Grave Mistakes (Hellgate Guardians #1)(50)
I didn’t sign up for Hell field trips or demon Gate shifts and all the other bullshit that comes with it. I don’t want to blow up my entire life and existence as I know it. People—aka pissy demons—should give me a fucking break. I know this is not what they want, but they can just join the fucking club. Welcome to life in the Mortal Realm, the place where things hardly ever work out the way that you want them to, and yet you still have to pay taxes on that shit anyway.
My footsteps stomping with anger, I unlock the door and then yank it open. Well, I try to yank it open, but the fucker is stuck again. I pull the handle and put my foot against the frame for leverage. After one strong tug, the bastard opens, and miraculously, I keep from flying back.
“Bye, Jerif. Feel free to ignore the urge to visit again if the fancy strikes you in the future. Let’s hope for both our sakes, it doesn’t.”
He looks pissed as he bends forward, eyeing the sky through the open door. “I’m on babysitting duty for another couple of hours.”
“Under the lamp post looks to be a cozy spot,” I retort.
“I already dealt with one attack today,” he argues, not moving an inch. He crosses his arms in front of his muscular chest which is still covered in demon blood.
I spot the scythe in my umbrella holder, and before I can think it through, I reach for it. I extend the weapon toward Jerif, fed up with his judgy presence in my house. “I want you to leave. Now.”
Jerif shakes his head at me and glares at the scythe and then at me as he walks out the door. “You can’t run from the truth, Warrior Princess. This temper tantrum just further proves that you’re unworthy of such a sacred weapon.”
“Fuck off. Pretty sure the weapon I’m currently holding disagrees with your assessment of things, or it wouldn’t have let me find it in the first place,” I reply as he walks out. “Stay safe and warm now, the night is fraught with assholes and bitterness,” I say with an unkind smile.
He turns to look at me over his shoulder, but before he can open his stupid mouth again, I slam the door shut and lock the deadbolt and secure the chain. With a loaded exhale, I press my back to the door and slide down until my ass meets the floor. I feel like I just went twelve rounds with Holyfield, and as much as Jerif’s words and tactless delivery piss me off, I hate that they ring true to something inside of me.
I stare at the scythe sitting in my lap as if it somehow has the answers. I want to ask it why me? Why now? But it’s a stick, and I’m not that crazy yet. Give me another nine days of this shitty sleep scenario, and who knows what I’ll be talking to at that point?
After a few more grounding breaths, I get up and trade the scythe for the baseball bat in the umbrella stand. Maybe knocking a wall down with nothing but my rage and this Louisville Slugger will get me closer to the much-needed REM that I’m desperate for. And Jerif’s right. It will also double my kitchen space. Win-win.
13
Roughly six hours later, I’m sitting on top of my countertop, staring at the hole that used to be a wall. I’m wearing nothing but my old AC/DC sweatshirt and my underwear, and my hair’s thrown up on top of my head haphazardly. My kitchen is covered in enough powdery dust to set at least a thousand Instagram artist’s makeup.
“Now, you want to make sure that your wall is not load-bearing before you knock it down,” Bob Builds-A-Lot says from the YouTube video streaming on my phone.
“Way too late for that, Bob,” I tell him, eyeing the exposed studs I left on the ceiling. I’ll have to patch that. And fix the floor where the wall used to be, and fix the wall that used to connect to this one, and...a shit ton of other things that I mangled in the kitchen.
Bob Builds-A-Lot keeps droning on and on about the proper way to do things, and nowhere in his spiel does he condone someone blaring rock music at four in the morning and taking a baseball bat to their wall over and over again until paint and drywall exploded all over the place.
My house is a disaster, and I definitely shouldn’t have been so impulsive, but hey, it was a really good rage release. I just poured all of my anger and hurt and frustration and fear into every hit. At one point, I started kicking the wall too, which wasn’t too smart, considering I was barefoot and only had on leggings, but I was too caught up in the moment to stop myself.
I wish I had, because I accidentally sent my whole leg through the wall, got stuck, and then skinned my knee like a bitch trying to wrench it out. Once I got unstuck, I peeled off my leggings—and had to toss them since I put a hole in them—and then bandaged myself up. You’d think that with a bloody knee, the rage haze would’ve cleared, but no.
I blame my demon side.
I took down the whole wall, and that’s when I spotted the cracked tile on the floor. So I took the baseball to that too. And once I started with one tile, I had to do more, because it’s not like I could just replace one tile. I wanted hardwood anyway. So I smashed it. It was a real if you give a mouse a cookie kind of situation, but in this case, if you give an angry demon a baseball bat would be more accurate.
Once I smashed the floor tile up in the kitchen, I started staring at all the stained grout on my countertops, which is how I ended on top of my island, with a metal pick in hand and the remains of my frustration. The last of it is draining away, and now I’m just sitting here, soaking in the disaster that is my house. I’m also soaking in the drywall dust, because I think it’s embedded into my pores at this point.