Sharon fuels her imagination with recollections from years of motherhood and a lifetime of experience working with young people, at church and in public school. She resides in Oregon with her husband, sons and three cats, where she spends her non-writing hours substitute teaching, reading, playing piano, enjoying the outdoors and scrapbooking her family’s memories.
MARTI JOHNSON
Marti Johnson was born on an American Naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. She has lived in Massachusetts, Maine, Colorado, Nevada and California. Marti hiked and climbed mountains as a girl and young teen, and spent many years on horseback in the scenic eastern Sierras in California.. She is the author (under her given name, Margaret Johnson) of DARK HORSE SPIRIT: BEYOND REDEMPTION published in 2014, and is currently working on a sequel.
ELLE O’NEILL
Elle O’Neill loves reading and writing—from her first all-nighter as a seven year old with autographed copies of David Adler’s Cam Jansen books to her high school and college English and creative writing classes. She believes that you can fall into the world of a book and find yourself. While she sometimes has a hard time separating fiction from reality (or is it that she prefers not to?), she likes to think that’s a whimsical asset. She enjoys reading just about anything, but treasures underdogs and bluestockings—their trials successes feel close to home.
LORA PALMER
Lora Palmer writes science fiction and fantasy for young adults. Her debut novel, THE MIRRORMASTERS, is forthcoming from Clean Reads. Bucks County, Pennsylvania is her home, where she resides with her wonderful husband and their mischievous cat. She has earned a graduate degree in Psychology and works at a local residential facility serving autistic children and teens. In her spare time, she also sings in a praise band, Chalice Sounds.
CHRISTINA RAUS
Christina Raus earned her BA in Creative Writing from Western New England University in 2015. She received the Max Y. Litman English Prize for literary analysis and written communication upon her graduation. She has written articles for Lioness Magazine, a digital publication for female entrepreneurs. Originally from Massachusetts, she currently resides in New York, where she is attending Sarah Lawrence College and working on a novel. She is expected to graduate from Sarah Lawrence’s MFA in Creative Writing Program in 2017. “Emmaculate” is her first fiction publication.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
STEPHEN CLEMENTS
For Laureen, who provides so much inspiration.
For Daniel, who fought for light in a world of darkness.
NICOLE CRUCIAL
Thank you to Mrs. Elaine Jenkins, who helped to inspire this piece and who has always gone above and beyond to encourage me and all her students. Thank you to my ever-supportive family and friends, who have put up with far too much of my excitement over this project and who keep me calm when life threatens my sanity.
MIKE HAYS
I would like to thank Editor Laureen Cantwell for the exceptional editing and manuscript advice. My story came to shine through her expertise and guidance. A special thanks to Georgia McBride and Month9Books for putting together this worthwhile project for such a worthwhile cause.
Finally, I’d like to dedicate this story to my father. He wasn’t a man of arts or letters, but he taught me the value of hard work and doing your best work every single day no matter who is watching.
SHARON HUGHSON
This story exists on the page for you to read because, many months ago, a number of aimlessly floating molecules collided:
Molecule one: an open call for submissions shared with me by my author friend, J. Keller Ford.
Molecule two: the lessons from the Gospels, taught during Sunday school by my amazing, supportive husband.
Molecule three: the insane imagination that takes a few Bible verses and weaves them into a post-apocalyptic universe where demons wreak havoc.
Molecule four: a wonderful online group called the Sisterhood of Traveling Pen, which includes the amazing Jennifer M. Eaton who read (and destroyed) the first scene of an earlier draft of the story and helped me make it shine.
Molecule five: the submissions editor at Month9Books who read an early rendition and decided it would work in this anthology.
Molecule six: the talented and insightful Laureen Cantwell who helped me take a pretty good story and transform it into what you read here.
Because of my faith, I don’t believe these random-seeming bits intersected by happenstance. So to the One who orchestrates it all, I am deeply grateful.
MARTI JOHNSON
Thank you to Georgia McBride and especially to Laureen Cantwell for believing in my story and holding my hand through the entire editing process. Thanks, too, to my long-suffering husband Mike and the rest of the family for their never-ending patience and understanding while I ignore everything else to research and write. And finally, thanks to my lifelong friend and muse, Kay Fisk, for her eternal encouragement and enthusiasm.
ELLE O’NEILL
To JDS3, ANG, and AKB for being readers of a story struggling to find the page. To GM for believing the story was there to begin with. To every book and story I’ve ever read, for being an inspiration. To all the writers, editors, publishers, and anyone else who helped make this collection, and my story’s place in it, possible.
LORA PALMER
Above all, I praise God the almighty, whose inspiration and gentle nudge called me to write “First Wife.” I would like to express my deep appreciation and gratitude to Laureen, for giving my short story a chance and for your expert editorial advice to help realize its full potential, and for all of your hard work to make this wonderful anthology possible. Special thanks to Georgia McBride and the team at Month9Books for your labor of love in creating this anthology and launching it into the world. And to my wonderful husband Stephen, the love of my life, I am eternally grateful for your support, understanding, and encouragement throughout this journey.
CHRISTINA RAUS
I would like to thank Month9Books and the literary community at Western New England University for providing me with the resources and support needed to bring “Emmaculate” to life. I am forever grateful for my family’s encouragement and also for Daniel McKenney, who has read every single one of my questionable drafts and for some reason decides to keep reading.
EDITORS
LAUREEN P. CANTWELL
Laureen grew up in eastern Long Island and eventually found her way to Memphis —“the rock ’n’ roll side of Tennessee,” where she worked as a librarian at the University of Memphis and grew to love the darkness of the city—and Elvis. While there, she proposed and co-edited an anthology of short fiction, Memphis Noir, part of Akashic Books’ renowned Noir series published in November 2015. That adventure led to a conversation with Georgia McBride at a library conference, and to the thrilling experience of working with In the Beginning and putting together a charity anthology full of complex stories suitable for a young adult audience. She currently lives in Western Colorado and works as a librarian for Colorado Mesa University.
GEORGIA MCBRIDE
Georgia lives in North Carolina with her kids and husband. She has three dogs, one bird, and a fish. She loves to read, watch movies, listen to music, and go see films. She is a publisher, producer, writer, and editor. She has never met a piece of bacon she did not eat, or a cup of coffee she did not drink.
SAMPLE CHAPTER:
PRAEFATIO
PRAEFATIO
Georgia McBride
praefatio, praefationis, n.
1. preface
2. preliminary form of words, formula of announcement
PROLOGUE
Once the most beautiful, talented, and favored of all the Angels, I wanted for nothing. Privilege was mine. I knew only a life of luxury, leisure, and song. His plans were of no consequence to me. That is, until the sixth day.
I watched in amazement. They were capable of so much, yet formed from but the dust of His Earth.
Simple and alluring were their charms, and it was to be the beginning of my end.
Fascinated by humans, a name we soon bestowed upon them, we began to spend less time at our posts.
In those days, it was commonplace for Fallen to come upon us without invitation. The one who had Fallen spoke to me with the fervor of a meddling father. “If he would cast his most-adored son from here, what if you should displease him?”
When our brother appeared to a human female as one of them, He asked why he had done such a thing.
“I mean to marry her, to be bound to her on Earth.”
Our brother was not alone in his idiosyncrasies. So our father presented us with a choice: live amongst humans on Earth, or remain. If we remained, we’d be forgiven our indiscretions and restored to our former glory, powerful and alive with light. If we chose Earth, the more time spent around humans, the more like them we would become—for He had already forbidden the joining of Angels with humans.
I was among the first of twenty-three to leave.
As time passed, we became more like our beloved humans. Our powers faded, but were not completely lost. We began to crave their company, rather than simply appreciate it. I indulged in their many vices—even enjoyed them.
Heightened senses enhanced certain desires, making them more difficult to control. Lust, anger, fear, covetousness, and deceit enveloped me in a cloak of humanity. I learned to master most, even welcome them, while others longed for home.
The Divine One offered to take us back and gave us three days to decide. A great wrath awaited those who would dare refuse The Divine One not once, but twice. Still, twelve of us stayed, and expected judgment as night fell on the eve of the third day.
We retired to bed as humans do when the moon reigns supreme over their sky. I learned to sleep because it made my wife uneasy when she woke to find me sharpening knives. She knew not what I was, the truth of my origins. Instead, I embraced humanity and prayed she would never have to know.
That night I woke with a strange sensation in my throat. My body felt odd, weak in the loin. I might even say “human.” Heavy, stuffed with something other than the usual songs, color, and light, my head hung low. I heard a human heart, beating, moving blood in and out of it. The thought brought a smile to my face, hot from the flush that raced from my neck to my cheeks. Then, an unfamiliar, but welcome, desire consumed me.
PART ONE
You Found Me
IN THE BEGINNING
After everything I’d been through, I couldn’t believe this was how it was going to end. The training, the bloodshed, the kisses—oh my
God, the kisses—and death, nullified by ten minutes in a police car.
It was hard to talk, let alone think, with the nonstop pounding in my head. It hurt to blink through swollen eyelids, and the dim overhead lights seemed brighter than they probably were. Incessant buzzing from a fly sitting defiantly atop the fluorescent beam threatened to make my eardrums explode. Who knew they could make so much noise without moving?
Everything was amplified, things seemed larger than life, and nothing made any sense at all.
I watched him, the fly, as he flitted back and forth, struggling to find freedom in the enclosed space of the interrogation room. I wondered if he knew he was going to die here.
The cop stared like I was a freak straight out of a science fiction movie, tentacles and all. I’d been mumbling incoherently since they’d found me and hadn’t volunteered much more since arriving at the station the night before. My mind was jumbled, scrambled as if it were trying to tune to the correct radio frequency, but couldn’t. Flashes, memories from my past, of what I was and what I had done, were returning, but they were all out of order. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to remain in my own skin much longer, and all I could do was shake.
Hours spent waiting for my “paperwork” to be processed didn’t help. How much paperwork could one runaway have?
When I spoke, it came out like gibberish, or maybe like an auctioneer on crack. The visual made me giggle. My voice was high-pitched and nervous. And then a thought stopped me mid-laugh: Stockholm’s Auktionsverk is the oldest auction house in the world. Not-so-random and useless information like that flooded my head for no reason at all, or maybe because it simply had no place else to go.
They wanted to know what I was doing on Gavin Vault’s estate, running and screaming, “Help!” That I was barely dressed from the waist up, another mystery. I would tell them, but in my own words. I refused to lie or say something that could send Gavin to prison. And the statement they’d written for me? I was about to tell them where they could shove it when the cop shot me a “you’d better start talking, or we’re gonna start the torture” look.
“You have no idea what you’ve done,” I said as I sipped hot, institutional-tasting liquid, realizing what I’d said made absolutely no sense to the officer. There’s no way she could have known what she’d gotten herself into. Sadly, she was about to find out. “I’ll tell you what you want to know, but you won’t believe a word of it.” Those were the most coherent words I’d spoken since I’d arrived.
The cop seemed confused, like she was surprised I was capable of forming articulate sentences. She watched as I pulled at the sleeves of the oversized sweater on loan from one of the male cops. Then I grabbed my head in my hands. Vivid images raced through my mind, before leaving as quickly as they’d appeared. They were memories that would free me from this stagnant mental prison if only I could set them in the proper order.
The fly whizzed past me. I was a volcano of turmoil and angst and sat, leg-shaking and squirming in the metal chair, attempting to calm the impending eruption. The officer just stared as if I were a nut that needed cracking, only she didn’t have the right tool.
“I’ll tell you everything as soon as my mother arrives,” I offered, sitting back in the steel chair. Mom would take care of everything.
The officer looked at me, then down at her blank pad, then back at me, and said, “Miss Miller, do you need a doctor? Were you harmed in any—way?” She leaned over the table, lowering her head and voice conspiratorially. It took me a second to realize what she’d meant.
But she was out of her mind if she thought Gavin would harm me. She wasn’t even asking the right questions. Like, “What’s someone like you doing here, and how did this happen?” I had to get out of there. I needed to find my brother, Remi. I needed to know what was going on with Gavin and what they had done to him. What’s taking Mom so long? It should not have surprised me. She’d always been unreliable. I tapped the table to keep from picking up my chair and throwing it at the two-way mirror. I needed to keep my anger in check, but I didn’t know how long I could. How had Gavin and I ended up in a police station, he accused of an unspeakable crime, and me his supposed accuser?
“How did you find me? How did you know where to find me?” I reluctantly asked. I should have been able to get the answer on my own, to read her mind.
“We received an anonymous tip,” she offered, raising her eyebrows, her tone secretive. And then I saw something, a fuzzy vision.
I tilted my head sharply to the side and cringed. The intrusion of my brain hurt like heck. A man, talking, then handing over an envelope with pictures of me looking like something the cat dragged in, then gone— the man and the vision. I gasped as the pounding in my head kicked into overdrive. Evidence? How? Gavin had never hit me. It’s a lie.
“What do you want from me? You seem to have all the evidence you need.” My eyes shifted from her small face to her name tag then to her “serving since” pin. Two years.
Officer Bladen looked away from me when she replied, “You’re at the very least a witness to a crime, Miss Miller. Has no one explained to you what’s going on?” She leaned forward again, cautiously, and opened the folder on the table, case file 092330200307. Just like in my vision, pictures of me beat to a pulp and … Gavin seemingly raising a hand to strike me.
I refused
to look at her or the photos and stopped rocking.
“Don’t you want to know what happened to you, Miss Miller?” she asked in a soft voice, pushing the folder closer. She sounded almost compassionate.
“I already know what happened to me!” I shouted. “I was there, remember?” I couldn’t stop the tears that pushed their way out of my eyes in a race down my cheeks. Gavin and I were being set up. Couldn’t she tell? Wasn’t she trained in these things? I felt like an animal that had been tricked into leaving a small cage only to be locked in an even smaller one.
I lurched forward and tried to grab the folder, to rip it to shreds. Instead, I caught Officer Bladen’s sleeve and a tiny piece of her hand. She snatched it away as abruptly, as if I’d burned her. I fell back into my chair, hitting it harder than I’d intended.
Something was terribly wrong.
Officer Bladen shifted in her chair as she checked her watch, then cell phone, then pager. It was as if she were expecting the Governor’s pardon.
“Just tell us what happened, Ms. Miller,” she said and checked her watch again, then looked toward the open door.
In the Beginning (Anthology) Page 23