Sacrificing Virgins Read Online Free Page B

purplish circles, and a patchy growth of beard spread like a rash across wide cheeks. Lips cut through black stubble like a pale river. It was a face that Jayce didn’t recognize. But then, he had no mental picture of himself at all to compare it to.
    He looked closer, trying to remember. Despite its fatigue, the mug that stared dully back at him didn’t look that old, just a worn-down thirtysomething, not the ancient creaking geriatric his back and limbs and mind seemed to indicate he might have physically become. Jayce wiped the water and his frown on a dingy white hand towel, and decided to see what lay beyond the room.
    The keys in his pocket started the car in the parking lot. But Jayce didn’t know where to go. He edged it out onto an empty side road, Clandestine Road , the sign read. He laughed at the irony of that. Behind him the vacant shell of the building he’d awoken inside loomed like a cutout prop against a gray sky. These moments hardly seemed real, yet, no matter how many times he tried pinching his skin, or biting his tongue, he did not wake up. Nor did he remember. At least, he didn’t remember what he had done yesterday, or what people called him, but he did remember learned motor skills, like walking and opening doors and driving a car.
    In a haze of time, he even vaguely remembered once getting his driver’s license, which allowed him to drive the car… speaking of which…
    Jayce pulled to the side of the road and put the car in park. Then he pulled out his wallet. If he had a license, he at least would know where to go home to, since it included his address. So long as he hadn’t moved recently.
    In moments he had discovered his address, and cross referenced it with a map from the glove box. The morning fog lifted as he navigated his way home, stopping once at a gas station to find out exactly where he was starting from, since Clandestine wasn’t on the map. He laughed at that.
    The gray morning fog had lifted by the time he stepped onto the wooden porch of the small bungalow he apparently called home. He froze for a second as he slid a key into the lock. What if he was married and there was a woman inside whom he didn’t know? Or worse yet…what if he was divorced and he no longer actually lived here?
    The lock clicked, and before he could think of any further debilitating scenarios, the door had creaked open. He stepped inside, shutting it quietly but firmly behind him. He knew in an instant that nobody was home. The air hung stagnant, stale, yet spiced with the hint of cumin.
    He quickly saw why when he stepped past the empty dining room table and into the narrow run of the kitchen.
    One long counter, meant for a cook’s workspace, was littered with empty Thai takeout boxes. As he stepped into the room something small and brown darted away from one of the boxes to slip in between the creamy counter backsplash and the kitchen wall. From the corner of his eye, Jayce thought he saw the dash for safety repeated elsewhere around him. He shivered and left the room to the bugs.
    Upstairs in the bedroom, he found a rumpled mess of pale sheets wound inside an ocean-blue comforter. Elegant gold thread slipped and curled in subtle filigree patterns across the thick bedcover; they glimmered like firefly capillaries in the dull light as he threw the sheets up to cover the crushed mound of pillows. Apparently he hadn’t cooked or made the bed in a while. He ran a finger across the dark wood of a woman’s dresser and stared at the gray silt that had collected there. Or dusted or cleaned.
    He reached around a ceramic statue of the Virgin Mary to pick up a picture frame from the dresser. The frame enclosed an action shot, rather than a portrait. He recognized a younger version of the face he had seen in the mirror this morning. Broad cheeks with a shadow of time turning to whiskers. Thick black eyebrows pulled back against an unmanageable tousle of hair. He