Crimson Lake 01 Crimson Lake by Candice Fox

Author:Candice Fox [Fox, Candice]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Random House UK
Published: 2017-04-06T00:00:00+00:00

Dear Jake,

It must be wonderful to be a god. I don’t necessarily mean a celebrity, someone who has the masses cowering and creeping along beneath them everywhere they go, although I’m sure you get your taste of that. A husband can be his wife’s god. She can love him in the kind of way that gives him steering power over her whole life. She can put her neck in his hands and tell him that he can decide how long she breathes. I realise that I’ve made you my god, Jake. Sometimes, I can feel your fingers on my throat, pressing, taking the breath from me.

It was kind of like that, seeing you at Cairns Books on McLeod Street. It was the first time I had been in your proximity, and my throat closed at the sight of you. I was almost sick on the bus there. It wasn’t just you that shocked me, but the freaks swirling around you, those happy demons putting water out for you and clicking your pen for you and standing by you like guards while the readers lined along the walls. All the fake laughter and the painful smiles. Seeing you there among the pretenders made me burn, Jake. They don’t love you like I do – and the fact that they’d even pretend they do makes me so enraged. So bitter. They don’t know what it’s like to have been writing to you this long and receiving nothing in return. They don’t know that kind of rejection.

You probably think I’m a freak. A lot of people do. A bit of fan fiction and some cheesy letters and an accidental overlooking – you’re so fucking busy, after all – and now you’ve got me all wound up like an angry bitch in heat. Calm down, mate. Get in line. There’s plenty to go around. Everybody will get their slice of Jake eventually.

They don’t get it, do they? They don’t get how this feels.

Our relationship isn’t writer and reader. It never was. It’s always been messenger and receiver. I’ve got yours, Jake. But all these pretenders, they’re getting in the way of you receiving mine.

I’ve included some more writing. I know you’re reading it. I don’t know why you don’t reply. Maybe you can’t. Maybe you’re frightened to see so much of yourself in me. Don’t be afraid, beautiful god. I won’t forsake you.

I found Amanda in my kitchen, making herself coffee. She’d said nothing about coming over, she’d just appeared, like something I’d imagined.

In the early morning hours, I’d spooked the vigilantes as they pulled up outside my house, running out there in my boxer shorts with a broom. I don’t know what they’d been planning, but there had been three of them on their way out of the car, and all three had jumped back in at the sight of me. I hadn’t noted any details about them, or the vehicle. I’d had a restless night thinking about Dynah Freeman’s words.

That Lauren isn’t anything like the Lauren who died.

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