Allie Bedeviled

By Josie Dorans

Blind dates are always a risk. Allie knew that going into the evening. What she didn't anticipate was her night ending in Hell, missing a slipper, and trapped in a plot to steal the throne. With new "friends" including a smart mouthed Minion, a cannibalistic clown, and a serial killer of a certain age who smells like cat pee, can Allie stay out of her former date's clutches, avoid the pitfalls of sinister background plans, and find her way home or will she lose everything in a mangled attempt to bring democracy to the underworld?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Josie Dorans
• Release date: Feb 4, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370254903

Josie Dorans

Josie Dorans is the pen name responsible for unleashing the feistier side of a rather nice indie author who grew up in the heartland, currently lives surrounded by the mountains, but sometimes wishes her toes were still in the ocean of her twenties.

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Allie Bedeviled

by

Josie Dorans

Allie Bedeviled

Published by Brittney Cassity at Smashwords

Copyright © 2017 by Josie Dorans

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

ISBN:

For M and C

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Epilogue

About the Author

Chapter One

It was too cold to think.

Snow filled my slippers. The wet slush drove my toes to numbness and crept up my legs. Goosebumps poked at the flannel penguin pajama pants that had seemed so warm when I pulled them on after the blind date from Hell had finally dropped me off in front of my tiny apartment. My breath left frantic clouds in the air making smoke signals that I didn’t want seen. I groped the checkered table cloth - my makeshift coat -closer and shook as I ran. Why did I wear a stupid freaking tank top? My teeth chattered so hard the words were lost in manic clicks.

There was no warning. Air whistled in my ears and then my face was full of snow. I hadn’t even felt myself trip.

Son of a… My hands stung from ice scrapes and frost bite. I pushed myself back up. I knew the pain was good. It meant that my hands were still alive. My feet might be a different story.

I’m coming, Allie, he said. The words floated to me through the snow. I urged the feet I couldn’t feel to move faster. I can see your pretty little tracks. I can almost smell you, I’m so close! The sing-song glee in that voice made my breath hitch. I had to make it to the trees. It was my only chance.

We’re going to have so…much…fun, he said, violently emphasizing each word. The creep didn’t even sound winded. I tried not to sob. If I cried, my eyes would freeze shut and I’d never get away.

The wind changed direction. Snow pelted my cheek. His voice drifted away but I knew he was still gaining on me.

No more blind dates! I thought. Ever!

The tree line was a darker shape in my snow blind horizon. I lurched forward and fell again. To Hell with it! I didn’t even bother to get up this time. With the stupid table cloth clutched in one numb fist at my throat I wallowed forward on my belly. The pines were going to be my safety; my miracle.

Crazy sobbing laughter bubbled out of me when I reached the first snow laden branches. I used them to pull myself through the drift. I rolled into the well of dryness surrounding the trunk. It was so blessedly still. No snow in my face. No wind blowing away what little body heat I had left. I wanted to stay. Maybe rest for just a minute or so. I fought the feeling. I had to push further into the trees.

I had to lose him.

Knotting the soaked, checkered fabric around my neck, I belly crawled through the branches. Pine needles jabbed at me. Branches flicked into my face leaving welts and scratches. Roots gouged at the palms of my hands and flannel covered knees. I kept crawling. When I heard the first snaps behind me, I crawled faster.

Come on, Allie. Frankie just wants to get to know you a little better.

I hoped one of the branches would take out his eye. Maybe then he’d slow down. I felt a hysterical laugh try to find its way out at the thought and wondered just how close to my own personal edge I was standing.

One more tree, I thought. Just one more, then I’ll climb. But there wasn’t one more.

My hands reached forward and found snow.

He was still too close.

I pulled myself into the clearing. It stretched in untouched white to more pine trees a football field – a galaxy – away.

Crack.

I ran. I hopped. I slogged.

Halfway across, Frank’s pounding footballs echoed my own heartbeat in my ears. The tackle caught me mid-thigh. We went down. There was a hideous, shattering sound when we landed. Only it wasn’t a landing.

Frank’s fingers dug into my thigh when he realized we were still falling. The jerk tried to use me as a mid-air ladder back to the edge. His nails scraped down my leg, past my knee when gravity pulled his extra weight past me. I kicked, breaking his nose in the process. He made another grab but only caught one red, soggy slipper. He took it with him into the blackness below.

Should the landing have already broken me? Oh, yeah.

And still I fell.

I fell away from that ragged circle of light and into unrelenting black. There was just me and the darkness and nothing more except a deranged moron somewhere below.

Just me…alone in the dark…well, sort of alone…maybe alone. Who knew what could be in the darkness that was letting me fall forever. There were probably things with teeth, or flying Somethings with giant talons. In an impossible fall, there were probably a million impossible things that could swallow you without you even knowing until the digestive juices started their work.

It dawned on me that I couldn’t even feel the air rushing by. I wondered if it was because the cold had killed my nerve endings or if it was because there was no air to rush anywhere. I cursed my over-active imagination and wrapped the tablecloth closer.

For a while, the sheer ridiculousness of the situation drove back fear. Then I developed a surety that I was simply hallucinating. Hypothermia can do all kinds of crazy things to the brain. But I still knew I was cold, and hypothermia’s favorite hallucination was warmth. I took a step toward the thought that I might be dead, but pulled back pretty darned fast. I had no interest in being dead yet, let alone in being dead and falling through blackness all by my lonesome.

An eternity later, the indescribable feeling of loneliness that almost overwhelmed me made me howl into the void. When nothing answered I screamed until my throat was too raw to make any more noise.

When it passed, I was out of every emotion except agitation. With a defiant glint in my eye I opened my mouth and instead of letting out anguish, I belted out the first line of You are My Sunshine. Yes, I was off key. Yes, my voice sounded rusty with a hint of gravel. Yes, the song’s purity was tainted with a liberal dash of kiss-my-ass. But I sang. I made it all the way to the words ‘…love you’ before I slammed face first into the sharp, jagged rocks lining the floor.

So, there was an end to the eternal fall. Nice to know…

Chapter Two

Ooof. Shit. Ouch. Damn, I collected myself from the graceless sprawl of my landing and took inventory by feel in the unrelenting darkness. Yep, hands are full of rocks and blood. Awesome. Knees feel pretty much the same. No band aids or peroxide that I can see, I said to myself. I paused for a slightly hysterical giggle. Road rash on right hip: check, and… yes, we have a black eye.

I gingerly plucked half a mountain’s worth of gravel out of my palms and knees and tried not to wonder how I was still alive. It didn’t seem to make any more or less sense than anything else that had happened since I broke through the clearing. I decided to just let it go. When situational crazy is driving the train, you should always keep your personal crazy tucked in the attic.

This can’t be one of those completely impossible things. Giant, endless holes must be everywhere. Obviously people fall into them five times a day and twice that on your average Wednesday. No big deal, I said in my most rational and conversation tone right before I broke into full-blown, shock-induced laughter. I laughed just because I was still breathing. I laughed because it was pitch black and I was moving my head like I might be able to see around the dark to my hand if I