Love crime fiction? Check out the opening scene of Manifest Agony!
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“YA KNOW, I don’t even feel like I need boobs?”
Kantrelle Yaba savored the scents of cooking dinners and damp foliage on the foggy autumn air. She had a sense that the sun was setting behind her, but the fog filtered the dying light through a cool haze.
“As long as he comes, I don’t need anybody else, Jetta, ya know? Well, maybe you!” Kantrelle laughed, tapping the ebony Labrador Retriever puppy in her lap on its pink nose. The bundle of fur shivered with delight and rolled over for a belly scratch. Kantrelle lightly scraped her short nails against Jetta’s stomach while she stared across Fourth Street. She knew there was a row of Victorian mansions there, but she could just make out the light from a few windows and a bright yellow, heart-shaped sign advertising a unit for sale. What she wouldn’t give for a place of her own. To be there with him. To spend days and nights together. To shed the uncertainties, shames, and guilt about her body to embrace the unfettered, full-fledged love and pleasure he made her feel. She knew she could do it alone, but she wanted him there. Every time.
To her right, at the far end of the park, she could barely make out “And must torture be immortal!” from an actor on the outdoor stage. The crowd had been relatively thin when she walked past with Jetta earlier, so she assumed it wasn’t the normal Shakespeare performance. And the way the fog was thickening, she knew it was some sort of thespian stubbornness that kept them performing when the audience was probably struggling to see them, or abandoning the amphitheater because they no longer could. Joggers and speed walkers hurried past her slim bubble of vision. She took it all in peripherally, but her mind was mainly focused on her next move as an adult. How she was going to set up a place for herself in the world so that she could have the privacy and independence she needed to get her mysterious visitor as often as she wanted.
With her hair up in a blossom of black spirals, the chill nipped at the back of her neck, but she barely felt it since erotic memories fueled a golden lust inside of her. All the jealousy and rage she’d felt when she saw the other girls’ bodies at school was gone. Almost as if it had never existed. She didn’t need Kendra’s D cups, Lana’s endless legs, or Anka’s swollen ass. She didn’t need makeup or perfume or the most expensive clothes. She was amazed that it only took a single being on a single night to show her that. To change her entire perspective on the things she had been about to do for the sake of fitting in with the crowd and feeling like she mattered to people who didn’t give a shit about her.
“I’m legally an adult now,” she said, Jetta nuzzling into her shirt to escape the cooling air. The people and sounds around her seemed to slowly dissipate.
“I’ll get my own house, maybe that condo for sale right there. And then I can just stay there and…” Kantrelle sighed, her face heating up again. She put her hands on the lightly pimpled, brown skin of her cheeks and heard a miniscule yelp as Jetta tumbled over her knees and onto the ground.
“Oh!” Kantrelle knelt to pick Jetta up, apologizing as she did so, patting Jetta’s fur to clean it of dust and dirt from the sidewalk as she sat back down. A brief, low sooop caught her attention at the same time that she felt a sharp pain across her shoulder blades. Immediately arching backwards, she stood, clutching Jetta to her chest.
“What the hell?”
Kantrelle looked around, following the slightly darkened path the object had taken through the fog. To her right, a long, metal rod was stuck in the ground. She figured that must have been what hit her, but couldn’t understand how. To her left, she saw nothing but the thick, slowly twirling mist. She noticed the splotches of blood on the back and seat of the bench. The injury worse than she’d thought.
Even with her house only a block away, she felt like she was too far for comfort. Instead of setting Jetta back on the ground, she kept the creature cradled in her arms as she started speed-walking south, toward home. The stinging across her back intensifying as she moved.
When she heard footsteps behind her, she broke into a sprint. She looked over her shoulder and saw no one, but that didn’t comfort or slow her. She would obey her fear until she knew it was safe. She could feel the hair on her arms standing on end. Jetta started to whine.
“Shh shh…it’s okay,” Kantrelle panted, looking both ways as she approached Magnolia Avenue. Her chest hurt with the force of her terror and the exertion of her running. She could just make out the shadow of the fountain at the center of St. James Court, the one that stood just in front of her house. She focused on that instead of the urge to drop Jetta and bolt.
Kantrelle was two front yards away from her own, had filled her lungs to scream for her parents, when an iron pole exploded through her chest.
Her body stopped its forward motion, all energy focused on the struggle to remain upright. She wanted to scream, but only a gurgling mewl escaped. Her mind was drowning in panic. Though no thicker than her middle finger, the rod might as well have been a boulder in the center of her body. She couldn’t bring her hands together to activate her phone. She could hardly breathe now, let alone cry out or talk. She tried to take another step, but her knee buckled and she toppled over onto her side. At first, she thought she’d dropped Jetta again.
But her eyes finally landed on the defunct body of the tiny canine at the end of the pole, slicked with blood from both of them. Her soft, floppy ears and chubby legs hung limp, the metal having pierced her neck.
Now Kantrelle’s shock gave way to tears. She wanted to go home. She would do chores forever and throw her lightboard in the trash and get good grades all the time if she could just get home. If she could just get back to her family.
Her vision dimmed as someone lifted the rod—and her—from behind. The pain was like nothing she had ever experienced, too intense for her to cry out, even if she could somehow find the strength to do so and clear her throat of the blood. A cruel antithesis to the colossal pleasure she’d been exposed to just a few weeks before. She could sense the life draining out of her. Even the pain was fading. She felt more bone and cartilage separate, heard it violently vibrating in her ears, mingling with the far-off sound of someone else’s weeping, just before the world went dark.