Bryan Smith - Kayla And The Devil

KAYLA AND THE DEVIL

by Bryan Smith

First Digital Edition

Copyright Bryan Smith, 2011

All Right Reserved

www.bryansmith.info

Cover design and eBook Creation by Stephen James Price

www.booklooksdesign.blogspot.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the permission of the author. All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

AUTHORS NOTE

This novel is set in a fictionalized version of the area immediately surrounding Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. I lived in this neighborhood for several years and many of the details are accurate. However, I am not now, nor have I ever been, a student at Vanderbilt. Readers who are actual Vanderbilt alumni should consider the version of VU portrayed here as existing in an alternate reality, as I have taken numerous liberties for the sake of the story. For instance, the dorm where the main character lives is a total fabrication. One of the bars mentioned late in the book no longer exists. However, this being my own fictional creation, the bar does exist in the alternate reality portrayed. And so on and so forth.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First and foremost, I want to acknowledge my late wife, Rachael Wise, who passed away in April of 2011. This is the first piece of fiction Ive written since her passing. This novel is something of a departure from my previous books, which have all been horror fiction. Although this tale involves supernatural subject material, my treatment of it is different here, more in the vein of urban fantasy than horror. And urban fantasy was a genre Rachael much enjoyed. As always, this book was driven by an idea I felt compelled to write, but the feeling that I was writing something Rachael would have enjoyed undoubtedly provided extra motivation.

I also need to thank a number of the usual suspects. For various reasons, I am indebted to the following for their friendship, assistance and advice: My brothers, Jeff and Eric Smith. My mother, Cherie Smith. Matthew Shannon Turbeville and Keith Ashley, lifelong friends. Thanks also to Tod Clark, Brian Keene, Paul Legerski , Derek Tatum, Brittany Hudson, Kim Myers, Kent Gowran , Mark Hickerson , Joe Howe, Ben and Tracy Eller, John Barcus , Paul Synuria II, KAOS, Shane Ryan Staley, Jeff Burk and Rose OKeefe at Deadite Press, John Hornor Jacobs, and all the regular commenters at my Facebook page.

For Paul Legerski

The only thing on Kayla Monroes mind in the those last moments before she met the devil was kissing. Not a desire to kiss a particular person, but the act itself. It was one of those random things she would start thinking about and obsess over for hours until the wheels in her head spun around again and landed on some other trivial but fascinating subject. The part of it she couldnt get past was who came up with the idea in the first place. And also why. She kept trying to picture it. Two gross and hairy cave people suddenly deciding to make out while they werent busy painting cave walls or dodging dinosaurs. Except, no, wait, that was wrong, because the dinosaurs died out way before the first humans showed up. But anywayso what made one of the horny primitives decide to press his or her mouth against the other cave persons mouth? It wasnt like it was at all necessary, much less intuitive. Surely they would have been driven by instinct only, with the primary mandate being Stick dong in vag , thrust, repeat as necessary. She tried to imagine the reaction of the cave person on the receiving end of the very first face merge. Without discussion regarding the particulars beforehand, surely that person would have freaked the fuck out and been all like, Hey, what the fuck are you doing? Are you trying to steal my breath or some other crazy caveman magic shit?

Actually, it probably would have been more like huh-huh-huh-huh-huh-huh-huh-huh-huh-huh-SMACK!

Followed no doubt by a great deal more tedious grunting and stupid caveman gesturing. Holy shit, but life in the long, long ago would have sucked .

Anyway.

Bottom line, somehow it had happened and kissing was invented. Which was a good thing, because kissing was fun. At least it was when she doing it with a guy who had a clue and didnt immediately start trying to shove his tongue halfway down her esophagus. The ones who were good at it knew how and when to shift from soft and sensual to hard and passionate. There was an art to it, a skill few of the boys in her early dating life had mastered. Shed damn near choked on more than one dudes tongue in those days. It wasnt until she was in her final year of high school that the guys she was getting with got good at it.

Shed gotten around quite a bit back then. Matter of fact, certain other girls had called her a slut. Right to her face, even. Fucking bitches. Anyway, shed never really thought of herself as possessing loose morals. She was justfriendly.

Oh, but how things had changed. If only those girls could see her now. Here she was, halfway through her sophomore year at Vanderbilt University, virtually surrounded by good-looking eligible guys, and she hadnt been on a date with anyone in months. It wasnt that shed gained weight or suddenly turned hideous. She wasnt supermodel-level stunning, but she had better-than-average looks. This wasnt ego or delusion. Shed been told she was hot and sexy maybe a million times in her life, and she could see the truth of that any time she looked in a mirror. She had a nice build, with a slender but curvy body, tiny at the waist and bigger in the right places. Her face was cute, she had a nice, even tan, and her shoulder-length hair was that almost blinding shade of blonde that turned heads and caused abrupt double-digit IQ drops in most guys she encountered.

On the romantic front, her first year at Vanderbilt had been a continuation of the life shed known in high school. Guys had fawned over her as usual. They bought her drinks in the bars she got into with her fake ID and tried to talk her out of her clothes at the earliest opportunity (a few even succeeded). One or two losers classmates had even displayed creepy stalker-type tendencies for a while.

But evidently something mysterious had happened over the course of the summer break, because ever since the start of the fall semester not one guy had showed even the slightest interest in her on a physical level. After two months of this nonsense, she got fed up and tracked down one of the stalker losers from freshman year, basically offering herself on a silver platter to the guy. And the creepy little fucker turned her down! She could have died on the spot. It was embarrassing. And inexplicable. The rejection itself had been bad enough, but what really put the icing on the disaster cake was the way shed pressed the matter, grabbing at him and pulling at his clothes. In the end, he ran screaming from his dorm room to get away from her. He later sent her an email threatening to call the campus police should she ever come sniffing around again.

It wasnt just guys, though.

In recent weeks, shed made half-serious overtures to female acquaintances. Because even a girl would be better than no kind of bed partner at all. And, hell, this was college--wasnt this the time to experiment? But even these Sapphic come-ons, usually made in an ostensibly joking manner, were rebuffed in the most emphatic way possible.

So, apparently, she was a pariah. No one wanted anything to do with her at all, really. She had seen people cross streets or reverse directions to avoid encountering her. It was driving her crazy because she didnt have the first clue why. And it was undoubtedly a big part of the reason why she would become so fixated on things like the origins of kissing. In truth, she frequently became obsessed with various aspects of human physical and emotional interaction. She was lonely and almost terminally horny, and, other than the unsatisfying solace of masturbation, there was no obvious solution on the horizon.