"I wouldn't become one of The Horrifying Women in my line. I know I had the genes for it. No princess life for me, no queen would emerge. No trying to be the star. I had to learn to let people in. I had to..."

With the events of the summer behind her, Elia was off to a good start, a new beginning for her last year of high school. Senior year was a time for dances, final projects, and full-moon gatherings. She was 18 now, had the house to herself, and the ghosts of her past were behaving.

For Elia and Trudy, T for short, everything seemed to be in place, life moving along as it should. But hurricane season was approaching, and the air would shift. And with those other girls?The Satanic Six?literally blocking their path, trouble was not far away. Life in this small, southern town was about to change.

Change. Yes, change would knock Elia down, circumstances beyond her control would take over, her grasp on reality slipping away. Would she be able to keep on the straight and narrow, or would the temptation to disappear into the dark be too great? Maybe she was just like the other women in her family.

Ancestral sins?it only takes one bad apple to ruin the whole bunch.

Greta T. Bates lives in sunny Fairhope, AL, where she draws the drapes and writes in the dark. She published Snapping, Fraying and Dangling in the Wind, Thoughts on Motherhood, Midlife and a Meaningful Existence in 2020. Currently, she is writing short stories that explore lost love, revenge, and facing one's fears, told through the lens of horror. A Mills College alumna, Greta, has been published in Eternal Haunted Summer-Pagan Songs and Tales, Summer Solstice 2022 issue, with Scars Publications at scars.tv, Down in the Dirt Magazine, Siren's Call, Trembling With Fear, The Mythos Minute Podcast, and in Horror Scope-A Zodiac Anthology, volumes 1 and 3 edited by H. Everend. Wounded is her first novella.