The Ladies of Horror

Ring of Fire
by Mary Ann Peden-Coviello

“You light a fire in my heart,” he said. That was how it started. And, oh, it was good. Gentle kisses, flowers, and romantic strolls.

“You’re my burning desire,” he said. And, oh, it was better. Hot, crushing kisses, rumpled sheets, and hotels in distant cities.

“You’re cold as dead ashes,” he said. And, oh, my heart shriveled.

“You’re a cheating, lying slut,” he said. “You’re cold to me, but you lie down for every guy on the street.” The words hurt more than the fists that followed them.

The handcuffs were easy to locate and buy, the gasoline even easier. I waited till he was sound asleep, drunk and sedated – he shouldn’t have let me make his drinks that night, not with my fresh bottle of sleeping pills close at hand. I’d spent a few minutes during the afternoon grinding the pills to a fine powder. When he was snoring, I poured the gasoline all over the bed. I joined him there and used the cigarette lighter I’d given him for our first anniversary to light the fire.

Flames leapt up like lapping tongues, kissing his hands, his lips, his face. His screams echoed my own as the cuffs that bound us together, hooked through the bars of the headboard, heated and twisted, as my hair caught fire.

My love was a flame, raging out of control. My hatred raged even higher. And it was best of all.

Fiction © Copyright Mary Ann Peden-Coviello
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com 

More from Mary Ann Peden-Coviello:

Fright Mare-Women Write Horror
Short Story: One Hour Before the Dark

Women write horror and have written it since before Mary Shelley wrote FRANKENSTEIN. This anthology is to highlight the fact women write great horror and to kill the fallacy that they aren’t in some way up to standard. They are. Read here stories by Elizabeth Massie, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Lucy Taylor, and a plethora of other great writers as they work on your nerves, get inside your head, and bang out some of the scariest tales written today. I’m proud to present these women for your consideration, as Rod Serling might say, as I ask you to step into FRIGHT MARE. Lock the door and windows, put on a light, and remember, it’s not real. It’s not real. Midnight awaits, monsters scheme to take you away, the strange and weird wait in the shadows, but it’s not real. Is it?

Edited by Billie Sue Mosiman, the author who brought you the SINISTER-TALES OF DREAD collections and her latest suspense novel, THE GREY MATTER.

Available on Amazon!

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