Burn for Jack (Holiday Horrors)

by Aiden Pierce

Derrick crouched, grabbed my arm and hauled me up with an apologetic look pinching his features. “Sorry.” An icy feeling settled in my chest. Sorry. I was sorry too. Sorry that I had been born in a town that was more like a disease than a home. A place where the people treated me like I was nothing but a cheap toy to toss around until I broke.

It was him. It was really him. Jack Calloway. Or whatever the devil left of him. The pumpkin’s face was carved with that creepy grin, with thick teeth and mean eyes. Flames danced from those eyes, his mouth and off the sides—charring nothing. The thing was, my fear was ebbing away by the second. I looked past his wide grin and deep into the crackling flames. Something inside that I hadn’t known was there ignited. I swallowed thickly. “I don’t remember you.” “In death, I’ve forgotten much of you as well.” His tone dropped to a whisper so terrifyingly wondrous, like the rustle of a thousand dead leaves. “All I remember is that you belong to me, witch.”

I directed my attention back to the girl’s scent, taking her aroma deep into my lungs. She smelled of dark and dormant magic. Of flame and misfortune. Of unholy miracles rooted deep in her bones.

My dark and lusty thoughts turned as black as pitch when I noticed the mark on her cheek. Her flesh was red and inflamed. I was in control of this land on All Hallows’ Eve, so my flames wouldn’t hurt her. But the inflammation wasn’t a burn. It was a handprint. A man’s. Someone had struck her and left her here to die in the fire. Painful memories stirred. I released a roar, and the flames engulfing my head blazed white hot. Ada’s eyes grew wide, my monstrous face grinning back at me through their reflection. “Who did this to you? Who touched what’s mine?”

“Look how my witch’s hunger grows. The question is, what does she crave more? Vengeance or my cock?” Neither! my morality screamed in my ear. Both, something darker whispered in the other.

My witch tasted like dark magic and sin.

They’d always said I worshipped the devil. But no. It was her I worshipped.

I couldn’t just pretend I hadn’t fallen for the monster in my favorite bedtime story.

“Caught you,” he said with a low growl. The sexual tension couldn’t be any thicker. “Let you,” I breathed. “Then you’re a foolish little thing. Like a moth to a flame, flocking to your own destruction.”

“There’s no God here, witch. He forsook both of us long ago. If you wish to scream a name other than mine, cry out to the devil. He’s the only one who has looked upon our union and smiled.”

This town had spent my whole life demonizing me. It only seemed fitting that I ended up getting railed by one.