Of Water and Madness (41 page)

“I have always been resourceful. I do what needs to be done to get ahead, no matter the cost.”

Winston eyed the pistol with a newfound shock racing through his blood. Good Lord, he was going to be murdered with his own gun. What terrible misdeeds had he committed in his life to deserve such a fate?

“You monster,” Winston choked out, clutching his robe around his midsection, his eyes glued to the gun. He didn’t think he could bear to look at the man’s face, only to have the image of those horrifying eyes be the last thing he would ever see…

“Turn your head, old man. And look straight ahead,” the man instructed, pressing the pistol to the side of Winston’s head. “It’ll all be over soon.”

“Monster,” Winston repeated as he shut his eyes tight, feeling tears brim hotly behind his closed lids, the cold steel of the pistol like sharp white frost against his temple.

Outside, a child watched the scene unfold through the barely open door with wide, terrified eyes. When the blast of the gunshot resounded through the room, Winston collapsed over his own desk, his blood spilling to soak through his papers and books.

Almost instantly, the child shot out into the hallway, fleeing like a rabbit to safety, a frightened scream held back only by a pure, unbridled terror that the monster was coming for him next.

It was a fear he would live with for the rest of his life.

About the Author

Nothing can compare to the exhilaration of discovering, at last, a mode of release for the imagination. Mine came, after years of struggling to visualize my creativity, in the form of the written word. I found myself with my nose constantly in a book, absorbing the life of the characters and the beauty of the setting. It was intoxicating, to say the least, and the only thing I knew was that I wanted to give writing a shot, and take the thousands of characters and storylines in my head and put them down on paper and form them into something real and compelling.

In truth, I’m just a girl from a small town north of Los Angeles with an imagination for days and thank goodness a keyboard at my fingertips. And even though my husband thinks I’m a nerd and my mom is undoubtedly my biggest fan, at the end of the day I’m loving life and enjoying giving breath to the characters living in my heart and sharing with others all of the creativity I can harness.

I believe in true love and I’ve always believed in happy endings. And that is just the beginning of the story.