Category : Books-Fiction

Sub Category : Fantasy

Chapter 1

It was my darkness again, making me write. But she eventually knocked. I finished up the poem’s last lines and forced myself to go to the door to greet her.
	She hesitated only a moment, reading the look on my face. “Princess time!” she cried. I smiled and, for some reason, gave in to the need to hug her like I’d never let go.
	Princess Time was our game we loved to play together. It was egalitarian in that neither of us had to be the princess or the servant; we just always chose our roles, and they were often equal. We didn’t need friends; we had each other.
	I was rather dark for an eight-year-old, at least according to our parents. My sister was much more light and fun-loving, not brooding like me. That was why Katharine was their favorite. She was mine too.
	My sister went on to make a number of friends, whereas I, well I went on to be a professional and stick to my goals. I couldn’t be bothered with much of a social life. Anytime Katharine would introduce me to her friends, I would do the bullshit-playing thing and talk with them a bit, then I’d inevitably return to whatever the hell else I had to do, and I always made sure I did. I’d hear them, especially if cooking in the nearby kitchen that faced out into the living room in which they thought they had total privacy from being overhead saying “Lizzie’s so dark. Is she always like that?” Katharine would just shrug and give them a look to shut-up because she didn’t like their talking about me in a negative way, even less so behind my back. It just wasn’t right. I was just as defensive of her.

Chapter 2

“What, then?” she said to her guy friend.
	He’d been friended for such a long time; she didn’t know why, why it was so easy to say to herself guys had to be friends or lovers. Why not both?
	I dropped my pen as I thought about Bart Hunter, my childhood friend whose parents had had a disjointed relationship at best. He and his younger sister had been moved to somewhere in California to live with their aunt and uncle. Their mother had killed their dad and herself. I shook my head at it. He’d been a good friend. Only a friend. Anytime anyone called him “your little boyfriend” I corrected them straightaway, no nonsense about it. I didn’t pay attention to the sad look on his face that was actually rather disheartened too. His mother, Bea, was an alcoholic and a prescription drug addict. She was beautiful, but deadly even to herself. She’d had the luck to find a funny and forgiving man in Paul Hunter, her husband. I just shook my head and was about to turn back to my writing when I realized I hadn’t dropped the pen at all. I laughed. Katharine came in and wondered what was so funny, then decided she was just glad to see her sister smile.

Chapter 3

Guy Mésanson was an interesting character, even more so for the way in which he’d managed to enter my life. Originally he’d just been Katharine’s boyfriend’s friend, a disembodied character at worst; but then somehow I met him. Theory: Gabe thought he’d set me up with him, the bastard. I shouldn’t say that of Gabe. Didn’t think much of Guy, and still don’t. I think a lot of Gabe, considering he thought enough of my sister to actually marry her. She insisted on getting my blessing instead of that of our parents. They were simply informed of it. It was in the moment in which she asked that I told her the only person’s blessing she ever needed to do anything in life was her own, but that I still approved anyway.
	Back to Guy. He was the quintessential skeezy French guy that somehow inevitably enters peoples’ lives. Such a cliché cautionary tale. His mom, Madeleine (former Pagan priestess), I could stand, but him? No. Just no. Ah, but there’s a backstory, and one drunken night of his, he decided to let me in on the whole thing, because apparently I have the misfortune of having that kind of a face that evokes confiding in me. Let’s put it this way: if you find out about a guy’s made-up sister, Mireille, that he only mentions when he’s drunk or high, then you know too much about him without the requirement of his being a significant other. A skeezy French guy that’s dumb enough with himself to get routinely drunk and/or high, who needs the drama?
	“Leezzie, come here and talk to me,” he said in his stupid French accent. Turns out his full name was Guillaume Labé (yes, related to Louise Labé) Mésanson, the Mésanson part coming from a drunk of a father that was never there for him, but like the prodigal child was always wanted, by his son anyway. To talk to Madeleine, who I talked to later that night because Katharine and Gabe were too asleep to drive Guy home, you’d think he was worse than the Devil. Unfaithful many times over, secret CIA agent (his family was American but French-descended), and the envelope in which the money came for his son? Never marked. I watched her shake her pretty head at that (GORGEOUS redhead with hints of gold in it, skin tinted with gold and moonlight, eyes midnight-grey and a face that curved into a perfectly pointed chin like Audrey Hepburn’s did). Then we got to talking about her. Her current husband, whom she’d met shortly after Guy was born, was a sweetheart of a guy named George Marshal (the last name being rather apt). She hung up her robes for him, seeing the sense in settling down. She didn’t have to, but she did it anyway. Her son and husband needed her and she’d already trained a perfectly good replacement.
	For the rest of it, Guy had an uneasy relationship with his stepdad, considering it was nonexistent save for money George spent on Guy, and of course Guy liked it that way. One other drunken night, Guy had gotten himself into some trouble, the legal kind. He stole some booze he claimed he simply hadn’t known he hadn’t had enough money for, then ran for it and only a cop car caught up with him. He was in the slammer for a grand total of two hours, hardly enough for him to be sobbingly, plaintively bemoaning it. Other than a flirtatious look from a fellow cell mate, he didn’t get much harassment. His stepdad finally came to get him out and was welcomed by an ungrateful stepson that had no intention of even saying “thank you” begrudgingly or no. They finally had it out in the parking lot, considering George had pretty much had it by then of Guy’s rudeness and total lack of regard for him and Madeleine unless she got strict with him.
	“So it’s to be strictness to get through to you at all, is it?” George asked, utterly befuddled by Guy’s cavalier attitude towards a man who’d done so much for him, whether or not it was for love of his mother. “Well, I sometimes wonder if hitting you might be the trick. It might get me some respect finally. Then again, my father taught me one thing: never hit a man unless he’ll learn from it. You won’t learn a good goddamned thing from my hitting you, so I’ll forego it, but I will say this: you’ve a great deal of growing up to do if you think you’ll have any kind of a future. Look at you- you’re 24 and all of 16 in terms of any kind of emotional maturity.” George paused and shook his head. “If you want to get anywhere in life, man, you’ve got to be a man, whatever that is for you. Believe me, I know well that even you wouldn’t call yourself a man really looking down deep into yourself. Even the best of intentions don’t get through to you.”
	Guy finally was given pause by such statements, such truths about him. He’d never been confronted with his own inadequacy to mature since he’d always silenced it by drinking or getting high. Ever since then, he respected George. He even shared a Jeffrey with him one night, George not knowing what a Jeffrey was. Guy hesitated to tell him at first, but then finally told him it was a total mix cocktail. When he saw George high on that drug cocktail, it was enough to scare him straight, but that was the point. George knew if he faked it, Guy would be able to tell, so he did it. He fried his brain for a night just to get through to him, because he knew only tough love would. It worked.

Chapter 4

My darkness could have been due to the fact that I had nightmares about a place that looked like a hospital or some sort of facility with metallic walls. It was a ward. As my dreams progressed with each night, they’d grow longer. First, it was just the metallic walls in a hallway. Then, I went into a room with a cot on each far wall. Then, I saw the angry face of my cellmate. Then, I interacted with her, and knew why she was angry. It went on until finally, the dream simply rushed me into the control room where it flashed from the Nikita series on TV (Egilsson, Copus) to the real thing, but not the literal faces of the people. It showed me the astral form countenances of each one. It flashed from the main man, a rather handsome one whose countenance flashed from lizard-like to positively dragonic in structure to this assistant woman whose astral form was quite fat though her body was in top shape, all muscle. There was one, though, that disturbed me, lurking as he was at a section of the controls, sort of in the shadows. It would land on his face in particular, then I’d always wake up, sweating and sometimes unable to move of fear.
In those moments, it was comforting to know that Katharine was in the opposite room, sleeping and dreaming more peacefully than I. Even if that wasn’t true, that was what I needed to tell myself to go back to sleep.
One night, I couldn’t even get to sleep. I watched the time tick by and tossed and turned, even after taking herbal sleeping pills (the regular kind made me have nightmares far worse than those I normally had) I couldn’t sleep. I finally got up, determined to write, but couldn’t. I tried to read, couldn’t. I finally researched and, through some obscure link on Google (Page, Brin), found a blog rant about a place called the Pagan Sector. The guy went off about it a lot more than I would have liked, but I found out some useful information. When I tried linking directly to it and looking it up on Google, all I found was his blog again. It irked me, but this meant that this was a real government secret. Any and all information rendering the U.S. government untrustworthy in the eyes of its citizens will be hereby stricken from record. They have people for that. I’m surprised the blog even got through. Must’ve been recent.

The dreams came with such frequency, it was like they were trying to tell me this was a memory, not just a dream. It was true that as of age six I had no memories of our parents. Neither did Katharine when I asked her. She just shrugged and thought it was normal. I’ve heard of other people at least having some memories, even if they’re only from age 4. Very rare were the cases that could remember as babies. Katharine and I could easily have been government sleeper brats and not known.