Peter walked down a bright and sunny Yonge Street, actually enjoying himself for the first time in over a year. He wore the sunglasses proudly, aware of the simple freedom that wearing them granted. Nobody could look into his eyes and then die while he wore those sunglasses.
Of course, he was concerned for the young male prostitute he’d asked to go into the store and pick up the sunglasses for him. He’d been careful to keep his eyes squinted and not to make eye contact with him, and he’d been positive the kid would just walk away with the money. But sure enough, he came back with the requested sunglasses. Peter was surprised at this and momentarily opened his eyes as the kid handed them over. Peter averted his eyes quickly as he passed the kid a twenty dollar bill.
He beat a hasty retreat as soon as Peter handed over the money, so Peter figured he would be fine. He was still worried though. After all, now that he had figured out a use for the power surging within him, he was hoping he wouldn’t have to kill any more innocent people.
The sunglasses gave him not only freedom, but confidence. He could kill at his own pleasure now — it no longer had to be an unavoidable accident.
It was all clear now, or at least as clear as things had seemed for the longest time. There was at least some sort of light in his future now. Things were looking up.
Except for Sarah, he reminded himself, and his thoughts turned, as they often did, to the one lost love that he still couldn’t get over. No amount of drink, no amount of time passed, was able to take that pain away.
His original plan — besides running from the authorities when they’d found he’d been living in the house with Uncle Bob’s dead body — had been to flee to Toronto, to the last place that Sarah had been spotted before her cousin had turned up dead.
He’d known it was going to be virtually impossible to find her; if she was even still alive. But what else was there for him?
And he had nothing left to lose, after all.
After deciding to give it all up, after staring at himself in the mirror to self-apply his death curse having failed, Peter tried slashing his wrists, taking a hand-full of Uncle Bob’s heart medication, and tried overdosing himself with booze.
None of them worked.
Sure, his wrists bled, and hurt like hell. He passed out from the pain and from the blood loss. But he woke up a day later. It hadn’t killed him, and his wrists were all hacked up and burned with the pain. But they eventually healed over, leaving nasty scars there.
Then he’d tried the pills. The same thing happened — he fell into a dark bliss, but awoke a day later in a pool of his own vomit, his head splitting in pain.
He did the same thing with drink. He consumed more than he knew he should be able to survive. But again, it didn’t work, it didn’t kill him.
The only benefit of having consumed so much alcohol was the numbing sensation that seemed to help. So he kept at it, kept drinking as much as he could, and while he knew it wouldn’t kill him, it did help to numb the pain.
The one pain he’d not been able to dull was the memory of Sarah.
Peter barely acknowledged almost being hit by a car as he jay-walked across the street because his mind was suddenly filled with memories of Sarah. Memories of a happier time. He caught a clear vision of her from his memory of almost three years earlier and clung to it desperately.
Sarah. Her black hair, green eyes and the slightly twisted smile on her face. Beautiful Sarah as he held her in Uncle Bob’s pickup truck in the parking lot by the Levack ski hill, far from the city, far from the evil and corruption, far from any thought of a death curse. Innocent and sexy Sarah, the look of excitement in her eyes that first night he touched the exposed flesh, fingered the kidney shaped mole on her breast. Her cute squirm and the sparkle in those green eyes. It had been the first time they’d gotten to that point, and was one of the fondest memories he had of her. They had just finished talking for several hours, sharing with each other their worst fears, their greatest insecurities. That’s what had made the physical moment which had come later more intimate and why it stuck in Peter’s mind so clearly.
Peter never understood why the death curse had never affected Sarah. Particularly when they’d spent so much time together, when he’d spent so much time gazing into and being lost in her eyes. He’d always suspected that perhaps, like Sarah’s father, she had been dying from some cancer he’d caused in her — likely some sort of undetected cancer.
Perhaps she was dead by now.
But he clung to the thought that she might still be alive, and that he might still have one more chance to just talk with her.
Because Sarah was the only person who had completely understood him.
And since she’d also lost several people close to her — her father and her cousin and Miss Hamilton — she was possibly able to understand the unending waves of grief that flooded his heart.
[The rest of this novel will continue to be rolled out on a regular basis here on Wattpad, but if you can't wait to read it, the print and eBook versions are available through all major online retailers. Publisher Atomic Fez's page (with links) is here: http://www.atomicfez.com/book-catalogue/9781927609033.html]