I am a writer. I wrote my first novel in 2011. I’ve started 14 more since then, finishing about half of those. One of these days I’ll actually try to find someone to publish them (or just do it myself). Onward!
(If anyone would like to be a beta reader, feel free to drop me a line).
SEVERAL YEARS AGO According to the medic, Amira was bleeding internally. He thought that he could go in and fix her up, but the problem was that she was just losing too much blood. She was going to need a transfusion or nothing that he could do was going to be able to save her life. Unfortunately, he had no idea what her blood type was, so what they needed was someone with O negative blood–a universal donor.
SEVERAL WEEKS AGO
Staring down the barrel of the gun in Mrs. Claire’s hands, I let go of the man and slowly raised my hands. “Let’s not do anything hasty now, shall we?”
Her eyes flicked from the other man to me and back. “Why don’t you tell him that.”
PRESENT DAY
The tensions finally peaked once we’d all had a chance to sit down and–at Father Antonio’s insistence–have a cup of coffee. To her credit, Amira made an American variety, not the jet fuel that we’d had down at the cafe, but Father Antonio at least took it in stride.
Finally, he was the one to break the silence. “So, you said that the two of you were old friends? Where did you meet?”
trust
is a
double
edged sword; razor sharp and
capable of harming both
he who trusts and he
who is trusted
one and the same
likewise
it
is he
who is trusted who will
cause the most harm
when every
thing goes
wrong
The flight back was uneventful. Lillian and Jacobs took some time to talk about Watkins. It had almost certainly been Adrian, but why Watkins? He had to have been close enough to take a shot at either Lillian or Jacobs, why hadn’t he taken it? And where was he? There was still no sign of him anywhere–not a blip on either the shuttle’s sensors or on Borealis’. Well before they reached the shuttle bay, their conversation started looping back on itself and gradually faded into silence. But it was the kind of silence between good friends–the kind of silence that they’d used to share back before Lillian had gone off on the Daedalus. It was nice to finally find it again.
SEVERAL WEEKS AGO
Mrs. Claire’s was everything that I expected it to be. A dimly lit front room with all manner of New Agey crystals and talismans on every available surface. A beaded curtain in lieu of a door, leading back into the shadows. The only thing missing was the eponymous shopkeeper herself.
“So?” I asked, turning to the man who’d brought me here.
Note: Somehow I managed to mix a Chicago section and a Baghdad section at the end of 23 yesterday. I’ve gone back and rewritten it to fit better and reposted the entire chapter here:
SEVERAL WEEKS AGO
His story went on for a few minutes, detailing how he and his friends had arrived at Mrs. Claire’s, how’d they’d been granted not only an audience but a chance to participate in a real life seance session. And finally, to the old woman calling forward the spirits of the dead–one spirit in particular.
PRESENT DAY
“Raise the dead you say?” There was more than a trace of disbelief in Father Antonio’s voice. Honestly, I didn’t blame him. He hadn’t seen even a fraction of the crazy things that I’d seen.
SEVERAL YEARS AGO
Whatever answer Amira had been about to give was swallowed up by the sudden chatter of gunfire coming from somewhere entirely too close by. It had been several days since I’d heard anything hear this close; although the sound had never gone away entirely.
I turned to back to Amira, intending to get her to safety before rejoining my unit–if the fighting were picking up again, they were going to need a priest. But when I turned to her, the first thing that I noticed was that she was too pale, her face gone an almost chalky white, lighter even than my own.
the
modern
computer is nothing short
short of a miracle
with billions
of tiny circuits
and role
billions to play
of lines of code and each important
each having in its
their own own way
Once back out into space, Lillian settled down to try to figure out how this was even going to work. They’d loaded dozens of metallic panels into the back of the shuttle, all carefully stacked. They were rather heavy now, but that wouldn’t be a problem when they got there–Watkins could just shut the gravity plating off.
She pulled out the tools she’d collected and arranged them neatly on the floor. Most of them she wouldn’t need and there was only limited options. Mostly it was soothing. Organizing things always helped to calm her nerves. It took up most of the time on the short flight back out to the damage and by the time she got there, she was completely calm. Ready.
Except there was Adrian. That wasn’t exactly calm-inducing.
SEVERAL WEEKS AGO
I caught up with him a few blocks later. Luckily for me, he didn’t seem to have a car, or at least if he did, it wasn’t parked nearby. He almost seemed to be walking slowly enough specifically so that I could catch up with him.
“Come to try to stop me, padre?”
Honestly, yes. That was high on my mind. But even before that, “I came to understand.”