'Praying for the Devil?'
With the war between the vampires and Varúlfur more brutal and blood-thirsty than it has ever been, Megan Garrick has been forced to seek sanctuary with the one person she hoped she would never have to turn to.
By her side i...
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I'm trying really hard to breathe, but there are hands wrapped around my throat and they're squeezing, wringing out the last remnants of my no-good bastard life like they're wringing out a dirty dishcloth.
Because that's what I am. I'm dirt. Filth. Scum.
I'm the waste-of-flesh son of a hypocritical, weak preacher and an open-all-hours slut of a mother. And yeah, I could blame them, I guess. I could blame him for never showing me what it was to be a man and I could blame her for all the times she opened her legs to some poor schmuck who fell under her spell. I could do that.
But the truth is I'm dirt because of me. Because of all the shitty things that I do. Because most of the time I have a choice, and when I'm standing at the fork in the road and I'm looking up ahead, I choose the wrong route. Every fucking time. I choose the road that disappears into darkness, the one where the wind screams at you through the trees, where the journey looks like it will beat you down with every step and I do it with my head held high, a swagger in my step and a look in my eye that tells everyone they can think what they fucking like, because I don't give a shit.
Only the problem is, I've been trying to breathe since Lucille left – all the while telling her, it will be okay, it will, everything will be fine, trust me (bastard) – and people who don't give a shit don't have any trouble breathing. They get on with things. They smile, and they smooth back their hair and they carry on just like they did before, because what does it matter? What does anyone matter? Nobody matters. Not the father that you love and hate in equal measure, not the mother that you despise and certainly not the Italian girl you got pregnant. The girl who's about to get ostracized by her whole family or sent to some convent somewhere where she can have her baby in secret, because that's what she'll be to them now. Nothing but a shameful, filthy-as-sin secret only fit to be farmed out and married off to some Italian mobster who'll beat the shit out of her every day because she had a kid that wasn't his, because she let some barely-Irish fuck stick his dîck in her. The type of guy who won't look at her and see how fucking incredible she is. The type of guy who won't see that she's a goddess among women.
Yeah, I'm dirt. I'm fucking dirt because I'm standing at that fork again and I'm looking ahead.
On one side, I see marriage. I see a family. A home. A wife and a kid, maybe even two or three. I see myself flipping the bird at Joe Lombardi and Jackie Cerone and yeah, maybe even at Frank. I see myself with Lucille and I know I wouldn't be a good husband, because I'm not a good man, but I see myself trying to be. I see myself getting by. Maybe even being happy once in a while.
On the other side, I see myself walking away. I see myself tossing Lucille to the wolves and not looking back once as they tear her to pieces, as she becomes nothing but ground meat and a pile of bones for them to pick over. I see myself not thinking once about that child I helped create, the one that'll probably have my eyes and her smile. The one that'll have my bad attitude and her courage. The one that'll spend its life hating me, just like I hate my folks.
