Read Forsaken for Free Online

hands had never stopped moving between her cards and the jar.
    The grandson shuffle-fucked around in the public part of the store. My butt puckered at the thought he’d discovered my thievery. Shit. My heart thumped. “Not exactly.” I could hear the nervousness in my own voice.
    “I make you deal.” Jeez . “If you want protection, I can give you. If you want power, I can give you. I cannot save you from what already knows you live and breathe; I can only give you the tools to help fight it.” Her one eye met mine and I saw in her a mother. She was a stone-cold killer, but she wasn’t a monster. I could get behind that classification.
    “Yeah.” I nodded repeatedly. “I’ll take it.”
    “Mm.” She made that one sound mean everything. We’d made a deal. I’d signed in blood. Practically. No more welching. “Here. Drink this.”
    “Say what?” I asked and looked at the old lady like she’d just asked me to eat a turd.
    “Drink or don’t, but my payment is still mine.” She sure as fuck simpled things up.
    I snatched the jar from her hands. “What will this do?” My eyes squinted, questioning her before we’d even begun.
    “Protection comes later. Power is now. Not like Popeye with spinach.” She squinted her one good eye like the old-time sailor and pinched her cigar into the corner of her mouth. I held back the laughter. “This will open your mind to the universe around you. This will let you see the world for what it is. Knowledge is power.”
    What she said made no sense. I didn’t care to see anything; I’d seen enough. I just wanted to be strong and not a fucking loony-toon. Standing there gripping an old jam jar filled with what smelled like liquid roses, I felt pretty damn loony.
    Lupe lifted her chin toward me. It was the only warning I figured I’d get. I prayed to whatever God would listen and tilted the glass jar. What had smelled like roses tasted like funky vagina; I gagged halfway through. She pointed her finger at me. I gulped back air over and over again, trying not to puke. I felt like I was a contestant on Fear Factor . I took one final breath and stomached the last of it.
    “Sit.” She pointed to the stained-concrete floor.
    “Why?” My head swam. I felt like I was standing on the grip of a spinning top. My knees buckled and gravity answered my question for me.
    “Sit and wait,” she said. “Just wait.”
    I sat. I didn’t have a choice, and since I was already there, I waited. Lupe cleared off her lap and brushed away any leftover ashes and imaginary crumbs apparently only she could see. “I don’t know what is supposed to be happening, but so far all I’ve done is fall on my ass. Since you’re new, I should inform you this is a regular occurrence and I’m not impressed.”
    “Do you ever shut up?” She shook her head and her wrinkled jowls quivered.
    I opened my mouth to rebut dryly, but instead, out flopped my tongue and gibberish followed. My head knew what it wanted to say, but my mouth wouldn’t form the words. It wasn’t the lack of control I’d faced when Azelie stole my body; more like a nice hefty dose of Demerol. I jabbered on for at least a minute before I finally got out, “Don’t let me die.”
    Lupe talked at warp speed in Spanish while she shuffled her deck of cards. Then, from left field, she said in English, “See you soon.”
    My head swam. I couldn’t hold my body up anymore and let it flop to the concrete floor. The wild patterns of the drapes and rugs, which hung on the walls in the tiny space, wriggled and waved. The floor was cold, but it helped keep me grounded in the chaos. If I’d had my right mind, I’d have requested someone play Jefferson Airplane.
    In the seconds that passed, my vision of reality left me and all I saw was a never-ending white passage. Bright and sterile and with no obvious light source, the long stretch of nothingness seemed a prison instead of a path which led anywhere like a passage should.
    “Lupe?”