Gabriel's Hope

"Or, I guess you can tell him to come out," she said. The man in her bedroom was kind of creepy: tall and lean with blond hair and eyes so dark, she couldn't see his pupils. Logan's choice in men was definitely lacking."It's okay. I know. I'm not mad. My name is Deidre."

"I've heard a lot about you." The blond man's smile was slow, predatory, his teeth sharpened into points and his dark gaze piercing. "I'm Jared."

She took an involuntary step back into the hall. "Nice to meet you."

Jared approached. Unnerved by the strange man, Deidre backed away until she bumped into the wall.

"I like your hair," he said, looking her over. "Reminds me of a water sprite."

The familiar phrase made her chest tighten. The instincts she'd ignored at seeing Logan alive grew louder. Something was wrong here. The bones and blood, the scary man with pointed teeth.

"After you." Jared motioned to the living room.

"Go ahead. I've gotta go to the bathroom," she replied.

He shrugged and padded down the hall.

Deidre turned to the spare bedroom. They kept Logan's baseball gear there, and she felt the sudden need to have a bat in her hands. She opened the door and flipped on the light.

The bedroom was covered in blood. The spare bed was soaked with it, and it pooled around the legs. There were handprints on the windows, as if someone had tried to escape, and blood splattered on the ceiling and the walls.

Unable to process what was before her, Deidre closed the door and swallowed hard. The sense of calm settling inside her was unnatural, like the rest of the day. She stared at the door. At some point, her life had gone from crappy to freakish. It started when she had a one night stand with a serial killer.

Was that it, then? Had she really died last night and entered this strange reality? Was this purgatory? Reparation for bad karma?

Could she leave? Return to her own world?

Far calmer than she'd ever been, she crept down the hallway. Logan and Jared were in front of the television, talking about the basketball game. Like two guys hanging out who thought it was normal to have bones in the bathroom and blood covering the spare bedroom.

She was going crazy. Or she'd died. There was no way this was real. It was a sign, though, that things had gone on long enough. Maybe this was the push she needed to take that final step, the one that'd take her out of this world completely. Hallucinations, fate or some sort of mania brought on by her brain tumor, she wasn't going to wait for the Grand Canyon. Either she was dead and didn't know it, or she was close enough to take matters into her own hands.