Fever in the Pines

The night air was thick enough to chew — hot like breath on the back of your neck. Down in the fields, the work was long done, but the sweat hadn’t left her skin. It never did. Not since the hunger started clawing at her insides.

Miss Corinne Larkson paced the polished wood floor of her upstairs room, the hem of her nightgown clinging to her thighs. She had washed. Twice. But her skin still hummed, still flushed, and the basin water still smelled like sin.

She paused by the window. The moon spilled over the cotton rows like silver milk. Somewhere out there was the one she shouldn’t even have seen — much less watched the way she did.

Corinne dug her nails into the windowsill.

“It’s a sickness,” she whispered, breath catching. “The Lord knows.”

The Lord might’ve known, but He wasn’t here. Not in that room. Not when she crept barefoot down the stairs, past her mother’s locked study, past the guest rooms, out the side door, and into the sweltering dark.

She told herself she was going to pray. That was her story. Down by the old sugar barn, where the tools were kept and the night swallowed sound.

Nobody would be there.

Nobody would see her.

Except, maybe, the one person she should’ve feared most.