Reunion Read Online Free Page B

wasn’t often she got hold of one like him.
    “Let’s put on a little mood music and make a trade. You owe me twenty dollars, big boy.” She gave his manhood a final squeeze before turning away.
    His stomach grumbled again. He looked around and sighed. He couldn’t see any food, but maybe that was where she was going. Maybe she was going to bring him something to eat.
    Suddenly a raucous blend of hard rock and rap shattered the intimacy of the moment.
    The woman turned toward him with a smile on her face and began moving her body to the beat as she started toward him.
    For him, there was no music, only a cacophony of wild sounds that to him became pain. With the wilting flowers still clutched in his hand, he threw back his head and screamed, clawing at his ears and beating himself on the head.
    The woman stopped short. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”
    She was standing too close to his answer.
    He swung blindly, wanting to stop the pain and stopped her heart instead. Thrown against the wall by the momentum of the blow, her neck snapped, and the stereo she’d turned on only moments earlier fell to the floor with a crash.
    When the sound ceased, the pain disappeared. He stood in the silence, staring down at the woman in blank confusion. His stomach grumbled again. There was a small drop of blood at the corner of her lip. He squatted down beside her and wiped it away with the ball of his thumb while staring at a swath of black hair lying across her eyes.
    Her blood was still on his hand, and he wiped it on the seat of his pants. He’d cut himself before and remembered that it hurt to bleed. She must be hurting, too. He looked down at his roses and then rocked back on his heels. Without hesitation, he pulled a single, long-stemmed rose from the bunch and laid it upon her stomach.
    “There now. All better.”
    He walked out of the room without looking back.
     
    When Gabriel opened his eyes, he found himself standing in the dark at the edge of his mother’s garden with a long-stemmed rosebud in his hand. Its leaves were covered with some of the same dew that had dampened the hems of his jeans. But when he looked closer, he knew it would never open. It had been picked too soon.
    As he glanced up at the house, he had a fleeting impression that it was a face and the windows its eyes, and that he was being judged and found lacking. He looked down at the rose and then suddenly tossed it away, wiping his damp fingers on his jeans as if he were wiping off something foul.
    At the same time, he felt something wet on the side of his jeans. It was thick and sticky, and he stared intently, trying to make out what it was. Whatever it was looked black in this light.
    Blood?
    He looked down at his hands, searching for injury, but it was too dark to see what he’d done.
    “What the hell is happening to me?”
    All he could hear was his own heartbeat, hammering in his ears. He started toward the house, and as he did, images began to flash in his mind.
    Images of a dark, ugly place and a black-haired woman lying on a dust-covered floor. Breath caught at the back of his throat as something rattled in the bushes beside him. By the time he passed through the patio doors, he was running. Only after he was safely inside did he stop to wonder why the security alarm hadn’t gone off. It did nothing for his peace of mind to find out that he must have turned it off before going outside. It bothered him even more that he didn’t remember anything about what he’d been doing. With a weary shake of his head, he reset the alarm and crawled back to bed.
     
    The bathroom mirror was fogged with steam as Gabriel stepped out of the shower. His thoughts were locked into the business of the day when he saw movement from the corner of his eye. His heart skipped a beat as he spun toward the motion, and then he froze, mesmerized by what he saw. It was his own reflection, partially hidden behind the curtain of mist. The shape of his face was vague,