An April Moon Books Publication
Published in arrangement with the author
Edited by Neil Baker
The work published herein © Patrick Loveland
Introduction © 2017 Neil Baker
This book copyright © 2017 April Moon Books
Cover Design and Illustrations © 2017 Neil Baker and Patrick Loveland
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.
This story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, historical events or organizations is purely coincidental.
First Edition 2017
Published in Canada.
www.AprilMoonBooks.com
978-0-9937180-9-0
This book is dedicated to my favorite failures.
P.L.
A Tear in the Veil
Prologue
Felix was lying on his stomach and drawing. His knees and arms were itchy from the blue and gray shag carpet but that was okay because Felix loved drawing. Drawing is fun. Well, it should be… but today it’s different.
Part of the difference today was that Felix didn’t really remember drawing these drawings. Also, there were broken crayons in his left fist and his face was hot and clammy. He’d been crying. Why? He relaxed his hand and the crayon chunks and waxy shards tumbled onto the drawings, some still connected by torn paper sheathes. The drawings were more roughly thrown around than he liked usually too. He gathered them together in what seemed like the right order.
Okay, so: Car driving, woman inside. A big monster truck or tank or something appears. Tank-monster drives toward little car.
Opens its mouth and bites the little car, chews it. A tooth comes out and stays in the woman.
There’s red crayon all over the next page.
Looks like a fireman or something but it’s messed up now. Next, the woman is coming out of the ground all white and blue next to a cross in the ground.
Then, a man and boy are standing at the cross.
Oh, this probably went before the other.
The second to last is of a house. The boy is outside. Inside, the man sits. The woman is floating next to the man.
They look sad.
The last looks like there was a person drawn on it but now it’s covered in swooping spirals of different colors. The spirals are densely layered and he pressed hard enough that the paper is indented by the repeated strokes.
That explains the broken crayons?
It had been almost two years. Felix knew that because he was almost ten now and he’d been almost eight when it had happened.
She would have been okay if they hadn’t…
He missed his mom.
Felix heard his dad’s door open down the hall then the shuffling of his slippers.
It’s been even slower lately… and he’s got that one radio station on with all the great old black people songs but a weird name… ‘Soul’, I think he said.
His dad came into the living room smoking a cigarette. He took a drag and flicked ash into the tray on top of the TV. He exhaled slowly.
Felix coughed.
“I thought you were gonna stop that, dad. You tol’ mom you would.”
Dad looks so tired.
“Yeah… Last one, little man. Promise.”
He used to be so cool.
Felix knew his dad still loved him, but he was different now. His dad still tried for a while after his mom went away. Felix didn’t think it was just because he missed mom so much too. Something else had changed and Felix didn’t understand what that could have been.
His dad looked down at the TV.
“Why do you like this Robot Tech shit, Felix? It’s unrealistic. Those eyes are huge… physically impossible. And they don’t even fuckin’ talk right,” he said and took another drag.
It’s Robotech. Robo-tech. You always say it wrong.
Felix still hadn’t caught every episode of the third Generation. In this episode Scott Bernard was still tough as usual, but he was sad now too for some reason.
I missed the reason again. Thanks, dad.
Felix would usually defend Robotech with all he had but today nothing felt important like it should.
“I don’t know why. It’s just cool.”
His dad exhaled and scoffed gently.
“You should ask yourself why you like it… or anything else. Know why, little man. Be honest to yourself and others.”
Dad never talks like this.
“You should always–”
Felix looked up and saw his dad staring above and past him. Felix looked at the corner behind himself.
There’s nothing there.
He looked back at his dad.
“You feel okay?”
Hand shaking, his dad raised the cigarette and took a long drag. He closed his eyes and exhaled. His eyes fluttered open before he was done and he looked back at the TV. He took another long drag and let the smoke billow from his mouth, then inhaled some of it through his nose and blew the rest out as smoke rings at Rick Hunter on the tube.
“Hey, you should get some outside time today. Why don’t you go play with Stacy down the street.”
Felix frowned and said, “You mean Tracy?”
“Yeah. And tell her mom I want to talk to her for a minute if she wouldn’t mind walking down here.”
“I thought you didn’t like her mom.”
His dad let out a soft chuckle. “I never said that exactly.” He started back down the hallway to his bedroom, then stopped and turned back. “Hey. Come here.”
Felix got up and walked to his dad, wiping his waxy hand on his shorts.
“I just want you to know that everything is alright. I need you to believe that, no matter what. Do you?”
Felix nodded.
“Say it then, Felix.”
“Everything is alright.”
His dad cupped the back and side of Felix’s head in his big hand and mussed his blond hair.
“Don’t forget to leave the door unlocked for Stacy’s mom.”
Something in his dad’s expression stopped Felix from correcting him again. His dad patted the side of his head, then turned and walked down the hall to his room. Over his shoulder he said, “And turn off that stupid fuckin’ cartoon, will you? TV is bullshit.”
Felix watched his dad close his bedroom door, then crossed to the TV and shut it off. He stepped over his weird drawings on the way to the front door, put on his shoes and pulled the Velcro over just tight enough, then went out onto the porch. Before he closed the door, he heard something like sliding furniture from his dad’s room.
Must be vacuuming or something.
San Jose sucks, thought Felix. He missed Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz is nicer. It’s closer to the water–the ocean, anyway. San Jose is also more flat or something? Sucks is all I know. Flat places just suck–especially when the sky is all grey and overcast. At least our street is sloped up a little. Danny from school’s house is in a totally flat part.
Felix looked up the street and saw Tracy kicking a soccer ball against her garage door. She’d kick it, run to catch it on the rebound, and kick it again.
She’s kind of a tomboy. Pretty enough but it’s annoying that she acts all dumb around me ‘cause she thinks I’m cute. Whatever… It’s better than hanging out with dad when he’s like this.
He stepped off the porch and walked up the sidewalk toward Tracy’s house. He looked over at the windows to his dad’s room and saw his dad. Felix waved but his dad didn�
��t seem to see him and closed the curtains tight. Felix lowered his hand, a little embarrassed. He looked around.
No one saw.
Felix moved on. He was almost to Tracy’s front yard when it started sprinkling. She squealed and kicked the ball into some hedges for storage then ran inside. Felix chuckled.
So much for the tough tomboy. That was cute.
Now Felix was kind of bummed that he couldn’t play with her.
She’d kicked the ball a little too hard and it had kept going through the bushes. It picked up speed as it rolled down the driveway closer to Felix. He tried to grab it but it was going too fast and made it out onto the street then down the gradual slope. It got shiny and threw off a little spray as it rolled through the fresh precipitation.
Felix walked up his porch steps and opened the door.
Why does he need the door left unlocked anyway?
He took off his shoes with a ripping of Velcro and walked to the TV to turn it back on. As it warmed back up, Voltron appeared.
Voltron is alright. It’s not rad like Robotech, but–
There was a thump and crash from his dad’s room.
“Dad?”
Felix walked down the hall.
“You okay?”
He knocked on the door, paused so he wouldn’t get yelled at, then tried the door knob. The knob turned but the door won’t budge. He could hear that the radio was still on and playing the soul music station.
Over the song, Felix heard a gurgle from inside.
“Dad?!” He turned the handle and pushed on the door, then slammed himself against it. He slammed again and the lock disengaged but he still couldn’t open it. Felix pushed hard against it but his socks slipped on the carpet. He dug them in and pushed with everything his little body had. The door slowly slid open, pushing aside the desk that was blocking it.
“O-o-h Child” by The Five Stairsteps was playing on the radio. It just so happened to be Felix’s favorite song from that radio station.
“DAD!”
Felix’s dad was hanging by his neck from a belt around one of the exposed rafters in his room, his body still bucking and twitching.
Felix ran to his dad’s legs and grabbed them. He tried to pull him down. He wrapped himself around his dad’s legs and pulled down hard again.
As he pulled, he saw the full-length broken mirror his father must have knocked over and started crying
“P-please, dad!”
He sobbed. The easier, brighter day the song promised couldn’t come soon enough.
The knot of the belt on the rafter started to loosen.
The radio was the first casualty as the knot gave way and the body fell like a sack of rocks, trapping Felix underneath. There was a sickening crunch as the head slammed down into his face, parts of his dad’s teeth chipping off into Felix’s jawbone. Felix screamed in pain. Blood from his jaw ran down his cheek and started to fill his eye as he struggled but couldn’t escape the weight of his dad’s huge, lifeless body. He tried to push him off, but he just couldn’t. He tried and tried until his muscles hurt and he stopped fighting.
All Felix could see in this position was the broken mirror image of his dad’s empty eyes. With the radio broken and silent, he could hear Voltron playing out in the living room and started sobbing. He couldn’t tell why that made it worse, but it did.
So much worse.
Then Felix got mad. The little boy started to fight again, pushing and pulling himself along the floor this time. He started to slide out just a bit. As he struggled, he stared into the spider-web cracks in the reflection of his bloody face and blood-filled eye. He started yelling, angrier than he’d ever been. Felix Brewer yelled and cried and fought.
The spider web cracks got closer.
And brighter?
Then deep, inky black.
He felt older, larger. His eyes opened slowly. He was naked and the floor was cold.
The room is spinning? No, something is spinning around it. Around the outside?
Everything was blurry. Warping and twisting unnaturally.
He pulled himself back a bit to make things more clear. Just enough that it was more like powerful wind whipping all around him but he could at least see a bit better. He was still scared but now he wasn’t sure why.
The floor was rubber. He looked around but things were still unfocused and he felt like his insides were shaking in rhythm with the sound of whatever was going around the outside of the room. He looked up and saw that he was inside a brushed metal dome. It was large and high enough that near the inner apex, it was so dark he couldn’t see.
Wait–It’s darker than it should be.
A black, viscous fluid began oozing and sliding down the walls of the dome from the impossible darkness near the apex.
Without knowing why he was so scared, Felix started screaming but he could barely hear himself over the growing roar outside the room.
Part 1
1
Felix jolts awake in a large futon in San Francisco, covered in sweat, breathing hard, and fighting a thick comforter that’s draped over him. As soon as he can steal back some amount of control from his subconscious, he actively slows and deepens his breathing then deliberately flexes his calf muscles by pointing his toes up toward his knees like he’s had to learn to do so he doesn’t get Charlie horses. I should drink more water.
Audrey squirms next to him. He throws the comforter gently onto her. She wriggles a bit and makes a cute sound. He rolls onto his side and smooths her glossy, raven hair down. Lovely Audrey.
Audrey Eloise Myron’s hair is a mess.
When she’s conscious and prepped, Audrey’s hair is meticulously groomed, combed, and frequently curled into a range of retro thirties, forties, and fifties hairstyles. She’ll also go with any of the more goth-y variations of those. Sharper v-cut bangs, for example.
She also keeps her style just stealthily tasteful enough that she can be mistaken for normal with just a few quick alterations. She hates to be judged unfairly and rightly believes people will do just that based on your appearance.
He’s been with her long enough to learn the basics of how her moods affect the style she chooses at a given time. Not long enough to be positively sure, but he’s forming opinions on the subtleties.
Felix Brewer has a thing for details and mannerisms and what they can say about someone; possibly too detail-oriented sometimes. Right now, Audrey’s hair is a mess. Felix loves that. He also loves that she puts so much work into her hair and it’s always clean and fantastic looking. But when her hair is all roughed up and disheveled, it’s like she’s not completely in control. That’s rare. Not that she’s a control freak. She’s just always in control of herself. Others can have their freedom, but if something is in her power to control, she will. Real put together, you might say.
And beautiful. Not like some fake, no-ass model. Felix isn’t into that. Beautiful in that real way that makes him ache sometimes when he looks at her. Her unnaturally lovely smile and deep, rich brown eyes can be too much for Felix sometimes.
Audrey’s only real imperfections are a vertical rectangular patch of lightly scarred skin starting on her right shoulder blade and running down to her right hip, a much smaller horizontal strip on her neck, and two other thinner ones down the length of her right forearm and calf. They’re tattoo removal scars from her late teens. He figured it would be rude to ask what they were of since she put so much effort into forgetting them. They are pretty subtle at this point anyway. You only really notice them when light hits them at a certain angle. They must be getting really good with that removal tech.
Felix rolls onto his other side and his eyes go straight to Audrey’s Maneki Neko statue in the corner of the room. It’s a white cat with paw raised, smiling and beckoning for eternity. Or until it’s shattered or the sun explodes or something.
Next to the cat is a small zebra toy that Felix found in the desert east of San Diego near the base of a large metal wind turbine. He h
ad never really thought about zebras much before but something about this tiny plastic representation struck him and it was more than the basic weirdness of it sticking half-buried in the shifting dirt in the middle of nowhere. He’s never been able to place why it did, but he kept it and he’s never looked at zebras quite the same.
Then he remembers his dream and shudders.
Why am I dreaming about dad again? I’ll get used to the nightmares someday, right? Yeah, probably not.
Audrey squirms again. Felix tries to be still.
What was that other part of the dream about? A big, freaky metal dome?
The alarm clock goes off. Felix shuts his eyes and acts asleep. The digital bleating wakes Audrey partially and she groans. She gently slaps Felix’s chest as she tries to reach the alarm. He acts like he’s just waking up. She grunts and reaches over him to slap the snooze button then collapses back on her side of the futon. She moans and grabs her head.
“You and your damn Olde English. ‘Forty-licious’, my ass.”
Felix chuckles and says, “I didn’t force you, girl.”
“But you know I’m fragile.”
“Fragile? You’re too flexible to be fragile.”
“Oh, what-ever, perv.” She laughs, then breaths in sharply and rubs her eyes with her palms. “Ow.”
“Don’t act like it bothers you. You like it,” says Felix as he rolls over and tickles Audrey’s underarm.
She locks up and giggles. “Don’t!”
Audrey flings herself onto Felix and rolls her body back and forth over him.
“Steamroller!”
Felix locks his arms around her and tightens until he’s restricted her rolling then smacks her bottom, another of his favorite parts. She mock-cringes like it hurts and he does it again. He’s getting a bit hard and she feels it.
“Oh hell no, Felix. I’d love to, but my students gave me dirty looks the last time I was late because of your little bastard there. It was like,” she makes a face like she’s aghast, “it was like they knew!”
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