The Lynnie Russell Trilogy by R. M. Gilmore Read Free Book Online

me before she left in a hurry.
     
    I’d pissed her off right good. I’d tell her sorry on a day I wasn’t recovering from second degree murder. Or would it be manslaughter? I slaughtered a man and I didn’t mean to do it. Maybe I could claim insanity. I don’t know anything about the law but what I see on Law & Order, Lord knows how much of that is real.
     
    “I made you’re bed up Lynnie. I got some pot roast in the cooker on the counter if you’re hungry.” My big brother was trying so hard. I wasn’t even angry with him anymore for leaving me in the hospital. I knew he was hurting more than he could handle. I could feel it in my bones and I didn’t know what to do for him.
     
    “I’m fine. I just wanna sleep. I need to lay down a bit.” I walked past him and into my bedroom at the end of the hallway.
    He had made up my bed just like he said he done. My cheeks got warm and my bottom lip shook about, but I downright refused to cry again.
     
    I swore to myself then that I would not cry again over this. I would sleep, eat, then figure out what in the hell I was gonna do with myself.
     
    I thought, first, I should beg the Lord to forgive me.
     
    “Lord, Jesus.” I said in a hush. “Please guide me down this path of sin and darkness. Please, Lord, bless the soul of my darling, Rusty. He’s an ornery little skunk, but he’s as good as they come.  I was something else, something wild. That woman done something to me to make me become that…creature. Please forgive me for what I done. Please salvage my soul, if I still got one. Thank you, Lord, my savior, my guiding light. Thy will be done. Amen.”
     
    I laid back and pulled the covers up over my head and tried not to think anymore. I could hear Garret rustling around in the kitchen. I knew there’d be a mess for me to clean in the morning. He doesn’t cook much, which is fine with me because I tend to have more work when he does the cooking than when I do.
     
    I listened to my brother fumbling around in the kitchen and tried to sleep. Before too long I started to feel like I was falling. I startled awake and flung the covers off my head. The light outside was turning blue instead of bright yellow. My room was nearly dark but I could see something in the corner.
     
    I looked hard at the figure in the dark. My stomach dropped about six inches when the shape moved out of the shadow and I could see what it was.
     
    “How?” Was all I could say to the dim shape of Rusty standing across the room from me.
     
    His face was clean and he wore a smile and a pair of jeans. He just stood there looking on at me for a long time. I stared right back.
     
    When I found my voice again I ask him, “Why are you here? Rusty, I am sorry love. I didn’t know what I was doin’.”
     
    “I know.” His voice sounded like he was talking to me through a tin-can on a string.  “You gotta go now, Lynnie.”
     
    “Where am I goin’?” I didn’t want to argue with a spectral in my bedroom. Just didn’t seem proper.
     
    “Out.” His smile left. “You gotta long road, darlin’. Don’t leave your soul behind ya’.”
     
    “What?” I ask him as he disappeared into the shadow in the corner. “No! Rusty?!” I jumped up out of bed and ran to the dark corner. Fanning my hands around trying to feel for anything left behind.
     
    A sharp pain in my stomach sent me to my knees. I called out in agony. I could hear Garret washing up the dishes.
     
    The one damn time he decides to wash up his mess is the one damn time I need him to be sitting on his butt drinking a beer in front of the idiot box.
     
    The hurt shot through from my head to my toes. I felt like I was gonna be sick all over my ugly brown carpet. I looked down to my hands and watched my fingers curl and bend into something unnatural. My back arched up like a cat and my ribs cracked inside my skin. I could feel my muscles stretch and pull while the bones in my legs and feet pushed out of place and