****
The beauty's name was Janette Haring, and she was a college student at a different university. She studied philosophy and history, and her favorite color was red. Now, his beautiful angel was also drunk and feeling very susceptible to his prowess, judging by the fact that she had her fingers on his leg. When she leaned in close, as she had been doing a lot lately, he could swear that he was staring straight at a fiery goddess. And suddenly he knew.
He wasn't speaking to a human girl. This was all a test. Her name wasn't Janette. This was Athena, and she was a goddess. A true goddess who had chosen him. He cupped her cheek, stared her in the eye, and smiled. She grinned sloppily back at him.
"You are Athena," he said, studying her reaction.
She giggled. "That's new, but yeah, I'll take it."
I knew it. I just knew it. A smile crossed his face. He couldn't believe how lucky he was, to be able to see the gods emblazoned in red. Some people didn't believe in gods, but he did. And now he had his proof. He leaned forward and kissed her on the mouth, desperate to know what Athena tasted like. It was of strawberries and the lingering aftertaste of alcohol. This did not surprise him. It was only natural that a goddess would taste sweet and would be the flavor of a fruit as red and as sultry as she was.
When they broke apart, he pressed his forehead against her own. "So, my Athena, why don't we go find a place where we can be alone?"
A place where I can have you.
"Okay, whatever. It's been awhile." She shrugged. "I noticed that there was a shed out front, and since I saw earlier that the upstairs bedrooms are locked, that might be our best bet now."
"Athena, you are as knowledgeable as you are beautiful."
"Okay, you can stop with the Athena stuff now," she said, laughing and shaking her head. "You're already getting to be with me."
Suddenly, he understood. He had said her true name loudly, too loudly for somebody that wanted to keep her identity a secret. His eyes widened and his stomach bubbled with guilt. He could have ruined everything. Athena was married. They had to keep their secret rendezvous just that—a secret. He bowed before her and then gathered her in his arms, breathing into her ear.
"I am so sorry, Janette," he said. "I forgot that you must keep your identity a secret."
She laughed again. "Yeah, okay, lover boy. Let's just go. Not just guys get horny."
Nodding, he seized her hand and began to pull her out of the kitchen. People stared and some smirked, but he didn't care. Tonight he was going to possess the glowing red goddess Athena, the one that most men only got to read about. He was blessed.
On the way toward the door, however, he met his enemy, Squeal. Her eyes were red-rimmed, and she looked at Athena with a wide-eyed and open mouthed expression. That appeased him. His enemy did not like the fact that he was going with Athena, which meant that his goddess was on his side. He squeezed Athena's hand, and she squeezed back. When London tried to move by Squeal, though, she stopped him and pushed her hand against his chest with massive, fearful eyes.
"Don't go," she said, though she appeared to be talking to Athena more than him, which confused him. "Just don't."
The hair on the back of his neck stood up, and he began to panic. He stole a worried look at the goddess at his side, and judging by her furrowed brows, she was angry—likely at him for letting some commoner get in the way of their rendezvous.
Just when he thought that Squeal had ruined his chances with his goddess, Athena stepped forward and then ran her hand seductively over his arm. A chill danced down his spine as he turned and smiled at Athena. Amazing, he thought, wide-eyed. She was an amazing creature, more beautiful than any that he had ever seen. She did not care that Squeal was there.
"You'll regret this," Squeal said, though she once again appeared to be talking to Janette. "I'm not saying to not go. Just not now. Not tonight."
"He was mine first," Janette said, smirking at her. "Why don't you go play with somebody who isn't taken?"
The color drained from Squeal's face. London was pleased. Leave it to a goddess to knock some sense into the betrayers of the human world.
"That wasn't what I was thinking." Squeal's fists balled. "I am not jealous. I'm trying to help you."
"Uh-huh," Athena said, running her hand down London's thigh. "That's what they all say. You're barking up the wrong tree."
Shaking her head, Squeal turned and, knocking into people, headed into the backyard, a furious, stomping madman. London stole a look at his glowing red goddess and wondered what to do. She answered the question by seizing his hand and pulling him out the front door. Excitement filled his body as Athena led him toward a small wooden shed peeking out of the side of the house. The door was ajar and revealed that it was filled with gardening supplies like shears and fertilizer.
The moment that they were inside, Athena threw herself at him, a glowing ball of fire. Her hands touched his shirt, his chest, all of him. He felt as if she was giving him that red energy and filling him with burning fire, unrelenting. He moaned against her lips and felt the need to possess her fill him further. As he ran his hands up her hard, smooth, muscular back, she dug around in his pants and fumbled with his zipper. When she finally got it down, she attempted to pull down his pants by his pockets, but instead she only managed to spill their contents all over the floor.
The first thing that landed was his bottle of pills with the white sticker on the front that said his name, London McKay. He stared at the bottle and froze as Janette bent to pick it up. The goddess didn't need to know about his problems, especially now that he realized that the pills were the work of the government to keep people like him, the ones with special powers, a secret. He didn't intend to take them again—didn't even know why he had had them in his pocket, really.
"Zyprexa," Janette said, as she examined the bottle. His heart pounded. "This is an anti-psychotic, isn't it?"
She turned and stared at him, wide-eyed. He did not respond.
"That girl back there, maybe she…" Janette's hand shook the bottle. "Maybe she was right. London, did you take your pills? I don't care if you have problems. We all do. But if…"
Once again, he was silent. The glowing red around her flashed even brighter. It was like she was consuming the whole shed with her aura. Panic filled him as he tried to think coherently. Janette—Athena—changed before his very eyes. She wasn't on his side. Of course she wasn't. Red was the color of anger. Maybe it meant that she was the enemy, the one that he was supposed to kill.
She reached forward and grasped his shoulder, and he watched, horrified, as her hand became bloodied and clawed. When he turned to look at her beautiful face, he saw that it was no longer frail and lovely. She was covered in greasy grey flecks of flesh that wafted off of her face and her skin shrunk around a broken skull. Her hair had tufts missing from it and a dry, flecking scalp covered in crusty scabs shown where the patches were. When she opened her mouth, she revealed the fact that she was missing teeth and had a swollen, grey, dry tongue. Her breath smelled horrible, like a dog's that had been lapping at polluted pond water. Her eyes were grey and unseeing. Empty. Like two cold marbles.
"You." London shook. His mouth twisted in anger at the thought of her betrayal. "I thought that you were Athena. You lied to me."
She gripped his arm so hard it hurt and offered the pills to him. The demon pills, the ones that she had created. "Take them. Take them, please."
An angry roar erupted from his throat. "How dare you? How dare you betray me?"
With a flying leap, he tackled her to the ground and straddled her skinny, festering, dead body. He wrapped his arms around her thin throat and felt her strain to breathe beneath his pressing fingers. She looked up at him, panicked. She drew back her hand and slapped him across the face with her deadly claw, and the place where she had hit him burned.
"I should have known you were out to get me," he said, his heart leaping. "I should have known that you weren't a goddess. Red. The color
of blood."
She made a gagging noise underneath him and her eyes bulged from her head, threatening to pop out. That was when there was a loud bang in front of him and he looked up and saw glowing white light. Heaven. Was he seeing heaven? That was when that light was accompanied by a blur of dark brown and then pain as he landed on the floor with a grunt. Janette gasped at his side and choked. Kill her. Possess her. He had to. Everything in his being told him that.
With a scream of rage, he leapt to his feet and attempted to straddle Janette again, but two strong arms fasted around his waist and held him back. He heard heavy panting in his ear, and when he looked down, he realized that the dying, decaying corpse was no more. Instead Janette lay on the ground at his feet, arms spread open wide, her face pale.
"What is wrong with you?" Janette asked, tears pouring down his face.
"You're a monster," he said. "I saw you. You're hiding yourself."
"No, she's not. Look around you, man. Look."
That was when he realized who held him at his waist. Cole. It was Cole. The traitor. Or was he? Confusion and nausea filled him as he looked at the shed's threshold and saw Squeal with Francis at her side. He let out a half gasp, half cry as Squeal helped Janette to her feet and Janette backed away until her butt hit the far wall. There were bruises, fingerprints, on her neck that had already begun to swell.
Real…What's real? He buried his face in his hands and tried to calm himself. Tears of frustration threatened to fall. There was the sound of something small being shaken, almost like a baby's rattle, and when he opened his eyes, an orange bottle filled his vision. It was Squeal, offering the pills to him. He looked at all his friends' faces, horrified, as his heart pounded and his mouth grew dry. He stole a frightened glance at Janette. Real or not, he realized that he never wanted to see her become a monster again. He took the bottle from Squeal and popped pills into his mouth.
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About the author:
Stephanie Campbell is a novelist in Ogden, Utah, where she lives with her family and too many dogs. Her interests include history, traveling, classic movies, and biographies. She published her first book at seventeen and has continued to write with the goal of being a career novelist. She is the author of the novels Poachers, Dragon Night, Tasting Silver, Keeping Freedom, Late but not Never, Case Closed, Icy Tales of Draga, E is for Eternity, Specimen X, and P.S. I Killed My Mother, all of which are being published or have been published by traditional publishing houses.
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