Sugar by Mia Ballard

Author:Mia Ballard [Ballard, Mia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: B0DGFLWBP3
Publisher: Galaxy Press
Published: 2024-10-29T00:00:00+00:00

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Digging up Dean’s body wasn’t supposed to be part of the plan. He was meant to stay there forever, nestled under the lemon tree, hidden and safe beneath my watchful eye. But Lilah’s meddling has ruined that. Now I have to move him. Just in case. Just as I did when I killed him and buried him, I wait until three a.m. The dead hour—early enough that I can be done by sunrise, but late enough that the entire neighborhood is lost in sleep.

With a helmet light strapped to my forehead and a shovel in hand, I get to work, each stroke gouging the earth with a rhythm that’s both primal and painstaking. My arms burn, muscles screaming, but I can’t stop. My limbs are limp noodles, but there’s no turning back now. The shovel hits something solid, and I brace myself. I grab the tarp I’d stashed in the garage weeks ago and lay it out next to the open grave. The helmet light illuminates the body, and I gasp. Even though I’ve killed before, I’ve never faced them in this state. Dean looks inhuman, a parody of life, a horror show. His face is a grimace of liquefied features—eyes sunken into hollow pits, cheeks sagging into a death mask. The skin is a sickly shade of gray, stretched taut like decaying parchment over decomposing muscle. His lips have peeled back in a grotesque, eternal smile, teeth grinning yellowed and cracked. His suit, once pristine, is now a tattered shroud, clinging to his rotting frame.

By his arms, I start to pull him out of the hole, my stomach churning with every tug. His skin disintegrates under my touch, turning to mush, flaps of gray dead tissue sloughing off the bone. It clings to my fingers, cold and slimy, like wet, decayed paper. My mind is screaming, every instinct rebelling, but I force myself not to react, smothering my screams of disgust and horror. I pull and pull, each movement a march through hell. His limbs are stiff, a macabre puppet in my grip, every inch a testament to the life I extinguished. Finally, he’s out and on the tarp. I stare back at him as he stares back at me. “Hi my Deany,” I whisper.

I then wrap him up, the tangy scent of the lemon tree mingling with the stench of decay. The night is deep and silent, but I can’t shake the feeling that the earth itself is holding its breath, watching, waiting. My task isn’t done, but for now, Dean rests uneasily under my control, his future as uncertain as the night that embraces me. I drag his body, cocooned in the tarp, and wrestle it into a big black suitcase. It’s a dark dance, fitting him in, bending and twisting limbs that resist, reminding me of his stubbornness in life. But the suitcase is big enough, just barely. As I zip it closed, the finality of it is a blade slicing through the fog of my thoughts.

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