Unnatural Occurrence (An Anna Morgan Novella (Part 1)) by Peggy Martinez

out of her robes with her right. A tingle of fear and dread started in the back of my mind, but I pushed it away. Sororities could be melodramatic and over-the-top, but they wouldn’t really hurt me. I told myself they were going to make me slice my palm and swear a blood-oath or something stupid like that. 
    “We require a blood sacrifice,” she said as she approached me. I shivered again. Amy’s voice had lowered a pitch, causing the hairs on my arms to raise. I held out my hand, palm up. Amy laughed. One harsh sputter of laughter, but it wasn’t a normal laugh. Not a sane laugh. My mind screamed that something wasn’t right, but my feet refused to move and I was so very sure everything was okay. They had to be testing me. Seeing if I was weak and run or ask them to stop. Amy stood right in front of me now.
    “What would you have me do?” I asked. My voice sounded soft to my own ears, faraway. Amy stood there for a beat too long. Someone nearby shifted on their feet. Agitated. Nervous. Unsure. I swallowed the fear rising up fast and strong to choke me.
    “I would have you die,” she snarled as she raised her arm. The dagger flashed in the candle-lit room. I gasped and jumped back as quickly as I could, but I tripped on my robe and fell. The cracking sound. What was that? It was so loud. There was so much darkness. I felt so cold. The stones beneath me warmed with my blood. The bench where I struck my head did too. No one noticed though. Only I did as I stared down at my body, my head tilted at an unnatural angle. My eyes wide in terror and mortality. I couldn’t hear anything around me at first, but I knew people were screaming. I saw girls crying. Someone threw up. Even Amy shook and cried in shock. But she still held the book. I waited for someone to call the police, but they never did.
    I became confused.
    Then I became enraged.
     
    *~*
     
    My body was my own once again. I still felt the anger and anguish that Julie had felt coursing through me. And then I felt something that had been coiled inside of me unfurl. It’d been there all along, waiting for the right moment, waiting until I had no choice. I felt the spine of the book beneath my fingers, I felt the hands and nails as they scratched me and hit me. I felt Amy’s too-strong-to-be-normal body up against my own. And I felt my own power strike out. A second later and none of that mattered.
    I never knew I had this weapon inside of me.
    It was new to me.
    Lethal . Wrong . Mine .
    I felt bliss. I felt empowered. I felt like I was floating so high that I’d never come down and I never wanted to. If I hadn’t, though, if through my euphoria, something—or someone—hadn’t reached out to me and snapped me out of it, I would have killed three girls that night. As it is, I put two in the hospital and Amy in the ICU. I didn’t particularly care that night though. No, I was too high on my newfound power to care. I don’t even remember what else happened that night, except for bits and pieces.
    I know Detective Williams was there, that he ordered me to take a drug test and a Breathalyzer. I remember noticing a dark-skinned guy around my age pulling me from the bodies that littered the ground in the little hidden room. He argued with Detective Williams as well. I don’t know about what. I remember the darkness seeming a little less than it had before. Cops and paramedics flooded the house. I remember Christopher helping me get into his car early the next morning when we were all finally released from the sorority house.
    And then nothing.
    T hirty hours later I woke up screaming. 

Julie Reese’s funeral was an extravagant affair. Hundreds of people littered the graveyard to pay their respects and to say goodbye to her. She was no longer just a wraith. She was a sister. A daughter. A friend. And she was gone, finally and truly gone.
    “It’s over now,” Christopher whispered next to me. I gazed up at him through my dark sunglasses and nodded. He was