Excerpt
Jamie didn’t hear the splash when her body hit the water. She didn’t feel the cold grip of swirling liquid engulf her or lift her back up to the surface minutes later. She never noticed a murder of crows perched on the railings of the dilapidated concrete bridge. Or the way moonlight reflected off their coal black wings, shimmered in the rippling river and her wet hair. Jamie didn’t see, feel, or hear much of anything anymore. Because at twenty-two… Jamie Lund was dead.
The water carried her like a baby and birthed her to the grassy bank on the other side of the bridge. A branch grabbed the black mini-skirt that she had worn that night and held it against the tug. A thousand ebon eyes watched her body drift and moor like a boat. A
cold wind bent the tall grass on the river’s edge and filled the night with wings. Against the churning bubble and the damp lights of the city in the distance, a cacophony of beaks erupted. Caws like locusts fell from the sky.
As if struck by a hammer to the chest, breath fueled Jamie’s lungs. An awakening gasp burst through icy, cold lips and teeth that were filled with muddy leaves and liquid. Jamie’s back arched and her head rose from the water with a jolt. Her eyes were milky white and distant. She sucked in a gulp of air with the grate of a straw searching for that last drop of soda under the ice; raspy like thorns – broken
as the wind in the hollow of a tree. Her arms pushed up and drove her hands deep into riverbank mud. The chips and cracks in her red- polished nails were covered with dirt. Crows swarmed above her as
a single mood. She coughed the river from her throat and pulled her
shaking body from the frigid wet.
Ebon eyes glared at the wretched girl from the sky, from the trees, and their concrete perch on the dilapidated bridge as she
struggled with stiff limbs to drag her sore and aching body through the tall weeds to the road. Jamie sat at the edge of the busted tarmac and looked around as her vision slowly tuned into her surroundings. The moon smiled down on her, a faint yellow, illuminating a patch of earth that she had never been to before. Nothing was familiar. Everything felt wrong. Fog peeled back from her memory like Russian nesting dolls, opening into themselves, getting smaller and smaller with the same effect, revealing nothing. She didn’t know how or why she was here. Worry blossomed inside her chest like a fruit basket.
She tried to call out. To simply speak, to utter a sound, to work her feeble voice, but her throat burned hot nails all the way down her windpipe. A tiny squeak parted from her icy blue lips and she placed
a hand to her throat. It was fraught with pain. She struggled. She worked her jaw to loosen her voice box, wind the organ up to play, but a flash of memory slammed into the back of her skull. It shook her shoulders awake, repeating on a loop. Scorching Jamie’s cerebral cortex, her eyelids fluttered.
She was looking at herself in a freestanding mirror - getting dressed. A column of jet-black hair fell past bare shoulders, framing her pretty face. She had a lithe, curvy shape, sensual lips, and thin fingers that pulled the zipper of her skirt up the side of her hip. She turned the cute little black number around so that the fastener was in the back. She straightened her black lace bra, smiled, and then did her make up. She was going out...
But, where?
Suddenly, Jamie felt wet and shivered. Fear crept past her damp clothes and crawled under her skin as she lifted herself onto the road. Every muscle rebelled. Her knees argued at the thought of bending. The joints in her fingers and elbows ached, popping with movement. Her back felt as if someone had surgically implanted a slab of concrete, and a blinding pain ran from her neck down her spine. Her shoes were missing, toes numb, the sides of her feet scrapped along the busted edge of the tarmac as she rose crooked and wobbly onto two weak legs. It was a horrible dream, unspooling limbs for the audience of
the blackbirds. Nothing was clear, nothing was familiar. A dull ringing
filled Jamie’s ears and she felt cold. Bitter and deep, that sprang from her center. Jamie Lund felt the cold that no one ever feels but which we’re all made to visit. Somewhere vaguely in the coils of her mind the little lost dead girl was reminded that it was July. Its not supposed to be this cold out! Slowly, Jamie wrapped her arms across her chest and lumbered toward the distant lights of the city.
