Nicole M. Taylor - Our Lady of the Rivers Mouth

Our Lady of the Rivers Mouth
Killers

Written by Nicole M. Taylor

Copyright 2017 by Abdo Consulting Group, Inc.

Published by EPIC Press
PO Box 398166
Minneapolis, MN 55439

All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America.

International copyrights reserved in all countries.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without
written permission from the publisher. EPIC Press is trademark
and logo of Abdo Consulting Group, Inc.

Cover design by Christina Doffing
Images for cover art obtained from iStockPhoto.com
Edited by Jennifer Skogen

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Names: Taylor, Nicole M., author.
Title: Our lady of the rivers mouth / by Nicole M. Taylor.
Description: Minneapolis, MN : EPIC Press, 2017. | Series: Killers
Summary: A truck-stop waitress partners with a psychic, a ghost, and her old high-school-flame-turned-sheriffs-deputy to find out who has been murdering women and dumping them in the woods around her small town.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016946206 | ISBN 9781680764888 (lib. bdg.) |

ISBN 9781680765441 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: MurderersFiction. | MurderInvestigationFiction. | DetectivesFiction. | Mystery and detective storiesFiction. | Young adult fiction.
Classification: DDC [Fic]dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016946206

This digital document has been produced by Nord Compo.

For Poor Ellen Smith, Little Sadie, Delia,
and all of those who went unsung

I watched, from outside, from an uncertain distance, as he wrestled me into position with some difficulty. He took no particular care with me; if my head bumped on the uneven ground or my fingers snagged on the underbrush, he didnt notice.

His eyes were just staring, like when youre so tired you cant will yourself to look away from something. But it wasnt me he was looking at.

Even when he got me out where he felt safea big elm bending its branches over the two of usit still didnt look like he was really seeing me. I had become another feature of the earth, like a strange root system that was bursting up through the ground. My hair was the same color as the dirt. My skin was the color of the grubs that tunneled inside it.

He lowered himself onto me and I imagined what that weight felt like. I tried to conjure up the feeling of pressure and human warmth and the occasional gusts of breath. What had his breath smelled like? Coffee? Sardines? Morning-stink?

I had never seen it like this before, from above and far away. This pathetic scrambling.

It was stupid to feel embarrassed, ashamed for whatever of myself was left in that body. But some part of me wanted to turn around and look away, spare myself, I guess? Another parta bigger partknew that it was important that I stay here and that I see everything. I was a witness. My only witness.

He stopped after just a few moments. Whatever he wanted to do, it wasnt working. He sat back on his heels and I could see myself clearly, lying there with my face turned up toward God and everybody.

From a distance, it was easy to see that my left eyebrow was less tweezed than the right and my nose had a bump in it more pronounced than I remembered. There was a scar on my upper arm, about an inch or so long and perfectly straight, like someone had measured it out with a level. It looked old, dull beige instead of pink, and it must have been deep at one time. I wondered where I had gotten it.

I was also white, the whitest I had ever been, probably. A white that shaded into blue, the kind of color a live person never had. My mouth was open, but not like I was sleeping, more like a hole in my face, the way old people look when they take out their false teeth. All of those were things that death changes, and I understood that.

What I didnt understand was that scar. It was right there, plainly visible. How was it that I was seeing it now for the first time? The more I stared at that scar and the skin around it, the less I recognized it. It was like seeing a picture of yourself and not being able to match it up to the face in the mirror.

That girl on the ground looked like she could have been a cousin to me, a sister even. She could have been, but she wasnt.

The man rooted around in the undergrowth until he found a little branch that he took to me with a doctors detachment. It was like I was a formaldehyde frog, all pinned open for him to poke at curiously.

All I could think was: cant you see theres nothing left of me there?

As he labored over me, posing me just right like someone fussing with a store mannequin in a window display, I couldnt help but think about how little I had been. Not how fat or skinny I was, I mean how little my body was, all things considered. It seemed suddenly incredible to believe that everything I ever was had once fit inside there.

One of my shoes was missing. Where did it go?

He rose to his knees to examine his work, tilting his head to one side like he was hanging a picture frame on the wall. He grabbed one of my ankles and pulled my leg up and out until it was bent and turned open to anyone who came by.

He moved me like he was following a map that only existed in his own head. I could hear his breathing and how it had changed. It was slightly faster now, and deeper, which might have been from exertion. When he was pleased with the position of my limbs, he took my head in both of his hands and moved it, first to the left and then the right, but neither of those positions seemed to make him happy. He tilted it back until the top of my skull rested against the trees bark and the new red welt on my throat was pointed up toward the sky.

I could remember it mostly as a feeling, of something pressing in on my throat and the darkness at the edge of my vision and the panic and desperation, the air that wouldnt come. But I never saw it before. It was surprisingly thin, just a little spindly line and it looked like a deep bruise. It didnt look like something that would kill a person.

I had expected all of this to be so different. I expected it to be... more. I was used to life disappointing me but I guess I still expected more from death. It reminded me of being fifteen and still waiting on my period, years after it had happened to all my friends. When it finally came on me, it was a surprise. I didnt feel strange or sick at all, I just looked down and saw the toilet filling up with red. I was delighted for about a minutefinally! I could say I was a real woman! But then the bleeding didnt stop.

I had imagined that it would be like a nosebleed, only from my crotch. I was not prepared for the stabs of pain, like a fist clenching inside of me, or more importantly, for the strange things that I produced. Clumps of tissue, a black-purple color rather than the normal red issued from me at an alarming rate.

Something was wrong. I had gone too long before getting my period and something had gone off inside me, like milk curdling in the jug. I was rotting. The proof was in the pain, was in the strange, semi-solid pieces falling out of me. How could this be anything other than a part of my body, something I needed to stay alive?

When I didnt have any other options, I went to my mother. I told her what was happening and that I should probably go to the hospital. Big pieces of me are... coming out, I said.