Dr. Rosie nods her head slowly. “Jennifer Whitley?”
When I nod in confirmation, she writes something down her pad. “I don’t know if that’s true or not, but regardless, it doesn’t matter, Sibby. Even if every single one of them were evil people, that wasn’t for you to act on. You know that right?”
Her words prick at me, but instead of reacting in anger, I take a deep breath and dry my tears. Glenda's words come back to me. I may not be normal, but that doesn’t mean I’m crazy. That doesn’t mean what I’m seeing isn’t real. Dr. Rosie—she can’t see and smell the things I can. She wasn’t blessed with gifts I was blessed with. I just have to remember that. No matter what she tells me, she’s wrong. She’s speaking from a place of ignorance.
How can you tell me I’m not seeing what I’m seeing, just because you can’t see it, too? Why do the shortsighted people get to claim what is and isn’t sane?
Slowly but surely, I calm.
“They’re real,” I say with conviction.
“We're real,” a familiar voice whispers. My head snaps towards the voice, and I gasp when my eyes clash with familiar red eyes.
Mortis. Standing in the corner of the room, behind Dr. Rosie. Decked out in his red paint and red contact lens. A small, knowing smile on his face.
“Do you see something, Sibby?” the doctor asks, her brow furrowing. My eyes slide back to her, and I work hard to keep my face blank.
“You’re not allowed to call me Sibby,” I reply.
“They tried to get rid of us,” Mortis says, stepping away from the wall and walking up behind Dr. Rosie. Slowly, and methodically. She doesn’t acknowledge him. Instead she’s staring at me, a hard look on her face. “Did you stop taking the medications, Sibby?”
I nod, a small imperceptible dip of my chin as to keep the suspicions down from the doctor sitting across from me. Staring and dissecting. Trying to pick me apart and figure me out. She’s just like the rest of them. She thinks I’m crazy.
Mortis stands directly behind her. The smirk on his face grows as he rests his red hands on her shoulders. Yet, she still doesn’t acknowledge him. Doesn’t even seem to feel him touching her. She just keeps staring at me.
“I know how to get us out of here, Sibby. You know what to do,” he says, pointing towards the pen in her breast pocket. “Do it. Then we can be free, and then we can all be together again.”
A slow smile spreads across my face.
Dr. Rosie scoots towards the end of her chair, now looking more alarmed. See? She can sense her death, just like I can sense the evil that surrounds us every day. “Sibby? What’s going on?”
I stand. “Shh. It’ll all be over soon, Dr. Rosie.”
THE END
Thank you for reading Satan’s Affair! I hope you found Sibby as fascinating as I did.
This year, I am releasing a brand new duet! The first book, Haunting Adeline, will be coming this summer. Turn the page to read the first chapter of Haunting Adeline:
Chapter 1
The Manipulator
Sometimes I have very dark thoughts about my mother—thoughts no sane daughter should ever have.
Sometimes, I’m not always sane.
“Addie, you’re being ridiculous,” Mom says through the speaker on my phone. I glare at it in response, refusing to argue with her. When I have nothing to say, she sighs loudly. I wrinkle my nose. It blows my mind that this woman always called Nana dramatic yet can’t see her own flair for the dramatics.
“Just because your grandparents gave you the house, doesn’t mean you have to actually live in it. It’s old and would be doing everyone in that city a favor if it were torn down.”
I thump my head against the headrest, rolling my eyes upward and trying to find patience weaved into the stained roof of my car.
How did I manage to get ketchup up there?
“And just because you don’t like it, doesn’t mean I can’t live in it,” I retort dryly.
My mother is a bitch. Plain and simple. She’s always had a chip on her shoulder, and for the life of me, I can’t figure out why.
“You’ll be living an hour from us! That will be incredibly inconvenient for you to come visit us, won’t it?”
Oh, how will I ever survive?
Pretty sure my gynecologist is an hour away, too, but I still make the effort to go see her once a year. And those visits are far more painful.
“Nope,” I reply, popping the P. I’m over this conversation. My patience lasts up to an entire sixty seconds talking to my mother. After that, I’m running on fumes and have no desire to put in any more effort to keep the conversation moving along.
If it’s not one thing, it’s the other. She always manages to find something to complain about. This time, it’s my choice to live in the house my grandparents gave to me. I grew up in this house, running the halls alongside the ghosts and baking cookies with Nana. I have fond memories here—memories I refuse to let go of just because Mom didn’t get along with Nana.
I never understood the tension between them, but as I got older and started to comprehend Mom’s snarkiness and underhanded insults for what they were, it made sense.
Nana always had a positive, sunny outlook on life, viewing the world through rose-colored glasses. She was always smiling and humming, while Mom is cursed with a perpetual scowl on her face and looking at life like her glasses got smashed when she was plunged out of Nana’s vagina. I don’t know why her personality never developed past that of a porcupine—she was never raised to be that way.
Growing up, my mom and dad had a house only a mile away from Parsons Manor. She could barely tolerate me, so I
