Kingdom of Serenity Gardens
an excerpt

When Sierra Norton died on the way to the hospital, it wasn’t the worst of things. That came later, after she’d been resuscitated, operated on, operated on again (and again), had spent weeks recovering, and then asked if she was ready to look at her face in a mirror. She’d said yes, because she’d thought she was.
She wasn’t.
Her left eye socket was a mass of swollen, raw flesh. Her eyeball was inside there somewhere, but useless, because a bullet had passed behind it, slicing through the optic nerve. She’d also lost her cheekbone. Shards had been removed, leaving a cavern in her face where her dimple had once been.
It would have been better if they hadn’t revived her in the ambulance. She could have been remembered as Sierra Norton, 1st Runner Up in the Miss Georgia Peach beauty pageant and March 1966 cover model of Southern Belle Magazine, gone too soon in a blaze of senseless violence, but frozen in time; an ageless face seared into memories like Marilyn Monroe.
Now she’d be remembered for what she was. A monster.
That was the worst of it.