by A. J. Downey
I stopped in front of my unnamed Barred Owl’s cage, Charlie ducked out of the barn and into the ever present light drizzle outside. I considered the owl who cooed softly at me, another odd occurrence. I sighed and looked around to make sure that Charlie was good and gone from hearing range.
“W-what’s your n-n-n-n-ame fella?” I asked softly.
When it was just me and the owls, away from human judgment, my stutter was much less. Psychogenic they called it, as opposed to neurogenic. It meant that there was nothing neurologically wrong with me or my brain to cause the stutter. No, mine was all in my head on a psychological level due to trauma. Not something I liked to think about or talk about.
The owl cocked its head almost all the way ‘round upside down, like they do sometimes, and considered me. It gave a familiar broken call and I smiled. That was where my initial love of owls had come from.
When my Aunt and Uncle had plucked me out of the temporary state custody I’d been in, I’d already been self-conscious of my speech by then. Aunt Margie and Uncle Dave were a childless couple by fate, not design. So when Uncle Dave’s niece, my mom had gotten into… trouble, and could no longer handle taking care of me, Aunt Margie had insisted that she and Uncle Dave come to the rescue. It was the kind of people they were and I loved them for it.
Unfortunately for me, going from life in the city to life here on the Olympic Peninsula was a lesson in culture shock. It was so quiet here at night, and the animal sounds from out there in the dark, terrifying at first. That was, until Uncle Dave told me the broken hooting I was hearing was an Owl, and he pointed out a ghost of a bird in one of our trees.
He told me that there was nothing to be afraid of, that the owl was just saying ‘Welcome to the neighborhood,’ that she just had a stutter like me. I think it was his attempt at telling me not to let my stutter get me down, that the animals didn’t but I was way beyond a small pep talk at that point.
The big Barred Owl hooted at me questioningly and I smiled. He was just so odd. It made me wonder about him even more. I pursed my lips in thought and rejected the notion of going into his enclosure for now. As human as his mannerisms were, he was still a bird of prey and as such pretty dangerous and unpredictable. I smiled at him and backed away. He ruffled his feathers and hunkered down on his perch, blinked and watched me go. He would be ready for release just as soon as I could get him back into flying form, so a month or more down the road.
I slipped out into the mist like rain, shutting and securing the old barn door behind me. I looked out over my small side yard at the two story Cedar shake sided house that had been lovingly built by my uncle for my aunt. I had taken over the master bedroom on the second story when they had cleared out. A small deck jutted out from the floor to ceiling windows to either side of the French doors.
I traipsed across the gravel drive and mounted the steps to the small deck two at a time. I wiped my boots carefully on the mat before letting myself in to my bedroom.
I took off my boots just inside the doors on the slate entryway before it transitioned into carpet. I took pains to keep the outdoors where they belonged and not in my house. I stepped into my rubber soled sheepskin slippers and padded across the floor to the bedroom door. My bedroom was technically on the side of the house, rather than the back or front. I took off my coat as I went down the stairs, hanging it carelessly on the banister as I passed into the kitchen. I set about making myself and Charlie some dinner, boiling water for hot tea.
After a time, he came in through the back door. I scowled and pointed at his boots. He laughed and took them off. I scowled again at his holey sock where his big toe poked through as he took a seat at the marble kitchen counter.
“That big, Barred bastard, is about ready to go into an aviary,” he grunted, and I smiled. The Barred Owl wasn’t exactly native to the Pacific Northwest and was forcing out the much rarer and endangered Northern Spotted Owl, both by killing the slightly smaller owl and by interbreeding with it. To quote the villain of the movie Braveheart, “If we can’t get them out, we’ll breed them out.”
In Charlie’s world Barred Owls were interlopers, forcing the native Spotted Owls from their rightful territory. I’d imagine, being Quilleute, hell, being Native, gave Charlie a stronger opinion than most about the subject, and rightfully so. Still, Charlie was like me, a firm believer that every creature great and small deserved to live with as pain free an existence as possible. The world was harsh enough without us adding to it.
That’s not to say we were vegetarians or anything close. We did have a deep respect for what we ate and as I dished up the salmon steaks and green beans we bowed our heads in a moment of silence, paying our respects to the creature we were about to consume.
“Gotta mend the south aviary tomorrow if you’re gonna start working that big Barred, getting him ready to fly.” He spoke around a mouthful of food and I rolled my eyes while simultaneously giving him a thumbs up. He laughed, knowing exactly what it was I meant. He didn’t apologize for talking with his mouth full, he just shoveled more into his maw and chewed with gusto.
I cooked, he cleaned. That was the deal around here. I poured us some steaming mugs of blackberry tea and added a generous amount of honey to both while he rinsed dishes and loaded the dishwasher. He’d be heading home in his big old Ford pickup soon. I’d told him he should just move into the downstairs room but he’d have none of it. Swearing he’d live on the res and die on the res which was a good forty minutes away.
I sighed and went into the living room, adding logs to the ravenous potbellied stove in the corner.
“Well, Jessa-my-girl, it’s time for me to haul my old bones back to the res.” Charlie stretched and dropped into one of the seats at the little dining nook. He laboriously began pulling on his old boots.
“You going into town tomorrow?” he asked. I swiped across my neck once, our sign for no. It was my day off, but he already knew that.
“All right then sweetheart, you going to help an old man get that aviary up and running?” I shrugged and raised three fingers and pumped my fist up and down twice, holding imaginary jesses. He raised an eyebrow. Right now we had five birds, three of which needed exercise which is what I’d just told him.
“Well, when you’re done you know where to find me at.” He grumbled and I smiled sweetly. I went over and gave him a hug. He went out the back door and around the house, boots crunching on the gravel drive. I closed the door and a moment later I heard his old Ford grumble to life.
I sighed and doused the lights on the first floor after setting the coffee pot for the morning.
Sometimes there weren’t enough hours in a day. Today had been no exception. Still, the birds and Charlie were fed and tomorrow was a new day. I shuffled up the stairs, leaving my coat behind and put myself squarely into a hot shower. As I climbed into bed I could hear the big Barred Owl all the way from the barn, his call clear and loud. Scientists call it the “Who cooks for you! Who cooks for you all?” which I thought was funny. It didn’t sound like that to me. To me it sounded like all was right in my world.
Hunter’s Choice is available on Amazon here.
Chapter 1
The ivy of despair had taken root in my chest months ago. There was nothing specific that had happened, that I can remember, that brought on my depression. I didn’t lose my job, or a boyfriend, no one had died, still, it had taken root within me somehow, and as the days grew shorter and the rains had come the vines had grown, constricting my heart within my chest, blocking out all light and anything that was good, and warm, and comforting. Things I had once taken great pleasure in doing, the restoration work I did at the museum, painting, the theater… all of it suddenly seemed dull and I just didn’t know what to do with myself.
Some of my acquaintances had stopped calling, I call them acquaintances rather than friends because true friends wouldn’t give up on someone simply because they were feeling blue, even if that blue period lasted longer than a few days or weeks… woul
d they? No. I don’t think so. Roxanne, my oldest and longest friend, my best friend, had not given up on me. She’d said to me: “Gracelyn, I’m here for you. No matter what, you just call me.” I had smiled and we had hugged but I didn’t know how to quantify what it was that I was feeling.
I was sad, all the time, but I didn’t know why I was sad. I hurt for no reason, cried for no reason, and I was tired all the time for no reason. I had finally gone to my doctor who had diagnosed me with depression. She’d given me pills, which I dutifully took, but they didn’t help. I felt lost and adrift and therapy wasn’t an option, not only was it not covered by my medical plan, you had to have a problem to work the problem out, didn’t you?
The heels of my boots clicked sharply against the pavement as I made my way home to my apartment. The January wind bit along the exposed skin of my face and I scrunched down further into the collar of my black winter pea coat.
I had no problems, I grew up in a loving home, raised by my grandparents after my parents had passed in a bad car accident… which is something I had come to grips with a very long time ago. While I had not been popular in school growing up, I hadn’t been unpopular. I’d had friends, gone to college, gotten my Masters in Science of Historic Preservation and was certified by The Academy of Certified Archivists and was working on a dream project preserving historical artifacts from an archeological dig. I mean what was more exciting than preserving artifacts from a Viking raid in Scotland?
I turned and clacked up the steps to my building and let myself in. I lived in a modest high rise apartment in a relatively quiet neighborhood… well as quiet as any neighborhood in New York could be. It was relatively close to the museum I worked out of, only two subway stops away. I could walk if I wanted to most days and I did, the life as an academic isn’t exactly an active one so I walked to and from work and ran two or three times a week to stay in shape. It was getting harder and harder to resist the call of the subway though as all the joy in my life slowly leeched away worse than the color out of a painting left too long in the sun.
I unlocked my apartment door and closed it heavily behind me, locking the deadbolt and leaning against its worn surface. I dropped my purse and tote bag in the entryway and my keys into their dish on the little hall table I kept near the door. I hung my coat and scarf on the back of the door and before I did anything, unzipped my riding style boots from knee to ankle and toed them off.
“I’m home.” I called to no one in particular. I lived alone. Hence why it didn’t really matter if I left all my stuff in front of the door. I padded in my tights clad feet to the kitchen and opened the fridge, then closed it with a groan. Who was I kidding? I wasn’t hungry. I used to enjoy cooking for myself but not since the black ivy of my depression started choking the life out of me last year. I went into my bedroom and undressed, hanging my black blouse, and deep green skirt, and jacket back in their places.
I peeled out of my tights and underwear after casually flipping my bra into the dirty laundry basket. The tangle of undergarments sulked on the top of the pile and I let them as I padded across the hall into my bathroom. I let the shower heat up, pulled some towels out of the linen cupboard and climbed in, letting the hot water beat my tense shoulders into some semblance of submission.
Today had been meeting after meeting with the walking wallets that were funding our project. I hated dealing with the suits with a passion, my time was better spent in the lab with the tools of my trade, brushing dirt away, recording details and small discoveries about whatever artifact happened to find its way to my worktable. My day had been especially frustrating due to the fact that what currently occupied my worktable was the hilt and a good third or more of a genuine Viking blade, circa the tenth century. That’s right, the tenth century… you know it gets exciting for a history nerd like me when you start dropping into the lowest double digits before the word century.
I plucked the hair band off the end of the long golden braid hanging over my right shoulder and worked the strands of my dishwater blonde hair out of their thick rope. The water against my scalp felt good, but maddeningly I remained numb and indifferent, which frustrated me. I scrubbed my hands over my face and stuck it in the shower spray, huffing out a sigh. It was late, I was tired and all I wanted was my bed so I decided to make some seriously quick work of this shower, lathering my hair and rinsing it quickly, I skipped the conditioner and used my honey and milk body wash equally as quickly in a quick head to toe lather with my bath poof. I rinsed well and shut off the water, reaching for a towel.
The storm of a meltdown was brewing, I could feel it in my chest, and behind my eyes. I didn’t want to cry, I didn’t want to be alone and yet I couldn’t help it, the tide of emotion was rising and I was about to be swamped. I wrapped the regular sized bath towel around my hair and twisted, straightening up and flopping it back turban style on my head. I used the bath sheet to dry my body, starting with my face before finally wrapping it around myself twice below my arm pits and tucking the corner tight so it wouldn’t slide off.
I wiped a streak in the steam coating my bathroom mirror with my hand and looked at myself. Cornflower blue eyes stared back at me, high cheekbones and a narrow chin bracketed a full mouth above and below. I was pretty by the generally accepted standard but I had never relied on it. I valued brains over looks and didn’t have time for people that wanted to base their opinion of me on my packaging rather than what I had to offer in the intellectual department. Sometimes it got lonely, okay most of the time it got lonely, especially after the black ivy of despair moved in on me. I used my Tuscan honey lotion on my hands, arms, and legs and wrung my hair tightly one last time with the towel before letting it down. It was a tangled mess of snakes and there was no way I could sleep on it this wet, so I brought out the brush and hair dryer.
I shouldn’t have skipped the conditioner. The brush snarled painfully in my locks and the sharp pain in my scalp brought the sting of tears to my eyes and that did it. The floodgates opened, the tide rose, crashed into my careful walls and decimated them with the force of a tsunami. A tsunami that pretty much poured out my eyes.
God damn it, I couldn’t do anything right!
I cried my tears and dried my hair, brushing through the snarls and the pain on autopilot. Once dry I pulled it over my shoulder and braided it quickly to keep it from being a nightmare in the morning. I tossed the towels into the dirty laundry once back in my room and slipped a satin and lace nightgown over my skin. All of my sleepwear is sexy, an indulgence, my underwear is much the same. It was something Roxy had talked me into trying. An attempt to drag me out from beneath my black cloud. At the time it had been a marginal success, but they’d just rolled right back in again.
What was wrong with me?
I crawled into bed beneath my thick down comforter and lay in the fluffy marshmallow softness of my bed. The tears welled hot and immediate and spilled over. I just wanted this to end so badly. I wanted the hurt to stop, I wanted to sleep forever. Nothing helped, not my friend, not my work, not the pills. I felt like I was going mad and the fight, well the fight to just get out of bed in the morning was becoming harder and harder. I just didn’t know how to cope with these feelings, and I didn’t know how much longer I could live like this. So I sobbed into my pillow and hugged another to me, helplessly caught up in the storm of my emotions. I don’t know how long I lay this way, weeping brokenly, alone in my apartment, but eventually, I fell asleep.
Heaven, Hell And The Love In Between is available on Amazon here.
About the Authors
A.J. Downey is a born and raised Seattle, WA native, and the author of the bestselling Sacred Hearts Motorcycle Club series. She finds inspiration from her surroundings, through the people she meets and likely as a byproduct of way too much caffeine. She has lived many places and done many things, though mostly through her own imagination. An avid reader all of her life, it’s now her turn to try and give back, entertaining as she has been entertained.
You can find her on Amazon here, and she blogs regularly at http://authorajdowney.blogspot.com. She also connects with her readers on Goodreads, Pinterest and YouTube. If you want the easy button digest, as well as a bunch of exclusive content you can’t get anywhere else, sign up for her mailing list right here.
A California native and avid reader, for Ryan Kells, making the transition from reader to writer was simply the next logical evolution. He enjoys a number of genres from paranormal suspense to dystopian post-apocalyptic. All of his work contains a romantic spin with a decidedly erotic flair.
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Published 2015 by Second Circle Press
Book design by Lia Rees at Free Your Words (www.freeyourwords.com)
Cover art by Cover Your Dreams (www.coveryourdreams.net)
Text copyright © 2015 AJ Downey, Ryan Kells
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
All Rights Reserved
Contents
Title Page
Book Summary
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20