Total pages in book: 64
Estimated words: 63214 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 316(@200wpm)___ 253(@250wpm)___ 211(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63214 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 316(@200wpm)___ 253(@250wpm)___ 211(@300wpm)
“What did the tea do?”
“It linked you two. I saw you and Faith becoming close, later in life. I’ve known forever. Since you were a boy at that playground that you were the one. Thank God you both met years later. When you two started dating, I loved it. I got impatient and used the tea on you. It linked you two together.”
I tasted those words. “The tea linked us.”
“The more you drank it, the more weeks added on.”
“Brett didn’t drink it as much as me?”
“No, that’s why when the tea wore off a couple years ago, and his heart wasn’t in it for the right things anyway, he had no problem leaving.” She slung off her hat and unbuttoned her shirt. “Turn around.”
“Why?” I couldn’t help asking so many questions. It was hard to get an understanding of everything. “You’re getting naked?”
She undid more buttons. “Even worse.”
I couldn’t turn around.
“Daniel. Daniel. I don’t have time for this. You’ll just have to take the crash course in the craziness. Just try not to throw up. Okay?”
My voice cracked. “Okay.”
She touched the center of her forehead with her index finger in closed her eyes. The whole time she mumbled some incomprehensible chant.
What is she doing?
I edged away. Everything seemed okay. It was just humming and touching her forehead.
And then things did get worse.
Inch-by-inch, she dug her finger into her head. No blood appeared. Just light. A haunting green light. Sweat dripped from my forehead. I couldn’t lift my hands to wipe it away. I couldn’t pick up my feet to run. All I could do was stand there.
And the hole around her finger expanded, but didn’t tear all the way open. Instead, a line appeared and zipped down her face, sliding over her nose, separating her lips, and peeling away at her face. Her body looked like a costume with a zipper in the center and it was slowing unfastening. Her flesh peeled away, folding under itself around her shoulders as the light continued to slice down to the center of her chest.
Her body was a costume, detaching from this center filled with light.
Holy fuck! Holy, holy fuck!
And I would’ve been fine, had it just been light under her body costume. It could’ve been anything and I would’ve gone less mad. But instead, it was horrifying. Madness. Utter lunacy. Her face was no longer a face. Her neck and chest was not bones or muscles, veins, or blood.
She pulled her finger out of her forehead and shook the skin away.
And she was a monster!
Her body was made of faces.
Tiny faces.
Lots of little faces.
Heads!
Barely an inch in size, but with eyes that gaped back at me and tiny mouths that screamed and cried and stuck their tongue out and frowned in dismay. Some smiled. Most chewed on something. These heads formed her entire frame. They made up her body. Became the shape of her neck and rounded into shoulders. Some expanded out to form arms and legs and the creepiest feet.
Heads.
Millions of tiny heads.
All different races and colors. Hairstyles. Various fucking hairstyles. Had I not been shaking in my bones I would’ve taken in more of the details. Tried to make more sense of why some of the heads with braids were layered around her waists, but the bald ones were around the holes that served as her eyes. There would’ve been so many questions, after I stopped screaming in my head. Why were the darker skin heads near her cheeks? Why were the lighter complexions representing her knees and hips?
Was there a method to the madness?
I didn’t even know what the damn heads were attached to. I couldn’t make out their necks or arms and hands. There was no skeleton behind them or beating heart. It wasn’t like thousands of tiny people had their bodies stuck in a monster and was just poking their heads out of the flesh. There were no bodies behind the heads, just darkness that suggested something living behind it. Some sort of structure that no normal man could think of. Not even the sickest artist high off meth and downing booze could paint this image.
“Don’t worry.” Addie Mae’s voice sounded behind the heads. “It would take you years to understand this.”
I’ll never survive this night.
Addie Mae’s body and clothes continued to unzip at the center, and all of what I’d identified as this sweet, old woman fell to the ground.
I had no idea if my heart beat anymore. I was this numb shell of a man. If I made it out of this, God would give me a pat on the back and probably a chance to start my life over in a nice little mental hospital with gray walls and a cold floor.
So. . .
Addie Mae was now this tiny, framed body formed from thousands of little heads.