Chimera (The Weaver Series Book 1)
Page 1
Contents
Copyright-eBook
Dedication
Title Page-eBook
Chapter 1 - The Silent Treatment
Chapter 2 - The 5 W's
Chapter 3 - Questions & Answers
Chapter 4 - F.Y.I
Chapter 5 - If I Knew I'd Know
Chapter 6 - Infinity
Chapter 7 - Through the Looking Glass
Chapter 8 - Carbon Copy
Chapter 9 - The Big Oops
Chapter 10 - Outsiders
Chapter 11 - By the Way
Chapter 12 - Dream a Little Dream
Chapter 13 - Human Power Plants
Chapter 14 - Tangled Webs
Chapter 15 - Off Balance
Chapter 16 - Serial Killer Exchange Program
CHANGELING cover
Chapter 1 - Changeling (Sneak Peek)
Chapter 2 - Changeling (Sneak Peek)
Chapter 3 - Changeling (Sneak Peek)
Author BIO
Copyright © 2014
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of author rights.
Cover illustration and jacket design by Nathalia Suellen.
Editing by DeWanna Pace, Todd Barselow and Dr. Susan J. Nix.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of my imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
For print see the ISBN’s below:
ISBN: 1500702218
ISBN-13: 978-1500702212
DEDICATION
This book might never have happened if my husband, parents and sister hadn’t listened to me ramble and rant about a fictional world I hadn’t even created yet. Once I started writing all of my friends and family lifted me up and encouraged me. The journey helped make the acquaintance of other writers and those involved in helping make their world’s come alive. My first editor, also one of my best encouragers, is DeWanna Pace. My second editor, Todd Barselow, is a champion for the indie publishing scene and a good and honest person to know. I’m also a huge fan of the artistic talent of my cover artist, Nathalia Suellen. I love you all and this book is for you.
For any other aspiring writers out there, keep going and don’t give up!
-Vaun-
CHIMERA
Vaun Murphrey
Chapter One: The Silent Treatment
Ordinary days that turn extraordinary don’t typically have warning signs. They begin as expected and spiral out of your ability to imagine. Dreaming is nothing new to me. My mind is my sanctuary and my savior both. It supplies an inner voice that keeps me from the utter despair of my life in captivity and gives me access to an outside world of information. Who—or what—brings this to me and for what purpose? That’s an excellent question for which I hope I find an answer if I survive.
This particular morning I awoke from a strange dream that left me so restless I immediately sat up, violently scissor-kicking at the threadbare sheet, my only covering during the cold night hours. When my thighs rubbed together, I stilled and thought to myself, did I just pee the bed?
I concentrated on my bladder; it still felt full enough that I knew I needed to use the tiny stainless steel prison cell toilet. A whisper-quiet mechanical whirring informed me the corner mounted camera had focused in on my movement. It tracked me in the ten-by-ten space as if I might up and disappear.
Whoever was on the monitors wanted to know why I was up at—I looked at the glowing digital clock display on the side table—5:45a.m., fifteen minutes before my alarm usually went off. The dream I’d been having ran circles in the background of my mind.
I shook off the sensation with a resigned indifference. Why did it matter what I dreamed if I was still here, wherever ‘here’ was? I tried not to remember the day of my abduction, but the memory rolled to the forefront against my will as it often did when I woke in the dark.
The men who broke down our door in the middle of the night to kill my parents and take me captive had moved with precision. The whole event that had changed my life forever and been the subject of countless nightmares had probably taken five minutes or less. Three hundred seconds to wreck a life, a whole family. As they carried me out the apartment door, I saw Father’s sightless glassy eyes as he lay sprawled on my parents’ bed. Mother’s petite white feet protruded past the edge of the open bedroom doorway.
I forced myself from the memory by imagining an iron portcullis slamming down. I pulled back the sheet to investigate the cause of the sticky sensation between my thighs. My linen night shirt had ridden up my legs to bunch around my hips. Even in the dim light from the clock, the stain had a dark reddish tint.
My inner voice was alive with unexpressed hope at my body’s physical milestone. I searched for information instinctively, and it settled like a falling feather in my mind. My heart rate steadied as I absorbed the knowledge of thirteen being a perfectly acceptable age for menstruation to begin. Again the wall mounted camera whirred as if it was focusing on my sheets. Not half a minute later I heard the beep of a swiped key card.
In walked both of my regular guards. I called them Thing One and Thing Two because neither of them had ever spoken a word to me, and they looked like twin androgynous cartoon characters from one of the Dr. Seuss books my mother read me as a child. No stubble marred either of their faces, and they both had weak chins. I could only tell them apart by the scar on Thing One’s neck. Sporting shaved heads and white scrubs with white orthopedic tennis shoes, they each grabbed an arm. The skin on my arms burned where it was twisted and pinched in their grip.
As soon as they crossed to the cold tiled floor of my tiny adjoining bathroom, they lowered me to my feet. Thing One pulled my ruined night shift over my head catching my ears on the way. Thing Two leaned down to tug my underwear to my ankles.
They usually left me to my own devices. I tried to pretend it didn’t matter I was naked in front of them. I shuffled forward into the shower as fast as I could and closed the door to the cramped space. The springs on my cot squeaked as they stripped the sheets. I reached out to turn on the hot water as far as the rusted knob would allow. Since they only let the water get barely above lukewarm, I was in no danger of scalding my skin.
As I washed, the sounds of movement continued while my guards went about their tasks, not conversing with one another. The lesson had been impressed upon me long ago that attempting to speak with anyone was futile. I was allowed outside time in a walled courtyard daily and once when I’d still had a hope of escape, I risked a peek over the edge of the wall. As punishment for my brief glimpse of the barren surroundings beyond the stucco-covered brick, I had been bound, blindfolded, and left chained to a stake for what seemed like days until my skin felt burned to a crisp and I thought they might finally let me die.
From that day forward I had decided to use my mind as a refuge. They couldn’t control my thoughts or my soul, only my environment, and it was safer for them to think me a beaten down creature incapable of independent wants.
When I stepped out of the shower, I spotted underwear and a linen shift with loose drawstring pants draped over the metal wall mounted sink. No mirror hung over the sink for me to check my appearance. In fact, my jailers made sure I never had access to any reflective surface whatsoever. Most likely it was just another deprivation designed to wear down the state of my mental health. Maybe they were afraid I would start to have a stronger sense
of self?
My bladder reminded me I hadn’t yet used the facilities. I tried to ignore my silent audience. Thing One entered the cramped bathroom to hold out a towel with a plastic wrapped square. An instruction card stated how to use the feminine hygiene product. I took it without direct eye contact. I was leerier of Thing One. He enjoyed my punishments the most. Many days I had lain on my thin, lumpy mattress staring at the cracked ceiling, dreaming of ways to take revenge. That is until I realized the pointless exercise only made me feel less powerful.
I’d instinctively known growing up my childhood wasn’t the norm. We’d moved often, and my parents used different names every place we settled. They made a game of it so I could remember what alias to use. I wasn’t allowed to play outside unless both my parents were with me. Even then it was only at parks in other neighborhoods, resulting in the most superficial contact with children my age. The furtive life we lived went unexplained. My parents took their secrets to the grave.
Over the years, the days ran together. I lost the clear visualization of my parents’ faces. What I could recall of my childhood seemed happy. Every day was a gift, and my parents loved me. The one and only time I witnessed them argue was on the day of their death. That memory had also faded like so many others into a vague recollection that hovered on the edge of knowing, tantalizingly out of reach.
Once I dressed, I walked back into my ten-by-ten all-too-familiar cell to find that my guards had already gone.
Thing Two had remade the cot with the standard stiff white fitted sheets. I sat at the table where I ate every meal. The food given for breakfast, lunch, and dinner wasn’t bad, only blandly repetitive and served like clockwork. The time on the digital display read 6:15 a.m. Breakfast would be late today.
Only it never came.
I shifted restlessly on my seat, unaccustomed to the feeling of the bulky pad in between my legs although it did provide a cushion on the hard metal chair. Worry at the change in my routine wiggled like a worm at the back of my brain. Around here any variation from the norm could mean something bad coming my way. My inner voice expressed an aversion to worry since it served no purpose.
As I often did in my ‘free time’, I retreated to the comfort of my mind, relaxing my shoulders and breathing deeply. My fingers ran in soothing circles on the table’s slick metal surface until I no longer focused on the physical world, but dreamed. My imagination had always been a lively companion, even as a child. Here it had taken on a life of its own becoming the key to maintaining my sanity. I made up stories, wrote poetry, thought through mathematical theory, or sometimes just imagined places, all in vivid life-like Technicolor. Immediately I noticed a change in my alternate private world. No longer did it feel empty and eager to be filled by my personal imaginings.
Something waited in the recesses.
A light shone, like a varied collection of multi-colored LED lights bunched together in front of a backdrop of an endless night sky.
A deep male voice seemed to echo inside me. “Cassandra?”
I was still trying to make sure all of this wasn’t some hallucination. I would even suspect drugging if my food had come. Panic bloomed in a slow, insidious cloud, stalling my mind. What if I had finally cracked? Eight years was a long time to survive with no one but yourself to keep you company. But he knew my name…a name no one had called me for a long, long time.
The voice, which sounded to me like an older male, spoke again.
“You aren’t crazy. I’m doing what I can to get you out, but you have to hold on. Promise me.”
The pulsating lights moved closer, radiating emotions like beams from the sun until they were all I could see. Suddenly, I felt as if something brushed against my mind bringing with it foreign images and sensations. I got a flash of a red-haired smiling woman with a happy, mischievous glint in her eyes. The name Maggie popped into my head along with obviously male thoughts of how much he enjoyed her company. A feeling of apology, as if that wasn’t what I had been meant to see followed. A flash of my mother as a child came to me along with another image of a boy who morphed into a tall, thin man with dark hair and the same light brown eyes as my mother. The words brother and uncle settled softly, like a warm blanket, and then with rude, abrupt finality the rough hands of Thing One and Thing Two on my forearms dragged me back to the physical world.
Usually, I was far more aware of my surroundings, but they had entered my cell without it penetrating my ‘daydreaming’ state. I was already on my feet between them before my mind snapped back to reality. I tried to get a read on them as they hustled me out of my cell into the empty hallway. Both guards wore matching stoic expressions that told me absolutely nothing. The only choices in the whitewashed hall were left or right. The direction I usually went for courtyard time was left and the only time I ever got escorted to the right was for my yearly physical in the infirmary. Exam time had not yet come but maybe since I had started my menses they were going to make an exception.
The thought of someone touching me between my thighs made my stomach cramp. No one had been cruel on any of my visits. Their treatment of me was always perfunctory. As if I was a thing, not a live being with thoughts of my own.
As my guards escorted me down the hall, I wondered again at the many windowless doors on each side of us. Were they all filled with children like me? Had all of their parents been killed, too? If there were others imprisoned, and I couldn’t imagine why they would have constructed all of these cells to keep them unoccupied, they had never let me see another inmate. Even in the infirmary, I had always been the only patient. I suspected soundproofed walls because no matter how hard I tried I never heard any sounds of life in that long barren stretch.
The door at the end of the hall required a key card which Thing One scanned with the hand not occupied gripping my arm.
Once we were through that security checkpoint the personnel activity picked up. Other guards wearing the same snowy attire as Thing One and Two went about their business with brisk silent efficiency, shooting from room to room off of another long hallway. I made sure to keep my head down and only look at things through the shield of my lowered lashes. It wouldn’t do to seem too interested, especially since I wasn’t sure where I was going yet or why.
To my surprise, they continued to march past the area we usually turned for the infirmary and continued straight toward a set of double doors. Thing One and Two scanned their key cards simultaneously before they opened outward. The first thing to assault my senses was the drone of many voices speaking in low tones. I hadn’t heard a human voice in so long my brain couldn’t translate the racket into anything but gibberish. Slowly, in fits and starts, as we continued down a thoroughfare covered in thick, soft brown carpet my brain began to process it was indeed English.
Distracted by the auditory overload, I forgot to keep track of what was around me. Before I knew it, my guards had stopped at a set of heavy, dark wood doors. Cameras focused in on us; then the doors opened inward all by themselves to reveal a richly furnished office. After a quick glance, I forced my eyes to watch my bare feet. Thing One and Two hustled me forward to stand in front of a carved desk then dropped my arms and disappeared to stand somewhere behind me. I didn’t dare look up when I heard the sound of someone moving off to my right. Shiny black men’s dress shoes stopped just short of hitting my toes. The man in front of me took in a deep breath, as if to inhale my scent, then a soft but firm fingertip pushed my chin upward from underneath. I made sure I wouldn’t accidentally give direct eye contact. He squeezed my chin painfully until his face became the focal point of my vision.
The first thing I noticed was his eyes—something was terribly wrong with them. I sensed if he so desired I would die right then and there. The feeling was akin to what I imagined a mouse must experience when it finds itself in the paws of a cat that isn’t hungry, only mildly curious. Those strangely luminous eyes didn’t miss the slightest bit of me in their piercing inspection. If I hadn’t been trained so dili
gently not to speak I would have babbled, vainly telling him whatever I thought might save my life. The rest of his face didn’t matter, but I noted its features in the back of my mind. Light hair faded to gray at the temples. Slight wrinkles acquired from exposure to the sun. A rather unremarkable face if you discounted the eyes.
The hand holding my chin in a vice-like grip released when I held my head at the desired angle. His fingers traveled leisurely down my body to my hip as if I was a piece of meat for inspection. Unexpectedly the touch moved sideways to cup my bulky feminine napkin against my center. I gave an involuntary gasp. His eyes, which had stayed steadily engaged with mine, showed a flicker of life at my small sound of distress. He raised his hand to inhale with his fingers just beneath his flared nostrils. With a suddenness that almost made me take a step backward, he straightened his shoulders and turned his back.
Thing One and Two moved to my side at some unseen signal, roughly grabbing my arms to escort me post-haste back to my cell. I’m ashamed to say that I once again failed to pay attention and get a better understanding of the location. All I could do was take controlled breaths and not betray the absolute terror within me. Was this the person who had ordered my parents’ deaths? Why was I still alive and for what reason? I wanted to know, but I also feared the answer would be the end of me.
As I often did when I was afraid, I detached myself from the situation and let my inner voice examine my experience in a calm, rational, darkly humorous way. Laser Eyes, as I now called this man since he hadn’t exactly introduced himself, was very obviously a leader here—most likely at the top of the food chain. I pictured a lion roaring on the Savannah, scaring off all other predators from a kill, or a great white shark circling a glacier in the cold ocean waiting for random seals to jump in the water. My breathing had returned to normal by the time we made it down the lonely familiar hallway that led to my cell door. Without ceremony, Thing Two released my arm, and Thing One pushed me inside.