C. M. Rosens

Welcome back to Eldritch Girl…

The final act of the novel is upon us, and in this part, Katy returns to the Outside unprepared and Wes seizes his chance to get rid of Ricky.

CWs: incision/self-mutilation, drug-addled decision-making, aggressive family arguments, body horror.

Chapter 10

Memories crowded him, bouncing against the dark sand.

One of them stood out among the rest, looming closer.

Charlie, on her knees with a utility knife in her hand, slicing off her own eyelids so she could stare hopelessly at a collage of his photographs until she starved to death. She’d wet herself rather than leave the room, rather than leave the pictures of him.

“No, no, baby, no…” Wes whimpered, reaching for her, but he never wanted to touch that memory again. “I thought if I left, you’d get better…”

The memory replayed from when he walked in the door. He spun around, looking for other memories, but there was only that one, replaying like a gif wherever he
looked.

“No, no…” He closed his eyes, but it played on the back of his eyelids, and he couldn’t switch it off.

Regret oozed out of his joints, slowing him down as he tried to run, and just as he collapsed in a heap of broken, numbed parts, everything twisted into a different shape and he was still strapped into the passenger seat of his car, his brain inside out, thoughts sucked back inside.

It took him a good ten minutes and another bottle of mineral water before he dared unbuckle the seat belt.

“Fuck, I’ve got to stop taking these.”

There was too much darkness in him, too much he never wanted to remember either backwards or forwards.

~ C. M. Rosens, Thirteenth, p. 319

The standalone backstory of this memory is its own short, and also its own episode:

Blog post : >>here<<

Podcast episode: >>here<<

Ko-Fi Shop link: >>here<<

eBook Stores link: >>here<<

Amazon link (change .co.uk in the URL to your Amazon store): >>here<<

GoodReads Page: >>here<<