Free What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Zombier by Allison Wade Page B

you are, quietly trying to make yourself a name; on the other, there are the vultures, the ones peering at you and judging your every single move.
    At the times of Dante or Shakespeare, when everything was made by hand, there was no Internet, and the pirates needed time and patience to copy something.
    Now a couple of clicks is enough
et voilà
, the file with your precious manuscript is already traveling around the world, available for everyone.
    But she shouldn’t have done that. She picked the wrong person to offend.
    I wrote ten years ago my trilogy,
Pitch Black
, and I printed it with a little publishing house, half-unknown, because nowadays not even if you’re a demon you have some chance to make yourself a name in the publishing industry.
    Obviously, I couldn’t tell my editor that I was a creature from hell. No one knows it, neither does she.
    Who’s she? A silly girl all chats and web. A wannabe writer that plays the Goth, posting on her live journal pictures with her friends, posing like cute kittens, writing ill-formed fan fictions about the idols of the moment, crazy in love with some Edward Cul-
something
– a sparkling vampire, oh boy.
    What did this fool do? She found my books on a second hand stall, and she thought to scan them and spread them through the net, among her “emo”
I-wear-black-and-cut-myself-cuz-I’m-depressed
friends, and above all, she claimed to be the author.
    As if a stupid illiterate brat would really be able to write three sublime and deep black pearls like my manuscripts are.
    Grim night
,
The bottom of the pit
, and
Apparent death
are not only three horror books. They speak of the hellish torment of my dimension; they speak of violence, obscurity, blind terror. All things that a little girl like her can’t even imagine.
    But she will find out eventually; she will be aware that the journey of the main character through the stages of pain and depravation, until he becomes a demon of a hellish dimension, is not just a fantastic tale. It’s a true story. My story.
    She won’t be so lucky; she won’t have the privilege I had, an immortal life and unimaginable powers, devoted to evil and pure violence.
    I stare at her with satisfaction, while I rub my red-hot tools.
    I chained her to a board, and she looks at me with her big startled eyes, so wide open that they seems to be bulging out of their sockets, her panting breath, tears transfiguring her face.
    I approach, showing my grin, a blade of light on a dark impenetrable face. No one can stand my sight without slipping into madness.
    I can already feel in my mouth the taste of my revenge on the one who dared to profane my holy art.
    I’m on top of her. I plunge my tools.
    And her scream gets lost in the darkness.
     

Purple Grass Hill
     
     
     
     
    The purple grass should have been a clue.
    And the fact that she was walking in an open field without knowing how she ended up there. Just a skeletal tree with brown bark that stood out in a yellow and cloudy sky.
    She was barefoot; the purple grass was soft in contact with her naked skin. She was immersed in a static, unnatural silence.
    It was all so odd.
    The slight slope was a sign that she was on a hill, and the tree marked out the top. It was strange, at first she thought to be in plane.
    She turned around; behind her there was a dark wood. Not knowing which direction to take, she went toward the lonely tree.
    “
Amanda...”
    Someone was whispering her name.
    She continued to go uphill. From the black bark something moved, like a shadow.
    “
Amanda...”
    She shivered, while the figure became more distinct, small and black, he moved a skeletal limb, pointing his claws toward the girl in a weird sign of greeting.
    Amanda froze.
    She turned around to go back. She didn’t want to reach that place; she only wanted to go home, in the warmth of her bed.
    “
Amanda...”
     
    * * *
     
    She opened her eyes wide with short breath, covered with sweat. Underneath, the reassuring