Among Us: A Supernatural Novel written by Carver Edlund

Deleted Scene: Forgotten

This happened because I should never introduce a character not connected to my story . . .

TRIGGER WARNING: Please be aware that this oneshot is Read at Risk. The following scenes are more disturbing, darkly themed (repeated implied sexual assault), and stream-of-consciousness than my writing usually gets, and it's not pretty. Demons never are.

..::~*~::..

So this was how he was going to go. Bleeding out on a filthy, lumpy, stinking mattress shoved halfway up an alley wall. In the dark. In the slime. In the heat.

She'd taken her knife with her. A pretty thing, it had been, a butterfly blade three inches long. Probably something her boyfriend had given to her. She'd pulled it right out of her purse before he'd gotten her tight corduroy hip-huggers off her. It had caught a flash from the distant streetlight when she flicked her wrist to open it.

He'd laughed at it. What was she going to do with a toy of a pigsticker like that? He'd gone right for her slim throat, locking his hands around it. He liked to feel the waves of their long, soft hair brushing his knuckles. To smell their sweat as it soaked their clothes. To hear them asphyxiate as he rode them. There was no other high like it.

He'd moved fast. He'd gotten good at positioning his girls so that they were ready for him by the time he pressed them to the mattress. He only had minutes to enjoy this. And enjoy it he would.

But she'd broken his hold. Somehow gotten her arms in between his and turned—

He should have gone for the knife.

He could poke his fingers right up into the wounds. Five of them. One for each finger. He could tickle his own ribs.

Quickest fucking boner-killer he'd ever experienced in his life.

..::~*~::..

It took him a long time to die.

So long, that he got bored.

So bored, that he finally stood right up out of his body. He stepped aside as though it were a discarded pile of laundry.

Then, feeling sorry for himself, he crouched on the balls of his feet at one end of the mattress, staring at the patterns of garbage slime on the pavement. Absently, he probed the stab wounds in his side, reaching across his torso so he could dig around with his fingers. In. Deeper. Out. Harder.

Huh. They didn't seem to hurt anymore.

Boring.

"Stephen."

He threw a heavy-lidded glare over his shoulder. The hell? Who was that? What was anybody doing here?

"M'name's Ven," he grunted. "What d'you want? Go away. Leave me alone."

"You're not going to be difficult now, are you, Stephen?" the stranger asked in an unctuous tone that Ven immediately hated. The goddamn fruit produced a gold watch from his waistcoat pocket, studying it intently. He held a jewel-headed cane under one arm, and a bowler hat perched on his slicked, wavy hair.

"Ven," Ven said again. He slowly rose to his full height, which his girls easily surpassed. Didn't matter. He was wide enough to get his arms around them. Strong enough to immobilize them. His right hand dripped blood that looked black in the night.

The world spun, unbalancing him like a Tilt-A-Whirl.

The stranger didn't seem to notice. He closed his watch with a snap. "Come along, Stephen. The afterlife awaits."