*2018 WATTPAD PICKS FEATURED STORY*
Burny Madden is burning little by little to death. A phenomenon known as Spontaneous Human Combustion causes parts of his body to ignite at random.
Burny discovers that with his burning comes mysterious healing po...
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IT WAS A DAY FULL OF LIFE until she found three dead bodies.
Ella Cummings tried to scream, but her teeth chattered and she croaked. The jar of homemade strawberry jam slipped off her hands; it fell and shattered; and the jelly smeared the floor with crimson mess akin to curdled blood.
She stood at the front door of her neighbor's white house, bowels twisting into knots, fighting the disagreeable urge to vomit, the gruesome vision bouncing around inside her head
-Lifeless bodies.
-Woman. Man. Dog.
-Sprawled in the living room.
Carma Madden, her childhood friend and the woman she envied for looking nineteen despite being thirty-eight, bullet entry wound in her back.
(Blood. Blood. Blood.)
Stan Lucierno, the man with a permanent grin, Carma's second husband, still looked obnoxious even in death.
(Blood. Blood.)
Nearby, a dog, a Boxer, shot in the head.
(Blood.)
The only word that remained on Ella's incoherent thoughts. Everything else had left her. No words for horror, or why she was there, or Carma's secret fountain of youth, or her original strawberry with chili jam recipe, or her husband's erection problem.
Her legs crumpled, and she collapsed on her knees on the floor, lumbering like an inflatable Air Dancer losing air. She heaved, as if the sight of blood had sucked every wisp of air from her lungs. She struggled to inhale and exhale and exhale and inhale and inhale and exhale and...
Inhale.
Exhale.
Inhale.
(Blood.)
Trying to remember how to breathe.
Exhale.
Inhale.
Then her breath became choked words coming out through trembling lips: "Strawberry jam."
