by Lee Hayton
BITTER MAGIC
(World War Magic)
LEE HAYTON
Copyright © 2017 Lee Hayton
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
Cover design by James T. Egan, www.bookflydesign.com
Dedication
With eternal thanks to Kat Lind, the SIL Creative team, the Ds, and our fellow boot-campers at Phoenix Prime.
Rise up from the ashes, people.
Phoenix Prime is a Ph.D. level workshop that spans approximately four months. It uses applied industrial psychology to address components of writing, marketing, branding, business, contract issues, and productivity that combine Creative Writing and Business perspectives.
The participants will create a portfolio to showcase their work alongside students in doctoral programs in several major universities. The objective, in addition to expanding the professional growth of all the participants, is to study the impact of the independent author-publisher on the commercial fiction industry.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Thanks for Reading :)
Chapter One
Grainne sat frozen in shock. Her nerves ignited in a sequence of startled terror, up and down her body. Each muscle in her legs tensed, ready to spring into action, and poised to flee. But there was nowhere for her to run to. Instead, she forced herself to stay in place, staring at the flickering screen in front of her. After a moment, she reached out one shaking fingertip to brush aside the brain matter clinging to her monitor. The gray lump of goop stayed immobile. It wasn’t on her side. It was on Jane’s.
When she’d shot herself, most of the spray was directed up to the ceiling. It stuck in clumps at first, then spattered down like heavy rain. Still more spread across the wall behind her. A pointillism painting—fear overwhelms the desire to live.
The force of the shotgun blast had catapulted the newly decapitated torso back against the sofa. Even with the stingy cotton padding, the propulsion was enough to bounce her body forward again. A dicey equilibrium set in before she tipped all the way, leaving her upright. She looked for all the world like she was sitting in rapt attention. Except there were no ears poised to listen, no mouth ready to exclaim in sympathy.
Grainne didn’t have the faintest idea where Jane had gotten the gun.
Her own house had been swept clean. Even the cutlery drawer held nothing more dangerous than a plastic spork. Each one individually sealed inside crinkling cellophane wrappers—the sad leftovers from a hundred microwave meals.
If there’d been metal loose anywhere around the property, she would have dug for freedom. She would smash the most pathetic weapon against the walls until she broke out, no matter how thick the barrier encasing the house.
As it was, her hands were still healing from the uselessness of her soft fists beating against the hardened plaster. Her knuckles smashed their way through a window, only to be greeted with the agonizing hard graze of the concrete wrapped behind it.
So far, Grainne had found no method of calculating how thick the seal beyond the house walls were. She struggled to understand how the cement had been applied. When she first woke up, once the drugs wore off, it was to find the home already sealed shut.
At least the flies wouldn’t get her. Over six weeks into this torture, even the most tenacious would surely have died. They didn’t have the spare food to let it rot and attract a fresh crop of disco rice. After this long, no insects would remain.
Pitiful, fat Jane. So many times, she’d cried down the phone line to Grainne. On each occasion, calling on the pretense of a dozen other troubles but always circling back to the deepest source of her pain.
It’s hard to be obese in a society that values skinny. Difficult to be old in a community that worships youth.
Of course, those turned out not to be as challenging as some things.
She drew in a jagged breath and pressed shaking hands up to cup her jaw. The despair engulfing her was like a ragged hunting knife slicing into her chest. The blade twisted and gouged deeper. Roughly pulling her flesh apart until the wound gaped so wide it wouldn’t heal.
Each time she inhaled, each second she stared at Jane’s head dripping down the wall, Grainne’s desperation opened further. Soon, the injury would pierce her heart, tear a path through her lungs. It would slice its way through every internal organ until her body dropped dead.
She leaned forward suddenly, hand poised to slam the laptop lid shut. An instinct stopped her, freezing Grainne into place. Her arm hung in mid-air, unable to finish the gesture. The strangest thought nagged, like a hook tugging at her brain. If she tilted the screen to close it, Jane’s body would lose its odd balance. Her corpse would slide off the couch to lie on the floor. The camera feed didn’t reach that far, and the webcam only focused its empty eye straight ahead. She’d tumble out of view forever.
Watching her dead companion on the monitor, seeing the carnage the shotgun cartridge had wrought upon her, was bad enough. Tortuous. To not see, to not know, would be excruciating.
The stupidity of it struck her. Jane had always been a nuisance acquaintance. The kind of person you have in your life, not because of affection or shared interests but because they’re friends with someone you genuinely love. In Grainne’s case, that was her closest-ever friend, Emily. Jane and Emily had been thick as thieves since preschool. There was no way to have one, without the other.
So, Grainne had tolerated the woman, putting up with her whining and the mining for sympathy. A necessary concession. If she’d reacted instead with the irritation she actually felt was warranted, it would have broken her best friend’s loving heart.
Emily was dead now. Jane had been Grainne’s last link to her. When it came down to it, she’d also proven loyal. Without a second thought, she sacrificed her safety to rescue Grainne from gunpoint. In Ockham Square, with their peaceful world ending in a fit of chaotic confusion, Jane courageously dragged her out of the firing line.
If it hadn’t been for that brave action, Grainne’s life would probably have ended that day. Her last minutes would have been spent dying next to Emily, an echo of her friend’s screams ricocheting through her brain.
In hindsight, that might have been the better choice. Armed with the knowledge of what was in store for them, Jane’s act would be interpreted as malicious depravity instead of courage. Who’d save a friend only to land them here?
They hadn’t known, of course. No one could have guessed at the government’s abhorrent inhumanity. Jane knew what she was doing when she picked up that shotgun, though. Still, she plowed ahead and abandoned Grainne to a solitary fate. Condemned to die alone.
So soon after Mary, the pain was too fresh, too raw, to spend any time poking it about. Grainne shouldn’t hold Mary’s terrible death against her, but the resentment stayed fixed in place nonetheless. If she tried to be fair, Mary had the excuse of not being in contact with anybody. With no computer hidden inside, or lacking the intelligence to search,
she’d been lost within her solitude. Even with the company of the scrawny cat. Her favorite game of one-upmanship was a hard thing to play alone.
Stop thinking about it!
Grainne shook her head to loosen the thought. She didn’t want to dwell on dead friends or stray animals. It was bad enough reconciling herself to becoming a solo act when she’d gotten used to being in a duet.
Leaving the laptop screen raised, she rose from the couch and walked into the kitchen. Her breath was uneven, and the fiddly pearl buttons on the high-necked blouse challenged her to a dual. Finally, they were undone, though she soon discovered the air didn’t want to flood her lungs with relief.
As she leaned against the bench, gasping, Grainne’s nervous fingers played a dull tune on the side of the aluminum sink. A wave of nausea cascaded bile up the back of her throat, but she grimly swallowed its biting sourness down. Food was a scarce enough commodity. No need to waste it on dreadful visions.
She poured a glass of water. The odor was packed full of chemicals, making her nose wrinkle. Grainne drank it anyway—the only other option was to go without. In her old life, the fridge would have been stocked with bottled Evian, or make use of the ice dispenser to chill the contaminant tang away.
There was no refrigerator here, though. Another thing that Grainne didn’t know the reasoning behind. Perhaps a government official with an overactive imagination thought she’d use it to bust a path out of the house. Maybe a soldier with uncanny strength believed a middle-aged woman of slight build would be able to tuck whiteware under her armpit like a battering ram.
No fridge. No freezer. No microwave. There was a slick, black cooktop built into the bench but only a wide gap where the stove would once have sat. Still, Grainne couldn’t complain. Well, not to anybody who’d listen, anyway.
Her face felt hot, her skin was clammy. She chugged another glass of water, this time holding her nose as she swallowed it down. Despite the drink, her nausea continued to bubble and churn. The rank scent that usually hid behind familiarity suddenly began yelling for attention.
Because the house was encased in concrete, there were no drafts to blow away the fug. It centered around her body, but the residue crept in everywhere. Every gross breath that Grainne exhaled joined into the overwhelming odor, infiltrating the whole property with its collective stench.
Still, there were a few inlets that provided her with air. Sneaky entry points that couldn’t be completely sealed without going to a lot more trouble than the government had bothered to demonstrate so far. There were small peaks and pokes of freshness. Tiny breaths that puffed out through the pipes when they weren’t being used up by running water. An outside breeze would occasionally poke up its chilly head through the open plughole in the sink. Not today, though. No matter how close she put her nostrils.
Grainne walked over to her favorite spot in the house. The downstairs washroom. Not a place usually associated with fresh and delightful scents but she kept it pristine by not using it for anything, ever. Except for moments, like now, when she popped her head inside to draw in a long, clean breath. Refreshed, she retreated before the air inside tangled with the outside cloud, rendering it unclean.
The toilet in next room along went unused as well. Not because of its sweet scent but because there was no door and a camera peered straight into it. Grainne had grown accustomed to many new experiences in the past few weeks, but some things could only be pushed so far.
The upstairs bathroom, with its shower and toilet placed in disconcerting proximity, was the room Grainne used for her ablutions. Washing her skin clean with the chemical-laden water. No soap because that had long ago run out. Just the motion of her dirty hands over her grimy body. When she finished, a threadbare towel would try its best to soak the moisture away.
That poor, sad towel. Soon it would join its siblings in the pile of laundry. Although Grainne washed them regularly, they were difficult to get dry. In the absence of light, drafts of air, a faint breeze to make them flutter, they hung lankly over the back of unused furniture. Eventually, they made the transformation from wet to damp. All the while soaking up odors from the enclosed space. With the cool nip of autumn taking leisurely bites out of the last remaining heat of summer, even that might become impossible. A pellet fire was her bastion against the cold if only there’d been fuel to burn.
If she survived the long winter ahead, come springtime Grainne could just stand naked in the shower. After turning the water off, the warmth of the room would dry her better than a dead-skin-cell laden towel.
If she could survive.
She walked back to her habitual spot on the sofa. Under a cloud of body odor that rose as Grainne took her seat was another, darker scent. One harder to catch, but ever present. The high tangy smell of fear, redolent in the air. She caught the whiff of it on the cushions, on her breath. It wafted up from the pillows when she woke every morning.
The laptop showed her friend’s obese body still tentatively balanced in the same position. Once again, Grainne reached out a fingertip to touch the brain matter clotted in the corner of her monitor. The gray clump didn’t move.
It wasn’t on her screen. It was on Jane’s.
Chapter Two
“If you look at it in an esoteric sense,” Mary said. “The story becomes even more interesting.”
Grainne stifled a yawn against the back of her hand and turned to look across the sun-drenched village square. She wasn’t sure what esoteric even meant, nor how it would fit in with the story they’d all just read. Nor would she ever learn the word now. Grainne made it a point to never look up any word that Mary introduced.
The light was drenched in a late summer glow of reds and yellows, edging close to fall. The shadows from their table had lengthened noticeably from where they’d been at the last book club meeting. The same square, the same café, once a week. Grainne could chart the changing seasons from the same seat, like slow motion photography taken to the extreme.
Mary droned on, always the bore, always the one to hold forth on any conversation. For crying out loud, they were a book club. Meeting up to talk about fiction because it was hard for lonely middle-aged women to make new friends.
Or, at least, middle-aged women who don’t have children or any other outside interests. If Grainne had chased bodily perfection like other women at her gym, perhaps she wouldn’t have spent so many lunchtimes snacking alone. She just went to her exercise classes because it seemed like a thing she should do. Duty stepping in where personal desire was found sorely lacking.
The only place she visited out of choice rather than a sense of doing the right thing was the library. For reading, she had a genuine passion. An exuberance that spilled over into long conversations with the young librarian. Too long, as it turned out. One day she was pointedly introduced to Emily and Jane, and then directed to a flyer on the wall advertising a book club, “Just for fun!”
Left to her own devices, Grainne would immediately have demurred. Out of an instinctual reaction to any flyer that felt the need to include an exclamation point, if nothing else. But by then they were shaking hands and nodding, and somebody said, “Yes, let’s do that. I know a great wee café on Ockham Square.” Before she knew it, two years had passed, and here they all still were.
Although Mary had been the one to pin up the flyer to begin with, the “just for fun” truly seemed to have flown straight over her head. If Grainne were in a mean mood, she could imagine Mary at home, plodding through each assigned tome with grim determination. Researching opinions online, rather than going to the effort of thinking up her own.
Only if she were in a mean mood, though. The rest of the time, Mary’s trite opinions passed by without raising even an eyebrow. Once the droning stopped, an actual conversation might begin to start.
“I liked the bit with the aliens,” Emily said, handing the conversation over to Grainne with a raised eyebrow. She also passed along a little eye roll, but not so large a gesture that the others would
notice. Emily was a hoot. Grainne smiled with gratitude and picked up the gambit before Mary could jump in with yet another lecture.
“Oh yes, I agree. ‘Have you mated, yet?’ has to be the best line.”
Jane reached across the table to snag the last chocolate chip cookie on the plate. The group always ordered up a full batch, a distraction from the conversation. No matter how many the café supplied, Jane always had room for one more.
“What did you think, Jane?” Emily asked.
The question ignited the same old twinge of jealousy in Grainne. No matter how many times she scolded herself for uncharitable thoughts, the reaction was the same. Seeing Emily’s eyes twinkle with the enjoyment of another person made Grainne’s cheeks flush red, and her heart beat a little harder. As though they were a couple, newly in love, and Jane was a passing handsome stranger.
Stupid, of course. If it had been a romance, then Grainne would have been outclassed years ago. She’d known Emily from the moment of the librarian’s introduction, and not a minute more. Jane, however, had the pleasure of Emily’s company for a good forty years longer. Their bonds ran deep, their entire lives from preschool onward, intertwined.
“I found it all a bit hard to follow,” Jane said through a mouthful of crumbs. Despite hoarding half a day’s worth of calories in its chocolatey goodness, it had already gone—demolished in the few seconds it took Emily to ask her question.
The sunshine was so warm and kind upon Grainne’s shoulders, she tilted her head back to let it gleam on her forehead. A treat. After so many years covering it up during cloistered life, to expose her brow to the sun was a joy she hadn’t known she was missing.
Of course, having her forehead covered all those long years meant the skin was now unblemished. Since there was no lover for it to be unblemished for, though, the effect was rather wasted.
Mary opened her ponderously dull mouth. “I think we should return—”
Light erupted from the ground. It flipped the table. Half of it landed three yards away. The rest rained down in jagged splinters.