Page 43 of Cherry Moon

I thanked him and leapt to my feet, hurrying toward the smoking hole where the bone wall used to be. I dove through it, hitting pink sand face-first, my right-side colliding with a body.

“Fuck!” Aki yelped.

I righted myself, running on a speedy autopilot, cleaving through the sand until his eyes met mine.

“Hey,” he whispered.

I went to grab him, but something snapped around my neck and tightened, crushing my windpipe.

“G!”

Colorful dots burst across my vision. I jammed my fingers under the bitingly cold wire, only enough to buy me a short amount of time.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Aki howled at a presence behind me.

“Love is such a weakness!” a horrible voice returned.

The same horrible voice who tried telling me Aki had died.

My love came at me, reaching for the contracting wire. As he got within inches of touching me, I was yanked back, sent spinning through light and color and sound until I appeared in my central garden. Bathed in the light of the holy moon, hanging from the highest branch of the cherry tree, trapped in an hourglass quickly filling with pink sand.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

AKIRA

Irolled across the grass, my flesh arm slamming into the birdbath.

“Bollocks!” I boomed.

“Love is powerful, love is weak.”

“Fuck off, you bony piece of shit!”

I got to my feet, ready to kill. No motherfucker laid a hand on my G.

But Bony Hag wasn’t there, Mama Rita was.

This time, her face didn’t mess me up. “Really? It’s not gonna work this⁠—”

My fiancé hung from our cherry tree, locked inside an hourglass, his feet kicking, just a little too high off the ground.

“G?”

The ruby-red cherries twinkled like hundreds of lights around him, beautifying the morbidity.

Oh, hell no.

A crash sounded from inside the cottage. But I was already moving for G, screaming his name, my lungs suddenly on fire.

Mama Rita grabbed me by the scruff of the neck, spun me to face her, and slapped my face so hard I saw stars, the force sending me to the ground.

I rolled, jumping up, blood pouring from my nose into my mouth.

“Fuck you!” I darted around her, tears gushing, rage like the angry heart of a volcano.

She blocked me.

My bionic fist went straight through her face, bursting out the other side.