Shades of Pink

by 33 authors

  Calliope. Her child. Her only child. A child she’d been forced to bear in secret by command of Zeus. The Greek King of the Gods had been so angry, livid and full of rage that hadn’t lessened over the years. She’d given birth prematurely on the lonely island of Naxos. It’d been deserted not long after the Summit all those years ago. She’d hidden there with none to aid her or help her. Zeus had told the others she was on a mission for him and none questioned the Greek God. None dared. She’d held the sweet infant for only a moment, had seen the brilliance of her eyes, the stamp of her divine heritage from Clotho. Her hair was darkest blonde, like her father’s...like Dagr’s. Zeus had taken the squirming baby and left, returning shortly with the short, terse information that he’d put the child into the womb of Dagr’s new bride, her old friend Keely. Once Zeus discovered the young Fate’s condition, his thoughts centered on that and he forgot about the pressing need to gift his son with the Princess of Thasos. At the time Clotho gave birth, Keely herself was heavy with child. When the time came, she gave birth to twins, a boy and girl, Zola and Calliope. No one had been the wiser, the fact that Dagr’s daughter had pink eyes was chalked up to the fact he was the grandson of Odin and therefore, his blood was divine in nature.

  So much had happened since then. Dynasties had risen and fallen, kings and queens too. The world had changed, mankind had progressed and regressed countless times.

  The Fates had been busy.

  But in the early moments of the morning or the late stillness of the night, Clotho had thought always of her precious Calliope. Zeus had given her strict instructions to leave the girl alone, have no contact with her. He would kill her. He could do that. And Clotho could do nothing since she had sworn to never raise a hand against Zeus. Ever. For love of her daughter, she stayed invisible but took small measures when she could to ensure the girl’s happiness on some base levels. But of course, eventually, Calliope had passed on, leaving behind children and grandchildren. All of Greece and Norway mourned her passing and the mother she never knew wallowed in grief for centuries. She’d wanted to bring Calliope to Elysian Fields but was denied. Calliope was part Norse, and since no one knew Clotho was her true mother, she went the way of her father’s people in death, she went to Hel.

  And now, eons later, Odin had named a successor to his own immortal throne. He was tired. He wanted peace and to live forevermore in Valhalla. The affairs of Gods and Men meant little to him now. Many thought he’d leave the crown to Thor or Balder. Maybe even Tyr. But he surprised them all by giving it to Dagr. His grandson to whom he’d given immortality after Dagr’s wife had died.

  It was Dagr who now awaited her on Mytikes. Whatever innocent affection she’d borne the Norseman all those years ago was gone. She didn’t hate him, how could she? He’d been a good father to Calliope and his other children. She couldn’t fault him for that despite any other character defects he may have had.

  They’d been mere children then.

  “CLOTHO!”

  The shout made her jump as Zeus bellowed through her head again and in the next heartbeat, she stood on Mytikes, facing the small crowd of witnesses who all turned to look her way. Dagr, standing at Zeus’s side, looked older but every inch a kingly warrior, his handsome face remaining blank even as his eyes held hers. He didn’t want to do this any more than she, she could feel it. So, why?

  And then her heart stopped for one painful moment when a dark head peered around Dagr’s shoulder. She was assailed by pain and a fresh wave of tender regret as a pair of cut glass green eyes pierced her for countless seconds.

  Soren. Oh Gods, she should have remembered the tragedy that had granted him immortality as well.

  Soren.

  The love of her very long life. He just didn’t know it.

  And now she was about to tie herself to his King God, his heart brother, his Lord Prince.

  Her feet moved clumsily forward.

  ~~~

  Torie James lives in Southern California physically but spends more time inside her head where the voices are real, the dreams are bright and the stories keep unfolding. Co-Author of Whispers in the Dark, an epic poetry book along Stacy Moran and Ashley Nemer, Ms. James’ debut novel, Timeless Night hits the public in September 2013. If you want to follow along on the bumpy Whirl-a-gig that is her life, you can follow along at https://www.facebook.com/TorieNJames.

  OLIVIA

  Madeline Sheehan

  Home. What is home—where your family lives or a state of mind?

  The whispers, judgment, sting of reality—that was why I left my home. When I did, I had life experiences most only dream about…until something rocked my world.

  This is my journey, and it led me to the last place I ever expected.

  ~~~

  They say you can never go home again. At least, Thomas Wolfe said it once and someone else agreed, and so on until it became a famous and overused quote found in movies and books, and yelled from the mouths of homeless men on street corners. It has even been tossed around in New Age coffee shops by faux existentialists who wanted to appear deeper than they actually were in a pathetic attempt to fill a void caused by society’s exhausting and debilitating attempts at turning mankind into thoughtless, nameless, faceless robots consumed by consumerism.

  But I digress.

  Regardless of who said it, in what context or for whatever reason, and despite the countless ways it can forever be interpreted…

  It just plain isn’t true.

  Because one can in fact go home again.

  Okay, so maybe you can’t actually go to your actual home because, say, your house burned down or an atom bomb took out not only your house but the entire town you lived in and therefore you literally have no home.

  But that’s neither here nor there.

  What’s here is George Webber and George Webber apparently couldn’t go home again.

  But everyone else can.

  We can physically get in a car, on a plane or bus or train, hop on a bike, put on our running shoes and literally…go home.

  In all probability, George Webber could go home again too.

  Although George Webber was a fictional character birthed from the mind of Thomas Wolfe, who may or may not have been speaking from personal experience, I assume the statement referred to Webber’s emotional home, not his literal one, meaning that his past was just that. His past. He couldn’t go back.

  Back to my point.

  Home. What is home?

  Is it the actual four walls with a roof that sheltered you as you were raised? Is it the town or city where you grew up? Is it wherever your family is, or maybe your friends? Or is home simply a state of mind?

  The answer is…

  I don’t know.

  I’m not even sure there is an answer. I think home may very well be a subjective term, different for each and every individual. Home could be the farm where you grew up, or the new house you just bought. Or home could be wherever your mother is. Or your dog. Or your favorite blanket.

  Home could be lying in the middle of a wheat field, your eyes closed, the sun warming your bare arms and legs, listening to the sweet, simple sound of…nothing.

  Do we usually associate home with happiness?

  I guess it depends on whether you’re the glass is half full or half empty kind of person. Or whether your father beat you, or your mother was a street whore who smoked meth and brought home strange men with less-than-honorable intentions.

  Not that I know anything about either of those scenarios. I was born and raised in a small town in upstate New York. The only thing my father ever beat on was the cars and trucks he worked on at his auto body shop, and my mother was the furthest thing from a meth-head street whore. No, my mother was a combination of Mary Poppins, Betty Crocker, and June Cleaver. My two siblings, an older sister and a younger brother, were both carbon copies of our parents who settled without question into the same sort of life.

  My sister actually bought the house two doors down from
my parents, and my brother bought one only three blocks away. Both my siblings married, had children of their own, a dog and a cat, white picket fences and neatly mowed lawns, decorative mailboxes, and quite possibly a garden gnome or two.

  Often I envision them having block parties and family barbeques, the children playing while the adults sip beers, halfheartedly argue politics, and laughingly complain about their expanding waistlines.

  And then there was me.

  The odd one out. The black sheep. The misunderstood sort of girl that small town residents whisper loudly about as she passes by.

  “Drugs…it has to be drugs.”

  “Television is to blame, I tell ya. Too much television.”

  “It’s her parents I feel sorry for. Having to be seen in public with her. Can you imagine?”

  “She’s a Satanist. I saw a special the other night about teenagers who killed a man and drank his blood. One of these days we’ll be watching a special like that about her.”

  Now, you’re probably thinking I was some white-faced, robe-wearing, Marilyn Manson-obsessed Goth freak when in all actuality I was simply a tee shirt and jeans kind of girl who happened to have her nose pierced. Just because I wasn’t a real big fan of the color pink didn’t mean I wore studded leather collars. I didn’t even have a defiant streak of color in my hair, just a tiny little silver nose stud that was hardly noticeable unless you were standing right next to me.

  Total. Freak. Right?

  No.

  I was a quiet kid. I thought more than I spoke, read books more than I watched television.

  But the thing I did most was watch people. I studied them, tried to figure them out, attempted to dissect who they really were underneath the façade. I didn’t realize until I was older that this made people infinitely uncomfortable. And once I realized this—how truly afraid of being revealed everyone around me truly was—I retreated further into my own world, daydreaming of the day I could finally leave.

  During my eighteen-year stint in hometown purgatory, my differentness resulted in a sum total of zero boyfriends and even fewer friends. No one asked me out on dates, to dances, or to the prom. I refused to attend graduation for the sole reason that no one was going to applaud when my name was called. The hometown folks in the audience would just whisper and stare and continue to make irrational assumptions about my demented and disturbing future…if I lived to see thirty, which was a very big “if” in their opinion.

  So I left. Emptied out my college fund that my long dead grandmother gave to each of us kids, got into my crappy little ’88 Chevy Cavalier, and left. No destination, no plan, nothing.

  There was no real reason, nothing particularly traumatic I was running away from. Instead my motivation was a culmination of…nothing. I was bored. Nothing interested me, and the thought of ending up like my parents—living in that town for the rest of my life—seemed unacceptable.

  I never said good-bye.

  I bummed around for a while, making friends in the strangest places, divesting myself of my virginity as quickly as possible. Who knew hippie communes still existed in modern society? I turned to nature for a while, lived off the land, meditating and engaging in supposedly spiritually awakening sex acts with both men and women.

  After countless orgies, far too much marijuana, and ingesting enough hallucinogenic drugs to be considered legally insane, I grew weary of the hedonistic life and hit the road again.

  When my car broke down and the money was gone, I started hitchhiking, bouncing from truck stops to homeless shelters, working odd jobs along the way. But no matter how broke I was, how desolate the future looked, I never once considered going home. I was determined to find a life for myself, one that satisfied me, one that had nothing to do with where I came from.

  Eventually I ended up in the Midwest where I laid down some roots, bartended for a while, and dated an honest-to-God cowboy complete with a horse ranch, a pickup truck, and a ten-gallon hat.

  On the verge of taking my cowboy up on his offer to move in with him, I was having a particularly busy night at work when my interest was piqued by an out-of-town band that just so happened to be performing at the bar.

  Following far too many tequila shots, I took both the lead singer and the drummer home with me where we proceeded to have hours of messy, no-holds-barred, drunken sex, after which I packed up my duffle bag, hopped in their tour van, and hit the road again.

  I worked as a roadie for a while, jumping from band to band, man to man, wherever the wind took me. I dyed my hair every color of the rainbow, had more body piercings than I could count, and added quite a few large, elaborate tattoos.

  Eventually, suffering from a healthy appetite for cocaine, I ended up running into my Midwest drummer from way back when. He was famous by then, drowning in money and women, and I was broke and bored, addicted to drugs, uncaring where or with whom I ended up.

  I danced along the red carpet with him for a while, indulging in the decadent debauchery that was the rich-and-famous lifestyle, covered in head-to-toe excess from my designer clothing to the extraordinarily large and elaborate pink diamond engagement ring on my finger.

  And of course, there were the drugs.

  I lived this way until one morning I awoke with the sinking feeling that if I continued down this path, I would end up cutting short this wild ride of mine.

  That same afternoon I hopped off the tour bus, dropped my engagement ring inside the first mailbox I saw, and checked myself into a rehab in Colorado.

  Three months of being clean and sober later, I hopped on a different kind of bus, this one with a greyhound on its side, and headed back toward the East Coast. I’d been in New York City only five minutes when I snatched the first help-needed sign I saw off the door it was taped to and handed it to the man behind the counter. Some fast talking and a blow job later, I began an apprenticeship at a tattoo shop in Brooklyn.

  Life was simple for a while. I worked and made a few friends. My steady job made me enough money to keep the electricity on in my tiny one-room apartment, and food on the kitchen table I hadn’t yet gotten around to buying.

  In my down time, I started writing. Journaling. Writing it all down. People, places, drugs, jobs, sex, love and hate, friends and foes, my happy times, my sad times, the times I thought I’d never feel more alive, and the times I thought I might die from despair. I wrote it all down. From beginning to end and everything in between.

  Three hundred thousand words later, give or take a couple hundred, and five months spent trying to come up with a title for it, I mulled around several stellar choices like Diary of a Mad Woman or The Ravings of a Lunatic or This is What Happens When You Give Crazy People Computers before finally settling on…Olivia.

  I’ll admit, it was neither a very original nor eye-catching title. It is in fact my name, the first half of it, anyway. And without anything better to call the mishmash of words that had taken me nearly two years to put in any sort of coherent order, I settled on my name since the mishmash was in fact all about me. Olivia.

  And after all that…I was the proud owner of a self-published e-book.

  I smiled at myself in the mirror, patted myself on the back, and went on about my daily life without giving my electronic ramblings a second thought.

  That is, until huge deposits of money began appearing in my bank account. Soon agents and publishers were e-mailing me, calling me, offering me deals and yammering on about contracts and this and that until my head was spinning, splitting, and finally exploding.

  One agent and a publishing deal later, I hit the New York Times Best Seller List and that’s when the shit really hit the fan. First it was book signings, then Good Morning America and the whole talk show circuit. Then Oprah was calling me, or one of her many assistants, requesting my presence on her show.

  I had suddenly been dubbed:

  “The most interesting woman alive.”

  “A true American gypsy.”

  “…quite possibly a contender for
the next great American novel.”

  With a giant eye roll to the world, I bought a studio in Manhattan and started writing another book, this one about the mismanagement of priorities in modern American society.

  It was an angry, one-sided, spiteful, hate-filled account of my feelings on pop culture and its Nazi-esque enforcers. On release day, the book hit number one on every best seller list in a matter of hours, further proving just how close to home my angry rants really hit.

  Then it was Bill Maher and Barbara Walters who wanted to talk to me. But I knew what they really wanted was to have a public battle of wills, a controversial bicker-filled debate that would bump up their ratings.

  So I declined, honestly afraid if I took that next step I was going to end up with my own reality television show or something equally as ridiculous.

  After that I stopped writing and started playing. Since I had more money than I knew what to do with, the world became one giant playground as I crossed off all the "must sees before you die." During my travels I dated two actors, an underwear model, a multibillionaire who fronted as a coffee shop manager, a famous painter, and a woman nearly fifteen years older than me. None of them were nearly as interesting as their job titles, and with each failed relationship I grew more and more jaded until I eventually gave up on relationships altogether.

  By the time I was twenty-nine, I’d given up on humanity as a whole and rarely left my apartment for anything other than survival necessities. While hiding from the world, I started writing again, this time fiction. I penned several romance novels, written under various pen names that all did well, had strong followings, and gave me the escape from the bitter sting of reality that I needed.

  The day after I turned thirty I left New York, bound for North Carolina. I bought an old bed and breakfast on the Outer Banks where the off-season population neared zero. I continued writing, this time horror, a genre that allowed me to effectively release my frustration, boredom, and overall unhappiness with my existence in the form of blood, guts, betrayal, and murder.