Jenny Pox (The Paranormals, Book 1) (47 page)

A hand patted her bare wet back, helping her cough some more.  Then it slid up to rub her affectionately on the back of the neck, while she coughed up the rest of the water.

“
Feeling better?” he asked.

“
I can’t see.” Her voice was a wet croak. “It’s so cold.”  She was naked and shivering hard.

“
Here.” He wrapped something like a blanket around her. It helped a little, but it was open and drafty in both the front and the back.

He pulled her close to him, into his lap, and his skin was as hot as open flames.  She wrapped her arms around his neck.  He lay one scorching hand on her drenched head.  He lay another across her bare stomach, and rubbed, creating more warmth through friction.  She realized he was wet and mostly bare, too, except the soggy boxer shorts under her ass.

“Seth?” she whispered.  Her eyes itched.  They were starting to work, but so far it was all dark, fuzzy streaks. 

“
Now you ask?  Would you just climb naked into anybody’s lap?”

“
Right now I would.” Her teeth chattered. “It’s really, really cold.”

“
Next time, don’t drown yourself in a pond.”

“
I was already dying,” she said. “I just wanted the pain to end.”

“
You made it a lot harder on me,” Seth told her. “I didn’t think I could do it, after I pulled you up and saw you.”

She could see the pale, fuzzy shape of his face now.  She lay a hand on it.

“Is this real?” she whispered, then coughed.  Her windpipe and lungs felt very sore. “Am I dreaming?  Am I dead?”

“
You were.  Now you’re not.”

“
Why?”

“
Because I can’t live without you.”  He turned her head and kissed her.  Her vision cleared up.

“
But, seriously,” she said. “What happened?  What day is it?”

“
It’s still tonight,” Seth told her. “I woke up on the courthouse steps a couple hours ago.  It took a while for me to finish healing.  Then another while to look around, because I woke up  surrounded by dead bodies as far as I could see—”

“
Sorry,” Jenny said. “But they were all guilty.”

“—
yeah, so I remembered about the plague-goddess girlfriend,” Seth said, and his choice of words startled her. “Then I had to find you.  Ashleigh’s body wasn’t on the square, so I thought you might be here.”

“
In the pond?”

“
That was easy.  You left dead white footprints all the way from the house.” Seth grinned and held up her lacy, dripping wet panties. “And these float.”

Jenny snatched her underwear from him. Then she touched his pale chest, where the bullet had entered his heart.  There was only a scar.

“She got me pretty good,” Seth said. He reached into the gaping, tattered hole in the back of the coat he’d put around Jenny, and his fingers touched her skin.  “Ruined my best suit, too. Almost want to resurrect her so I can kill her again.  Have you seen her body in the driveway?  Looks like chicken bones and charcoal.”

Jenny was still concentrating on his new scar.

“Does this mean you can’t die?” she asked.

“
I’m sure I can,” he said. “Just not that easy.  Besides, I had to come back and take care of you.”

“
And I didn’t really die, either,” Jenny said, her voice full of wonder. “I survived the drowning.”

“
Nah, you were totally dead when I pulled you out,” he told her. “I mean you were the color of a fish, no pulse, muddy, skin rotten, weeds in your hair, totally bloated up with water—”

“
Okay!” Jenny said.  She touched her left side.  Seth had erased her gunshot wound, too.

“
I’ve never healed anybody that dead before,” Seth said. “I’m very impressed with myself.”

“
I’m impressed with yourself.” Jenny looked at him carefully.  “But I bet you would die if I nailed you down with iron and set you on fire.”

“
Yes!” Seth recoiled. “That would probably do it!  That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard.  Why would you even think of that?  I think I’ve had nightmares about that.”

“
I think I already…I just had some crazy dreams down there.”

“
When you were dead?”

“
Don’t laugh.”

“
I had some, too,” Seth said.

Jenny looked him in the eyes. “Really?”

“You first,” he said.

She told him what she could remember of what she’d seen, though it was all getting murky and jumbled.  They had past lives together.  They made war on each other, and on the others who were like them, since prehistoric times.

“I saw some of that,” he said.

“
Don’t screw with me, Seth.”

“
I’m not.” His eyes looked into the distance toward the first pale shade of blue in the east.  “And something else.  Before we were human—I know that sounds weird, but listen—before we were human, we came from this dark, empty place.  Not…wherever normal humans souls come from.”

“
The wastelands,” Jenny said, nodding.

“
That a good word for it.  A great word.  Wastelands.” He frowned deeply, as if remembering a little of what it was like.  Jenny had a few memory-impressions of it, too.  Deep cold, darkness, an urge to scream in a place with no sound.  Trying to think about it filled her with horror.

“
When we first tried being human,” Seth said, “We didn’t understand people at all.  We were powerful, but we were wicked and brutal.  We loved destruction.”

“
Sounds like Ashleigh.” Jenny laughed a little.

“
Exactly like Ashleigh.  But some of us, or maybe just you and me, we started learning from all these human lives.  There’s a lot more available here, in this world, than just power and pleasure, but that’s all we could see at first.  We laughed at everyone else for their weakness.  But really the weakness is important.  Pain and suffering can teach compassion.  And love.  You and I have been learning about love for several lifetimes now.  We learn about it from each other.”

This struck Jenny as painfully sweet, and she gave him a long kiss.  Suddenly, she couldn’t get close enough to Seth.

She hugged against him.

“
I don’t think I understand love yet,” Jenny whispered. “But I want to keep trying.  With you.  I know I love you, Seth.”

“
I know I love you, too,” he whispered.

The sky was brightening above them.  They were sitting in the back yard of the deceased Goodling family, from which about ninety pregnant girls had recently emerged under inexplicable circumstances.  The broken pieces of Ashleigh’s body lay on the front walk.  Before long, someone would be here to investigate.  Someone would also be investigating the mysterious plague that left bodies all over downtown.

Seth wore only his wet boxers.  The rest of his clothes were scattered on the grass, where he’d left them when he dived into the pond to get her.  Jenny was naked except for the coat, which was missing a lot of its back.

“
We should go,” Jenny said.

They dressed as much as they could.  Jenny wore Seth’s bloodstained black pants.  Seth put on his bloodstained dress shirt, with the back blown out by shotgun.  It was hard to share one set of ruined clothes between two people.

“We had another reason for being born this time,” Jenny said. “To stop Ashleigh.”

“
We did that,” Seth said. “I mean, you did.  She pretty much stopped me.”

“
But there are others,” Jenny said. “I got the feeling there could be a lot of others.  Won’t they try to do the same kind of thing?  Won’t Ashleigh be looking for another chance to get herself born?”

“
Then we’ll watch out for the others.” Seth took her hand, and they walked towards the front yard.  Both of their backs were exposed to the rising sun.  “Today, I don’t want to think about anyone but you.”

Jenny smiled.

“What are we, Seth?  Before, we always had something we could believe. Something we could pretend to be.  I actually spent a whole lifetime thinking I was Arabian death angel.  It was kind of cool.  But we always let other people tell us what we are,” Jenny said.  “Now we have our memories of other lives.  Now that we remember, what do we do?”

“
We make it up as we go,” Seth said. “That’s what we’ve always done.”

“
But how should we—what do we—should we try to—” So many questions filled her up that she couldn’t begin to focus on any particular one.

“
We have forever to figure that out,” Seth said. “Right now, let’s just think about living this one lifetime together.”

“
Then we’d better get started,” Jenny said. “One lifetime goes by like that.”

Jenny snapped her fingers.

THE END

J. L. Bryan
studied English literature at the University of Georgia and at Oxford.  He also studied screenwriting at UCLA. He lives in Atlanta with his wife Christina and assorted pets.

The Paranormals series by J.L. Bryan

On Amazon
:

Jenny Pox

Tommy Nightmare

Alexander Death

Jenny Plague-Bringer

On Amazon UK
:

Jenny Pox

Tommy Nightmare

Alexander Death

Jenny Plague-Bringer

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An excerpt from

Glimpse

By Stacey Wallace Benefiel

Chapter One

I stared at the back of Avery Adams head, imagining what it would feel like to press my face into his wavy brown hair. I longed to experience the exhilaration of running my fingertips over his broad shoulders and down his chest, of standing that close to him, feeling the heat coming off of his golden skin.

He was two people ahead of me in the line to take communion.  I tried to focus on the smell of his shampoo. Unfortunately, the two people between us were my mom, and his dad. With them blocking the way, all I could smell was tea rose perfume and extra strength drain cleaner.  Not a pleasant combination. 

The line moved forward. The woman behind me, Mrs. Hobby, stepped on the back of my heel, scraping it with the pointy toe of her white patent leather flat.

“
Ouch!” I said, way too loudly. The congregants of my white bread Lutheran church were not prone to exclamation of any kind.  I flushed my usual shade of flame as everyone looked at me, including Avery.  Mortified, I wheeled around, facing Mrs. Hobby, accidentally knocking off her massive white Easter hat.  I caught it mid-air and jammed it back on her head. “Sorry! I was spacing out,” I whispered, like the whole church couldn’t hear what I was saying.

“
Zellie!” Mom hissed at me from the front of the church.

“
Uh, here we go, our turn at bat.”  I ran up to the altar and knelt down, bowing my head, touching my chin to my chest.

Someone in the back of the church snorted a laugh.  It sounded like Claire. A giggle shimmied up my throat. Claire was my best friend and a frequent witness to my extreme dorkiness.  She could also make me get the giggles at the most inappropriate moments.

I raised my head and took the communion wafer that my dad, Pastor Paul, offered, clamping my mouth shut before the giggles could escape and embarrass me even further.  I glanced down the altar, wishing that the elder would hurry up with my tiny plastic cup of wine. I always seemed to get the communion wafer stuck to the roof of my mouth and then had to engage in some major tonguing in order to get it loose.

Avery leaned forward, taking his wafer from my dad. He swallowed it in one smooth gulp and then gave me a confused grin.

Oh, God, he must think I’m looking at him!   I immediately stopped trying to pry the wafer loose with my tongue and put my chin to my chest again. What could I have looked like? I tried to float above myself, picture my face. What I conjured was not a flattering image.  I had one eye closed, nostrils flaring, my tongue flicking back and forth.  What the hell was my problem? I looked like a cat coughing up a fur ball.  Ugh.