Page 239 of Fame & Rhythm

She gets in and starts the engine, and we pull away.

I turn my head slowly, looking at her. “Would you really slit my throat?” I ask, a soft laugh escaping me.

She glances over, smiling. “Yes, honey. Without hesitation.”

I grin, the thought drifting through my mind like something unreal. “Would I bleed rainbows?”

“No, honey,” she says with a smirk. “You’d die.”

The words cut through the haze, and I sit up straighter, something shifting inside me as I look down at my legs. The purple changes. It splits. Moves. My breath catches as I stare closer. They’re not liquid anymore, they are moving. Thousands of tiny black shapes, legs, bodies, crawling over my skin.

“No!” The scream rips out of me as I jerk violently in the seat, trying to shake them off. “Get them off! Get them off me!”

“What the fuck?” Loretta snaps, glancing at me.

“The bugs!” I cry, thrashing harder. “They’re on me… get them off!”

She laughs. “It’s not real, Acacia,” she says. “It’s just the drugs.”

But they are real.

I can feel them.

They crawl faster, swarming over my legs, my stomach, my chest…

Then they start to burrow.

I choke on a scream as the sensation turns unbearable, like needles pushing beneath my skin. “They’re inside me!” I gasp. “Loretta, stop them!”

She laughs louder. “Yeah, bug trips are the worst.”

My whole body convulses as I try to escape it, but I can’t move my hands, can’t claw them off, can’t stop the crawling, digging, invading feeling.

They race higher, up my neck toward my face, toward my mouth.

“No… no… no…” I sob, my voice breaking into hysterical screams as I thrash uselessly.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, shut up!” Loretta snaps.

I can’t.

I can’t stop.

They’re everywhere…

Under my skin.

Inside me.

“Oh, fuck it.” Her fist slams into the side of my face, and pain explodes.

The world tilts violently…

Then everything drops away, and darkness swallows me whole.

Chapter Forty-Three

Annie