Pretty Faces and Dark Places
Read Pretty Faces and Dark Places Online
Authors: Rose B. Mashal
Pretty Faces and Dark Places
by Rose B. Mashal
Winner of a Halloween Contest Hosted by Cool Beans Publishing House. Now extended
.
Copyright © 2015 by Rose B. Mashal
All rights reserved.
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Editors
Susan Willeat
Lisa Marie Salyers
When Maya finally decides to go to a party in the woods with her best friend on a dark Halloween night, she didn’t imagine she was heading down the road of no return.
With her heart filled with love and her spirit shielded with pureness, she entered the underworld, facing what she never thought existed, and living with creatures she knew only lived in legends.
With his heart made of pure hate and his soul stained with evilness, Andrew fell in love with the last girl he should fall in love with.
Together, they try to make their love survive – because forbidden love is the most kind of love that needs fighting for.
To Ann May, I wrote it only because of you. I love you more than I can ever say.
Always trust your first gut instincts
, they say.
If you genuinely feel in your heart and soul that something is wrong, it usually is.
A lesson that life taught me. The very hard way. But sometimes, it just wasn’t that easy to listen.
I always believed in following those niggling feelings you get when you’re exposed to something new to you. Where you would find the options, know them and understand them, knowing deep inside that there is only one option that you
should
follow.
I wish that I had been able to listen to those niggling feelings that Halloween night, when everything in me told me not to go along with it, to stop it as soon as it started, to go back and just let it go. Because not a day has passed since then where I didn’t ask myself
‘What if...?’
and wonder if the horrible things that happened that night would still have happened if I had only gone with my gut and hadn’t gone
there
.
Halloween 2013
Giving up wasn’t something that she could do. Her favorite saying was
, ‘If I want something, I get it.’
And get it she did. She had a strong, powerful talent in convincing people of whatever she wanted them to be convinced of. It was crazy. Almost like magic. Crazy magic.
“May, please?” Sophie begged. “It’s going to be fun, I promise.”
“I don’t like parties, you
know
I don’t,” I said, throwing myself back on my bed and rubbing my temple with my thumb and pointer-finger. My best friend’s pleas were giving me a headache. A horrible one.
“I know, but this one is different. It’s not a bunch of hormonal teenagers who just want to get laid–they’re college boys, dude!”
“Sophie, it’s a Halloween party! Costumes and stuff! That’s even worse!” I complained. The last thing I wanted do was to go to a crowded house, where the smell of alcohol mixed with sweat and puke was everywhere, while wearing a stupid costume that made me all itchy–and probably look like a prostitute. Oh no, thank you very much.
“We’ll keep it low key, just bunny ears and a little tail?” Sophie tried.
“No way!”
Freaking bunny.
“Hmm…devil horns and a red tail?”
“What’s up with you and tails? Forget it, Sophie, I’m not going.”
“Oh, wait!” She jumped off of the bed excitedly and ran to my closet. I groaned. She stayed in there for a good five minutes digging for God only knows what, then came out sporting a huge grin.
“Ta-da!” she sang.
I sat up on my elbows and took one look at what she held in her hands. “Not gonna happen!”
“Oh, c’mon! Please!”
“I haven’t worn those for like two hundred years–I was a kid.”
“You were
fourteen
!” she corrected. “And we celebrated your eighteenth birthday last week, remember? It wasn’t one hundred and ninety-six years ago.”
“I wouldn’t know anyone. I’ll be bored out of my mind!” I tried one more time.
“You’ll know
me
!” she protested with a pout, then she did this thing with her head that she’s always used as her trump card where she tilts it to the side and shoots me those puppy-dog eyes, and BANG, I’m a goner.
I sighed. She squealed...because she just won.
“Now, c’mon, let’s go down and have breakfast.”
A ball of energy
, that’s what the sister I never had was. She was always full of life, always excited about everything. She was the kind of girl who threw smiles all around and stopped to play with a little puppy or a kitten. She was the one who went out of her way to give a homeless person her lunch on her way to school. She was the girl everyone fell in love with: boys wanted her and girls wanted to
be
her. And she had been my best friend for as long as I could remember.
“Good morning, girls!” my grandmother greeted us when we entered the kitchen.
“Mornin’, Nana,” we both said in unison.
“I made pancakes!” Nana said with a big grin on her face, her pearly white teeth–
they were all hers
, she’d always said to everyone and anyone on any occasion–were almost competing with the whiteness of her straight locks that played with the tops of her shoulders as she moved around.
“Uh-” I said.
“Thank you, Nana, you spoil us too much!” Sophie kissed her on the cheek.
“It’s my pleasure, Sweetheart. I’ll be in the greenhouse if you girls need anything.”
I watched my granny as she made her way out of the kitchen and right at that second I felt pain in my shoulder as Sophie gave me quite a hard punch.
“Ouch!” I whined. “What the hell did you do that for?”
“You were rude to Nana!” she scowled.
“No, I wasn’t!” I said. “I was just going to tell her that you hate pancakes is all.” My Nana tended to forget lots of things lately. Lots. And I had no idea if it was because she missed my grandfather–God rest his soul–dearly or not. Like, was she always thinking about him so there was no room to remember other things; or was it much more than just grieving emotions? After all, I was surprised that Nana survived and bore a life without him at all. Their love was out of this world. Almost like the love that my parents shared one day. Almost. But not really. My parents’ love was much stronger. I knew it was.
“See? That’s rude.” Sophie insisted.
“I didn’t say anything!”
“But you were going to.”
“Shut up, Sophie.”
She shook her head and stood up, opening the fridge and taking out the milk then turning to pick up the box of cereal. I shot her a knowing look and she stuck her tongue out at me like a little kid. I rolled my eyes, smiling.
We were halfway through our breakfast when Sophie spoke, “Mom called while you were sleeping.”
“Yeah? What did she want?” I asked, taking a forkful of my pancakes.
“The usual:
‘You’re never home.’
and
‘Are you ever going to have breakfast with us?’
mixed with some
‘Your dad misses you, too,’
“ she sighed.