Friday Fiction: Meaghan Callahan, Scene Two

Go here for Scene One.

"Do your parents know you're here?" His voice is quiet. Non-judgemental. Designed to invite my confidence and trust.

Too bad I already know what lies beneath the sugar-soft syllables.

I rip the corner of a Splenda packet and watch the tiny crystals slide from their paper home, arc through the air, and plummet to the bottom of my Styrofoam coffee cup. "They checked out of my day to day life a while ago."

Six years, four months, and twenty-eight days ago, to be precise. Courtesy of a patch of wet highway and a faulty guardrail. Every day since then had felt heavy. Like trying to breathe underwater.

"Hm," he says and takes a cup of coffee for himself. Two sugars. Three creams. "Would you sit with me for a moment? I'd like to get to know you a bit more to better understand how I can help."

I wonder if he fed my sister the same line last year when she first visited this barren space carved out of the community center's basement. I shrug and follow him past small groupings of other attendees to the steps leading up to the dusty stage, it's once-graceful hardwood surface now beaten and scarred. We sit side by side. The warmth of his body brushes against my skin, and I hold myself still, waiting for the fury scorching my insides to subside.

It doesn't. I clench my cup and bring it to my lips, letting the bitter bite of scalding coffee wash away the acidic words lingering unsaid on my tongue.

"So. Meaghan, right?" He holds his cup loosely with steepled fingers.

I nod, though it isn't my real name. He'll know who I am seconds before he closes his eyes forever. I draw in a shaky breath as I rehearse my story. My sister's story. The one I know will entice him to pursue me. Stalk me. Kill me.

"If your parents aren't aware of your addiction, I can assume they didn't send you here."

I nod again, still staring at my coffee.

"So, who did?" His voice is still quietly sincere, but beneath it lurks something darker. Hungrier. Faint and blurry around the edges, but I know what to listen for.

"No one. No one knows what I do. What I've done." I sweep a glace at his face, hoping he sees fragility and fear when he looks at me. "I saw an ad for this group on the YMCA board months ago, but ..."

He speaks into the quiet, already eager to finish my sentences with what he thinks he knows of me. "But you didn't scare yourself enough to find the courage to come until now?"

The hand holding my cup shakes, though not from fear. I've got him now. Months of research. Planning. Existing on a steady diet of grief and rage and he's about to fall for me hook, line, and sinker.

"I'm just so tired," I say and finally hold his gaze. I don't have any trouble delivering the next line with absolute honesty. "I'm sick of my secrets. My lies. Everything I have to hide. I wish I had someone who knew all the things I'm afraid to say. I wish I had someone who could tell me how to fix this."

His eyes glow, and a slight smile quickens his face before dying in the wake of an expression far more sober. I wonder how long he spent training his inner predator to lie in wait beneath the still, calm waters of what he shows the world. How long he stood in front of a mirror, mimicking the face the rest of humanity wears with ease. Hiding the killer within takes time.

I hope I've spent enough time hiding mine. I'd hate for him to have the chance to put up his guard.

"I understand your secrets, Meaghan. Your lies. I've done the same." He puts his cup on the dusty step beside him and reaches to steady my shaking hands, encasing my ice-tipped fingers in strong, smooth warmth. "I can help you fix this, if you want. I can help you transform your life."

I look at our joined hands, wrapped around my cooling cup of coffee, and bite my lip as if undecided.

"Will you let me help you?" His fingers squeeze mine, a light pressure designed to reassure me.

My arm muscles burn with the effort to keep from wrenching my hands from my cup and wrapping them around his throat instead, but I give him a tiny smile of relief and nod. "I'd like that," I say softly, as if the weight of my secrets has just been lifted.

He smiles back, and I memorize the moment. I want to revisit it while I watch his lifeblood seep out of him and onto my sister's grave.

Friday Fiction: Meaghan Callahan, Scene 1

"My name is Meaghan Callahan, and I'm an addict."

The room stirs briefly as visitors sitting scatter-shot across the uneven rows of orange and silver chairs murmur greetings, offering placid acceptance of my statement as if it's an everyday occurrence to hear a sixteen year old girl admit to being one of the hungry. The lost. The broken who've managed to scrape their way up from rock bottom to cling precariously to a tiny foothold in the ranks of polite society.

Maybe my admission is nothing more than a ripple across the hard-won surface of the tranquility they fight to keep. Maybe they see themselves as they look at me. Cocaine Addict, the Younger Years. A few meet my eyes, boldly identifying with the pain they think they see in mine. Offering solidarity. Brotherhood. Hope.

It would be touching. If I wasn't lying through my teeth.

"Why don't you tell us your story, Meaghan?" He asks, his voice softening the syllables of my name with hints of his Louisiana roots.

I glance at him. He's taller than I thought he'd be. Dusty gold light from the bulb hanging above us sinks into his red-brown hair and lingers. His eyes, full of sympathetic patience, are green.

Somehow, I thought they'd be black. Or as close to black as a devil in human guise could manage.

"Meaghan? You're safe here," he says and a smile peels his lips from his teeth.

I am safe.

But he isn't.

I clear my throat and try to mimic his smile. I don't think I succeed because his expression moves from sympathy to guarded curiosity. Turning away from him, I face the handful of expectant faces waiting to hear yet another tale of misery and woe.

I could give it to them. And every word of it would be true. But the truth won't give me what I want. What I need. What I've lived for since the moment I stood beside her grave, the seams between solid soil and the freshly laid sod covering her still unmended, and promised his life in return for hers.

"I started using last July." My voice chokes as images of bitter-dark nights full of humidity and grief threaten to close my throat. I look at him to see if the memories of July spill acid through his veins the way they do mine, but his expression remains unchanged. Fury uncurls within my stomach, sharp and hungry.

"Why did you start?" he asks.

My hands clench, and I bury them in the pockets of my hoodie. "I'd lost ... a lot."

Everything. I'd lost everything.

"I needed something to fill the spaces, you know?" I address this question to the crowd, who nod in assent, but I'm watching him. The way his thumbs hook into the belt loops on his jeans. The way the shadows carve his face in half and slide beneath the collar of his polo shirt. The way his eyes stay riveted on me.

"We know," he says and smiles again. His sincerity is palpable.

But then, so is the dirt on my sister's grave.

Friday Fiction - Winner & Post

She's been threatening to hack into random.org and swing my contests in her favor for weeks now. I guess she finally accomplished the dreadful deed because M.G. Buehrlen is the Friday Fiction winner! M.G. please take a look at the list of titles to the right and let me know which one you want. :)

M.G.'s three words are: Fiesta (the Ford car version, not the party version)
Circumlocution, and Weenie-head.

She thinks she's done me in with those three. Never fear, faithful blog readers. I shall rise to the occasion. And then some.

I hope.


Friday Fiction Entry #2

I've waited here, in this damp, godforsaken husk of what was once a busy, well-lit hub, for more days than I can remember. The darkness swallowed me whole as I entered its lair, and my eyes had yet to adjust. For the first few hours, I'd strained against the thick blanket of black, hoping to see outlines of familiar shapes. Light gray among the opaque. Hints that I was somehow less alone.

I'd given up searching for anything days ago. There was nothing here. Nothing but cold slicing into me with bitter teeth, slow seeping damp coating the walls and huddling in the corners, and the whispery fear crawling along my skin.

He wasn't coming. He'd been infected. Or killed.

Either way, I was dead. Doomed to starve beneath the war-strewn streets above me, or fated to join the battle, be recognized at once, and find my head separated from my body before the sun could hide its face from the carnage we'd created.

In the heady days leading up to The Event, we'd thought we were heroes. Saviors. The gods of science all mankind would worship for centuries once we went public with our discovery. In all our circumlocution of logic, ideas, and outcomes, we'd been too busy gulping down the belief in our own greatness to ever stop and consider the consequences. The unknowns. The risks of removing all experimental controls and introducing the most unpredictable element of all--mankind.

There wasn't much mankind left to protest our hubris now.

And I was hiding beneath the streets, clutching the formula for what I hoped would be the antidote while Ben trolled the looted stores looking for ingredients. I'd wanted to come. Insisted on it. This was as much my mess as his. He'd refused me on the grounds that it wasn't just my life on the line now. I was hiding for two.

Hunger wrapped itself around my middle and squeezed with vicious fingers. The meager food I'd shoved into a plastic sack had run out hours--days?--ago. The water had run out soon after. If I didn't make a move soon, I'd die.

Trailing my fingers against the nubby, slime-covered wall beside me, I sidled along the walkway, caution raising the hairs on the back of my neck as faint screams filtered down from the street above. I slid one foot in front of the other without lifting my sole from the concrete beneath me. The last thing I needed was to hit an obstacle and plunge from the subway platform to the rails below.

The wall beside me gave way suddenly to the open space of the platform proper, and I nearly stumbled. Catching myself, I strained to see the steps leading from the underbelly of the city and froze as the distant whine of a motor hummed across the chilly air.

I whirled toward the tracks and crouched as headlights bounced around the corner, washing over the graffiti-coated walls in thin steams of yellow. Twisted letters in black and red bled across the unforgiving stone, a mural of images and words. The final obituary for a civilization brought to its knees in the name of progress.

I shoved myself back until I hit the wall, wrapped my arms around my chest, and watched as the headlights closed in until they slid over me and the vehicle screeched to a halt. It was a Ford Fiesta, battle-scarred and beautiful. As Ben opened the door and stepped toward me, I lunged for him, leaping off the platform to wrap myself around him.

"Hey, now," he said as I sobbed against his shoulder. "I'm here, now. It's okay. I told you I'd come for you. How's our little weenie-head?" He pressed a hand against my womb and the baby kicked.

"I thought you were dead!"

"Not yet."

I heard something weary in his voice. Something that sounded like the awful, choking grief I'd held caged within me since the first moment I'd realized our beautiful gift to mankind was going to be its final curse.

"We need to keep moving. They're coming into the lower levels now," Ben said and gently pushed me toward the Fiesta.

I got into the car as somewhere above us gunfire ripped into the now-familiar cacophony of screams and curses. Soon, there would be no safety. No hiding place. No where to work to undo what we'd unleashed. We had to move fast before our chance for redemption was swallowed by the blood-thirsty tide above us.

I looked at Ben and said "Drive."

Friday Fiction - #1

The random number generator gave me WandererInGray's first sentence for today's installment of Friday Fiction. Congratulations, Katie! You've won a book of your choice from my stash. Today's choices are: Maggie Stiefvater's SHIVER, Kelly Gay's THE BETTER PART OF DARKNESS, and Jeaniene Frost's FIRST DROP OF CRIMSON.

FRIDAY FICTION

When I woke up in a dumpster covered in lime Jello I knew it was going to be one of those Mondays. Not that any of my Mondays have been peachy since she showed up, but whatever.

I stood up, felt the world tilt, and crashed back onto my bed of Jello, used napkins, and other substances I decided not to investigate. My head ached with so much intensity I had to reach up and pat my skull to make sure no one had embedded an axe in it while I wasn't looking.

My head, while mercifully axe-free, was covered with a sticky substance I soon discovered was blood. My blood. Which was shame because a) it really sucked to wake up bloody and lying in a dumpster and b) after everything I'd done yesterday, I'd really hoped to make her bleed instead.

Now I was stuck inside a metal prison that smelled like rotting food, and she was still out there. Hunting. Probably cozying up to Jonathan, lying through her teeth, and plotting his ultimate demise. She probably thought she'd killed me and the coast was clear.

She was going to really regret not finishing the job.

This time when I stood up, I dug my fingers into the cold, slimy side of the dumpster and hung on for dear life when the dizziness threatened to slap me back down. Nausea lurched toward the back of my throat as my sense of vertigo collided with the overwhelming scent of decaying something permeating the air. I swallowed against it and shoved the metal flap resting over the top of the dumpster. It flipped open with the harsh screech of metal hinges slowly giving ground to rust, and I grasped the edge with both hands and pulled myself up enough to see over the edge.

A man stood in the alley, his hands full of glossy black trash bags, his mouth gaping open like he'd never seen a girl covered in blood and lime Jello trying to crawl out of a dumpster.

"Am I glad to see you," I said. "You think you can give me a hand? I seem to be stuck."

He closed his mouth, but came no closer. "Um. What were you doing in there?"

I rolled my eyes and instantly regretted it as the pain in my head doubled. "Research."

He frowned. "What kind of research?"

The kind that seeks to understand what happens when a fairly average human girl decides to pick a fight with a totally superstar Nephilim.

"Never mind what kind of research. Can you pull me out?"

"You're bleeding," he said.

Thank you, Captain Obvious. "I know. I slipped on Jello and hit my head. Are you going to stare at me all day, or will you help me?"

He dumped his trash bags on the cracked asphalt and offered me a hand. Several minutes, two failed attempts, and one very ungraceful landing later, I was free of the dumpster. I thanked the man, who was now wearing almost as much Jello as I was, and headed toward the mouth of the alley. My head pounded with every step, dried blood caked my face, and my clothing looked like I'd somersaulted through an all-you-could-eat-buffet. I didn't care. All that mattered was I was alive, I knew where the weapon was hidden, and I no longer had any compunctions about using it.

I had a lying little Nephilim to kill.

Friday Fiction

I used to call this feature "Get Me Started," but decided I couldn't resist the alliteration of "Friday Fiction" instead. Here's how it works.

1. You leave me a comment with an interesting first sentence. (No profanity or sex please)

2. Every Friday, I use a random number generator to pick one of the comments, and then use that first sentence as a starting place to write a short piece of fiction for the blog.

3. If your comment is chosen, you win a book of your choice from my private stash!

4. You may enter up to five separate first sentence comments.

5. If I use your comment, you have until the following Friday to give me your email addy so we can talk prizes.

6. What are you waiting for? Give me some awesome first sentences and let's get Friday Fiction going!