When the Devil Came Down to Texas

Chapter One

*not my image in the header

P A R T O N E

In the Beginning, there was Man and Woman. When they fell from grace, they fell through rose bushes. The thrones sliced open their skin, and their blood watered the dry, crumbling earth. From their blood-water, peach orchards blossomed. Around them, the air smelled like death.

CHAPTER 1 //

Alexandra can't help but think that maybe this time it will be better. She watched the South Texas landscape pass outside her window. Her fingers turn a sickly shade of white as she clenches the steering wheel. She tells herself to breathe. Tommy can't find her here. Not out here in the middle of nowhere Texas. There's nothing around but trees- tall ones, taller than the skyscrapers like back home- and she can't help but think how perfect it is.

Starting over. Alex absent-mindedly traces the scars on the inside of her wrist. The ones she didn't put there. The ones Tommy put there. The ones Tommy told everyone were the reason that she was unfit to live alone and unless they didn't give him the keys to her apartment she might as well be dead. That should have risen suspicion. But it didn't. It just painted him- in all her family's and friend's eyes-as he caring and so very considerate boyfriend who should be the fiancé by now. Why hasn't he proposed by now?

He did a month later. Alex couldn't say no. She should have said no. She loved him. Loves. His sharp cheekbones and accent, passed onto him from his mother. The way he'd slip between tongues. The way he looked at her, in the beginning. The way she could drown in his eyes.

She wished she had learned how to swim. Maybe then she could have left sooner.

She takes a deep breath and tells herself how proud she is of her ability to leave. Better late than never. Better alive than dead. She exhales the breath and smiles. She really is happy with herself.

Alex can still feel his spirit weight, like a phantom limb, on her. Over her. Inside her. Her head and her body. All over her. His finger prints never washed away.

She passes a sign that reads Welcome to Longward, Texas. Looking out her window, all Alex can see are wildflowers. Pressing her foot onto the brake, she lets her car come to a steady pace and pulls it over to the side. Stopping for the first time since she got in the car a day and a half ago, she clasps her key tightly in her fist and opens the door. There isn't a car for miles. Alex lets go of a tight as iron breath that she didn't know she had been holding. She must have been holding it since she had escaped. Finally escaped. A laugh bubbled up from her chest at the notion of being free. It had been too long. Way too long.

She couldn't stop thinking how good it felt leaving her chest. The exhale that let go of all the tension, a little bit of fear. She inhaled a little bit of hope that lingered along the edges of the wildflower field she parked her car at. The tank is almost on empty, and she knows she can't keep driving forever. Alex couldn't help but look over her shoulder a few times as she walked to the wooden fence that surrounded the field, waiting for Tommy to appear. All she could see when she closed her eyes were his fingertips. So Alex didn't close her eyes. Instead she looked over into the flower filled prairie, detailed with reds from poppies and purples from lavender. Yellows and golds. Greens and blues for as far as the eye, or her eyes, could see.

It was marvelous. All the flowers and the hot, hot sun beating down on her neck. So different from the frozen sunshine she was used to. She didn't miss it, or Tommy's hands on her at all.

Looking over the field of wildflowers, recalling the times when she gardened with her mother—these are called lilacs, Alex—she felt a little freer.