Anthony Greer's Blog, page 3
June 23, 2015
World of Dusk: The Wedding
World of Dusk:“The Wedding”
Anthony Greer
© 2015, Anthony Greer. AG Creative Publications
All rights reserved.No portion of this book may be used without sole permission of the copyright holder except in use of a review.
To read book one in the series: “The Raven of Dusk: Transcendence” click here
World of Dusk: The Wedding
It had been nearly thirty years since Abraham Donnick was the reigning King of Cardeau, his wing was still the largest in the palace. Koston, Abraham’s grandson, stood in the threshold of the long hall plastered with portraits of whom so many declared to be the finest man that ever lived. As if making Cardeau one of the most prosperous of the twelve city-states in Noreis wasn’t enough, Abraham then went on to become the Monarch Superior and brought the whole globe peace. Even after his recent retirement, his mark on Noreis remained—and that very mark resided strongest in Koston.
Even as a child, Koston was told how much he looked like his grandfather. He spent his whole life growing up beside portraits of Abraham and seeing papers and magazines show sketches of him and Noreis’ greatest ruler in three hundred years. It was no wonder that the entire world loved Koston. They tried to love Koston’s father, too, but the love they bestowed upon the man a generation between Koston and Abraham was partially what brought him to an early grave. Fame and fortune wasn’t for everyone. The pedestal he was placed on made him feel like he was walking on stilts, the higher and higher it raised, the harder he found it was to keep his footing.
Abraham’s wing was covered in silver and cyan: the colors of Cardeau. His portraits shone with golden frames, and Koston felt more like he was entering a museum than he was stepping into the quarters that his grandfather once resided in. When he looked at the pictures of Abraham at twenty, Koston’s own age, not even he could deny their resemblance. They bore the same penetrating eyes and wavy light brown hair. His nose had the same slight hook and his lips were thin but gave birth to dimples when he smiled. He and Abraham were alike in every single way but one: on Abraham’s wedding day, he most likely wasn’t thinking of a male knight he met a few days prior.
Koston buried the thoughts deep in his mind. The world didn’t need to know his sexual cravings—least of all his future wife. Jessa was getting ready elsewhere in the palace, most likely getting dressed in a gown that matched the world’s perception of their fairy tale romance. And heavens, what a story it was: she worked as a waitress and came from a lower class family, while he was a Donnick at the fork in the road, swaying back and forth between the paths laid out before him. If he followed his grandfather’s footsteps, he would claim the love and respect of the world and be cherished for the rest of his days. If he became like his father, he would bury himself in the shadows of a greater man, drugs, alcohol, and finally choke on the wealth he grew up with. It was Jessa’s friendship that brought him down the right path. The relationship was misconstrued by the media—and by Jessa most of all, but this was the price to pay for the love he was given. He needed to give Jessa the life she deserved for saving his. To tell the world his truth would bring her and Abraham shame. Both of them had already dealt with enough shame in their life.
Bury your thoughts, Koston. You are a Donnick, and you are to make Jessa a Donnick, too. You cannot think of him, or of any other man. You are a Donnick… You are a Donnick…
“I thought I’d find you here,” a familiar voice called from the entrance of Abraham’s grand wing. Kallisto entered the room in her cyan dress while her platinum dress draped over her shoulders. She looked like the sky and the clouds all at once and, as she approached him, she was nearly taller than his six feet. She was walking on her own set of stilts that day!
“Aren’t you part of Jessa’s wedding party?” Koston asked her. His voice grew a little shaky, and he couldn’t help but wonder why Kallisto had come to join him.
“There is far too much estrogen in that room. I am sure that your bride-to-be is plenty busy with her other hens.”
Koston assumed that, what Kallisto meant to say, was that she remained jealous that Jessa had chosen another to be her maid of honor. It would have been fitting for his future wife to have considered Kallisto, a senator, for the role. They’d been neighbors and friends for more than half their lives. Jessa selected her sister, to whom she barely spoke, instead.
“And how are the hens?” Koston asked, finding himself amused by his guest.
“Oh, they’re clucking away. It’s quite obnoxious, actually. I can’t believe that I was in Jessa’s shoes just a year before—and now I know why Smithe and I eloped.” Kallisto sighed, gazing down the long hall that eventually led to a master bedroom with a balcony view of the entire city-state. There was no doubt that the streets were filling up with people all dressed in Cardeau’s colors, hoping to catch a glimpse of the ceremony that was to be performed at the gates of the palace.
Anytime Koston thought about calling it off, he reminded himself of how excited the people were for the wedding in which all of the city-state was invited to attend. Hell, half of the monarchs in Noreis would be there—and he wasn’t even a royal himself! He had no desire to follow Abraham’s footsteps into the realm of politics. Most of his life remained unplanned… everything but this wedding.
“Koston,” Kallisto lingered, as if she had much more to say, but was debating whether or not her words were wise.
He shot her what must have been one of the most curious of stares and knew he gave away that he had an inkling about what was on her mind, even if he didn’t know it before. If she were to ask him what he feared she would, then he already gave her the answer.
Kallisto merely nodded. Their whole conversation was complete before either of said another word. “It is going to be a beautiful wedding,” he forced a smile and looked at his reflection in a portrait of Abraham Donnick just a few years older than he.
Kallisto nodded. “They will talk about this for years to come. Jessa was telling me that a ghost writer is compiling both of your stories. Your love story is going to be a book.”
He nodded quickly and kept the sorrow from his eyes. “I am going to make her very happy, Kallisto. I love her dearly, and she is to be my wife. That is what you wish for her, is it not? I can make that happen.”
“Because you’re a Donnick?”
Koston was confused whether that was a statement or a question.
Kallisto crossed her arms and stared him down much like an older sister would. “And this is what you want?”
“Yes,” he said all-too-quickly. “Yes, more than anything.”
“And tonight?”
His heart started to pound against his chest. Kallisto’s eyes looked as though they had x-ray vision, but he couldn’t let her see him. He pondered an appropriate answer and smiled the same sweet smile he often gave so many others. “We will feast, and drink, and have a grand party.”
Her stare didn’t let up. “And… after?”
“Af… after?” He couldn’t hide his blush. “Well, I imagine we’ll all be tired. We’ve got a trip to the Ivalian Islands in the morning, so—”
“So you’re not at all nervous about your wedding night?”
“I…” he took a deep breath and buried his frustration. As he did, he couldn’t help but think of a knight from Barencos that he saw a week ago. Just one elongated stare gave him four days’ worth of fantasies.
“Jessa is still a virgin, is she not?” Kallisto eyes were are blue as the frosty feeling she was emitting. “She told me yesterday that you two have yet to consummate your love.”
Koston went to shrug, but it looked more like his shoulders jerked uncontrollably for a couple of seconds. “You said it yourself. It’s a fairy tale romance.”
“On her end, yes.”
Like with most of the conversation thus far, Koston had to choose his words carefully. He cocked his head and took a long moment before replying. “Senator, if you disapprove of my marrying your dear friend, I can assure you that I will make her very happy.”
Kallisto shot him an elongated stare. As careful as Koston had been, she was just as cautious now. “I could never disapprove of someone of your stature—”
“Is that sarcasm?”
“No, it’s fact. The wing that we’re speaking in belonged to the most loved and respected human being of our lifetime. You’ve inherited that by carrying the Donnick genes. If I disapproved of your betrothal, I would lose my seat in the Senate faster than either of you could say ‘I do.’ It’s partly why I could never say more than I already have, and I’ve already said more than I ever should.”
“Then…” Koston’s lips as he grew frustrated with the woman that came to address him. “Then why say anything at all? Why did you even come here? You’re Jessa’s friend, not mine.”
“Don’t be rash. I am your friend, too.”
“You’re disapproving of our marriage and of her happiness. You’re telling me this just hours before we’re to be wed. I’m afraid I don’t understand your actions here, and if you cannot convey them properly and sort this out, I’m going to have to ask you to leave me be.”
“I’m not here to ask you about her happiness, I’m here to question yours.”
Koston scoffed and cast his eyes on the wall of Abraham’s portraits. They were much nicer to look at that the woman who came to confront him.
“I know, Koston.” In the reflection he saw that she pondered stepping forward. She remained wise and didn’t. “I know where your feelings truly reside. Yes, you love her. That much is obvious, but… I am worried that you’re using that love to shield yourself from the one thing that will keep you from being like your grandfather.”
I am Koston Donnick. He told himself. I will be the man that the people wish for me to be; a man that can honor my grandfather’s wishes, and a man who can prove that the tragedy that befell my father will be nothing more than a sorrowful page in our family history. Jessa wants to marry me, and she has earned that right. The people want me to marry her, and I owe it to them to give them what they want. I am a Donnick. With that title, fame, and prosperity comes a list of duties. I chose this path long ago, and if it’s the path I am to go down, than this is one of those duties.
“You Donnicks are easy to read,” Kallisto said, speaking to him through the reflection of his grandfather’s portrait. “If Jessa wasn’t so blinded by her love for you, she would see it, too. If the people weren’t so blinded by that same love, we wouldn’t need to have this conversation. You would’ve given yourself away the first time you stared at another man, or hugged one for a second too long. And eventually,” she sighed. “Eventually, you’re going to crave something more than just a hug. You’re going to lust for something more, and the deeper you bury this part of yourself, the harder it’s going to be in control. By marrying Jessa you’re giving her everything that any woman would ever want on paper, but in your bedroom, you’ll both be craving the same thing.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“I’m telling you that you don’t have to be honorable,” Kallisto said. He still wouldn’t face her, so she talked through the reflection. “People marry for many reasons, but usually it’s for the same reason. She loves you now, but if she learns that you’ve been lying to her… she will not by blinded by your ruse forever.”
If Senator Kallisto didn’t already have her suspicions, Koston was giving it away with his eyes as they filled with melancholy and despair. He stared again at his grandfather’s image and felt ashamed to look so much like him. He recalled the time his father threw a half-empty bottle at it and turned to the-then fifteen-year-old Koston with brew on his breath and a glaze in his eyes. “We’ll never be like him,” Koston was told. “He stands so tall that his shadow swallows us whole. His fame will be both of our deaths!”
And father was half right. He died the next year and, although he didn’t show it, those that were close enough to Abraham knew that it was the grief he felt for losing his son that brought him into an early retirement. Most Monarch Superiors wore the white crown until they died.
“I can do this,” Koston said aloud, though unintentional. “I can do this for her. The people need to know that the Donnick family is alive and thriving. My grandfather lit our torch, and it is I that must keep it burning.”
Kallisto sounded far from consoled. “I don’t believe I’ve ever heard a statement smothered in more hubris than that one. So, since you’re deciding to take on a beard as opposed to a genuine love interest, you will have two options, and only two, from the moment those words escape your lips down there: you can either keep this marriage a short one, and later call it a miscommunication between two close friends and keep the fairy tale going by allowing your relationship to form the natural friendship it was always supposed to have, or you give her a child so that, when you do succumb to a man you find to be too desirable, she will still have a Donnick of her own to love.”
Koston took his glance off of Abraham’s image and walked across the tiled floor to the senator. She didn’t cower as he looked at her like he smelled burning garbage beneath his nose. He almost respected that she was one of the few that wouldn’t rescind her words in the presence of his frustration, but he couldn’t respect her outlook on his and Jessa’s future.
“Someday you’ll look back at this moment and you will either be grateful that you heeded my advice, or regret that you couldn’t see passed your own arrogance to know that I am the one person in this entire city-state that is being honest with you.”
The young Donnick shook his head. “You should go back to Jessa’s dressing room. My future wife is probably wondering where her favorite bridesmaid is.”
Hela kissed Koston’s coat-of-arms sewn into the fabric of his gilded suit. He resembled a phoenix as he emerged from Cardeau Palace’s double-doors, feeling as though Noreis’ star covered him in bright burning flames and allowed him to walk down the rolled up silver carpet all the way to the main stage constructed by the palace gates.
The fanfare was so loud that he could barely hear the string instruments harmoniously play the wedding march. With the stage ahead of him, he could only see the heads of the people as they jumped up and down on the clean paved Cardeau streets. Serenity Seekers, palace guards, and multiple citizens took to the rooftops and shot cyan and silver confetti out of miniature cannons strategically placed all throughout the city. Doves and blue birds flew in spirals around the stage and over the people, as air shuttles flew above them with tapestries embedded with the emblem of Cardeau (a large kite with a string of smaller diamonds and the words “Freedom, Respect, Equality, Excellence) tied to their rails. Posters of Koston and Jessa were plastered on the sides of buildings on Abraham Boulevard, while telescreens that usually showed the news or various advertisements revealed a series of images and videos of the two in candid moments, or scenes that were staged for the purpose of showing them on this day.
Jessa’s hand tightened around Koston’s forearm. He was so caught up in the moment that he nearly forgot that he was walking next to the woman that he was to spend the rest of his days with. If this was to be Cardeau’s fairy tale wedding, Jessa’s bridesmaids and wedding planning team certainly played their part! Her make-up emphasized her large emerald doe-eyes and her soft brown hair was pushed back in a large thin veil that covered most of her bare back, while two braids grazed her left and right cheeks as she walked. Her dress looked at thought it was made entirely of sewn white features that covered her breasts and torso, but stopped just above the knee and formed and large train that made Koston wonder if she would take flight if she were to raise her arms and flap them.
The color of purity was a fitting look on her: his fairy tale bride. Her skin was as soft as a baby’s and glowed in Hela’s light, while specs of glitter on her collarbone and arms shimmered white and silver. She looked nothing like the soot-covered young woman who helped him to his feet after a night of crazy partying left him drunk beside an alley garbage can. She was his angel then, and she was his angel now. He knew that she felt the same way and, as they climbed the stairs to the stage, and the lights blinded them, and the cheers made them deaf, he knew that everything would be okay.
Monarchs and government officials from more than half of the world rose to their feet and stood over their comfortable seats on the shimmering silver and blue stage. At the front of it was a minister bearing the finest linens with a holy text in hand, waiting for the pair of young lovers to approach him. The bridesmaids and groomsmen all stood to the sides, and Koston did his best to ignore the fact that Kallisto was the only one who was not smiling.
Koston and Jessa took their places before the minister, who had to wait nearly a full three minutes as the roaring crowd kept cheering. The first time the crowd began to simmer, someone yelled, “We love you, Koston!” and then the fanfare continued. The second time, a woman belted out, “We love you, Jessa!” and started it all over again.
The cheering only ceased when Koston raised his hand to call for their attention. As he did, he looked into the crowd and saw a man in the fourth row with just the right amount of scruff, wearing a fitted blue dress shirt that emphasized his biceps and chest. For a moment, Koston had nearly forgotten all about his wedding. When the man winked at him, Koston quickly looked away and returned his attention to his future wife and only his future wife.
The minister opened his book, and the ceremony began.
Koston heard the tears of a woman before he entered his quarters and was suddenly grateful that he hadn’t worn his knight armor back to their home in the palace. He would have been heard the moment he stepped foot in the corridor.
“Jessa,” another woman’s voice said from inside. “Jessa it’s okay to cry, but what’s bothering you?”
Kallisto. He knew immediately. He would’ve been fooled by her voice of genuine concern if he wasn’t so used to hearing it.
“Everything,” was his wife’s answer. “Everything and nothing… I can’t even explain it. It just feels like something’s missing or off and… I don’t know what.”
He heard the long, long silence on Kallisto’s end. Even without seeing her, he knew that she was tempted to say something. He wondered if she’d brave the words.
“Has… has he been mean to you?”
“Gods, no!” Jessa exclaimed as if Kallisto had just asked her if she’d seen Koston commit murder. "He’s a wonderful man. He goes out of his way to make me smile. Whenever I’m sad he brings me the most beautiful flowers from the east garden, or he’ll take me to the finest restaurants—and you remember that surprise cruise around the Pecorwin continent. That was all just to make me feel better about being let go. We’re still so happy it’s… it’s wonderful.”
There was a pause.
“I don’t understand why you called on me, then,” Kallisto replied. “Not that—please, take no offense, you can ask for me whenever and as long as I’m not on the campaign trail I’m here for you.”
“I know, I know! That’s why I was so hesitant to go to you, of all people, being that you’re trying to become Queen, but of my friends, I feel like you’re the only one that knows Koston as well as you know me.”
“Maybe, but I cannot speak for him.”
“But you two do talk,” Jessa replied. “Is… is he happy?”
Kallisto didn’t say anything right away. With each second that went by between Jessa asking her question and the answer, Koston felt his heartbeat grow louder and louder. A second or two later, and the women would’ve heard it through the other side of the door.
“He seems just as happy as I’ve seen him in the last couple of years,” Kallisto replied. “And certainly as happy as he was on your wedding day.”
Jessa’s response was little more than a long, drawn out sigh. “It’s me, then. Something is wrong with me.”
His wife began to cry again, and for the next couple of moments, all Koston was able to hear was Kallisto consoling her with a “there, there” and probably a warm hug that was otherwise unbecoming of her.
Entering their quarters at this point only seemed like a bad idea. He turned and left before either of the women could’ve noticed that he was ever there at all.
The other man moaned so loud that the creatures in the nocturnal exhibit started howling in reply. He then fell from all fours to the ground as Koston dropped on top of him after climaxing, engrossing himself in the other man’s sweat while the glass cased animals made noises that emulated their own. The zoo trainer laughed as the imp behemoths and the howlers from the exhibits outside joined the chorus, wondering what all of the commotion was about. He then rolled over and met Koston with a gentle kiss—the same one that led to Koston following him into the nocturnal area.
“When you offered to help take things down after your fundraiser, I didn’t think you meant me,” he said with another laugh.
Koston smiled in reply, but as his sexual desires left him, his mind went to a million places all at once. He was able to feel the electricity between the two as soon as they’d met when Koston first arrived to oversee set up for the Donnick Charity Fundraiser. Their eyes had locked for a moment too long on several occasions, and he’d made an effort to find any excuse necessary to talk with him, even though there were three monarchs in attendance, and half of the government officials in Cardeau. When Jessa said that she wasn’t feeling well and wished to return early, his first thoughts were those of glee. She was one more variable that he didn’t have to consider. When the zoo trainer (he didn’t even know his name) told the rest of his crew that he could destruct the tables and chairs himself, he took what he hoped was a hint and went with it. They were alone for no more than five minutes before their eyes locked, and then their lips… They’d barely made it into an area without security cameras before their clothes were thrown off of one another.
But now Koston had to think about it. He’d just gone out of his way to be unfaithful to his wife so that he could finally fill his urges with another man. This wasn’t a sudden spark that ignited before he could control himself; this was premeditated. Koston spent the entire night trying to find a way to get this man alone, and he had to make great strides to do so. Not once did he think of what would happen after. How could he ever face his loving wife? How could be remain a proud man in the presence of so many that loved and admired him blindly?
He held onto the man for a little while longer. The cold cement felt good on their bare backs, and the commotion from the animals died down until the loudest sound in the Cardeau City Zoo was of the two of them breathing. Koston matched the man’s exhales and inhales in an attempt to breathe in unison. It made him feel better connected to this stranger, even if they were to never see each other again.
“I should go,” Koston said a few minutes later.
The man nodded, understanding, and the two helped each other back to their feet.
Koston spent the next couple of moments trying to find his clothes in the dark. His guilt only continued to grow. The man tried to make small talk as they walked to the zoo’s exit, but Koston felt that even uttering another word to this man would shame himself greater. He wore a silver and blue outfit custom made for him just for that evening, but even while wearing a suit that cost more than most of Cardeau’s citizens entire wardrobe, he’d never felt cheaper. As he crossed the gate, he didn’t bother to give the man so much as another look. Their moment was over, and he wished to never think of it again.
The thought was firmly buried in the back of his mind on his way back to the palace. There was something strangely peaceful about walking down the large tiled floors in the middle of the night, long after most of the staff had gone to sleep. He felt as though he was seeing the palace for the first time, not used to seeing how large it was in the absence of others. Each hall grew larger than the one before it. The tapestries brightened in the many shimmering lights of the grand chandeliers, and the floor to ceiling windows on some walls revealed the rest of Cardeau to be mostly asleep, with dancing blue flames atop street poles to act as nightlights in the city’s slumber.
He wasn’t surprised to see that most of the lights in the knight’s corridors were out. Those that weren’t asleep by now were working the graveyard shift: patrolling the empty halls and guarding Queen Kallisto’s door. He raised an eyebrow when he noticed that the lights weren’t off in his home, however. What was Jessa doing up in the middle of the night?
Does she know…?
Koston braced himself for whatever he was about to walk in to, and blanched as he opened the door to his home.
“Koston! You’re home!” Jessa exclaimed with glee. She sprung off of their couch, where she and the newly-elected Queen were sitting.
Jessa’s arms were wrapped around him before he knew what was going on. She wasn’t angry with him, so there was that. Still, something didn’t feel right. Kallisto’s elongated stare seemed to prove his theory.
“Koston, I’ve the most wonderful news,” Jessa said.
“You’re feeling better, I see,” he replied, trying to keep the conversation light.
“I’m much better now,” she grinned ear to ear. “Koston, it’s finally happened. I’m pregnant!”
Kallisto crossed her arms and leaned into their couch. Her eyes looked like they could burn through his at any moment, but if they did, Koston wasn’t sure if he’d even feel it. His body went numb the second Jessa said those words, and all he could think of was the conversation he and his queen had just moments before their wedding.
“You’ve… you’ve given me everything that I’ve ever wanted,” Jessa said sweetly, on the verge of tears. “You are the most amazing man there is.”
“Well, he is a Donnick,” Kallisto said flatly.
Koston heard neither Jessa’s praise nor Kallisto’s scathing remark. Even though they were in the room with him, he felt a million miles away.
To read book one in the series: “The Raven of Dusk: Transcendence” click here
June 19, 2015
World of Dusk: The Shadow video commentary
Here up above for a spoiler-free author commentary on "The Shadow" and it's tie-ins to "The Raven of Dusk" series!
June 16, 2015
World of Dusk: The Shadow
It has been far too long since I've last posted on here. However, I've got great news! Starting this week, for the next six weeks I'm going to be posting a series of short stories that all tie in with the world of Noreis from The Raven of Dusk series. You don't have to have read
The Raven of Dusk
before reading these. Look forward to each of those, once every Tuesday, and then a video log from me on Thursdays. If all goes well/according to plan, I extend this to some of the first few chapters of The Raven of Dusk: Transcendence as well.
All of these short stories will be published and available on Amazon as well. I'm going to promote them for free as much as I can, otherwise they'll be $.99 cents a piece (or you can just read them here for free!). All of this will lead up to the release of The Raven of Dusk: Children of the Rain in early August. For those of you have read Transcendence and have hounded me about the release of CotR, thank you :D. No seriously, you won't be disappointed. I think CotR is the best thing I've written thus far. I'm working on the third book right now as well. It is currently untitled.
To read book one in the series: The Raven of Dusk: Transcendence click here
Before I get further ahead of myself, here's the first of the origin series: "World of Dusk: The Shadow"
World of Dusk: The Shadow
It moved between the tall buildings that suffocated the light with its massive stone walls. Jaiden had to look directly at it to see a darker figure haunting the shadows in the absence of the moon. He saw it every night for the last four nights on their way to the temp houses he and his older brother slept in. They walked side by side, almost in a line with the others that were given slips with the location of their housing.
“Ugh,” Ruben scoffed, keeping a firm grasp on his younger brother’s hand. “It’s even smaller than last night’s.”
Ruben tried to keep walking, but Jaiden was fixated on the figure in the alley. Each night he saw the faceless creature, it was always somewhere different. The first night he saw it staring down at him from the top of a building. The way the moon was cast behind it made it glow eerily like a wingless angel coated in shadow. Since then, he’d seen it watching through a window, then from behind one of the many desecrated statues of King Ratone. Jaiden didn’t see it last night until he woke in the middle of the night and stepped around the other unfound to get out of their shelter. The figure watched him from beneath a street pole with a snuffed out flame. Its presence puzzled him; it bore a human’s form like a shadow that escaped from someone’s body.
He didn’t know what to make of his watcher. He thought for certain that it would make contact, or attack him, or say something through its absence of a face. It did none of those things. Not until he dreamed…
Jaiden smelled the ripe old man before he bumped into him. His boney hip grazed Jaiden’s face and he nearly toppled over. “Move, boy!”
Ruben gasped and thrust his brother forward. “Jaiden, c’mon! We need to claim our spots.” In his other hand were the two slips and the address printed on them. He glanced worriedly at the house with cracked stoned and boarded windows. It couldn’t have been more than a single room. The roof was unintentionally concave on one side, threatening to soak those beneath it on one of those rare rainy nights. “I don’t think they’ll have space for all of us.”
Jaiden faced the line of others behind him, and the bright, boisterous lights of one of the noble districts somewhere far away. If Ruben was right, these people hadn’t figured it out yet. Ruben thrust him forward before he could count the people in line. When he did, he was taken away from his vantage point between the two tall buildings and the alley where the shadow watched in silence. Whatever it was, he was sure he’d see it again the moment he closed his eyes…
Ruben had trouble sleeping that night. He didn’t usually have problems sleeping in temp houses no matter how uncomfortable the hardwood floors were, or how boisterous the snoring was all around him. He was used to bending in awkward angles as he and the others were cramped together, coating the floors with members of the lost. There was no way to get a good night’s rest while Jaiden was repeatedly kicking his back.
“No… no,” his younger brother whispered, still dreaming. His body was contorting in bizarre directions as if he was being electrocuted in his slumber. The others around them groaned and growled while getting whacked in the head and sides with Jaiden’s flailing limbs.
A woman old enough to be their great-grandmother snarled, after Jaiden clocked her in the jaw with his tiny hands, and shoved him away.
“No!” Jaiden screamed—this time loud enough to wake the others around them while his seizure-like movements continued. “No! Don’t take me! Don’t let them take me!”
The old woman hissed in Ruben’s direction. “If you don’t do something about your brother, I will throw him into the streets myself!”
“Be quiet, woman!” came from the haughty voice of a bearded man on the other side of her.
Others were grumbling as well, and Ruben knew that he had no choice but to wake Jaiden before the woman made good on her threat. It was a cold autumn night. Even though the city-state of Ratone was surrounded by deserts to the north and south, the breeze from the ocean carried all the way into the city. They couldn’t afford to catch a cold or get sick. Jaiden was all he had now. Their younger brother, Minnow, died of an infection the year before. Ruben tried to get a hospital to treat him, but the doctors would only help him if they had the money to pay for his treatment. The upper class ignored the rest in Ratone, leaving the other 90% to suffer well below the poverty line. Foreclosed and abandoned homes turned into homeless residences. A nightly shelter away from the cold was all the “noble class” would provide.
As he left, carrying his dying baby brother in his arms, he overheard a doctor say, “We’re flushing out another rat. Maybe my property’s value will finally go up again soon.”
Minnow was dead two mornings after. He and Jaiden cried for a week.
Ruben shook his brother awake. They couldn’t afford to be kicked out. He couldn’t risk losing the last person he had in his life.
Jaiden’s youthful eyes opened up and he was oblivious to the angry scowls on the faces of everyone else around him. His brother wasn’t one to see negativity. Ruben and the other members of Ratone’s homeless called themselves ‘the lost,’ but Jaiden said that they were ‘unfound.’ The connotation was cute, but also naïve; two words befitting of his little brother.
“You were tossing and yelling in your sleep again,” Ruben whispered, trying to keep his voice down. Jaiden frowned and looked upon his brother with watery eyes. “I’m sorry. It was the shadows. They were after me.”
“The dark played tricks on you. You don’t see anything in it.”
“But I do!” Jaiden was quickly shushed by someone behind them. He blushed and spoke quieter. “But I do. They move at night as part of the darkness. They come out where the moon and the lights can’t reach them. They see me without having eyes and they say that they’re coming for me.”
“You had a bad dream. Go back to sleep,” Ruben replied. Hopefully his nightmares wouldn’t continue this time. They were happening more and more frequently. Whatever Jaiden thought he saw stuck with him. Ruben only wished he knew what it was so that he could rebuff his brother’s concerns.
Ruben realized that he would not be going back to sleep some time later, long after his brother started to join the chorus of snores all around him. He lay awake, thinking about his brother’s words only until another reality came to mind. As uncomfortable as he was in the crowded room full of wheezes and loud exhalations, the smells of the others were far worse. The temp houses rarely had showers and, in the rooms as packed as they were, the odors emitted from sweaty bodies compounded upon one another. There was no escaping the scents of rotting fish and mold; these people were decaying all around him.
He stood up carefully and watched his footing, doing his best to step around the others so that he wouldn’t wake them. Ruben crossed the room successfully and made it outside where the wafts of fresh air kissed his skin and washed away the smells he inherited inside.
The city lights glowed orange and white and the streets were paved in discarded trash and crumbled papers. Half of the street poles flickered on and off like degenerating life support monitors. Abandoned fruit stands were erected by the sidewalks on the dirt sidewalk. Vendors could longer afford to maintain them with all the thieves running around and no one with money to buy from them. Nothing remained in this district of Ratone—or most of them, for that matter. People lived either on the streets or living in mansions on the far end of town. There was no middle ground.
A girl with long silver hair made into pig tails sat beside an older woman. Both leaned against the house, likely too late to get a seat inside. The girl was bundled in rags that were probably given to her by the old woman, who wore very little and let the slow gusts of wind soak her bones. Ruben wondered if she’d survive the night, though he was certain she’d been through this before.
“There it is again,” the girl muttered beside her. Ruben didn’t realize that both of them were awake. He stared forward at the cracks of light that attempted to brighten an alley between two large buildings. Jaiden was glancing at it before, allowing for his mind to see shapes that sprang to life in his dreams.
“They have returned to Ratone,” the elderly woman said through clicks of clattering teeth.
Ruben approached them, hugging himself as the next gust of wind slipped through the tiny holes in his brown rags. The girl couldn’t have been older than his little brother, while the elderly woman may have been as old at the stars in the sky. Several others were huddled on the ground besides the building, all asleep. These two women were all that remained.
“My brother thought he saw something, too,” Ruben said, leaning beside the cold wall next to them. “The shadows have appeared the last few nights,” the elderly woman replied. Her face was gaunt and bore extra skin that sagged as time’s cruelty withered her. “I wonder how many they’re taking this time.”
Ruben cocked his head. “What do you mean?”
“You are too young to remember when they were here last. They scarce show their face in the outer world, but Ratone has always been a popular harvesting ground for them.” The elderly woman didn’t take her eyes off of the thin alley between the buildings that were once home to great businesses.
Ruben stared carefully into the alley while the moon slinked behind a pair of thick, heavy clouds. A darker, deeper shadow coated the dirt pavement of the streets as if a large flying object hovered over them. The alley became harder and harder to see, but he was already envisioning a creature inching closer to the edge of it, keeping it’s claws just inches from the last rays of light that weren’t coated in the absence of the sky light.
“A girl disappeared in the temp house I was in three nights ago,” the bundled up girl on the other side of the old woman said to her. “She slept right next to me. I felt a cold in my dream, and then I thought that I saw this mass standing over me, staring down at me without a face. When I woke, the girl was gone and not a single person saw what took her.”
“A young boy vanished from mine as well,” the old woman said. “I gave him my space in the room, then watched him step outside in the middle of the night. He looked to be in a trance and sleepwalked toward a building, the same one that someone pointed at a figure inside of it earlier that night. He never came out. A few of us inspected it the morning after, but there was no trace of the boy or his captor. If they are here tonight, then someone was taken last night as well.” She sighed. “I wonder how many they’ll reap this time.”
Ruben thought about going inside. He could stay up at night from now on and watch his brother sleep. Jaiden was having nightmares for days and kept muttering about these creatures of nighttime. He tried to point them out to Ruben, but Ruben never saw. He wondered if Jaiden was hallucinating. Maybe he wasn’t getting enough food or water. Ruben could only scrounge up so much for the both of them. There was barely any to be found as it was.
But if this girl and old woman spoke of the same shadows, then it couldn’t be something that Jaiden had just made up. If children were disappearing…
Both Ruben and the girl leaned in toward the old woman, who had a straight vantage point of the alley just across the street. He hoped that his eyes would adjust to the dark well enough to see these moving shapes that he otherwise wouldn’t be able to see. Several minutes went by and Ruben squinted harder, making out cracks on the inside of the walls that he couldn’t see before, as well as the outside of a trash can that overflowed years before. Flies would emerge from the alley and then sweep right back in, swarming around the trash that coated so much of Ratone’s pavement. He watched and waited for something to appear. He watched and waited; watched and waited.
His head grazed the old woman’s shoulder. He hadn’t realized how much of her space he was invading, but, when she didn’t mind, he placed the rest of his head on her shoulder and continued to watch for shadows in shadows with glossy eyes. Ruben’s vision grew fuzzy and the gentle gusts felt like they were giving him chilly, but consoling hugs.
Its face nearly touched Ruben’s nose, but Jaiden was right: It didn’t have a face. Its head was oval-shaped, but there was only darkness in place of its sockets, nose, and mouth. There was nothing there but the frosty breath that tickled his cheeks, then around the back of his neck and down his spine like a small creature with prickly icicles for legs. It towered over him; the full size of a human being in human shape with four limbs. It looked like the negative of a moving photograph.
Ruben couldn’t move in its presence. He tried to remember the old woman’s words about the reaping or the recruiting—or both. He couldn’t leave his brother behind. It couldn’t be him that disappeared tonight.
The shadow’s face was replaced with a fabric like rough, unshaven hair that scratched the tip of his nose while vacant eyes inspected him. He half-expected to hear a grumble or growl—or perhaps even words! But nothing emerged from this being; nothing but thoughts Ruben felt his own mind tell him. If he was next, he would never see his brother again.
A hand appeared slowly and slid across his face. He could feel a rough leather-like fabric cause his skin to tingle, and then finally a word that he recognized clearly. “Sleep.”
“She is gone,” were the first words he heard as he came to. He picked his head up from the old woman’s shoulder and squinted his eyes as Hela brightened the buildings around them. He must have fallen asleep out there. That figure staring at him was all just a dream.
But then he noticed that the woman’s other shoulder was vacant. There was no girl still sleeping against the outside of the house. Something happened in the middle of the night, and Ruben could only draw one possible conclusion.
“They took her,” The old woman said, more drop to hear herself speak than to convey the news. “They scooped her right from my shoulder as we slept. They made her vanish from our world.”
“Vanish--”
“She is gone,” the woman snapped. “She is gone... I had only known her for a day, but I promised I’d keep her safe.” Her words rang with sadness, but her eyes bore little more than stoicism. He gathered that she’d endured too much in life to be phased by the disappearance of a girl she barely knew.
“Jaiden!” he gasped. Ruben shot up from the wall and spun toward the temp house, where he thrust the door open and caused a pair of men next to it to jolt and wake in the sudden blast of light Ruben let in with him. Beyond their scorning looks and contorted bodies, Ruben cast his eyes around the room in search of a boy half everyone’s size. He came to a quick relief when he stood Jaiden on his back in the room’s center, sound asleep and snoring as loudly as the drooling elderly man next to him.
Ruben shut the door before the two woken man could protest, then let out an uncontrollable yawn. He didn’t get enough sleep the night before. How could he, while he joined two women in staring into the empty space where a creature one resided.
“I saw it come toward us,” the old woman said, all but yawning herself. “It emerged the moment I grew tired. It stood on two hind legs and had a man’s walk. It approached you and then… then I slept.” She grimaced, looking at where the girl had sat beside her, just hours before. “Jefra is now for their harvest.”
Ruben had so many questions that it was difficult for him to think of which one to ask first. “W… w… what are they?”
“Help me up, boy. My bones are not what they used to be.”
Ruben rushed to her aid and clasped onto one of her hands. The flesh had left her some time ago, and she was more bones than human. The old woman winced as he helped her to her feet. Her joints grinded more than a vehicle in desperate need of an oil change but, when she reached her feet, she didn’t topple over and break into a thousand pieces. Even nearing a natural death, she was stronger than she looked.
“I helped you, now tell me,” Ruben demanded. “What are these things? Why have they been taking kids—and why didn’t they take me? I saw one last night. It was closer to me than you are now.”
“How old are you, boy?”
Ruben had to think of the answer. He and his brothers had lost their parents some time ago and with his parents went the ability to tell the day and the times. He could only take his best guess, give or take a year. “I am eight.”
“Then you are too old,” she replied.
“Too old for what?”
“They do not prefer those with clear memories of our world. These creatures prefer youth that knows nothing more than what can be taught to them.”
Ruben frowned, recalling Jaiden’s nightmares and the reason for why he was awakened in the middle of the night. “My brother has seen these things, too. He says that they are shadows. He screams ‘don’t take me’ in his dreams, and when he’s been able to see them for almost a week now.”
The old woman’s eyes grew as white as a bed of snow. “I had a brother once, many years ago. We shared a room in a home just a little larger than this one. He would toss and turn in the presence of the moon with closed eyes and gasps full of anxiety and fear. I woke up to his screams for three days, and then, on the fourth night, I stayed awake and kept my eyes barely open while he slept peacefully. I thought his string of dreams was over, but then a saw the shadow reach from our closed window. It let the frost in with it and slipped into the room with its long sable limbs. It didn’t make a sound as his slid its body under the barely open window. Not even the floor creaked beneath its feet. It glided over to my brother’s bed. I tried to scream, but I felt as though all sound was taken from between my lips and I watched as my brother was lifted from his bed and whisked away in the dead of night. I could do nothing but watch, dazed as if I’d been dreaming about it.” A hundred years of sorrow cast a shadow under her baggy eyes. “The neighbors said that my mother’s screams were heard from one end of Ratone to the other that morning. She’d been inconsolable for months, and eventually her grief caused her to take her life. My father made me never speak of it again. He would hear nothing of shadows, or even acknowledge that my brother ever existed.”
Ruben’s mouth fell open a little, but no words could come through them.
“I saw him once again nearly thirty years ago. I couldn’t see his face in the shadows, but I knew that it was him. I watched him take a child, just as he’d been taken. And now another has been recruited whilst fast asleep on my shoulder… I doubt that they are done. Their harvests are sporadic. Sometimes just one will be taken, other sometimes it could be several weeks’ worth of children. We’ll never know until they disappear again.”
“Why do they take children?” Ruben asked. “What are they?”
The woman’s old white eyes glowed in the light of Hela in the sky. The rays cast upon her traced each wrinkle of her skin as if a toddler drew on her face, but her expression was anything but friendly. Her attention was quickly drawn over his shoulder.
“They are demons,” Jaiden’s mousy voice said behind him. Ruben frowned when he turned around to see his brother standing just outside of the door. He couldn’t imagine what he could be thinking if he’d heard the old woman’s story. How long had he been out there listening to them?
“Jaiden—”
“They came out of the shadows again,” he said. “I saw them in my mind. It was a little girl this time—my age, I think. It took her deep into the shadows, where the darkness all merges together. It will come again tonight.”
“Yes,” the old woman said. “And tonight it will come for you.”
“Hey!” Ruben exclaimed, but Jaiden’s gasp demanded more of his attention than the old woman as she sauntered away, down the streets and around the piles of trash. He turned to his little brother, whose eyes welled up with tears. If Jaiden were to cry, he wasn’t sure if he could keep it together. He was still reeling from last night’s disappearance and the nonchalance of the old woman. Only one person in this world truly mattered to him anymore.
Jaiden hugged him tight. Ruben kissed his little brother on the top of the forehead as he whimpered and dampened his shirt.
“I don’t want them to take me,” Jaiden grumbled. “Don’t let them take me…”
Ruben’s best idea was for them to walk as far away as possible. They couldn’t go to the authorities because he knew that no one would care about them. Serenity Seekers had more than once proved to be just as useful as Ratone’s doctors. If they walked out of the city-state itself, then maybe the shadows wouldn’t follow them. They were plenty of other “lost” children to harvest, or recruit, or whatever that old woman was griping on about.
Hela didn’t escape through the clouds that day. The skies were cast in gray and the surrounding houses paled to browns and whites, having lost their vibrant colors long ago. Ruben wasn’t sad to cross the borders of the city of Ratone itself and step out onto the desert sands. They were cool on their bare feet without the heat to catch their grains afire. Ruben knew of several nearby towns just beyond the city. He hoped that they could reach one of them in a day, though he didn’t know how many miles away they were.
The two spent most of the day in silence, both lost in their own minds, their feet digging into the grains as they climbed up and down the ever-changing landscape that the winds formed for them. They kept walking straight but, as the day wore on, Ruben couldn’t help but wonder if they were going around in circles. Everything in this vast desert looked the same. Every time they stopped to rest or pee, he knew that they were at risk of changing course—especially without Hela to guide them.
It wasn’t long before Jaiden was fatigued, having no food or water all day. He took a seat in the sand at the base of a dune while another, much larger dune, was up ahead. His clothes were drenched in sweat and his lips were chapped to the point of bleeding.
Ruben no longer had any idea where they were. Leaving Ratone was a horrible idea. And nighttime was coming. If the shadows came for them, they would have nowhere to hide.
His little brother started to cry again, licking his tears as they came close enough for his lips to catch. “I don’t want them to take me… I don’t wanna go…”
Ruben frowned and cast his eyes on the darkening sky. It was too late to get anywhere now—even back into the city. Their best bet would be to climb the tall dune in front of them and look around for the lights of Ratone to guide their way. They wouldn’t last more than another day in the desert, especially if the clouds went away. He began to climb the dune, but Jaiden wasn’t following.His little brother remained planted at the base of the dune with his legs crossed and his face in his hands, continuing to sob. Jaiden wasn’t going to be getting up anytime soon.
Ruben returned to him and wrapped his arms around him tight, getting a quick flashback of how he held Minnow before he died, and then of how their mother held all three of them before she faced the same fate. That seemed like so long ago, back when they had a house and a full family. Everything went wrong these last few years.
“It’s going to be okay,” Ruben said, but he knew he didn’t sound convincing. “We’re going to be okay.”
Jaiden’s voice was barely audible through his tears. “Can I… can I see it again?”
Ruben nodded and withdrew from his pocket the other token he had left of their old life: a wrinkled picture of their family during Minnow’s first birthday. It was blurry and accidentally dampened a couple of times, but they could still make out baby Minnow’s bright-eyed grin and lit up face while their mother smiled with her arms around all three of them. It was one of the last happy days they had before an air shuttle crashed through their mother’s bedroom. It took less than two days before their house was raided for all of their valuables, leaving them with nothing but a picture to remember things by.
They lay in the sand, with Jaiden in Ruben’s arms, as they stared at the picture and didn’t say a word. The sand caressed and cradled their backs while they lie there and Jaiden slinked under Ruben’s shoulder. They stared at the picture for as long as they could, before Ruben’s arm was too tired to hold it up, while the white clouds darkened as the moon took to the sky.
Jaiden’s thrashing woke Ruben up in a panic.
“No, don’t let them! I don’t want to go!”
“Jaiden!” Ruben said, shaking him awake again.
His little brother gasped for air, then opened his eyes, going from dreaming to fully alert in less than a second.
Ruben hugged and held him as tight as he could. “It’s okay, little brother. It’s okay. It was just a dream… only a dream.”
Jaiden wasn’t responding. Ruben heard him breathe just fine, but he could sense that his brother’s attention wasn’t on Ruben cradling him. And then he felt his heart begin to race, and Jaiden wasn’t hugging him back. He looked into his brother’s eyes and saw the reflection of a figure in them. Ruben spun around and saw it peering down at them from the top of the dune, cancelling out the swirls of blackened clouds behind it. Then another appeared beside it. And a third. And a fourth.
“They’ve come for me,” Jaiden whispered, looking too petrified to move.
The creatures leapt from the dune and came hurdling toward them like a cascade of demons that danced on the top of the grains they propelled down. They were so quick that Ruben barely saw their feet move as the faceless creatures grew larger and closer like shadows trying to reclaim their human forms.
“Jaiden—run!” Ruben grabbed for his brother’s hand and leapt to his feet. He started to run but was jerked back when he saw that Jaiden had yet to move. He was too enamored with the creatures racing toward him, threatening to consume him in their shadows.
“Jaiden!”
The second command knocked some sense back into his brother. He blinked and quickly spun around, fighting to get to his feet. Hand-in-hand, the two raced across the desert toward the dune they’d gone gown while the shadow creatures bolted towards the bottom of the sand tower they came from. Ruben pulled Jaiden along and made great strides that Jaiden struggled to match with his shorter, stubby legs. He felt Jaiden’s grasp weaken and suddenly his little brother slipped and fell to his hands and knees on the dirt.
Ruben spun around and made a desperate grab for his hand. Jaiden reconnected, but as he did Ruben looked on helplessly and the creatures were quickly coming upon them. Their shadows were painting the sands at their feet and starting to eclipse Ruben and Jaiden’s own. They couldn’t give up. They had to keep running!
The sand reached up and clawed as their feet. Each step was a battle to remain on top of the sinking grains as they came to the next dune. Ruben shoved his feet into the sandy hills and made footholds that his brother could follow. He nearly fell forward, so with his free hand and buried into the dune he scaled it furiously as Jaiden’s hand grew sweaty in his palms. He didn’t dare turn back to see how close the shadows were. They didn’t even make a sound!
He was almost able to see the top of the dune. He tightened his grip on Jaiden’s hand as his brother panted and moaned. Then—
“No! No!”
Ruben was jerked backward and spun around as Jaiden’s hand slipped from his grip. He gasped as he watched his brother slip backwards into the arms of one of the shadows, and then the others began to cover him.
“Ruben! Help!”
Ruben didn’t think before he jumped toward them, his limbs outstretched as if he was falling from the sky. He flew down onto the shadows and felt one of their hands grab at his shirt. He caught a quick glimpse of Jaiden’s terrified eyes before he was thrown forward again, and then he went from flying to falling further and further down the dune as the shadows completely restrained Jaiden from reaching out toward him. The usually soft sand felt like a million tiny rocks as Ruben crashed onto them and his vision grew blurry. He could still hear the screams for his name, but they grew further away and quieter.
Minutes later, he was the only thing left in the desert. Him, and the picture beside him of the family that once wrapped their arms around him.
Many years later…
They sat in their usual seats in the Decision Room. He looked at Mont-Blanc to his left, then Jayla to his right. Both of them sat at their triangular desks while he placed his hands on his long, sleek one that took up nearly the entire wall while the mural of the Raven was placed prominently behind him.
“You’re looking morose today,” Mont-Blanc said in his haughty voice. “Is everything all right?”
“Yes,” he lied, but they didn’t need to know that things weren’t. “Jayla, you are certain that we need more children?”
Jayla nodded, but was far from smiling. He wondered if she was feeling the same way that morning.
“It is the only way to keep our numbers up. Our soldiers grow older by the day, and our harvesters and our staff are getting weak. When we find the child of mixed breed, he’s going to need us to be at our best.”
“I know that I don’t need to remind you how essential it is, for the whole world, that we keep our numbers up,” Mont-Blanc sneered. “No leader of the Ravens of Dusk has ever allowed our ranks to slip this low.”
“Yes, I know,” he replied with a sigh. “But… does it have to be Ratone?”
“Yes,” Jayla and Mont-Blanc replied in unison.
Mont-Blanc went on, “It is the easiest place for us to take children. We’ll be doing most of them a favor. They already consider themselves children of the lost.”
Those words caused his unintentional grimace. “Do it then.”
Mont-Blanc and Jayla obliged and left him to his lonesome in the massive room that he’d earned the right to sit at the helm of. However, no amount of power could keep him from the memories that never stopped haunting him. He wondered how many of the new recruits would feel the same way that he had when he first joined their ranks. But those weren’t thoughts that he was allowed to have anymore. After all, they weren’t stealing children of the lost. They were finding children that were going unfound…
To read book one in the series: “The Raven of Dusk: Transcendence” click here
All of these short stories will be published and available on Amazon as well. I'm going to promote them for free as much as I can, otherwise they'll be $.99 cents a piece (or you can just read them here for free!). All of this will lead up to the release of The Raven of Dusk: Children of the Rain in early August. For those of you have read Transcendence and have hounded me about the release of CotR, thank you :D. No seriously, you won't be disappointed. I think CotR is the best thing I've written thus far. I'm working on the third book right now as well. It is currently untitled.
To read book one in the series: The Raven of Dusk: Transcendence click here
Before I get further ahead of myself, here's the first of the origin series: "World of Dusk: The Shadow"
World of Dusk: The Shadow
It moved between the tall buildings that suffocated the light with its massive stone walls. Jaiden had to look directly at it to see a darker figure haunting the shadows in the absence of the moon. He saw it every night for the last four nights on their way to the temp houses he and his older brother slept in. They walked side by side, almost in a line with the others that were given slips with the location of their housing.
“Ugh,” Ruben scoffed, keeping a firm grasp on his younger brother’s hand. “It’s even smaller than last night’s.”
Ruben tried to keep walking, but Jaiden was fixated on the figure in the alley. Each night he saw the faceless creature, it was always somewhere different. The first night he saw it staring down at him from the top of a building. The way the moon was cast behind it made it glow eerily like a wingless angel coated in shadow. Since then, he’d seen it watching through a window, then from behind one of the many desecrated statues of King Ratone. Jaiden didn’t see it last night until he woke in the middle of the night and stepped around the other unfound to get out of their shelter. The figure watched him from beneath a street pole with a snuffed out flame. Its presence puzzled him; it bore a human’s form like a shadow that escaped from someone’s body.
He didn’t know what to make of his watcher. He thought for certain that it would make contact, or attack him, or say something through its absence of a face. It did none of those things. Not until he dreamed…
Jaiden smelled the ripe old man before he bumped into him. His boney hip grazed Jaiden’s face and he nearly toppled over. “Move, boy!”
Ruben gasped and thrust his brother forward. “Jaiden, c’mon! We need to claim our spots.” In his other hand were the two slips and the address printed on them. He glanced worriedly at the house with cracked stoned and boarded windows. It couldn’t have been more than a single room. The roof was unintentionally concave on one side, threatening to soak those beneath it on one of those rare rainy nights. “I don’t think they’ll have space for all of us.”
Jaiden faced the line of others behind him, and the bright, boisterous lights of one of the noble districts somewhere far away. If Ruben was right, these people hadn’t figured it out yet. Ruben thrust him forward before he could count the people in line. When he did, he was taken away from his vantage point between the two tall buildings and the alley where the shadow watched in silence. Whatever it was, he was sure he’d see it again the moment he closed his eyes…
Ruben had trouble sleeping that night. He didn’t usually have problems sleeping in temp houses no matter how uncomfortable the hardwood floors were, or how boisterous the snoring was all around him. He was used to bending in awkward angles as he and the others were cramped together, coating the floors with members of the lost. There was no way to get a good night’s rest while Jaiden was repeatedly kicking his back.
“No… no,” his younger brother whispered, still dreaming. His body was contorting in bizarre directions as if he was being electrocuted in his slumber. The others around them groaned and growled while getting whacked in the head and sides with Jaiden’s flailing limbs.
A woman old enough to be their great-grandmother snarled, after Jaiden clocked her in the jaw with his tiny hands, and shoved him away.
“No!” Jaiden screamed—this time loud enough to wake the others around them while his seizure-like movements continued. “No! Don’t take me! Don’t let them take me!”
The old woman hissed in Ruben’s direction. “If you don’t do something about your brother, I will throw him into the streets myself!”
“Be quiet, woman!” came from the haughty voice of a bearded man on the other side of her.
Others were grumbling as well, and Ruben knew that he had no choice but to wake Jaiden before the woman made good on her threat. It was a cold autumn night. Even though the city-state of Ratone was surrounded by deserts to the north and south, the breeze from the ocean carried all the way into the city. They couldn’t afford to catch a cold or get sick. Jaiden was all he had now. Their younger brother, Minnow, died of an infection the year before. Ruben tried to get a hospital to treat him, but the doctors would only help him if they had the money to pay for his treatment. The upper class ignored the rest in Ratone, leaving the other 90% to suffer well below the poverty line. Foreclosed and abandoned homes turned into homeless residences. A nightly shelter away from the cold was all the “noble class” would provide.
As he left, carrying his dying baby brother in his arms, he overheard a doctor say, “We’re flushing out another rat. Maybe my property’s value will finally go up again soon.”
Minnow was dead two mornings after. He and Jaiden cried for a week.
Ruben shook his brother awake. They couldn’t afford to be kicked out. He couldn’t risk losing the last person he had in his life.
Jaiden’s youthful eyes opened up and he was oblivious to the angry scowls on the faces of everyone else around him. His brother wasn’t one to see negativity. Ruben and the other members of Ratone’s homeless called themselves ‘the lost,’ but Jaiden said that they were ‘unfound.’ The connotation was cute, but also naïve; two words befitting of his little brother.
“You were tossing and yelling in your sleep again,” Ruben whispered, trying to keep his voice down. Jaiden frowned and looked upon his brother with watery eyes. “I’m sorry. It was the shadows. They were after me.”
“The dark played tricks on you. You don’t see anything in it.”
“But I do!” Jaiden was quickly shushed by someone behind them. He blushed and spoke quieter. “But I do. They move at night as part of the darkness. They come out where the moon and the lights can’t reach them. They see me without having eyes and they say that they’re coming for me.”
“You had a bad dream. Go back to sleep,” Ruben replied. Hopefully his nightmares wouldn’t continue this time. They were happening more and more frequently. Whatever Jaiden thought he saw stuck with him. Ruben only wished he knew what it was so that he could rebuff his brother’s concerns.
Ruben realized that he would not be going back to sleep some time later, long after his brother started to join the chorus of snores all around him. He lay awake, thinking about his brother’s words only until another reality came to mind. As uncomfortable as he was in the crowded room full of wheezes and loud exhalations, the smells of the others were far worse. The temp houses rarely had showers and, in the rooms as packed as they were, the odors emitted from sweaty bodies compounded upon one another. There was no escaping the scents of rotting fish and mold; these people were decaying all around him.
He stood up carefully and watched his footing, doing his best to step around the others so that he wouldn’t wake them. Ruben crossed the room successfully and made it outside where the wafts of fresh air kissed his skin and washed away the smells he inherited inside.
The city lights glowed orange and white and the streets were paved in discarded trash and crumbled papers. Half of the street poles flickered on and off like degenerating life support monitors. Abandoned fruit stands were erected by the sidewalks on the dirt sidewalk. Vendors could longer afford to maintain them with all the thieves running around and no one with money to buy from them. Nothing remained in this district of Ratone—or most of them, for that matter. People lived either on the streets or living in mansions on the far end of town. There was no middle ground.
A girl with long silver hair made into pig tails sat beside an older woman. Both leaned against the house, likely too late to get a seat inside. The girl was bundled in rags that were probably given to her by the old woman, who wore very little and let the slow gusts of wind soak her bones. Ruben wondered if she’d survive the night, though he was certain she’d been through this before.
“There it is again,” the girl muttered beside her. Ruben didn’t realize that both of them were awake. He stared forward at the cracks of light that attempted to brighten an alley between two large buildings. Jaiden was glancing at it before, allowing for his mind to see shapes that sprang to life in his dreams.
“They have returned to Ratone,” the elderly woman said through clicks of clattering teeth.
Ruben approached them, hugging himself as the next gust of wind slipped through the tiny holes in his brown rags. The girl couldn’t have been older than his little brother, while the elderly woman may have been as old at the stars in the sky. Several others were huddled on the ground besides the building, all asleep. These two women were all that remained.
“My brother thought he saw something, too,” Ruben said, leaning beside the cold wall next to them. “The shadows have appeared the last few nights,” the elderly woman replied. Her face was gaunt and bore extra skin that sagged as time’s cruelty withered her. “I wonder how many they’re taking this time.”
Ruben cocked his head. “What do you mean?”
“You are too young to remember when they were here last. They scarce show their face in the outer world, but Ratone has always been a popular harvesting ground for them.” The elderly woman didn’t take her eyes off of the thin alley between the buildings that were once home to great businesses.
Ruben stared carefully into the alley while the moon slinked behind a pair of thick, heavy clouds. A darker, deeper shadow coated the dirt pavement of the streets as if a large flying object hovered over them. The alley became harder and harder to see, but he was already envisioning a creature inching closer to the edge of it, keeping it’s claws just inches from the last rays of light that weren’t coated in the absence of the sky light.
“A girl disappeared in the temp house I was in three nights ago,” the bundled up girl on the other side of the old woman said to her. “She slept right next to me. I felt a cold in my dream, and then I thought that I saw this mass standing over me, staring down at me without a face. When I woke, the girl was gone and not a single person saw what took her.”
“A young boy vanished from mine as well,” the old woman said. “I gave him my space in the room, then watched him step outside in the middle of the night. He looked to be in a trance and sleepwalked toward a building, the same one that someone pointed at a figure inside of it earlier that night. He never came out. A few of us inspected it the morning after, but there was no trace of the boy or his captor. If they are here tonight, then someone was taken last night as well.” She sighed. “I wonder how many they’ll reap this time.”
Ruben thought about going inside. He could stay up at night from now on and watch his brother sleep. Jaiden was having nightmares for days and kept muttering about these creatures of nighttime. He tried to point them out to Ruben, but Ruben never saw. He wondered if Jaiden was hallucinating. Maybe he wasn’t getting enough food or water. Ruben could only scrounge up so much for the both of them. There was barely any to be found as it was.
But if this girl and old woman spoke of the same shadows, then it couldn’t be something that Jaiden had just made up. If children were disappearing…
Both Ruben and the girl leaned in toward the old woman, who had a straight vantage point of the alley just across the street. He hoped that his eyes would adjust to the dark well enough to see these moving shapes that he otherwise wouldn’t be able to see. Several minutes went by and Ruben squinted harder, making out cracks on the inside of the walls that he couldn’t see before, as well as the outside of a trash can that overflowed years before. Flies would emerge from the alley and then sweep right back in, swarming around the trash that coated so much of Ratone’s pavement. He watched and waited for something to appear. He watched and waited; watched and waited.
His head grazed the old woman’s shoulder. He hadn’t realized how much of her space he was invading, but, when she didn’t mind, he placed the rest of his head on her shoulder and continued to watch for shadows in shadows with glossy eyes. Ruben’s vision grew fuzzy and the gentle gusts felt like they were giving him chilly, but consoling hugs.
Its face nearly touched Ruben’s nose, but Jaiden was right: It didn’t have a face. Its head was oval-shaped, but there was only darkness in place of its sockets, nose, and mouth. There was nothing there but the frosty breath that tickled his cheeks, then around the back of his neck and down his spine like a small creature with prickly icicles for legs. It towered over him; the full size of a human being in human shape with four limbs. It looked like the negative of a moving photograph.
Ruben couldn’t move in its presence. He tried to remember the old woman’s words about the reaping or the recruiting—or both. He couldn’t leave his brother behind. It couldn’t be him that disappeared tonight.
The shadow’s face was replaced with a fabric like rough, unshaven hair that scratched the tip of his nose while vacant eyes inspected him. He half-expected to hear a grumble or growl—or perhaps even words! But nothing emerged from this being; nothing but thoughts Ruben felt his own mind tell him. If he was next, he would never see his brother again.
A hand appeared slowly and slid across his face. He could feel a rough leather-like fabric cause his skin to tingle, and then finally a word that he recognized clearly. “Sleep.”
“She is gone,” were the first words he heard as he came to. He picked his head up from the old woman’s shoulder and squinted his eyes as Hela brightened the buildings around them. He must have fallen asleep out there. That figure staring at him was all just a dream.
But then he noticed that the woman’s other shoulder was vacant. There was no girl still sleeping against the outside of the house. Something happened in the middle of the night, and Ruben could only draw one possible conclusion.
“They took her,” The old woman said, more drop to hear herself speak than to convey the news. “They scooped her right from my shoulder as we slept. They made her vanish from our world.”
“Vanish--”
“She is gone,” the woman snapped. “She is gone... I had only known her for a day, but I promised I’d keep her safe.” Her words rang with sadness, but her eyes bore little more than stoicism. He gathered that she’d endured too much in life to be phased by the disappearance of a girl she barely knew.
“Jaiden!” he gasped. Ruben shot up from the wall and spun toward the temp house, where he thrust the door open and caused a pair of men next to it to jolt and wake in the sudden blast of light Ruben let in with him. Beyond their scorning looks and contorted bodies, Ruben cast his eyes around the room in search of a boy half everyone’s size. He came to a quick relief when he stood Jaiden on his back in the room’s center, sound asleep and snoring as loudly as the drooling elderly man next to him.
Ruben shut the door before the two woken man could protest, then let out an uncontrollable yawn. He didn’t get enough sleep the night before. How could he, while he joined two women in staring into the empty space where a creature one resided.
“I saw it come toward us,” the old woman said, all but yawning herself. “It emerged the moment I grew tired. It stood on two hind legs and had a man’s walk. It approached you and then… then I slept.” She grimaced, looking at where the girl had sat beside her, just hours before. “Jefra is now for their harvest.”
Ruben had so many questions that it was difficult for him to think of which one to ask first. “W… w… what are they?”
“Help me up, boy. My bones are not what they used to be.”
Ruben rushed to her aid and clasped onto one of her hands. The flesh had left her some time ago, and she was more bones than human. The old woman winced as he helped her to her feet. Her joints grinded more than a vehicle in desperate need of an oil change but, when she reached her feet, she didn’t topple over and break into a thousand pieces. Even nearing a natural death, she was stronger than she looked.
“I helped you, now tell me,” Ruben demanded. “What are these things? Why have they been taking kids—and why didn’t they take me? I saw one last night. It was closer to me than you are now.”
“How old are you, boy?”
Ruben had to think of the answer. He and his brothers had lost their parents some time ago and with his parents went the ability to tell the day and the times. He could only take his best guess, give or take a year. “I am eight.”
“Then you are too old,” she replied.
“Too old for what?”
“They do not prefer those with clear memories of our world. These creatures prefer youth that knows nothing more than what can be taught to them.”
Ruben frowned, recalling Jaiden’s nightmares and the reason for why he was awakened in the middle of the night. “My brother has seen these things, too. He says that they are shadows. He screams ‘don’t take me’ in his dreams, and when he’s been able to see them for almost a week now.”
The old woman’s eyes grew as white as a bed of snow. “I had a brother once, many years ago. We shared a room in a home just a little larger than this one. He would toss and turn in the presence of the moon with closed eyes and gasps full of anxiety and fear. I woke up to his screams for three days, and then, on the fourth night, I stayed awake and kept my eyes barely open while he slept peacefully. I thought his string of dreams was over, but then a saw the shadow reach from our closed window. It let the frost in with it and slipped into the room with its long sable limbs. It didn’t make a sound as his slid its body under the barely open window. Not even the floor creaked beneath its feet. It glided over to my brother’s bed. I tried to scream, but I felt as though all sound was taken from between my lips and I watched as my brother was lifted from his bed and whisked away in the dead of night. I could do nothing but watch, dazed as if I’d been dreaming about it.” A hundred years of sorrow cast a shadow under her baggy eyes. “The neighbors said that my mother’s screams were heard from one end of Ratone to the other that morning. She’d been inconsolable for months, and eventually her grief caused her to take her life. My father made me never speak of it again. He would hear nothing of shadows, or even acknowledge that my brother ever existed.”
Ruben’s mouth fell open a little, but no words could come through them.
“I saw him once again nearly thirty years ago. I couldn’t see his face in the shadows, but I knew that it was him. I watched him take a child, just as he’d been taken. And now another has been recruited whilst fast asleep on my shoulder… I doubt that they are done. Their harvests are sporadic. Sometimes just one will be taken, other sometimes it could be several weeks’ worth of children. We’ll never know until they disappear again.”
“Why do they take children?” Ruben asked. “What are they?”
The woman’s old white eyes glowed in the light of Hela in the sky. The rays cast upon her traced each wrinkle of her skin as if a toddler drew on her face, but her expression was anything but friendly. Her attention was quickly drawn over his shoulder.
“They are demons,” Jaiden’s mousy voice said behind him. Ruben frowned when he turned around to see his brother standing just outside of the door. He couldn’t imagine what he could be thinking if he’d heard the old woman’s story. How long had he been out there listening to them?
“Jaiden—”
“They came out of the shadows again,” he said. “I saw them in my mind. It was a little girl this time—my age, I think. It took her deep into the shadows, where the darkness all merges together. It will come again tonight.”
“Yes,” the old woman said. “And tonight it will come for you.”
“Hey!” Ruben exclaimed, but Jaiden’s gasp demanded more of his attention than the old woman as she sauntered away, down the streets and around the piles of trash. He turned to his little brother, whose eyes welled up with tears. If Jaiden were to cry, he wasn’t sure if he could keep it together. He was still reeling from last night’s disappearance and the nonchalance of the old woman. Only one person in this world truly mattered to him anymore.
Jaiden hugged him tight. Ruben kissed his little brother on the top of the forehead as he whimpered and dampened his shirt.
“I don’t want them to take me,” Jaiden grumbled. “Don’t let them take me…”
Ruben’s best idea was for them to walk as far away as possible. They couldn’t go to the authorities because he knew that no one would care about them. Serenity Seekers had more than once proved to be just as useful as Ratone’s doctors. If they walked out of the city-state itself, then maybe the shadows wouldn’t follow them. They were plenty of other “lost” children to harvest, or recruit, or whatever that old woman was griping on about.
Hela didn’t escape through the clouds that day. The skies were cast in gray and the surrounding houses paled to browns and whites, having lost their vibrant colors long ago. Ruben wasn’t sad to cross the borders of the city of Ratone itself and step out onto the desert sands. They were cool on their bare feet without the heat to catch their grains afire. Ruben knew of several nearby towns just beyond the city. He hoped that they could reach one of them in a day, though he didn’t know how many miles away they were.
The two spent most of the day in silence, both lost in their own minds, their feet digging into the grains as they climbed up and down the ever-changing landscape that the winds formed for them. They kept walking straight but, as the day wore on, Ruben couldn’t help but wonder if they were going around in circles. Everything in this vast desert looked the same. Every time they stopped to rest or pee, he knew that they were at risk of changing course—especially without Hela to guide them.
It wasn’t long before Jaiden was fatigued, having no food or water all day. He took a seat in the sand at the base of a dune while another, much larger dune, was up ahead. His clothes were drenched in sweat and his lips were chapped to the point of bleeding.
Ruben no longer had any idea where they were. Leaving Ratone was a horrible idea. And nighttime was coming. If the shadows came for them, they would have nowhere to hide.
His little brother started to cry again, licking his tears as they came close enough for his lips to catch. “I don’t want them to take me… I don’t wanna go…”
Ruben frowned and cast his eyes on the darkening sky. It was too late to get anywhere now—even back into the city. Their best bet would be to climb the tall dune in front of them and look around for the lights of Ratone to guide their way. They wouldn’t last more than another day in the desert, especially if the clouds went away. He began to climb the dune, but Jaiden wasn’t following.His little brother remained planted at the base of the dune with his legs crossed and his face in his hands, continuing to sob. Jaiden wasn’t going to be getting up anytime soon.
Ruben returned to him and wrapped his arms around him tight, getting a quick flashback of how he held Minnow before he died, and then of how their mother held all three of them before she faced the same fate. That seemed like so long ago, back when they had a house and a full family. Everything went wrong these last few years.
“It’s going to be okay,” Ruben said, but he knew he didn’t sound convincing. “We’re going to be okay.”
Jaiden’s voice was barely audible through his tears. “Can I… can I see it again?”
Ruben nodded and withdrew from his pocket the other token he had left of their old life: a wrinkled picture of their family during Minnow’s first birthday. It was blurry and accidentally dampened a couple of times, but they could still make out baby Minnow’s bright-eyed grin and lit up face while their mother smiled with her arms around all three of them. It was one of the last happy days they had before an air shuttle crashed through their mother’s bedroom. It took less than two days before their house was raided for all of their valuables, leaving them with nothing but a picture to remember things by.
They lay in the sand, with Jaiden in Ruben’s arms, as they stared at the picture and didn’t say a word. The sand caressed and cradled their backs while they lie there and Jaiden slinked under Ruben’s shoulder. They stared at the picture for as long as they could, before Ruben’s arm was too tired to hold it up, while the white clouds darkened as the moon took to the sky.
Jaiden’s thrashing woke Ruben up in a panic.
“No, don’t let them! I don’t want to go!”
“Jaiden!” Ruben said, shaking him awake again.
His little brother gasped for air, then opened his eyes, going from dreaming to fully alert in less than a second.
Ruben hugged and held him as tight as he could. “It’s okay, little brother. It’s okay. It was just a dream… only a dream.”
Jaiden wasn’t responding. Ruben heard him breathe just fine, but he could sense that his brother’s attention wasn’t on Ruben cradling him. And then he felt his heart begin to race, and Jaiden wasn’t hugging him back. He looked into his brother’s eyes and saw the reflection of a figure in them. Ruben spun around and saw it peering down at them from the top of the dune, cancelling out the swirls of blackened clouds behind it. Then another appeared beside it. And a third. And a fourth.
“They’ve come for me,” Jaiden whispered, looking too petrified to move.
The creatures leapt from the dune and came hurdling toward them like a cascade of demons that danced on the top of the grains they propelled down. They were so quick that Ruben barely saw their feet move as the faceless creatures grew larger and closer like shadows trying to reclaim their human forms.
“Jaiden—run!” Ruben grabbed for his brother’s hand and leapt to his feet. He started to run but was jerked back when he saw that Jaiden had yet to move. He was too enamored with the creatures racing toward him, threatening to consume him in their shadows.
“Jaiden!”
The second command knocked some sense back into his brother. He blinked and quickly spun around, fighting to get to his feet. Hand-in-hand, the two raced across the desert toward the dune they’d gone gown while the shadow creatures bolted towards the bottom of the sand tower they came from. Ruben pulled Jaiden along and made great strides that Jaiden struggled to match with his shorter, stubby legs. He felt Jaiden’s grasp weaken and suddenly his little brother slipped and fell to his hands and knees on the dirt.
Ruben spun around and made a desperate grab for his hand. Jaiden reconnected, but as he did Ruben looked on helplessly and the creatures were quickly coming upon them. Their shadows were painting the sands at their feet and starting to eclipse Ruben and Jaiden’s own. They couldn’t give up. They had to keep running!
The sand reached up and clawed as their feet. Each step was a battle to remain on top of the sinking grains as they came to the next dune. Ruben shoved his feet into the sandy hills and made footholds that his brother could follow. He nearly fell forward, so with his free hand and buried into the dune he scaled it furiously as Jaiden’s hand grew sweaty in his palms. He didn’t dare turn back to see how close the shadows were. They didn’t even make a sound!
He was almost able to see the top of the dune. He tightened his grip on Jaiden’s hand as his brother panted and moaned. Then—
“No! No!”
Ruben was jerked backward and spun around as Jaiden’s hand slipped from his grip. He gasped as he watched his brother slip backwards into the arms of one of the shadows, and then the others began to cover him.
“Ruben! Help!”
Ruben didn’t think before he jumped toward them, his limbs outstretched as if he was falling from the sky. He flew down onto the shadows and felt one of their hands grab at his shirt. He caught a quick glimpse of Jaiden’s terrified eyes before he was thrown forward again, and then he went from flying to falling further and further down the dune as the shadows completely restrained Jaiden from reaching out toward him. The usually soft sand felt like a million tiny rocks as Ruben crashed onto them and his vision grew blurry. He could still hear the screams for his name, but they grew further away and quieter.
Minutes later, he was the only thing left in the desert. Him, and the picture beside him of the family that once wrapped their arms around him.
Many years later…
They sat in their usual seats in the Decision Room. He looked at Mont-Blanc to his left, then Jayla to his right. Both of them sat at their triangular desks while he placed his hands on his long, sleek one that took up nearly the entire wall while the mural of the Raven was placed prominently behind him.
“You’re looking morose today,” Mont-Blanc said in his haughty voice. “Is everything all right?”
“Yes,” he lied, but they didn’t need to know that things weren’t. “Jayla, you are certain that we need more children?”
Jayla nodded, but was far from smiling. He wondered if she was feeling the same way that morning.
“It is the only way to keep our numbers up. Our soldiers grow older by the day, and our harvesters and our staff are getting weak. When we find the child of mixed breed, he’s going to need us to be at our best.”
“I know that I don’t need to remind you how essential it is, for the whole world, that we keep our numbers up,” Mont-Blanc sneered. “No leader of the Ravens of Dusk has ever allowed our ranks to slip this low.”
“Yes, I know,” he replied with a sigh. “But… does it have to be Ratone?”
“Yes,” Jayla and Mont-Blanc replied in unison.
Mont-Blanc went on, “It is the easiest place for us to take children. We’ll be doing most of them a favor. They already consider themselves children of the lost.”
Those words caused his unintentional grimace. “Do it then.”
Mont-Blanc and Jayla obliged and left him to his lonesome in the massive room that he’d earned the right to sit at the helm of. However, no amount of power could keep him from the memories that never stopped haunting him. He wondered how many of the new recruits would feel the same way that he had when he first joined their ranks. But those weren’t thoughts that he was allowed to have anymore. After all, they weren’t stealing children of the lost. They were finding children that were going unfound…
To read book one in the series: “The Raven of Dusk: Transcendence” click here
May 19, 2015
The Black Athame: Chapter 1
Alexis Kearns wiggled around in the harsh metal chair, but even with a jacket on she could feel the icy bar digging into her back. She could have been sitting on a plushy cushion and been just as uncomfortable. There was no way for her to brace what was about to walk through the other door. Visiting hours should’ve been busier. The added company of background chatter would have served as a nice distraction from her thoughts. More of them were piling on. Each of them made her regret her decision to pay him a visit. She wasn’t safe, even with the two guards stationed on both sides of the glass. The door buzzed like the sound of an old dryer once its cycle completed. She jumped and scowled at herself for it. It relieved her to hear a noise louder than her heavy breathing or her pounding heart. Both only grew more frantic as the buzzing came to a stop and the door opened. Two more guards entered with a dark figure between them. His ankle chains scraped on the ground as the guards motioned him forward. His footsteps were amplified as if a microphone was placed beneath them as he drew closer. There would be no leaving now.She made a terrible mistake by coming here. The guards, the glass, and the other security measures wouldn’t be enough to keep him from getting to her if he wished. She knew that it had to have been her imagination; she couldn’t really hear him through the soundproofing. It was all in her head. It’s all in my head.His form towered over her from the other side of the glass. His biceps popped out of his arms and his thighs grew larger than her waist. His meaty hands looked as if they could break the handcuffs if he balled them into fists, and even through his bulky orange jump suit she could tell that he’d put on significant muscle mass since he’d been behind bars. If he and Robert were to ever get into a scuffle again, he would snap probably Robert’s neck in seconds.The guards pulled out his chair and had him sit across from her, then they disappeared behind the dividers. Alexis had to remind herself again that there was a layer of glass and four guards between them, but logic did little to reassure her. She took a deep breath and exhaled between her teeth, doing her best to keep the fear from her face. With a quivering hand she grabbed the thick black phone from the left side of the divider and placed it to her mouth and ear. He mimicked, glaring at her with his charcoal-colored eyes.“Hello Jack.” She couldn’t say another word without fumbling. He couldn’t know how often she woke up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat after a nightmare. Sometimes in her dreams she hadn’t escaped him. If he got whiff of that, their whole conversation would be a waste of time. Staring him down made keeping a poker face seem harder than typing an error-free article while blindfolded. Alexis didn’t know how much time went by as Jack Calderan’s eyes narrowed in on hers. The time-space continuum altered in their world between the dividers. Her words fumbled from her lips and no sounds came out. She reminded herself again and again to maintain her composure. She needed to be strong. She needed to be the woman she was in every other situation in her life. He’s just a man... He’s just a man. But if that was true, she wouldn’t be meeting with him. “You reek of fear. I can practically see it seeping out of your skin.”Alexis opened her mouth, but Calderan’s hand seemed like it went through the glass and grasped her neck, squeezing her vocal chords so tight that they were unable to emit a sound.“I’ve had time to think about where things went wrong,” he said to her. “I was overly anxious. Next time I’ll be more… tactical.”She couldn’t let him get the better of her. She needed him to know that she wasn’t afraid of him, even if it was a lie. Finally, Alexis got the words out. “You can think and do whatever you’d like in there. You’re still not getting out for another twenty-five to life.”“Heh,” he leaned forward. The dark pools where his eyes should have been grew larger; the two black holes threatened to swallow her whole. “Do you really think that I’ll be in here for that long?”“Jack Calderan will be,” she took another deep breath and leaned forward to brave the abyss within his pupils. Their noses were just three inches apart. He could leap forward and bite off her face if it wasn’t for the glass. “But I’m not speaking to Jack Calderan right now, am I?”Calderan grinned.“Who is it that I am speaking to?” The longer he watched her, the wider his sockets grew until Alexis was convinced that she was gazing deep into twin portals to Hell. Thoughts of her dreams began to resurface. Sometimes she’d be in Carla’s house again with no doors or windows to escape. Other times she’d be alone in her apartment and the lights would suddenly go out. She’d catch a glimpse of his silhouette from the corner of her eye, and before she’d have time to react his firm hands would be clutched around her throat. He’d make her squawk like a chicken as he tightened his grip until the air was ripped from her lungs.Alexis took a deep breath and refocused. A little more relaxed, she asked her question again. “Who am I speaking to?”“I’m not going to tell you that now.” His words were so deep that they pierced the glass as if he spewed tiny razors from his mouth. “Oh, and when are you gonna tell me? Right before you kill me? Are you that cliché?”“What makes you think I want you to die?” Calderan licked his canine teeth. “You mean nothing to me.”Those words set her off. She wasn’t insignificant—especially to him! The initial fear of Calderan haunting her dreams faded away. He was still terrifying to look at, but she allowed for her frustration to dominate her sentiments. “We both know that’s not true. I’m the reason you’re in there.”“No, I’m the reason I’m in here.”Alexis emphasized every word. “They put you on suicide watch. I shot you, but we kept you alive. You tried to kill yourself in the hospital, but you were too slow. Then you were in solitary—”“And now I’m with people,” his smile widened. If he still had wisdom teeth, she would have seen all of them. “A lot of people with a lot of talents.”She didn’t like that he was no longer under careful surveillance. Forester’s order to put him on suicide watch must have been overruled or expired. Calderan the man couldn’t go anywhere, but that wouldn’t matter in the end. “So, what then? Are you going to kill yourself and inhabit another medium?”Jack blinked the two black pools in the center of his face. “I like this body,” he said, flexing his biceps. “It’s strong and quick. Jack Calderan was much more in tuned than I initially realized. I can get what I want with him even with these complications.”“And what is it that you want? The journals of Olivia Harris?”Jack remained quiet and smiling. He wasn’t going to tell her, but it was worth a shot anyway. “The death of Carla Harris?”His expression didn’t alter.“That seems like it would make the most sense now, wouldn’t it? Your trying to kill her was the only time that the medium suicides pattern was broken.”“Heh,” he motioned forward. She was surprised that his nose didn’t press against the glass, though his eyes could burn right through it. “You know nothing about who or what I am, what I’ve done, or what I’m going to do next. You’re my inferior—to converse with you is to waste my air. You’re a creature so naïve that I’m going to let you live because slamming your head against that back wall over there so hard that your cranium splits in two would be a misuse of my time.”“And yet you’ve wasted three months of your life behind bars instead of killing more mediums because—oh wait—I put you here. I’m not a medium or a monster like you. I’m just a regular woman who outsmarted your ass. When you do get out of here, I’ll be ready for you because the one thing that you’ve still failed to realize, asshole, is that you have no fucking clue who you’re up against.”“If you were at all significant to me you’d be dead by now,” Jack replied. “You will be dead long before you realize, but it won’t be by my hand.”“And when you die, it’ll be because I’ve helped make it happen.”“I—”“See you in twenty-five to life, asshole.” Alexis slammed the phone back on its holder and withdrew from her seat. She didn’t bother taking another look at Jack Calderan as she walked to the door. He was no longer worth her time or effort.
April 15, 2015
Clean Reader: Your guide to book censorship!
Finally! There’s an app out there that people can buy to take out all of the profanity in books or change the language (ex. “bitch” to “witch”) so as not to offend people who don’t want to read curse words or racial slurs. AND it only kind ofskates on copyright infringement!
Welcome to Clean Reader http://www.cleanreaderapp.com/, an app that gives you all of the book with none of the swear words. No, seriously. Their tagline is “Read books. Not profanity.”
At this point, I pray that you all know that I’m being sarcastic, and that this idea offends almost as much as Memories Pizza, projections that 3D printers will be able to print out a human heart before women receive equal pay, or anything Ted Cruz. So where do I begin here?
First off, in an e-mail correspondence by author Joanna Harris, http://joannechocolat.tumblr.com/post/114572318791/an-e-mail-from-clean-reader, representatives from the app address a blog post written by Harris about the product. Their words are eloquent and carefully written, but it is still clear that they’ve missed the point. Harris points out that, artistically, writers choose certain words to convey a meaning. Yes, there are some authors out there, like Mark Henshaw, who is featured on the Clean Reader blog which states: “Mark writes well enough that he doesn’t need to include profanity in his writing.”
Dude, get off your high horse. I should say, “Get off your fucking high horse,” but I have better use for the ‘F’ word in the next paragraph. The point it, Henshaw choosing to not use profanity doesn’t make him better than authors that do.
Yes, there are those that do overuse profanity and thus it may lose meaning. However, most of us—especially writers—use our language very carefully and very effectively. For example, in one of my novels I only use “fuck” once, but because I chose to use “fuck” and not “darn” or whatever the Clean Reader equivalent to “fuck” is, that passage conveys a lot more power. When I did a search for the word in my book, it only came up once and I knew exactly where, because the use of the word in that scene made it that much more memorable. I also use the word “whore” early on in a story to express how one character feels about his interaction with another character. It’s powerful, and it’s the last word in that passage. By people having the ability to take away those words or alter them, they are taking less from the stories that we write and are even sometimes missing vital points.
Let’s think about some of the most notable texts and passages of all time and see how they’d be altered. If you take out racially uncomfortable themes and slurs, you might as well not even bother reading To Kill a Mockingbird. Ma Joad won’t be breastfeeding a man in The Grapes of Wrath (would the Clean Reader alternative be her giving him a chicken breast? Would they take out the last chapter altogether?), and—I’m sorry, but who didn’t go “ohhhhh shit” when Viserys Targaryen tells his sister Daenerys in her first POV chapter, “I would let his [Khal Drogo] whole tribe fuck you - all forty thousand men - and their horses too if that's what it took.” He says that to his little sister. Damn, that’s cold! What’s the Clean Reader equivalent? It certain wouldn’t leave you feeling the same anger towards him and pity for her, much less the visual! Funny enough, on the Clean Reader Blog page, there’s an advertisement for their version of Game of Thrones. Who would want to read that?! The whole 5 book series would have to be shaved down to about 300 pages, and 200 of them would be say nothing but “Hodor.”
Harris also points out the “moral” wrong of this app. Given the word choices it makes, it appears to give books a Christian bias, which is offensive to non-Christians. If you change “bitch” to “witch” you go from insulting people who don’t want to see the word “bitch” to insulting pagans with regards to the negatively connotation of the word “witch.” Also, to jump back to my first point, I sometimes write fantasy. If the words “bitch” and “witch” are switched, there are going to be some potentially confused readers out there!
Lastly, Harris mentions the “pedagogical” wrongs with the app. For further understanding, here’s the story behind the app. The creators stated that, “One day our oldest child came home from school and she was a little sad. We asked her what was wrong and she said she had been reading a book during library time and it had a few swear words in it. She really liked the book but not the swear words.” Okay, I understand that. It seems like the initial concept behind the app are comparable to parental control settings on TV or the internet. This doesn’t mean that the same child won’t hear these words at school, or in music, potentially every other facet of media and social media.
Harris’ response to this is as follows: “I believe the toxic message it carries (that body parts are shameful and must not be mentioned by name; that sex is dirty and shameful) is likely to be extremely harmful to impressionable young people, and may result in serious psychological damage, with all the social consequences that may entail.”
We can shelter our children all we want, but I’ve always been one to believe that when my hypothetical child approaches me after hearing something at school, or seeing or reading something that confuses them, it would be my obligation as a parent to be as honest as I can be with them. It is only with knowledge that children will understand and grow.
Chuck Wendig, another author with the popular blog http://terribleminds.com/, says that “Education isn’t about concealment of information. It isn’t about the eradication or modification of offensive language, or ideas, or information. It’s about presenting truth when a child or an adult are ready to hear it, and then talking about it. Anything else is how you get Jesus riding dinosaurs, or a loss of climate change, or the eradication of women or people of color from the pages of history, all because it doesn’t line up with preconceived notions and pre-existing comfort levels… Authors write the books they want to write, and you read them as they are written.” I personally couldn’t agree more.
We are brought up reading about contentious issues from a very young age. Some of them make us uncomfortable, but they also cause us to think. Yes, not every work will use racial themes as well as “To Kill a Mockingbird” or “Huckleberry Finn,” or provide the same graphically effective profanity as Martin’s “Game of Thrones” series, but an author—every author—should have the right for their works to not be altered by an app for people who don’t want to read anything because it might offend them. And if this is a “Christian-bias” app, then the creators should have their children read the Bible. There’s no sex or violence AT ALL in that!
April 11, 2015
The Raven of Dusk: Transcendence FREE PROMO
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00VUGO0SQ
For just this weekend, The Raven of Dusk: Transcendence is FREE on Amazon.
Currently it's ranked #17 in it's genre. Let's make it #1!!!
Raiden, a young wildlife guide, watches his beloved and mysterious father murdered before his eyes without knowing why… or why his own child has been placed under a sentence of death.
Kostan, a dynastic hero, is slowly drawn into the realm of politics, while desperately trying to prevent his own son’s fall into moral depravity.
Vila, an ambitious politician, carries the unborn child of "mixed breed", which her own religion and people would kill on sight if she were to let her secret be known.
And Eliza, an ambitious and brazen young woman, always the outcast amongst her peers, finds herself encased in an enigmatic white glow.
Each of these four separate life threads are being slowly drawn together and shaped by an even greater mystery... because once, long ago, all life on Noreis suddenly became extinct… and no one, not one of the many races, cultures, or religions which currently share this planet, knows why.
Over time, the story of how and why it happened has devolved from history and myth, and from the dust of fading memories, life has sprung anew. A new world has erected with city-states that have skyscrapers that touch the heavens, lands covered in crystals with pavements like rock candy, and culture is rich and vibrant. Some people flourish in the footsteps of their ancestors while others drown in their shadows. Women rule among men, disputes are fickle, and a brighter history is being written.
But trouble is brewing… and the Ravens of Dusk are preparing to make their presence known.
Shifts in the world’s balance threaten the long-standing peace of its inhabitants. Political ties are shifting and breaking, unlikely alliances are forming, and betrayals are devastating. As dawn sheds light on the beginning of the end of days, only one thing is certain: whatever once caused a global extinction thousands of years threatens to repeat itself.
Watch the trailer at: http://bit.ly/1advRa4
April 3, 2015
April 2, 2015
April 1, 2015
Alexis, Chapter 1: The Interview
Hey, everyone! Below is the first of my 12 chapter novella, "Alexis", which centers around the lead female character, Alexis Kearns, in my debut novel "The Messengers": which can be found here.
This is a stand-alone novel that takes place in-between "The Messengers" and it's sequel, "The Black Athame" , which will be released on May 21 of this year. While characters that appear in "The Messengers" series will play a role in this novella, you do not have to read "The Messengers" in order to understand the plot line to "Alexis" (though it is recommended :D )
Alexis, a novellaChapter 1: The Interview
“This is Alexis Kearns interviewing State Senator Margaret Thomas,” she said into the recorder before placing it on the table. “Good afternoon, Senator. Thank you for agreeing to speak with me.”Senator Thomas smiled pleasantly from behind her desk. Her teeth were an off-white color that reminded Alexis of the dentures her grandmother wore. They were nearly the same shade as the senator’s short wispy hair, reminding her of one of the actresses from the Ovaltine commercials that she was barely old enough to remember. “Thank you, Miss Kearns,” the senator replied. “I was very happy to hear that you wanted to speak with me about the Next Generation Heroes Foundation. I was hoping that the Chronicle would report on it, but I didn’t expect to get you!”“Oh, well, you know,” Alexis said, half-expecting herself to do a hair flip that she would’ve smacked herself for doing later. She acquired quite a bit fame after the medium suicides case—primarily from the story she broke about James Hawthorne when he fell to his death and she did a whole piece on her Android. Without Justin around any longer, she had become the top dog at the Seattle Chronicle, and given free reign over the stories she chose to report on. “The Next Gen Heroes Foundation means a lot to me personally. It was one of the scholarships from your foundation that paid for most of my first year at U-Dub.” “Really,” Senator Thomas said with a sense of self-gratification. “Then I guess you are the right person for the article. You know first-hand the good work we do.”“Exactly,” Alexis replied, eying the tape recorder. “That said, why don’t you tell me a little background information about the foundation?”Senator Thomas clasped her hands over the table and leaned forward so that her every word could be picked up. “The Next Generation Heroes Foundation was founded in 1992 by my ex-husband, Henry, and I. Before becoming a senator for Seattle area I worked as a Critical Theory professor at the University of Washington and then Seattle University. During my time at Seattle U I had a girl in my class, Deshana Lambert. Miss Lambert was clearly one of the brightest students in my class that year, but she was always getting there late and sometimes nodded off during my lectures. She approached me during visiting hours one afternoon to apologize for falling asleep in class, and mentioned she had just worked a double-shift at a twenty-four hour diner before getting to class. In fact, Miss Lambert was sometimes working fifty-hour weeks between her two jobs while attending Seattle U full-time. She was working so hard to afford her education that she didn’t give herself enough time to absorb the material so that she could keep up with students that came from wealthier families. “Well, that didn’t resonate so well with me. While Miss Lambert made it work, graduated, and went on to become a project manager at Microsoft, so many others just like her were dropping out or putting their education on hold until they could afford it. I sat down with my husband, who was worked as a grant writing consultant, and told him that I wanted to create a scholarship fund to further help our young people get an education. Between his grant writing skills and my connections through the schools and the students that became successful after leaving my classroom, we’ve managed to raise more than twelve million dollars in the last twenty-three years. Fifty-thousand of that has come from Miss Lambert herself! She always gives us a generous donation at the end of the year.”“The Seattle Chronicle has made multiple donations to your scholarship fund as well, has it not?”“Indeed,” Senator Thomas nodded. “We are very grateful for the donations from the Seattle Chronicle and the Bauer family.”“And in turn, the foundation has benefitted you as well.”The senator cocked her head. “I’m sorry?”Alexis paused, but then smiled sweetly was brushed her black bangs from her eyes. “My apologies. I mean, when you first ran from a senate seat in 2002, you were able to use the Next Gen Heroes Foundation as part of your platform.”“Oh!” Senator Thomas replied. Color returned to her face. “Of course. It’s important to note that using the foundation as a means of acquiring a senate seat was never my intent. A Seattle Times reporter commented on it, and from then on I was known as the ‘scholarship lady’ during the rest of my campaign.”“Politicians have certainly been called worse things during their campaigns,” Alexis said, sharing a laugh with the senator, who softened again after Alexis’ interpretable approach.“Since I’ve been a state senator, our scholarship funds have nearly doubled. Of the twelve million that has been raised in our twenty-three years, eight million of it has come in the last ten.”“Yes,” Alexis’ ‘s’ lingered. “As of last month, the Next Gen Heroes Foundation has raised $12,486,354.25.”Senator Thomas pondered the number for a moment. “That sounds about right.”“And in the last seven years, roughly $392,403 of that has found its way into one of your off-shore accounts. Does that number also sound about right?” The senator’s face soured to that of a rotten tomato. Alexis thought it wise that she went into education and not professional poker. Senator Thomas took a moment before replying and glanced at the tape recorder as if it were a cockroach taking a nap on her desk. “Excuse me?”“Is it, or is it not true that, starting in July of 2008, you have been cutting yourself a portion of the donations that should be going to your foundation?” Alexis asked, fixated on the senator’s inability to look her in the eye. “I can put in to you in other terms. The cost for tuition for an undergraduate student to attend the University of Washington in Seattle during fall quarter of the 2014-2015 school year was $4132 after fees. The amount of money that you embezzled could have paid for ninety-five of those students—some just like Deshana Lambert. Instead, that money went straight from Miss Lambert’s checkbook, the Seattle Chronicle account, and so many others, right into your pocket. Is that correct?”“No! Absolutely not—and I’m offended by the mere implication that I could be stealing from my own non-profit.”Alexis leaned to the side and unzipped the messenger bag she carried with her (all the while keeping an eye on the tape recorder in case Senator Thomas did something stupid). She grabbed a tan folder and slid it onto the table towards the senator. The senator opened it and examined the documents inside as if she was reading someone else’s draft of her last will and testament. Alexis explained as the senator sifted through the documents. “Those first few pages are account statements given to me by another member of your foundation. On it are your accounts payable and receivable, salaries for yourself and your employees, miscellaneous expenses, the grant money distributions—everything that should be there.”The senator nodded as she combed through every line like a Calculus teacher waiting to find a line in a math problem where the numbers didn’t add up.“The final page contains a number that is just under four-hundred thousand dollars short of what it should be.”“There are a number of reasons for why that could be,” the senator said. “For instance—”“For instance, you can scroll through the rest of that document and put your foot in your mouth,” Alexis replied swiftly. “I wouldn’t have approached you with this allegation without it being truthful. It’s all there. The list of accounts that you’ve created, the credit report that was run on you two months ago, a printed spreadsheet of every small funds transfer you’ve made between your non-profit’s account and your personal account, the tax information that clearly states that your reported is less than what you’re claiming as your salary—shall I go on?”“You were a recipient of this scholarship,” the senator hissed. “Why are you of all people trying to take it down?”“I’m not,” Alexis replied. “I’m just presenting information that proves that you are no longer the best person to run it. I also don’t think that your constituents will approve of your siphoning of funds come re-election.”Senator Thomas launched her hand out toward the tape recorder like a snake trying to swallow its prey, but Alexis was just as fast and grabbed the senator’s wrist before she could swipe it. “I strongly suggest that you let go of my property, ma’am,” she said in the more derogatory tone she could muster. “Also that’s not the only recording device I brought with me today. I figured you might have this reaction.”The senator loosened her grip on the recorder, so Alexis let released her wrist. When she did, the senator raised an eyebrow and turned Alexis’ wrist around, revealing the kanji tattoo that she’d gotten when she first turned eighteen. “It means ‘family’,” Alexis said. “I got it when—”“I studied Chinese in high school and Japanese in college. This tattoo doesn’t mean ‘family’,” the senator glanced from the tattoo straight into Alexis’ eyes. “It means ‘don’t forget’.”“‘Never forget’,” Alexis corrected her though clenched teeth.“Hmm,” Senator Thomas muttered. The wheels turned in her head as she shed her skin to reveal herself as the viper Alexis knew that she was before starting the interview. This was not a kind old lady that meant to do nothing but good work with her non-profit. Something changed several years ago when her husband left her for someone younger and she realized that she could dip into the scholarship pool that she’d been filling for the last two decades. Her jaws were unhinged and she was threatening to swallow Alexis whole. “What kind of young woman would get a tattoo and lie about its meaning? Something very personal must have happened to you, if you’re willing to engrave the words ‘never forget’ on a part of your body that you can almost always see. If you’re going to lie about it, it must be something that you don’t tell anyone—something that you’ve possibly never told anyone before.”“You don’t know me.”Senator Thomas clasped Alexis’ wrist between her two clammy hands and ran her thumb down the tattoo that Alexis was caught lying about. “You’re the older of two girls brought up in a middle-class Christian home. Your parents are do-gooders and your younger sister frequently joins them on bake sales and retreats to build wells in third world countries and houses and other shit. You are nothing like them. You were an angry child in grade school, frequently dying your hair shades of black, red, and pink, and grew up on punk music while wearing clothes that made you look like a street rat. When you got into journalism, you were dead-set on going after other people like a prosecutor with a chip on their shoulder, and like an angry prosecutor you often went above and beyond to ensure that your subjects paid for their wrong-doings—sometimes very publicly.”Alexis could feel the senator’s thumbnail threatening to dig into her tattoo, as if to slice it clear off of her skin. She did nothing to stop her, though. Their conversation was still being recorded, and there was no telling what else the senator would say while on the record. “You’ve done your research on me, then. You knew that I was a recipient of your scholarship, but you chose to bullshit me.”“I was playing nice. Judging by this tattoo, I don’t think that people often play nice with you.” A smirk crept across the senator’s face. “You got this tattoo as a reminder that you need to play hero. You want to play hero for those that have been wronged, because when you needed a hero, no one came to you aid. Someone wronged at a young age, didn’t they. And whatever they did… it’s something that you never got over.”Alexis glared at the senator and replied through a pair of tight lips. “Is there anything else that you’d like to admit to while you’re still on the record?”“He still haunts you, doesn’t me,” the senator scathed. “Jack Calderan, I mean. When he attacked you, it must have reminded you of what happened before.”Alexis clutched onto the tape recorder and yanked her arm out from between the senator’s scaly palms. “We’re done here, bitch. And you’re just done in general. ‘Senator and Scholarship Founder Grants Herself Ninety-Five Quarter’s Worth of Student’s Dreams.’ It’ll have to be the subhead, since it runs a bit wordy. I think the headline ‘FRAUD’ in all caps with your picture underneath will grab the public’s attention though.” She placed her tape recorder back in her pocket and zipped up her messenger bag before slinging it around her shoulder. “Thank you for paying for part of my education, senator. I’m glad I put it to good use.”“You can take me down, Alexis,” the senator crossed her arms over her chest. “But you’ll never be able to outrun what really haunts you.”Alexis turned away and walked toward the door. “I already did,” she replied, shutting it behind her.
This is a stand-alone novel that takes place in-between "The Messengers" and it's sequel, "The Black Athame" , which will be released on May 21 of this year. While characters that appear in "The Messengers" series will play a role in this novella, you do not have to read "The Messengers" in order to understand the plot line to "Alexis" (though it is recommended :D )
Alexis, a novellaChapter 1: The Interview
“This is Alexis Kearns interviewing State Senator Margaret Thomas,” she said into the recorder before placing it on the table. “Good afternoon, Senator. Thank you for agreeing to speak with me.”Senator Thomas smiled pleasantly from behind her desk. Her teeth were an off-white color that reminded Alexis of the dentures her grandmother wore. They were nearly the same shade as the senator’s short wispy hair, reminding her of one of the actresses from the Ovaltine commercials that she was barely old enough to remember. “Thank you, Miss Kearns,” the senator replied. “I was very happy to hear that you wanted to speak with me about the Next Generation Heroes Foundation. I was hoping that the Chronicle would report on it, but I didn’t expect to get you!”“Oh, well, you know,” Alexis said, half-expecting herself to do a hair flip that she would’ve smacked herself for doing later. She acquired quite a bit fame after the medium suicides case—primarily from the story she broke about James Hawthorne when he fell to his death and she did a whole piece on her Android. Without Justin around any longer, she had become the top dog at the Seattle Chronicle, and given free reign over the stories she chose to report on. “The Next Gen Heroes Foundation means a lot to me personally. It was one of the scholarships from your foundation that paid for most of my first year at U-Dub.” “Really,” Senator Thomas said with a sense of self-gratification. “Then I guess you are the right person for the article. You know first-hand the good work we do.”“Exactly,” Alexis replied, eying the tape recorder. “That said, why don’t you tell me a little background information about the foundation?”Senator Thomas clasped her hands over the table and leaned forward so that her every word could be picked up. “The Next Generation Heroes Foundation was founded in 1992 by my ex-husband, Henry, and I. Before becoming a senator for Seattle area I worked as a Critical Theory professor at the University of Washington and then Seattle University. During my time at Seattle U I had a girl in my class, Deshana Lambert. Miss Lambert was clearly one of the brightest students in my class that year, but she was always getting there late and sometimes nodded off during my lectures. She approached me during visiting hours one afternoon to apologize for falling asleep in class, and mentioned she had just worked a double-shift at a twenty-four hour diner before getting to class. In fact, Miss Lambert was sometimes working fifty-hour weeks between her two jobs while attending Seattle U full-time. She was working so hard to afford her education that she didn’t give herself enough time to absorb the material so that she could keep up with students that came from wealthier families. “Well, that didn’t resonate so well with me. While Miss Lambert made it work, graduated, and went on to become a project manager at Microsoft, so many others just like her were dropping out or putting their education on hold until they could afford it. I sat down with my husband, who was worked as a grant writing consultant, and told him that I wanted to create a scholarship fund to further help our young people get an education. Between his grant writing skills and my connections through the schools and the students that became successful after leaving my classroom, we’ve managed to raise more than twelve million dollars in the last twenty-three years. Fifty-thousand of that has come from Miss Lambert herself! She always gives us a generous donation at the end of the year.”“The Seattle Chronicle has made multiple donations to your scholarship fund as well, has it not?”“Indeed,” Senator Thomas nodded. “We are very grateful for the donations from the Seattle Chronicle and the Bauer family.”“And in turn, the foundation has benefitted you as well.”The senator cocked her head. “I’m sorry?”Alexis paused, but then smiled sweetly was brushed her black bangs from her eyes. “My apologies. I mean, when you first ran from a senate seat in 2002, you were able to use the Next Gen Heroes Foundation as part of your platform.”“Oh!” Senator Thomas replied. Color returned to her face. “Of course. It’s important to note that using the foundation as a means of acquiring a senate seat was never my intent. A Seattle Times reporter commented on it, and from then on I was known as the ‘scholarship lady’ during the rest of my campaign.”“Politicians have certainly been called worse things during their campaigns,” Alexis said, sharing a laugh with the senator, who softened again after Alexis’ interpretable approach.“Since I’ve been a state senator, our scholarship funds have nearly doubled. Of the twelve million that has been raised in our twenty-three years, eight million of it has come in the last ten.”“Yes,” Alexis’ ‘s’ lingered. “As of last month, the Next Gen Heroes Foundation has raised $12,486,354.25.”Senator Thomas pondered the number for a moment. “That sounds about right.”“And in the last seven years, roughly $392,403 of that has found its way into one of your off-shore accounts. Does that number also sound about right?” The senator’s face soured to that of a rotten tomato. Alexis thought it wise that she went into education and not professional poker. Senator Thomas took a moment before replying and glanced at the tape recorder as if it were a cockroach taking a nap on her desk. “Excuse me?”“Is it, or is it not true that, starting in July of 2008, you have been cutting yourself a portion of the donations that should be going to your foundation?” Alexis asked, fixated on the senator’s inability to look her in the eye. “I can put in to you in other terms. The cost for tuition for an undergraduate student to attend the University of Washington in Seattle during fall quarter of the 2014-2015 school year was $4132 after fees. The amount of money that you embezzled could have paid for ninety-five of those students—some just like Deshana Lambert. Instead, that money went straight from Miss Lambert’s checkbook, the Seattle Chronicle account, and so many others, right into your pocket. Is that correct?”“No! Absolutely not—and I’m offended by the mere implication that I could be stealing from my own non-profit.”Alexis leaned to the side and unzipped the messenger bag she carried with her (all the while keeping an eye on the tape recorder in case Senator Thomas did something stupid). She grabbed a tan folder and slid it onto the table towards the senator. The senator opened it and examined the documents inside as if she was reading someone else’s draft of her last will and testament. Alexis explained as the senator sifted through the documents. “Those first few pages are account statements given to me by another member of your foundation. On it are your accounts payable and receivable, salaries for yourself and your employees, miscellaneous expenses, the grant money distributions—everything that should be there.”The senator nodded as she combed through every line like a Calculus teacher waiting to find a line in a math problem where the numbers didn’t add up.“The final page contains a number that is just under four-hundred thousand dollars short of what it should be.”“There are a number of reasons for why that could be,” the senator said. “For instance—”“For instance, you can scroll through the rest of that document and put your foot in your mouth,” Alexis replied swiftly. “I wouldn’t have approached you with this allegation without it being truthful. It’s all there. The list of accounts that you’ve created, the credit report that was run on you two months ago, a printed spreadsheet of every small funds transfer you’ve made between your non-profit’s account and your personal account, the tax information that clearly states that your reported is less than what you’re claiming as your salary—shall I go on?”“You were a recipient of this scholarship,” the senator hissed. “Why are you of all people trying to take it down?”“I’m not,” Alexis replied. “I’m just presenting information that proves that you are no longer the best person to run it. I also don’t think that your constituents will approve of your siphoning of funds come re-election.”Senator Thomas launched her hand out toward the tape recorder like a snake trying to swallow its prey, but Alexis was just as fast and grabbed the senator’s wrist before she could swipe it. “I strongly suggest that you let go of my property, ma’am,” she said in the more derogatory tone she could muster. “Also that’s not the only recording device I brought with me today. I figured you might have this reaction.”The senator loosened her grip on the recorder, so Alexis let released her wrist. When she did, the senator raised an eyebrow and turned Alexis’ wrist around, revealing the kanji tattoo that she’d gotten when she first turned eighteen. “It means ‘family’,” Alexis said. “I got it when—”“I studied Chinese in high school and Japanese in college. This tattoo doesn’t mean ‘family’,” the senator glanced from the tattoo straight into Alexis’ eyes. “It means ‘don’t forget’.”“‘Never forget’,” Alexis corrected her though clenched teeth.“Hmm,” Senator Thomas muttered. The wheels turned in her head as she shed her skin to reveal herself as the viper Alexis knew that she was before starting the interview. This was not a kind old lady that meant to do nothing but good work with her non-profit. Something changed several years ago when her husband left her for someone younger and she realized that she could dip into the scholarship pool that she’d been filling for the last two decades. Her jaws were unhinged and she was threatening to swallow Alexis whole. “What kind of young woman would get a tattoo and lie about its meaning? Something very personal must have happened to you, if you’re willing to engrave the words ‘never forget’ on a part of your body that you can almost always see. If you’re going to lie about it, it must be something that you don’t tell anyone—something that you’ve possibly never told anyone before.”“You don’t know me.”Senator Thomas clasped Alexis’ wrist between her two clammy hands and ran her thumb down the tattoo that Alexis was caught lying about. “You’re the older of two girls brought up in a middle-class Christian home. Your parents are do-gooders and your younger sister frequently joins them on bake sales and retreats to build wells in third world countries and houses and other shit. You are nothing like them. You were an angry child in grade school, frequently dying your hair shades of black, red, and pink, and grew up on punk music while wearing clothes that made you look like a street rat. When you got into journalism, you were dead-set on going after other people like a prosecutor with a chip on their shoulder, and like an angry prosecutor you often went above and beyond to ensure that your subjects paid for their wrong-doings—sometimes very publicly.”Alexis could feel the senator’s thumbnail threatening to dig into her tattoo, as if to slice it clear off of her skin. She did nothing to stop her, though. Their conversation was still being recorded, and there was no telling what else the senator would say while on the record. “You’ve done your research on me, then. You knew that I was a recipient of your scholarship, but you chose to bullshit me.”“I was playing nice. Judging by this tattoo, I don’t think that people often play nice with you.” A smirk crept across the senator’s face. “You got this tattoo as a reminder that you need to play hero. You want to play hero for those that have been wronged, because when you needed a hero, no one came to you aid. Someone wronged at a young age, didn’t they. And whatever they did… it’s something that you never got over.”Alexis glared at the senator and replied through a pair of tight lips. “Is there anything else that you’d like to admit to while you’re still on the record?”“He still haunts you, doesn’t me,” the senator scathed. “Jack Calderan, I mean. When he attacked you, it must have reminded you of what happened before.”Alexis clutched onto the tape recorder and yanked her arm out from between the senator’s scaly palms. “We’re done here, bitch. And you’re just done in general. ‘Senator and Scholarship Founder Grants Herself Ninety-Five Quarter’s Worth of Student’s Dreams.’ It’ll have to be the subhead, since it runs a bit wordy. I think the headline ‘FRAUD’ in all caps with your picture underneath will grab the public’s attention though.” She placed her tape recorder back in her pocket and zipped up her messenger bag before slinging it around her shoulder. “Thank you for paying for part of my education, senator. I’m glad I put it to good use.”“You can take me down, Alexis,” the senator crossed her arms over her chest. “But you’ll never be able to outrun what really haunts you.”Alexis turned away and walked toward the door. “I already did,” she replied, shutting it behind her.
