Free WILLODEAN (THE CUPITOR CHRONICLES Book 1) by Fowler Robertson

frightened, my hair blows straight backwards and my skin flaps as if Maw Sue is only inches from my face.  I smell the camel cigarettes, moth balls and old lady powder.  I cannot see her, only hear her voice.  My ears tingle in hearing her words.  I want to believe her, acknowledge the words and eat them as food, consume them to give me strength and courage.  Form a new life in me.  I want it so much. 
    “Willodean Hart.  Use your gift. Do not forget who you are—and where you come from…”
    “You will fail.” The shadow cuts Maw Sue’s words off.  It snatches them into his cloak of blackness.  Snatches are just one more weapon in a shadows arsenal of tricks.  They grab encouraging words like crumbs before the words have a chance to soak inside the soul.  They know the power of words.  The shadow is at my face, circling me.  I feel his hot sweaty breathe ignite  every inch of my wasted flesh.   
    “You will fail. Again.” He s ays.  Then he s hoots an interception into my mind, making me remember my failures, my attempts of love, of life, failure in everything. It is what I am.  A complete failure.  I grab my ears and scream unable to take his words, his pressure and prodding.  I cannot bear to see myself, to view the memories of the truth, my sad pitiful self.  Failure. Failure. Failure. Pain surges inside and out.  I had forgotten how powerful the interceptions are.  They are among the greatest of weapons, to prick and intensify my fear, remind me of what was, what is, what will never be.  My failures, my marriage, my divorce, my sins, my secrets, the horrible things I’ve done, the unforgivable, the unpardonable sin .
    Before I realize it, I am not in my bedroom.  The shadows have taken me inside the house, inside me.  They drag me down the long dreadful hallway I know all too well.  They drop me in front of the fear room.   I can barely look at the door.  It’s made from a thousand hands all tangled together, grabbing, reaching, pulling, pinching, snatching, knocking, turning, twisting.  So many hands, like a pit of brooding snake heads hissing and biting. In the center of the hand door, a skeletal hand holds a nameplate.  It spells out my struggles.  FEAR.  The door knob isn’t a door knob, it’s a creepy hand with long slender fingers and nails with sharp points.  The shadows make me reach out, grip the hand and shake, and then turn as if turning a knob but my hand always trembles.  The slender hand always penetrates more fear into me, as if I didn’t have enough already.  The hand releases mine and the door opens.  The shadows shove me in.  It’s different every time I go inside.  Today, t here is door after door, just a fear room of more doors.  I sink to the floor.  A door opens and plays out r eenactments of my life and forces me to watch.  Then another door, another failed attempt at life, at love, at living.  I don’t want to see it—who I’ve become and why.  I cover my eyes to avoid the sight but hearing it through my cursed ears is enough to send me over the edge.  I close my eyes, and deny.  Deny, deny.  The whole time I feel the hands come out.  I’m grabbed, groped and pulled w ith a thousand fingers of shame.  It is dark under my eyelids, dark inside the house inside me, the house I can never leave. I am rocking forward and back, my body in little clock ticks, waiting for death, waiting to live, waiting for something, or someone, to save me. But all I see is darkness. Regret. Punishment.  I scream a thousand screams that no one hears.
    “Remember who you are Willodean!” Maw Sue words slip in, penetrating the darkness with an unseen candle of light, a ceremonial ritual just for me.  I see us both face to face with the dark, the lesser light.  “Get yourself to gether. This is not who you are.  You must fight. You are enough. Believe in yourself. Use the gift.” 
    I eat her words and the nourishment stirs something passionate