All of us are lambs for their slaughter.
Paisley should be getting engaged. Oscar should be popping the question. Anita should be in the kitchen.
But shoulds have no place here at the manor—especially tonight. What was supposed to be a romantic getaway at a vineyard turns into an evening of unimaginable horror with an ending unlike anything you’ve read before.
*This dark mystery has some challenging scenes. There is no sexual assault or rape. No animals are tortured or die.
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Excerpt:
Paisley
Most men don’t understand darkness like women do. They cause it.
It goes beyond the headlines. Those, we’ve gotten used to as a society. Those, we’ve almost accepted. In every bunch of apples, there are a few bad ones. It’s expected.
But no one thinks the nice guys will spend years getting to know you, gaining the trust of those around you, bringing homemade toffee to Christmas parties, then sell you to the highest bidder at a gathering of wealthy couples wanting to have an exotic dinner party where you’re on the menu. In what form? None of us know yet.
Four years—we’ve spent four beautiful years together.
Under the stars, here at a vineyard, far away from the city, the noises and shouts and horns and catcalls and hustle and bustle that throws me into a tizzy at random, I thought he was going to propose. When he told me to wear something nice, I put on that dress he liked. It’s soft and teal, clingy, with a flair at the bottom that has me wanting to spin to see it billow around me.
It wasn’t what they wanted, though.
That’s what he said. “I think they were hoping for something fancier.”
I didn’t know what he was talking about—maybe the vineyard had a dress code?
Before I could tell him it was the nicest thing I brought, that it would look beautiful on our walk through the vines, that it was the dress I wanted to get engaged in, that I’d already imagined the pictures of him on one knee in his khaki button-up and me in this dress with an orange and purple sunset behind us, I was falling. My knees cracked as I hit the cement.
I never saw the person who hit me.
memory loss fiction novella