Stuck

By LeQuita Harrison

A woman boards a bus in the middle of the night. A twin sister finds herself losing hope in herself and everything else. A grieving woman seeks revenge. A mother yearns to fix what she herself has broken. A teenage girl is lost in a spiral of insecurities. A young woman's dark guardian angel threatens to take control over her. Everyone is stuck in a maze of darkness. Will they find light? Will they be able to break free?

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: LeQuita Harrison
• Release date: Jul 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9781387852659

LeQuita Harrison

She is a writer of many genres. She writes from YA and NA fantasy to science fiction to short stories - in no particular order. A recent graduate from University of Baltimore with her MFA in Creative Writing and Publishing Arts, some of her work have been published in multiple anthologies and she has a self-published collection of short stories called Stuck. On the side, she is a graphic designer and crafter with her own business, LeQuita's Designs, an editor/proofreader, web publisher, and a woman of God. She encourages everyone to spread love and joy to those around them.

Book preview

STUCK

Short Stories By LeQuita C. Harrison

Royal Books Publishing

Royal Books Publishing

© Copyright 2022 by LeQuita Harrison

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

For permission requests, write to the author, addressed Attention: Permissions Request, to [e-mail].

Printed in the United States of America

Book and cover design by LeQuita Harrison This book is a work of Fiction.

For my loving family who are my greatest supporters.

FOR JESSE

She’s been waiting so long to do this. For three months now, she has prepared for this moment. Since the day her best friend was snatched and killed, Cyrene had never been the same. At first, each day grew into a struggle to climb out of bed, find something to wear, drag herself to work or to school, eat, breathe, and stop the salty tears leaking from her exhausted eyes. Sleeping was a pain. Every dream began with Jesse and her charismatic personality, only to replay that wretched day. She was a prisoner of her own mind, torturing with no mercy, imagining the pain, the torture, the fear

Jesse had to have faced in her last moments alive.

I should’ve done something, Cyrene would mutter into a chant as if it would form powers and rewind time. And when nothing happened, her heart, now an empty freezer, grew its own dark voice and whispered in her ear one sleepless night.

Avenge her.

Today, on this chilly fall day, in the middle of a calm shower of burning red, gold, and orange leaves, she had merged herself with nature to hunt the monster. She had bought the outfit from the downtown hunting shop along with sturdy hiking boots, binoculars, and a new box of bullets. Her mother, too sick to persuade her to seek grief counseling, pretended not to see the drastic preparation for this hunt.

It was not difficult to acknowledge how the monster had done the same thing to take Jesse. It watched her from a distance, sitting amongst the trees, waiting with determined patience and cruel joy to feed its hunger. Cyrene declared to her mother on many occasions that the monster, the murderer, lacked a soul, a purpose, and was a waste of oxygen.

That’s how dark Cyrene’s heart became. The Maryland police were no help, as usual.

You live along the Chesapeake Bay. These things just happen, missy, one officer exclaimed, hand resting on his holstered gun, eyes blinking with a poor attempt at caring.

Cyrene, sobbing too much to speak, looked to her mother for help. Her mother, already withering into the air by her own culprit of bone cancer, shivered under summer’s breeze and shook her head. There was nothing she could do about the law that protected the monster. But this did not sit well with Cyrene. Something had to be done. For Jesse, of course, in hopes that her spirit could rest in peace.

She sniffled back tears and knelt behind a bush and tree. Still and poised, her mind wandered back to the day after Jesse was snatched. How some unknown energy claimed her soul and pressed her to leave home under a waking sun and cross their field to enter the woods where the murderer had taken her. Hands clenched at her sides, she had only one resolve. To find and reclaim Jesse’s body. For such a sweet, loyal friend as she, Jesse deserved a decent burial. Then after a day’s walk and search of the woods, an odor she would never forget slapped her in the face. She froze in place, heart slamming into her ribcage, lungs burning from lack of oxygen as her eyes skimmed for the inevitable. She first found Jesse’s collar made of thick pink leather with fake diamonds along the seams, the gold tags engraved with her name, stained in her blood. Cyrene picked it up with trembling hands and forced herself to follow the stench until finally, there she was.

The sound of the wind through the trees brought Cyrene back to the task at hand. She peered through her binoculars at the sky of half-bare treetops. Unlike other days when doubt and second thought tried to slither into her mind and trigger hour-long anxiety attacks, today, she felt good. She was a huntress soon to claim victory over a predator. Unstoppable, unforgivable, merciless, yet true. Forget the laws that protected this monster and honored it as the nation’s symbol of liberty and justice. The bullets in her rifle had now become her liberty and justice. Jesse’s liberty and justice.

So, she searched and waited. The bugs and bees buzzing by her ears did not bother her. They meant nothing to her, just brainless insects that would feed on anything. Just like Jesse’s mutilated body lying in pieces under a giant old tree. A feast of leftovers by a vicious creature. That’s how she found where the monster lived.

Above, in the giant old tree, its home looked like a chunk of dung lodged into its branches. And then her stalking began. She crammed her head with research and information to learn everything about this monster and its little ones chirping senselessly. Jail or a hefty fine would be her consequence if she would succeed in this hunt, but it didn’t bother her. Then when her mom succumbed to her culprit last month, she added the fresh grief and stress into the mixture of indignation for Jesse’s culprit, sending her further down the dark path of no return. At this point, she had nothing to lose. She was all alone in this world.

She quit her secretarial job and spent the extra time brushing up on her shooting skills. Before her mom