❝I had a conversation with Death, he wants you back ❞
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At the New Year's Eve party, Quincy Sinclair finds the dead body of Alfred Kingsley III. Resident golden boy and incredibly rich, his death was no accident.
By morning, Quincy sees him again...
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I woke up to the numbing feeling on my forehead as it spread around my body and made my muscles tingle back to life. Cool leather pushed against my body from the couch and was a cold awakening to the bare skin of my arms.
I reached my arms up and above my head, clicking them into place. Every one of my limbs ached and it felt as though I'd been sleeping for years. Fluttering my eyes open, I recognised my surroundings as the living room. I lifted my head from the leather sofa and pain pierced through my skull. With furrowed brows, I massaged my temples and breathed deeply to soothe the pain.
Just the thought of what happened earlier sent a shudder through my body. What was that? It all felt so real and scary. The blood looked real, it smelt real, it felt real. I glanced down at my wrist and saw the words 'Quincy Sinclair' scrawled across the skin, proving I was now awake.
Fighting through the incessant throb in my head, I lifted myself into a seating position and waited as my blurred vision returned to normal.
"Dad?" I croaked out silently to my empty living room.
It was too bright for me to be able to properly concentrate on anything around me except for the fluffy blanket pooled at my legs and the water dripping down my face from the wet kitchen roll carelessly folded and placed on my forehead. I heard a noise though.
The kitchen and living room were separated by a frosted glass door that was left slightly ajar. I could tell my grandmother was home from the smoke that swirled into the living room from the kitchen. I could also hear her voice. Though it sounded as though she was trying her best to be quiet, it wasn't something Gran was used to.
She was short but bulky. Caring but firm and strict in every sense of the word. Quiet was not in her vocabulary.
"I'm worried about her, Arthur," she told Dad in that deep voice of hers.
"And you don't think I am too?" He replied and desperation oozed from the tone.
I imagined the pair sat around the table in the dimly lit kitchen as the smoke of my grandmother's cigarette flurried around their bodies as if they were in some underground game of poker.
"She found a dead body, Mum," Dad hissed through clenched teeth. "And not the pretty ones with clean clothes and closed eyes, either. She found a boy her age with two knife wounds, bleeding out right in front of her eyes. You should have seen her the night the police called, the blood..." He trailed off quietly.
"Jesus, did I really look like that?" A small voice asked from the carpeted floor below. I looked down to see Kingsley as he leant back on his forearms. I didn't answer him, I'd forgotten he was following me for a moment.
"The blood was all over her. We spent the whole night trying to get it off. It was on her clothes, on her face, under her fingernails. The whole time she just sat there with this blank expression. And her eyes. God, they looked like Amélie's."
