HÊR CURSE

Chapter 2:Good Morning Jimmy

The sun was up, but it didn’t feel like morning.

It felt like I’d been caught doing something I couldn’t take back.

I stood outside 4B, jacket pulled tight, one hand shoved in my pocket to hide the mark. The air was cold and damp, the kind that clung to your skin and made you feel dirtier. My arm throbbed under the fabric. The black lines had crawled higher. Now they were halfway to my shoulder, like roots digging deeper.

“You’re imagining it,” I muttered. “It’s stress. Sleep deprivation. Anything but her.”

Saying it didn’t make it true.

My phone buzzed again.

I didn’t want to look. I knew what it would say.

But I looked anyway.

*Unknown Number:*

_Good morning, Jimmy. Did you sleep well?_

Below it, a second message.

*Unknown Number:*

_You always hated sunrise. Said it made the world look too honest._

My blood went cold.

Nobody knew that. Nobody except Mira. She used to tease me about it every time I’d roll over and groan when her alarm went off. “Jimmy, the sun’s not judging you. Stop acting like it is.”

My thumb hovered over the reply box.

What was I supposed to say? _Hey Mira, are you dead or are you a demon wearing your face?_

Stupid.

I locked the phone and shoved it back in my pocket. The mark burned hotter, like it was laughing at me.

I started walking. No direction. Just away from the apartment, away from the memory of her standing in that shadow, smiling with Mira’s face.

The city was waking up now. Shop owners rolling up shutters, buses hissing to a stop, people rushing past with coffee and earbuds, pretending they weren’t scared of being alone with their thoughts.

I envied them.

I made it three blocks before the pain hit.

It started as a dull ache in my forearm and exploded up my arm like fire. I ducked into an alley, bracing myself against the wall as my knees buckled. My vision blurred.

“Stop,” I gasped. “Stop it.”

The mark was glowing through my sleeve. I could feel it. Hot, invasive, alive.

In my head, her laugh echoed.

“You’re not ready to let me go, are you, Jimmy?”

I slammed my fist against the brick wall. Once. Twice. The skin split, blood mixing with the sweat on my palm. The pain in my arm eased slightly.

“Don’t talk to me,” I said through gritted teeth. “You’re not real.”

“Then why does it hurt when I talk?” she asked.

I had no answer.

When the wave passed, I was shaking. My hand was bleeding, my shirt was soaked, and I smelled like panic and old trash.

I couldn’t keep doing this.

I needed answers.

The library was closed. Too early.

Mira’s parents had moved back to Ohio after the funeral.

Her best friend, Tessa, blocked me six months ago.

That left one place.

St. Agnes Cemetery.

It was a twenty-minute walk. Twenty minutes of trying not to think, trying not to feel the mark pulsing with every step.

The cemetery was quiet. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that made you check over your shoulder even when you knew nobody was there.

Mira’s headstone was simple. White marble, her name, dates, and the line Tessa had picked: _She laughed too loud and loved too hard._

I stood in front of it for a long time.

“Talk to me,” I said. “If you’re really here, talk to me.”

Nothing. Just wind through the trees.

The mark was quiet too. Too quiet. Like it was waiting.

I crouched down and touched the stone. It was cold. Real. Dead.

“I miss you,” I whispered. “God, I miss you.”

The words felt stupid the second they left my mouth. Three months of pretending I was fine, and it all fell apart in front of a rock.

A twig snapped behind me.

I spun around, heart hammering.

Nobody was there.

But my phone buzzed in my pocket.

I pulled it out.

*Unknown Number:*

_You said that at the beach too._

My hands shook.

The beach. Last summer. She’d been asleep on my chest, and I’d said it without thinking. “I miss you already.” She’d laughed and said, “I’m right here, idiot.”

Nobody else was there. Nobody else knew.

I deleted the message. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

“Stop it,” I said out loud. “Stop messing with me.”

The mark flared, and I doubled over, gasping. It felt like someone was twisting my bones.

“You want answers,” her voice said in my head. “But you don’t want the truth.”

I sank to my knees on the grass, dirt staining my jeans. “What truth?”

“That you’re not angry I died,” she said. “You’re angry I left you alone.”

I wanted to deny it. I couldn’t.

The pain eased.

I sat there for ten minutes, breathing hard, staring at her name on the stone.

When I stood up, my legs felt like lead.

I had to get out of here.

I made it to the cemetery gates before it happened.

A car sped past on the road outside, too fast, too close. I jumped back, and my foot caught on a loose stone. I fell hard, scraping my palms.

The car didn’t stop.

But the driver looked at me.

And for half a second, I saw her face in the window.

Mira’s face. Smiling.

I scrambled to my feet, heart racing. The car was gone.

“See?” I said to nobody. “See what you’re doing?”

The mark pulsed once, and I knew.

It wasn’t a coincidence.

The curse was spilling out. It was affecting things. People.

I was dangerous now.

That thought scared me more than the demon.

I got home at 9 AM. My apartment felt foreign. Like it belonged to someone else.

I dropped my keys on the counter and went straight to the bathroom.

I needed to see the mark.

I peeled my sleeve back.

It was worse. The black lines had reached my shoulder, and new ones were branching out toward my chest. Faint, but there.

And the skin around it was cold. Not hot like before. Cold, like death.

I touched it. It didn’t hurt. That was worse.

In the mirror, my eyes looked wrong. Darker. Hollow.

“Jimmy,” her voice whispered.

I didn’t turn around.

“I’m closer than you think.”

I spun around, expecting to see her.

The bathroom was empty.

But the mirror fogged again. And in the fog, a single word appeared, written like someone had drawn it with a finger:

_MINE_

I wiped it away with my hand. It came back.

I punched the mirror.

It shattered, glass spraying everywhere.

The pain in my arm flared one last time, then stopped.

Silence.

I stood there, breathing hard, blood dripping from my knuckles onto the tile.

The mark was quiet.

For now.

My phone buzzed again.

I didn’t want to look. I looked anyway.

*Unknown Number:*

_You’re bleeding, Jimmy. Let me help._

I threw the phone across the room. It hit the wall and went dark.

I slid down the wall to the floor, head in my hands.

This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be happening.

But it was.

And the worst part?

Part of me didn’t want it to stop.

Because as long as she was here, even like this, she wasn’t gone.

I sat on the bathroom floor for an hour, staring at the shattered mirror.

When I finally stood up, my legs were numb.

I had to make a choice.

Ignore it and pretend I could live like this.

Or find a way to end it.

Even if ending it meant losing her for good.

I didn’t know what to choose.

But I knew one thing.

I couldn’t keep running.

My phone lit up on the floor.

*Unknown Number:*

_Tomorrow, Jimmy. We talk tomorrow._

I didn’t reply.

I couldn’t.

The mark was quiet again.

But I could feel her.

Waiting.

Smiling.

And somewhere inside me, a part of me was smiling back.

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