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November 2008

Comet Press open for submissions

Our print division, Comet Press, is currently accepting submissions for horror, suspense, and dark crime novels and novellas. Visit www.cometpress.us for details.

Available for order from Comet Press

DEADLINES: AN ANTHOLOGY OF HORROR AND DARK FICTION, will be released in November of 2008! Visit www.cometpress.us

Burn
by Amanda Lawrence Auverigne

So here you are.

At my feet.

Weeping as usual.

What's the trouble this time? What is your ailment today?

I look down at the mass of shining blonde curls that lay on your head and I sigh.

You look up at me with wide eyes.

The tears that pour from your blue eyes are like liquid crystals and if I had any tears left I would weep for the sight of your beauty.

I've cried floods of tears for you already. There are none left.

Even if I wanted to cry for you now I couldn't.

I loved you so much for so long.

And you didn't even know that I was alive.

I followed for three years.

Waiting in the shadows.

Hoping that you would look at me. Talk to me.

Acknowledge my existence.

But you never did.

Sure I tried to forget you.

I had alot of flings with alot of useless guys. I felt empty inside each time I let one of them touch me.

They weren't you.

You were the one I wanted. And you didn't even know that I existed.

The years passed.

You looked at me for the first time when I tripped over your feet.

Before I walked across the stage.

Your notice of me at that point didn't really count.

The whole school watched me as I slid across the stage and fell on top of the Dean.

His wrinkled face was red when the people got me off of him. And I was surprised when he handed me my diploma with a smile.

You talked to me afterwards.

I was polite enough but I did not give way to the flood of senseless emotion that had overtook me since the day I first set eyes on you.

When you noticed me I was over you.

Which is the way these things work.

You took great pains to walk beside me.

You talked about your life and goals.

You told me things about yourself that I have known for years.

And I found myself bored and restless in your presence.

I left the ceremony and did think of you after.

I was surprised.

I had loved you for so long and the fact that I was nonchalant when you finally spoke to me filled me with a grave sense of remorse.

I set aside fifteen minutes of my busy post-graduate day to think on these new and confusing developments in the realm of my fragile emotions.

I came to the conclusion that I had loved you so much for so long without any form of encouragement, gentility or acknowledgement.

I had lived and loved you with the bitterness of disappointment in my
breast. And thus the flame I had carried for you for so long had died
out.

My love for you had burned itself out.

I have no idea how you got my number.

I had yours for years.

I called you dozens of times in the middle of the night.

Just to hear your voice.

Your girlfriend answered and I quickly hung up.

I had your cell, pager and dorm room number.

I also have your home number in my Rolodex.

Your mother sounds like a nice lady.

She was always cheerful when I called your house during the semester breaks.

I almost choked on the bagel I was eating when Beethoven's Eroica poured from my purse in the crowded coffee shop.

I opened my cell phone and said hello.

I could not believe it when I heard your voice.

You had a one way conversation for ten minutes and you asked if I
would be interested in meeting with you.

I declined your invitation and I slammed the phone closed and devoured the rest of my bagel.

You started following me after that.

I had moved a few blocks from campus with some friends who were having a hard time dealing with the fact that their aimless college years were over.

I was with them because of the reasonable rent.

I saw you in the lobby.

I nodded my head in passing.

You stood in the corner of the room near the mailboxes with your hands in your pockets.

I rushed out of the door before you could speak to me.

Then you came to my job.

I saw you in front of the large office building holding two cups of coffee in the freezing cold.

Your face lit up when you saw me and I felt a mixture of irritation and pity when I looked in your eyes.

I took the coffee but I did not invite you in.

Then you were sitting at my desk.

You were dressed in a suit and told me cheerfully that you would be working at my firm.

I had a full fledged panic attack at this point.

I watched you leap across the desks to get me a cup of water.

My collegeaues gathered around me as I held my chest and gasped for air.

Panic attacks are not fun.

They feel like heart attacks but are not fatal.

When I calmed down I left for the day.

You followed me in your car.

You stayed outside my building all night.

My friends laughed and giggled as they stood in the window and
pointed down at you.

I thought them cruel.

My cell phone rang and rang.

I turned it off.

The apartment phone rang.

My friends did not understand my reaction to you.

They knew that I had stalked you for years and they wondered why I didn't want you.

I went into my room and cried.

My best friend came in and gave me a hug. And she pulled out a small black bag and put it on my bed.

She rubbed at my head and stared at me. And she apologized for what she had done.

She opened the bag and dumped the contents on my mattress.

I looked at the feathers, specks of dust, rocks and vials of liquid that fell on my comforter.

She told me that sometimes these things work out. And other times they don't.

She ran her hand along the items and she told me that sometimes the balance of what you scribe for is outta wack.

She held a lock of blonde hair in her hand.

She said that she thought she had it right. She had tried it out on a few people before she did it to you.

She said that she did it as a present for me. She said that she hoped that it would make me happy.

That is how I found out that my best friend, who I have known since kindergarten, is a witch.

A very powerful witch.

Just when you think you know a person.

I cried and told her to undo whatever she had done.

She put the stuff in the bag and told me that these things tend to burn themselves out.

I left the apartment.

I ran by your car as you were getting out.

I had to get away from the craziness that surrounded me. So I jumped in a high priced cab and told the driver to go north.

I was still crying like an infant when I looked up to see that I was downtown.

I decided to get some food after my stomach growled over the loud music the driver was blasting.

I told him to stop and stuck my twenty dollar bill in the bullet proof slot.

I got out of the cab and sneezed as a blast of incense went up my nose.

I walked down the crowded street and bumped into a young blonde girl.

I apologized and kept going.

The scent of curry assaulted me from the opened doors of the restaurants I passed.

I stopped walking and held my belly.

I felt sick.

I looked down to see blood staining my shirt near my elbow.

I pulled my shirt up to see a small puncture wound in my arm.

My arm felt stiff and I turned and looked in the crowd.

I didn't see the blonde girl anywhere.

My head started to hurt.

I fell on the pavement.

I heard sirens and I saw your face leaning over me.

I was cold. But I felt your tears slap against my cheeks.

They were warm.

And now I'm here.

I can't move.

The stiffness started at the wound and traveled all over my body.

I am standing with my arms outstretched and my face is looking down on you.

I don't hurt anymore.

Sometimes I feel like weeping.

My best friend lied.

Sometimes these things don't burn themselves out.

You still love me.

After all this time. You still love me.

I know you do or else you would not have picked me up off of the street and locked me in this room.

Away from her.

I know you still love me.

If you didn’t you would not have stopped her when she found me.

The blonde girl in the street.

I know you still love me. If you did not, you would not have taken the sledgehammer from her hands and did what you did.

I can still smell the blood.

I can still hear the screams.

You scrubbed the room with bleach afterwards.

You did not weep then.

But I can still see the blood.

Her blood.

I long for the day when it burns out.

When what you think you feel for me ends.

I hope my friend was right. But I don’t think that she is.

You started to love me after I stopped loving you.

That’s the way these things are sometimes.

I wonder what would have happened if you cared for me the way I cared for you before.

Before all of this. Before that day on the street.

When I found out that your girlfriend was a witch.

A very powerful witch.

I wish you had not done what you did.

She was the only one who could save me from this.

This life if you can call it that.

I only wish that you had loved me truly before she turned me
into stone.

So here I am.

And here you are.

I am bored as I look down at you.

And you are weeping at my feet.