Cursed - N. Isabelle Blanco Page 0,1

B-rated script. Doesn’t it?

Hah. Just wait. It gets worse. Alice’s rabbit hole doesn’t have shit on mine.

See, the priestess might’ve been ancient, but I was high off my fucking ass.

I was always high back in those days; it was my only way to get by.

Easy to tell myself I imagined that entire night—the odd woman that approached me, her ability to see the rotting pain in my soul. How she offered me everything I could’ve ever wanted, a deliverance from the life I didn’t ask for.

How, according to her, all I had to do was “sign” on the dotted line . . . Or, in the name of complete transparency, press my bleeding thumb to the bottom of an old-fashioned, text-filled parchment.

I told you this crap sounds like imagined garbage.

Except, I did it.

I convinced myself I didn’t.

Shortly thereafter, my life changed in ways I could’ve never envisioned.

Ten years down the line, it’s changing once more—a bad acid trip that’s about to become ten times worse.

The only way I can help you make sense of it—hell, the only way I can begin to truly understand it—is to show you.

Step one: my suicidal idiocy.

Step two: the dark hole it’s about to lead me to.

And the incarnation of fire and damnation that’s waiting for me at the bottom of that pit.

CHAPTER 1

Flames surround her, a tempest of hellfire that encompasses her entire form.

I’m not burning as she approaches; I’m frozen down to the depths of my damaged soul.

“I know you,” I hear my warped, echoing voice say.

“We all recognize death when it finally arrives at our door.” Her outline flickers as she appears inches from my chained body.

Chains? When was I . . . the question vanishes into the ether as I tilt my head back to take in her mind-bending glory. Her black coat flares out into a skirt and each step she takes parts the folds, exposing the straps of a garter belt connected to black, silk-edged thigh highs.

Her hair falls in brown waves down her shoulders—a cacophony of different shades that’s highlighted by the fire trickling along her silhouette. Her skin is a golden tan and my befuddled mind muses how apt that is; after all, a woman of flames would be kissed by its glow.

Ice-blue eyes assess me in the coldest of ways.

My soul freezes even more.

My heart nearly disappears in a burst of molten ashes fanned by her presence.

She scares me to the core.

Fascinates me like the quintessential abyss calling my name.

I’m sure I’m not the first man to get aroused by the cause of his demise.

“It’s you. You’re the one here to collect.” The chains I’m shackled in cut my flesh with each move.

She tilts her head, staring at the pitiful fool by her feet. “You gave them your soul and you’ve become the abomination you’re meant to be. Now you shall burn for your greed.”

Greed? Can she not see how wrong she is, this glorious creature of myth. She calls me the abomination, yet she’s the embodiment of all that shouldn’t exist. Proof that what happened a decade ago—me selling my soul to that bedraggled woman—was real.

Proof that there’s a world beyond human pettiness, poverty and glitz, desires and strife.

I jerk my head, unblinking, drunk on the sight of my intended executioner. Not that she’ll have the chance to become that. She’s here for something much worse. “They sent you here to kill me, but that’s not what you’re here to do. You’re here to own me . . .”

An undeniable truth.

A damming one.

A punishment far worse than my death.

I don’t know her, yet my molecules recognize the danger she poses.

Her expression flashes; fire-framed fingers twitch at her sides. Every inch of her is in denial of my claim—ready to destroy the lowly being that would dare to utter such a claim. She’s a vision of incoming disaster.

A symphony of bad intentions.

“The only thing I own, foul creature, is the life still coursing through your veins. And I shall be taking that now.” She lifts her hand, the flames bursting into an even more blinding whirl—

Last thing I see is that fire coming for me.

The disgust in her gaze.

My own limbs shifting within the shackles, overcome with . . . fur?

Someone’s haunting howl is the last thing I hear.

And I’m pretty sure that sound came from me.

Champagne flows freely throughout the room. No one asks what kind it is, but we all know it’s the expensive shit. It has to be. Louis Westfeldt would have no