Would you read this gothic horror?
I'm refining the opening voice/tone for my Southern Gothic horror novel. Does this pull you in, or lose you?
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It all came rushing back again, that grueling memory. The aftermath of my final decision. The decision that caused me, Keningale Perks, to lose my head.
I shoved that thought aside like I’d done so many times before, by imagining how my life might have been had never met the man and the child responsible for turning me immortal without my consent.
I’d most likely have a family with terrible issues, a job I couldn’t stand, a house with a ridiculous mortgage… and that would have been just fine. Perfect. A perfectly mundane life. The thing about what-ifs, though, is the absence of fulfillment behind them. Eventually you end up right back where you started. The bitter reality. And in this reality I had no chance at being me any longer. That old identity was fading fast.
I’d been stuck this way for a while now. No way to tell how long. Time had truly become irrelevant with me stuck here, in the same place, a prisoner by choice, nowhere to go but within my own thoughts.
No longer being mortal made it increasingly harder for me to imagine my old life the way it used to be. The way I used to worry about trivial things, like death.
I had no need for sleep anymore, but I could still dream. I could still hope. And my hopes and dreams were mostly about her.
This time, my memory returned, and it went back all the way to my last normal day. The last time I felt human.
A sparrow sang outside my bedroom window, and I squinted my left eye open, trying to find it. It was watching me from the twig of an oak tree in the front yard. I’d always leave the blinds open, inviting the morning to enter uninterrupted. The bird tilted its head toward the house, curious, and sang again. Two quick notes, unremarkable and perfect. I ignored it and closed my eye, drifting straight to her, the girl of my dreams. All five feet of Native American TNT that she was.
Last night, something must have gone terribly wrong in the universe. I had always suspected loneliness was the type of thing a person could get used to. And I did get used to it, not by choice, but I did. Yet, last night I’d felt lucky, and I knew very well that luck was never on my side.
I wasn’t a drinker. She was. And last night, one glass of red wine had brought us closer than ever.
Last night, I’d kissed her, and she’d kissed me back—willingly.
In my dream, I heard her name. Pearl. And it echoed in a loop. The vowels slowly vanishing into the incessant metallic sound of a fire alarm.