That was better.
He raised his hand again.
“Don’t…oh God, please don’t!” she pled from immobile lips. “What’re you doing?” She was wailing violently, nearly incoherently, panic stretching her vocal cords. But her shoulders remained stiff. Inflexible. Her face without any passion.
Something was wrong here, very wrong…
“Oh God, oh God, oh God…please stop.”
The sound of fear, the gulping, gasping sobs, reverberated through the room, yet no tears fell from Jenna’s eyes, nor did they blink. Her lips didn’t tremble. Her shoulders didn’t shake. Her body didn’t convulse…
He blinked. Cleared his head. His erection softened as he realized where he was and realized what he was doing.
Hell!
He stared down at Jenna Hughes, and as if his hands were burned, dropped her onto the mussed silk sheets.
Crack!
Her head hit the bed frame.
A shriek of pure terror ripped through the room.
Jenna’s neck snapped.
Her bald head fell away from her body.
“Oh God, noooooooooo!”
Eyes wide, the head rolled off the mattress.
With a dull thud, her skull landed on the concrete floor of this, his sanctuary.
The screams became hysterical, violent, horrible sobs that tore through the chamber, bouncing off the walls and climbing up his spine.
“Oh God! Please, don’t!” Her voice seemed to echo to the rooftop. So she could feel. And yet she wasn’t looking at him. Something was wrong here…very wrong.
On the floor, Jenna’s features compressed and flattened in the ooze that had once been her face.
His mind cleared.
He realized that his near-perfect creation, his waxe
n mask of Jenna Hughes’s gorgeous face, was destroyed.
Because he hadn’t been able to wait.
Because he’d taken too many pills.
Because he wanted her so badly that he’d lost his judgment and slapped her. Long before her likeness had hardened.
“Fool,” he ground out and slapped himself alongside the head. “Idiot!” All that work for nothing. The beautiful face—could it be reconstructed? Where once it had been nearly lifelike, now it was goo; once a Michelangelo, now a Picasso, her beautiful features distorted as they pooled around sightless eyes that were glassy and stark.
He leaned back, away from the mess on the bed. There was no blood. No flesh and bone. Not from this lifeless form. Swiping the sweat away from his forehead, he glanced across the shadowed expanse to his darkened stage, already set, where several near-perfect mannequins stood silently waiting in the gloom. They were beautiful, if not alive. Replicas of Jenna Hughes.
But this one! He looked again at what had once been his masterpiece and frowned. A pathetic imitation! He’d been distracted lately.
“Please…let me go.”