Excerpt: A HUMAN ELEMENT
X-10 woke up from
his pile of leaves to see the moon high overhead. He had left the Appalachian
Trail as it veered east toward Vermont, upon reaching the corners bordering
Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York. He now moved north into the Catskill
Mountains, just south of Albany. One night he stole a car to move faster. He
hid in the bushes beside an all night convenient store just off the trail,
where the highway passed through.
His patience paid
off. At 2:00 a.m. a man stopped, looking at a map in his car. X-10 seized the
opportunity to rush into his back seat, put his pod fingers around his throat,
and order him to drive. When the man looked in his rear view mirror he let his
bladder loose in fright. A urine stench rose up from the seat. X-10 kept his
hands on the man's throat as he drove north. The man chattered on, begging him
to let him go. X-10 told him to shut up and squeezed his throat harder.
The man drove for
two hours until the gas gauge registered empty. The car sputtered to a halt on
a dark, rural road. X-10 broke the man's neck with one crack and left him in
the car, slumped over the wheel. He then returned on foot to the woods that
would hide him. But the car had gotten him a considerable distance ahead. He
believed he could be only fifty or so miles away from the girl. He could reach
her within two days if he remained unfound under the cover of darkness.
As he ran under the
full moon, leaping over rocks and roots, darting around boulders he could see
her in his mind. Laura. You are mine. Then he saw her with her man.
Water coursed all around them. Her hair hung wet about her shoulders. They were
naked and sliding into one another. Her mouth hung open in ecstasy. Her breasts
bounced as the man held her up, driving into her. X-10 closed off his mind's
eye to the scene. He didn't want to see her naked. It made him feel strange.
And in that strange feeling he couldn't define, X-10 hated her even more. Rage
surged through him and his blood pulsed fast, throbbing under his white skin in
blue rivers. He forced himself to run faster through the night. Why did she get
to live a normal life? He would make sure her end was not normal. And she would
wish she had never been born.
A lonesome dog bayed
in the hills above X-10 as if approving his plan. Streaks of moonlight and
shadows fell across his face like whip lashes over and over, creating a living
painting from darkness and light. He would show Laura darkness like she never
experienced, and pain. There would be so much pain. He howled back at the
creature that rode alone through the woods as he did. Perhaps they would meet along
their journeys.
He hoped so. He was getting hungry again.
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Donna Galanti Bio:Donna Galanti is an ITW Debut Author of the paranormal suspense novel A HUMAN ELEMENT (Echelon Press). She’s lived from England as a child to Hawaii as a U.S. Navy photographer. She holds a B.A. in English and is an entrepreneur at heart with a background in marketing. If she couldn’t write she would bike, hike, and kayak every day. Donna lives with her family in an old farmhouse in PA with lots of nooks, fireplaces, and stinkbugs but sadly no ghosts.
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Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/DonnaGalanti
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/DonnaGalantiAuthor
Blog: http://blog.donnagalanti.com/wp/
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