Fate: No Strings Attached

by Erik Schubach

  Fate: No Strings Attached

  By Erik Schubach

  Copyright © 2017 by Erik Schubach

  Self publishing

  P.O. Box 523

  Nine Mile Falls, WA 99026

  Cover Photo © 2017 Nejron / DepositPhotos.com license

  Cover elements designed by kjpargeter / Freepik

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. 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 express written permission from the author / publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, blog, or broadcast.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  FIRST EDITION

  ISBN 978-0-9985110-7-8

  Prologue

  I was there again, in that impossibly huge room, the ceiling soaring so high on the carved marble columns that I couldn't make it out. The largest loom I had ever witnessed dominated the space. It had to have been at least four stories tall.

  But something was wrong. I had the impression of it laying shattered and in ruins as the flames started to consume it. The millions, if not billions of strands of pulsating, living light which led into the loom to create a fabric which brought me to reverent tears just trying to look directly at it, recoiled from the flames.

  I screamed as I watched the fabric unraveling. The impression of eons of work just falling apart. Then I raised my arms defensively above me as, with a deafening crack and earthshaking rumble, the great loom shuddered and then collapsed down upon me.

  Then my world was pain, pain, pain...

  The last thing I saw before I woke up with a scream in bed again, was the blood I saw on my hands. The horror of it was that I knew that blood was not my own.

  I sucked in shuddering breaths as the night terror receded again into a fog as my consciousness returned, I desperately tried to cling to the fading memory of it. It was all that I had of that past life, this nightmare that felt so real. It must mean something to the person I used to be. Before whatever accident I had suffered which stripped my memories from me. Was it a clue as to who I had been? Some Freudian glimpse into the person I was in that other life?

  I shivered, staring at my cooling sweat-slicked skin, twisting an arm slowly in front of my eyes at the alien yet familiar appendage, wiggling the long, slim fingers at the end of it. I was getting damn sick of not knowing who I was. Not knowing if I was a good person or a bad person. What had happened to me that I couldn't remember? And why couldn't the police discover just who the hell I was?

  Come on, it couldn't be that hard. I mean, someone had to be missing me somewhere. Someone had to have filed a missing person's report in the past nine months. Right? I wasn't alone in the world... right? I mean, I had to be someone.

  It almost hurt to know that whoever I was, I apparently hadn't made a mark on the world enough that it even mattered. The world spun on without me, and it appeared as though nobody had even noticed.

  I stared in morbid fascination at the impossible, as the ink that covered most of my body seemed to flow like smoke again, twisting and changing under my skin as the tattoos reformed themselves. They were always moving and changing, morphing into various things. As frightening as that was to my fragile state of mind, imagine just how terrifying it was that they always seemed to be appropriate for the things happening all around, as if the art were mimicking the life which went on around me.

  It was a few days after I was found lying in an impact crater in the mountains before the tattoos started to move on my skin, as I got stronger after I was released from the hospital. I've had to hide them ever since I first noticed that they had started changing and moving.

  I knew I had to be going insane, but then I saw strange reports on television. Of flying women being spotted in San Francisco and Seattle. Or the story of the woman that two fishermen swear came up from the depths of the Pacific to save them from their sinking vessel and swam them both to shore almost two miles away.

  The world seemed to be changing, and getting stranger by the day, as it seemed that more and more unbelievable and inexplicable things were popping up all the time.

  Maybe I was one of those things, but I couldn't tell you why. I couldn't tell you much of anything. Hell, I'd settle for my name.

  “Sloan?” My roommate, Enid, called through the door. “Are you ok? You were screaming again. The same nightmare? Can I come in?”

  I pulled the blankets up to hide the black ink on my body as it settled into its new configuration. I smiled at the door. Sloan was the name the hospital gave me because I was found laying in the charred crater on Sloan Peak in the Cascades, in the middle of winter. They thought it sounded better than calling me Jane Doe. I didn't have a preference at the time, not knowing my real name, so the name sort of stuck.

  So now, I'm Sloan Tesha, until my accursed memory returns. Nurse Sodhi said that Tesha is Indian for survivor. I thought it was pretty and had to agree that it was much better than Doe.

  The doctors say that my memory could come back in flashes, or all at once, or... never. I sat up all night in the early days just willing myself just to have one of those flashes, just a hint or glimpse, to no avail. My recurring nightmare is all that have.

  Once I got out of the women's shelter which the police had recommended until I could get a job and a place to live, I answered a want ad for a roommate here in Mount Vernon, Washington. Enid looks like one would imagine. Her parents did her no favors by naming her after her great grandmother.

  She's sort of a mousy girl, but possibly the nicest and most sincere person I have ever met. Well, let me rephrase that since I can't remember anyone before all this shit happened to me, she 'is' the nicest and most sincere person I have ever met. And once you get her talking, she's pretty funny and cute.

  I've been working on helping her get a better wardrobe than the frumpy clothes she wore, and found I had an uncanny gift with scissors as I cut her mousy brown hair in a more trendy fashion. I had this urge to protect the girl who was finally coming out of her shell.

  And I can sew, boy can I sew, I mean it seems I may have possibly have been a seamstress before this. That was an interesting thought, was it insight? I'll have to pass that along to the police, maybe it can help narrow things down.

  I called out, “Come on in Eeen. Sorry, didn't mean to wake you.”

  She opened the door, peeked in then scurried across my room to sit on the edge of the bed, asking, “Can you remember any more of the dream?” Her eyes were wide with concern.

  I patted her knee and shook my head. “No, not really. Just chaos, pain, fear... I think there was a fire.”

  She nodded encouragingly. “Well, that's something new.”

  Noting the time on my alarm clock by the bed, I grinned at her then pushed my sleep-matted hair back out of my eyes and said, “Well time to start the day anyway. Your turn to make breakfast, Trouble. I get the bathroom first today.”

  She hopped up, and grumpily said as she went out to the kitchen, “And here I was, worried about you.”

  I chuckled, neither of us liked cooking since neither of us was very good at it unless it was something microwavable. I expect I'll have a bowl of oatmeal or cereal waiting for me when I get done getting ready for my glamorous job as a records clerk at the downtown library.

  Hey,
I had no skills I was aware of, and a person has to start somewhere. Filing books and maintaining the lists for the librarians was the perfect fit for someone with no qualifications. It was that or working fast food or, shudder, being a barista.

  I sighed as I trudged my sorry ass to the little bathroom in our tiny rental house. I just hoped to whatever god may be watching and getting a good laugh at my expense, that I had a more glamorous job in my real life.

  I wondered idly if Detective Lisbon had made any progress on finding out just who the hell I was. I shrugged to myself. It's all in the weave I guess.

  Chapter 1 – My New Life

  I absently scratched at my arm under the cuff of the long sleeve blouse I wore unbuttoned over my tee. Not so much a fashion statement as it was a way to hide my changing tattoos. I sat staring out the second story window of the Downtown Library at the reference desk. I was supposed to be logging the returns in the system for the Head Librarian, Mrs. Ramos. But the alien feel of the ink beneath my skin moving and rearranging itself had me distracted.

  I knew the black lines would be glowing silver under my touch. I swear I could actually sense the people passing by on the street below. Get a sense of who they were, and what they were moving toward in their day to day lives. This all started when I first saw that my tattoos had changed somehow from the last time I had looked at them.

  I glanced back and switched tabs on the computer and pulled up a news article from just down the coast. It was a report of a riptide taking a child out to the unforgiving Pacific Ocean. The coast guard and local harbor police had been searching frantically for the boy to no avail.

  Just when all hope of finding the child alive was dashed, the mother says that a woman walked out of the sea by her seaside home with her son in her arms. He was alive. When she turned to thank the woman, she was gone, and she swore she saw a shadow moving impossibly fast in the surf, toward the open sea.

  When questioned, the boy swore that “The water-lady swimded up from the ocean an' swimded me to mommy.” But there was no corroborating evidence, and the police were starting to believe it was just a hoax perpetrated by the mother for attention, though the district attorney has said that no charges will be pressed.

  I tapped my fingers on the desk then pulled up a prior search. There were dozens of blurry pictures, of some huge winged shape, darting between buildings at the rooftops of the city of San Francisco. Witnesses all say it is a winged woman, like some sort of angel of vengeance, but the police and the feds have found no evidence it is anything but an elaborate hoax or promotional stunt for a movie.

  I inhaled slowly and deeply. These and other unsubstantiated reports from places like Seattle, New Orleans, Denver, and New York of women doing impossible things, were making me wonder if something wasn't happening in the world. If maybe these sightings were true, and I was one of these... different... women. But things like that, and my tattoos, were impossible, right?

  I exhaled the breath then went back to entering the returns back into the system, mindlessly scanning each as I pushed my long, wavy brown hair back over my shoulder. When they found me in the crater, my hair had been burned and singed to just above my shoulders.

  I had a feeling that I liked it longer, so I haven't had it cut in the last nine months, except to clean it up a bit. To my happy surprise, it has been growing out twice as fast as the average half inch a month and is already down below my shoulder blades. The salon says that some people just have good genetics.

  I jumped as I scanned the next book when, with a thud, another stack of books was placed beside the few I had remaining. I pulled myself out of my shock and smiled up at Mrs. Ramos who was panting a bit and grinning. The old lady had again overloaded herself with that armload of books. I was wondering just how she had done all of this with just one librarian under her for so long.

  She said in her strong alto voice, which belied her advanced age of what I guessed was seventy. My shoulder heated and I revised that estimation, she was seventy-two, I knew it with a surety which almost scared me, “That's the last of them, sweetie. Why don't you take a break after this, I know returns can be tedious.”

  I looked at the stack of almost twenty books and shook my head at her. “Mrs. Ramos, you don't need to be hauling these stacks around like that. I could have gotten them myself.”

  She waved me off with a flit of her hand. “Nonsense, the day I can't carry a few books is the day I retire. Most likely the day before I die, Sloan dear.”

  I smiled at her humor though I knew as the heat on my shoulder faded away that no, she wouldn't die the next day after she retired. She had quite some mileage left in her. Though I believed it was wishful thinking and imagination on my part, I'd like to think the feeling was right.

  I grinned and harrumphed in fun. “Until that day, let me do the heavy lifting shall we?”

  The matronly Hispanic librarian patted my shoulder and shared a warm smile with me before moving back into the stacks to do her daily walk through of the shelves. I swear she knows her library so well that she spots any misfiled books instantly and moves them to their correct location as she walks.

  Some people were just born to their job.

  That thought made me pause as I turned back to scan in the books. I wondered again what job I held before whatever bullshit happened to me in the mountains. I was still banking on something like a seamstress, though being around all this knowledge in the library held a certain kind of satisfaction for me too.

  I smiled as I glanced over to see her moving a book over a few spots on a shelf as she moved along. She took a chance on me, and I hope I'll not disappoint her. She reminded me so much of... well I don't know who, but I have the distinct impression that she reminds me of someone.

  This memory loss bullshit is going to drive me crazy. Put yourself in my shoes, how would you feel if you couldn't remember anything about yourself no matter how hard you tried or wished it to be true. It is an undertone of terror in my mind every second of every day.

  When I answered the want ad for a records clerk at the library when I was job hunting, I had no clue what the job would entail, but I found it sort of funny when Mrs. Ramos and her assistant librarian, Julie, interviewed me and I realized they didn't either. They just wanted someone to pick up the slack as the library had been getting more popular the past couple years and it was getting difficult for them to keep up.

  The first few questions were an embarrassment to me.

  “Do you have any experience working in a library?”

  “I'm not sure.”

  Awkward pause.

  “Do you have any computer or office experience?”

  “Possibly?”

  Awkward pause.

  “Well, you've at least read a book before?”

  “I guess I must have, it would just be odd if I hadn't.”

  Awkward pause.

  “You're her aren't you? The girl from the mountains?”

  Oh knotted threads, I was so embarrassed. I had blushed at that and gave a noncommittal grunt and was getting ready to flee the interview when Mrs. Ramos cocked her head at me and really regarded me in that way those who have lived a long life and gathered so very much wisdom in their years can do. Just like... someone I think I knew. That left me tugging on a thread in my mind.

  Then she nodded once, some decision made and she said, “I think you'll do, sweetie. Someone took a chance on me when I was your age. Back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. 500 section, 560 on the Dewy Decimal.”

  Then just like that, I was part of the working class. I swear I'll never let her down for giving me a chance.

  I get the feeling that she and Julie are grooming me to take Julie's position when Mrs. Ramos retires “Any year now... history, 900 on the Dewy,” and Julie becomes the Head Librarian. They are trying to convince me to take night courses to get a library sciences degree.

  I doubled down on my work and burned through the last of the returns and stacked them on the cart in order
of their reference numbers. I was about to take a break when a low and slightly raspy woman's voice, with overtones of smooth, dark whiskey, said from behind me, “750.1 comes before 751.3.”

  I nearly jumped out of my skin. I turned slowly and cocked an eyebrow at the smugly confident police officer, as I tried not to give her another appreciative once over that my traitorous libido always insisted upon. “Detective Lisbon.” I eyed the books I was organizing on the cart and swapped the two books and shook my head, the glint of her shiny gold badge hanging from her shapely hip begging for me to sneak a look.

  Instead, I forced myself to look back up at her face, feigning disinterest. She had a little smirk teasing around her full red cupid's bow lips, her striking pale green eyes twinkling in mirth.

  “They pay me to be observant, Miss Tesha.”

  I looked away from her, damn her cute blonde pixie cut, and shook my head rebuking. “Are you here to tell me how to do my job, or have you found something useful about my past?” When I first met the woman, I marveled at how such a hard and dangerous woman could still have such a strong feminine allure.

  A secret part of me smiled at how she seemed to soften up her tough as nails demeanor around me. Knotted threads, if she wasn't the officer assigned to my case from the missing person's department of the Mount Vernon police, I'd be insisting she called me Sloan... or anytime.

  She exhaled, conveying a familiar frustration that I felt every day I went without answers. “No, but I do have more questions.”

  I sighed in resignation and said, “Let me just save us both some time Lisbon...”

  “You can call me Andreya, Miss Tesha.”

  I responded in an accusatory tone, “When you call me Sloan.” I raised an eyebrow in challenge, she didn't bite, so I continued, “The answers are; I don't know, maybe, and your guess is as good as mine. Not necessarily in that order.”

  She snorted and pointed out. “At least we know one thing about you, you're an aggravating smartass.”