Flights of Fantasy

My prompt for this story was “teens overcoming adversity, evil, or ignorance and having a positive effect on their situation.”

What I created turned out to be one of my favorite young adult stories: Terrors.

It can be found  in Fiction River: Sparks, an anthology edited by the fabulous Rebecca Moesta, as well as a stand-alone, Spun Yarns tale published by WDM Publishing.

Terrors came to me full-blown. The first draft of the story flowed effortlessly from subconscious to screen, introducing me to two amazing teens. Artie, a misfit girl who knows too much, and Jed, a surprisingly stable and open-hearted boy with an indomitable desire to protect the innocent. I’m pretty sure the world hasn’t heard the last of these young heroes.

|A TERROR APPROACHED.

I cast my eyes down, fixing my gaze on the worn institutional tile beneath my feet, counting my heartbeats until it would be safe to look up again. The count was ingrained. A long practiced skill that no longer required my attention. Instead, my mind wandered, wondering what it would be like to unknow these denizens of the unseen world? To be a normal teen, with normal perceptions; a girl who walked this earth with no realization of what stalked her every step?

Unfortunately, that was not my life.

The count ended. I raised my eyes and glanced around quickly to reorient myself. High-ceilinged hallway, walls lined with lockers and classroom doors. Students milled around, chatted with friends, complained about their schedules. Everyone studiously avoided noticing me.

Yep. Same old invisible girl. The building might have changed, but the experience remained the same. I stepped away from the wall, pushed into the throng, and made my way to class without making eye contact with any of my peers.

I’d hoped high school would be different from middle school, that somehow, miraculously, the halls of McKinley High would be full of kids anxious to be my friends, and gloriously free of the beings that haunted my waking nightmares.

I’d been stupid of course. No such place existed.

Every single person I’d ever met considered me a freak. If truth be told, that even included my parents. And the others? The terrors? They ruled our world from the shadows, influencing our thoughts with whispered commands that were no more noticeable than the sigh of mosquito wings. Veiled suggestions of disease and despair, murmurs of treachery and disloyalty. Human souls rotted at the whim of foul creatures who fed from our life-force and lapped up our baser emotions like ice cream. No one knew of their existence, so no one guarded against their intrusions.

No one but me — and I’d learned early to hide my knowledge.

Mom and Dad had worried when my imaginary friends terrified me instead of entertaining. Other kids feared the boogieman in the closet or the monster under the bed, but were easily appeased by a nightlight or an extra bedtime story. Not me. Never me. I knew my monsters personally, recognized their reality with a sharp twist of terror in my gut.

Other kids embraced pacification, accepted that the monsters they perceived lived only in their imaginations. Not me. I learned to close my eyes, duck my head, and count the beats of my heart until the unholy creatures tired of watching me and moved on.

My parents noted my odd moments of seeming paralysis and sought psychological counseling. I developed yet another necessary life skill: I learned to lie. The doctor couldn’t explain away my certain knowledge of monsters, but I could explain away my parents’ concerns. Eventually, the adults in my life were appeased and I continued my uneasy existence, camouflaging myself from both my parents’ concern and the notice of the creatures that stalk humanity.

I wished I understood why I could see my terrors and others couldn’t. Why was I singled out to endure this curse? More than anything, I longed for a companion in this surreal world, someone to share my fears and woes … but then, would I truly wish this ungodly knowledge on another human being? Especially a person I might learn to consider a friend? I don’t know. Misery — at least mine, really would love some company.

A ghost story. That was the prompt. But what kind of ghost story should I write? I know! Let’s mix a detective investigating a murder with a paranormal story about a seventh son and then introduce a ghost with an attitude! (I know I’d have an attitude if I were a disembodied spirit!)

What did I get? Why “Lucky Me” of course 😀

The crime scene investigation I worked today turned sour when the victim spoke to me.

My partner, Jack Barnes, and I had been called to a dimly lit alley in downtown Portland. The early morning mist had burned off, leaving the pavement damp. The multi-story brick and mortar buildings on either side huddled close as if protecting the small figure centered in their midst, though she was beyond anyone’s help.

The air at the mouth of the alley smelled of freshly baked bread and cinnamon, but the odor turned fetid as I neared the corpse.

Jack joined the uniform who’d called it in, but I kept walking, accompanied by a steady drip of water from an overhanging eave.

I knelt beside the body, taking in her position on the damp gray pavement, the congealing blood pool, and the utter destruction of the back of her head. That’s when it happened. Blue eyes popped open and short, well-manicured nails dug into my wrist.

“Help me,” she whispered, her voice parched and cracking. “Don’t let him do this again.”

Her eyes snapped closed, as I yelled, fell backwards into a shallow puddle, and scrambled to get to my feet and as far away from her as possible.

My partner glanced my direction over the bowed head of our lone witness and raised his eyebrows. “What’s up, Gus?”

I wiped my hands on my pants, backed another two steps from the corpse and asked, “Who called her death?”

Jack’s brows pulled together as he strode to my side. “The uniform. He was first on the scene. Didn’t take any brains.”

“Get the medics in here. She’s still alive.”

He grabbed my arm and squeezed. “Get a grip on yourself,” he whispered, his gaze darting around to see who else might be listening. No one paid us any attention. “What’s wrong with you?”

I looked down at the young woman who had just spoken to me and acknowledged the obvious. She was an undeniable corpse. Blue-tinged skin, stiff limbs, a neat little hole in her forehead and a crater the size of Texas where the back of her skull had been.

But she’d spoken to me. My wrist still tingled from the bite of her nails.

I wiped sweat from my forehead with the back of my sleeve. I needed a break. The dead had never spoken to me before, and I’d been working homicide since I earned my release from a patrol car last year. I’d seen a lot of stiffs in my work, but never on my birthday. My twenty-eighth birthday.

Seven quadrupled.

I hated the number seven … with good reason. I was the seventh son of a seventh son, and I’d spent my whole life explaining that yes, the birth order thing is true, but no, I’m not psychic, and no, I sure as hell don’t know what the blonde at the next table thinks of you.

People can be such idiots.

But now a dead woman had spoken to me. Shit. What if all the seventh-seventh crap had a basis in fact?

I couldn’t bring myself to approach the body again, so I dusted off my hands and forced myself to look Jack square in the eyes.

“Why don’t I finish the interview and you check out the corpse?” I worked at sounding nonchalant, but my hands shook and Jack’s wary expression told me my face must be white as my grandmother’s sheets.

“What?” Jack asked. “Is our resident seventh-seventh feeling a little woozy?”

I scowled at him and marched over to the kid he’d been interviewing. I had no intention of discussing my own personal mythological hell. Ever. But especially not when I was spooked.

The kid’s story checked with what the uniforms had learned. A bunch of high school boys had been playing skateboard tag on the street, generally raising a ruckus and terrorizing pedestrians when our witness had veered down this alley and run smack into a crime scene. He’d hightailed it back to the street and gone looking for the nearest cop. It hadn’t taken long. The solid citizens had complained about the havoc the boys had been wreaking.

The patrol officer who answered their call had gotten significantly more than he’d bargained for. His perpetrators had morphed into witnesses and his quiet lecture on respecting others’ rights had given way to a full-scale murder investigation.

I closed my notebook and rubbed my temple. Dead end. No one saw anything suspicious, other than the corpse, and no one heard the shot that destroyed the victim’s skull.

But she’d spoken to me.

Hell’s bells. How was I supposed to work that into my report?

Want to read the rest of the story? It’s available at Spinetingler Magazine!

Thrillers aren’t my thing. I’m a kinder, gentler, kind of gal *lol* When asked to write a thriller, I swallowed hard … and gave it my best try. To my amazement, “Egg Thief” was purchased for an upcoming Fiction River anthology, edited by the amazing Kevin J. Anderson *happy dancing*

Here’s the opening to “Egg Thief” — my version of a thriller 😀

A mixture of terror and elation spur me down the steep, rocky slope. The harsh, cold wind buffets me, making it had to keep my leather-booted feet beneath me.

I can’t slow down. Can’t fall. If I so much as pause…she might come back, might realize what I’ve done. If she catches me on this unprotected slope, she’ll roast me alive.

The backpack bounces against my shoulders, its warm, reassuring weight throwing off my balance. I’ve done it! I slipped into her lair, stole an egg, and made it back to the cold, fresh air of the mountainside.

I’ve got to keep moving, got to make it to the forest. She won’t be able to find me once I reach the trees’ thick canopy.

I pant, cold air numbing nose and cheeks and making my lungs ache. But the precious egg in my pack, the one I risked everything to steal, is safe and warm, protected by a nest of soft woolen blankets.

The ground beneath my feet levels, turning from rock to coarse, low grass and sedge. Tree line is within sight, its stunted larch and fir trees twisted by the constant fierce, cold wind that whistles past my ears and makes my eyes water.

I’m going to make it. Those scraggly trees aren’t much, but they’re my only hope. The first cover on this wind-swept mountainside. Just a little way beyond the tree line, the proper forest begins. Tall spruce, firs, and aspen with sufficient canopy to shield a fleeing man from even a dragon’s sharp vision.

The worst is behind me. Once I gain the forest, I’ll be safe.

Terror loosens its grip on my heart and exultation bubbles through my core. A near-hysterical giggle forces its way past my chapped lips. Truly, I’ve done it. The jade-green egg with dark blue mottling is mine. A prize beyond measure. And not just because of the gold I will demand. My reputation will be made once I return to the city with a dragon egg in my pack.

I savor the fruits of my stealth. All that remains is to reach the safety of the forest.

A shadow passes overhead, and I stumble, my foot snagging on a tangled mass of sedge. I catch my balance and glance up at the clear blue, cloudless sky. My breath seizes and my heart plummets.

A dragon wheels in the sky.

She has returned, recognized her loss, and hunted me.

My pulse thunders, beating twice its normal tattoo. Blood sings in my veins, throbs at my temples, tingles in my fingertips. A burst of energy propels me down the slope. I must reach those trees.

With a screech of indignation, the dragon plummets to earth, landing between me and the trees. The backwash from her wings knocks me off my feet. I twist as I fall, keeping the packed egg safe, but sustaining a nasty jolt to my shoulder and wrenching a knee.

I gain my feet and crouch, ready to run, but where?

The dragon, a solid mass of muscle and anger, easily as big as my two-room hut, unfurls her wings and hisses. Her long, snake-like tongue lashes the air between us.

Dragon stink fills my nostrils, a noxious mix of sulfur, rotting meat and blood that solidifies the terror freezing my heart and paralyzing my thoughts. Pain throbs in shoulder and knee, darkening the edges of my vision. Bitter, poisonous bile gags me.

All is lost.

No way forward. Not past a hulking beast whose wings blot out the scraggly trees beyond.

No way back. Not across a barren slope of alpine tundra.

Death stares at me with malignant satisfaction.