Heresy of Dragons

by Erik Reid

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  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

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2019 Erik Reid.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication, including the cover, formatting, or images presented, may be used, copied, disseminated, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or reproduced by any electronic or non-electronic means, or in any form whatsoever, without consent from the copyright owner.

  This writing is purely a work of fiction. Names, places, people, characters, incidents, and unintentional likenesses are solely the result of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously.

  CHAPTER 1

  Here she comes.

  The sun sank in the sky behind her, casting a warm orange glow and highlighting the one lonely cloud that wafted in from the horizon. It also lit Jasmine from behind, turning her into a smoking hot silhouette. High heels tightened her bare calves as she strutted toward me in a short skirt and a skimpy top that clung to her chest and left just an inch of her lower stomach exposed.

  I set down my bolt cutters, resting them against the base of a metal fence at the parking lot’s edge. The padlock I had clipped apart already lay in halves on the pavement and now I leaned against a sturdy pole and watched my date approach.

  My hand slid into my jeans pocket and pulled my phone out. Even with her face shadowed by the sun’s backlighting, something didn’t quite seem right. Glancing down at the screen, I swiped my thumb a few times and brought up the dating app.

  User: Jasmine Contreras

  Height: 5’10”

  Weight: 132 lbs.

  No worries there. Her stats seemed to match the woman that strode toward me.

  I scrolled through a few of her pictures next, flipping past sexy little poses and photos of her out in nature. Cliffside yoga photographed from ten yards away… A shot of her kayaking down a rushing river with a helmet and life jacket… A photo of her tight, round ass as she hiked away from the camera, deeper into some forest or other.

  Bingo. This is what I was looking for: a close-up of her face.

  “Kyle?” she asked, hugging her own bare arms to shield herself from a cool evening breeze that swept across the empty parking lot. She stepped to the side, avoiding a thick patch of wild grasses that found a home inside one of the cracks that stretched across the neglected pavement.

  “Yes,” I said, still leaning in place next to the bolt cutters I left resting against the chain link fence. I squinted against the reduced light, openly staring at her face as she neared.

  She looked nothing like her picture. Goddamned photo filters. I should have realized it sooner, the perfect skin, the wide innocent eyes, the soft touch of pink across her cheeks. It wasn’t makeup or good lighting, it was all a manipulation. A lie. She had even altered the slope of her jawline and the shape of her chin.

  I turned the brightness up on my screen and looked down at it until the clacking of her heels on the pavement stopped.

  “Jasmine, right?” I asked, holding up the perfect image of her smiling fraudulent face. It was an accusation, but she didn’t take it as one.

  “Yes,” she said, flashing her bleached teeth in a wide grin. “I’m so happy to meet you, you look just like your pictures. It’s such a relief.”

  “You don’t say,” I replied.

  In reality, she was pretty enough without using apps to retouch her photos and make her eyes look larger and her lips fuller. Her face was round and bright. Long eyelashes framed brown eyes that matched the dark hair she wore in a tight ponytail. Plus, her body was round where it should be round, and flat where it should be flat. She was a liar, but still a sexy one.

  I tried to shake off the image of her I had in my head and give her a chance. If the date went badly, we might still hook up before we went our separate ways and I didn’t want to ruin that for myself.

  I deserved a little action, no strings attached.

  She held a hand toward me and I took it, rubbing my thumb against the soft, supple skin of the back of her hand while we shook out our introduction, oddly businesslike.

  The sleeve of my hoodie slipped down my arm as we shook hands, revealing a small hole and a large dark stain that had turned the red fabric brown.

  “Nice jacket,” she said, raising an eyebrow and puckering up her lips like someone had just popped a sour patch candy into her mouth unannounced.

  “Nice face,” I replied.

  “Excuse me?” she asked.

  “Just exchanging genuine compliments with you. You’re very pretty.” I deadpanned it, leaving no hint of sarcasm.

  “Oh,” she said. “Yeah, I get that a lot. I didn’t really think your sweatshirt was nice though, it’s all torn and dirty. What did you spill on yourself, coffee?”

  “Dr. Pepper,” I said. “One of those 23 flavors sure knows how to leave a stain.”

  “It’s gross.”

  “It is what it is,” I said, “but if you’re going to try to change me, woman, wait until the second date.” I gave her a wink and she forced a laugh. This was going to be like pulling teeth, but I was committed to seeing it through. Never start a game you don’t intend to finish.

  “Shall we?” I asked.

  Jasmine’s smile fell away as she glanced behind me. “I thought you said this was an amusement park.”

  “It was,” I replied. “Twenty years ago before it was shut down for faulty rides, injuries, and the ensuing lawsuits. It’s been left to rust ever since. I told you I do this sort of thing, remember? You thought it was cool.”

  “Breaking into abandoned places?” she asked. “I don’t really think it’s cool, I was just being nice. That’s what you do on those apps.”

  Right. People lie.

  “Maybe I can change your mind about that,” I said. “Rumor has it, a kid died in this park before it was shut down. Poor little Mikey, he may still be haunting it now. Think we can find him?”

  “Oh, come on,” she said, hugging her arms again and rubbing them for warmth. “Let’s go get a drink instead. Or see a movie. Anything else.”

  I reached for her hand, prying it away from her upper arm and pulling her toward the metal entrance arch. Her skin prickled into goosebumps, but her feet shuffled forward as I drew her into Thrillville, past a faded sign that preserved the theme park’s ancient advertising that read, “Northeastern Indiana’s number one spot for loops and drops. There’s no place like Thrillville!”

  It had been the only rollercoaster park in this area of the state at the time, and technically it still was. At least Thrillville knew how to sell itself without bending the truth.

  Deep within the dark labyrinth of abandoned metal rides, rusted metal creaked and sighed. The night wind wasn’t strong, but these derelict scaffolds of neglected iron groaned anyway.

  Some might hear those as sounds of warning. I took them as an invitation.

  “I’ve
wanted to check this place out for a long time now,” I said. “I was waiting for the right girl to share it with, but I can’t wait forever, can I?”

  “Thanks,” she said. “I think.”

  We strolled past a rotting ticket booth and into a wide area surrounded by gift shops with boarded up windows and doors, but the paint hadn’t fully chipped away from their wooden façades yet. Periwinkle, goldenrod, and cotton candy pink still speckled these buildings, faded from decades of exposure to the unforgiving sun.

  “What do you even like about this sort of thing?” she asked. “It’s cold and… eerie.”

  It was a little cold. That’s why I wore actual clothing on our date, not that I was complaining about how much of Jasmine was currently on display. It was just chilly enough to force her nipples to harden against her shirt and I wasn’t such a gentleman that I refrained from looking.

  “A place like this reminds me how fleeting everything is,” I said. “One day, this park was full of families and children, shouting and running, eating funnel cake and enjoying the rides. The next, this place was shuttered up forever.”

  “I get it,” she said. “You like to live in the moment.”

  “It’s more than that,” I said. “This place holds some of the happiest memories of those kids’ lives. Except for the ones that got injured, and maimed, and killed by defective rides. Like little Mikey.

  “Some asshole adult built this place, told people it was safe when it wasn’t, and kept the doors open even after the first few people got hurt because he wanted to make his money.

  “Whatever he earned was built on lies. Filthy dangerous lies. Aren’t liars just the worst?”

  “I guess,” she said.

  “All the artifice is gone now,” I said. “This place isn’t hiding anything anymore. If we want its secrets, they’re ripe for the picking. That’s what I like. It’s naked now. It’s at peace with itself, flaws and all.”

  We pressed onward and I pointed to a sign that said “Sidewinder.”

  “This park had eight rollercoasters,” I said. “That’s sort of a big deal for twenty years ago. And this was the tallest. I looked the whole place up on Wikipedia, and a few message boards I lurk around on. It’s important to research these places ahead of time, in case there’s anything too dangerous.”

  A solid gust of wind buffeted us from the side and elicited a loud creaking groan from Sidewinder. The metal casings on the apex of its only full loop rattled and shifted as we watched.

  “It’s getting colder,” Jasmine said. “And what do you mean too dangerous? If this is any dangerous we should just go. You saw your little theme park, mission accomplished. Let’s get a hot meal.”

  “We’re just getting started,” I said. “This is Thrillville, Jasmine. Let’s get thrilled.”

  We walked further into the depths of the park. The sun was closer to setting now, and it begrudged us the benefit of its guiding light. What few rays still angled toward us were reduced by the occasional buildings and rides that blocked them.

  “That pavilion,” I said. “It must have been a food court at some point.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “So cool.”

  “See, your words say ‘so cool,’ but your tone says, ‘hard pass.’ ”

  “I don’t see what’s fun about this,” she said. “And you do it, like, all the time?”

  “When I can,” I said. “It’s about going where other people won’t, or can’t. It’s about seeing something old in a way that’s totally new. It’s discovery, plain and simple. That’s why it’s called urban exploration. You know, I’m basically the Magellan of northeastern Indiana.”

  “Someone else has already discovered this,” she said. “Look at all the graffiti.”

  “You mean art,” I said. “But yeah, places like this attract that element too.”

  She stopped walking and scanned the dormant rides around us. They each creaked in a different pitch, providing a faint chorus of struggling metallic sounds. “Is this illegal?” she asked.

  “Do I look like a lawyer to you?” I replied. She opened her mouth to respond, but changed her mind.

  “Forget it,” she said, reaching into her purse for her phone. She fidgeted at the screen while she spoke. “If it’s illegal I don’t want to know. You get fifteen more minutes of this and then I want a proper date. Or a cab home, before it starts raining.”

  I shot a suspicious glance skyward at the one large cloud that seemed to double in size over the last few minutes. “I guess I should have checked the weather more closely,” I said. “It was such a nice day, I didn’t see a storm catching us.”

  “But you did wear a hoodie,” she said. “And I didn’t. Oh!”

  She gasped and lifted one foot slowly, stretching a long strand of industrial-strength gunk from the pavement to the spike of her heel. It was thick and amber-brown.

  “You got something on your shoe,” I said.

  “No shit,” she replied.

  “No shit, but yes unidentifiable goop,” I said.

  She half-hopped forward, careful not to set that foot back down on the pavement and smoosh that sticky gunk further into her precious shoe.

  She found a crack in the blacktop that formed a miniature crevice and hobbled toward it. She sank her heel into its depths, scraping the sides against the crumbling pavement and the long, coarse weeds that grew in the minor trench there. She held onto her phone the whole time she struggled to clean her heel off, teetering on one heel while trying to scrape the other one bare.

  How she managed to keep her balance, I couldn’t imagine. That’s because my imagination was busy on other things, like storing the image of her hunched-over body shimmying with gusto. She bent over while she worked, shaking her round, firm rear from side to side and wriggling around to really work her shoe clean.

  “I don’t even know what I stepped in,” she said.

  “Karma,” I replied.

  “What?”

  “Caramel,” I said. “Just a guess. Here.” I stepped forward and gripped her upper arms to steady her body so she could work harder. I made sure to angle myself so I had a clear line of vision down her front. No sense in letting a good view go to waste.

  “Your hands are warm,” she said. “It must be nice to have sleeves, even if they are torn and in need of some stain removal.” She glanced at the dark splotch on my red hoodie again before looking away.

  “It is nice,” I said.

  Chivalry is stupid. I would not give her my hoodie just because she was a girl. If she was nice to me, and if I thought I wanted to foster a real bond here, maybe I’d make that kind of gesture, but she had insulted my favorite sweatshirt. She didn’t get to wear it now.

  “Let’s duck inside one of these buildings when you’re done cleaning up,” I said. “Get out of the wind, find someplace I can keep you warm.”

  “Just let me take a selfie first,” she said. “The sun’s almost gone, but the lighting should still be enough for an evening glamour shot.”

  “An evening… whatever,” I said. “You do you.” And then you can do me, I thought, walking a few steps away to let Jasmine work her dopey photo magic.

  She found a soft beam of evening sunlight that lit the ground like a spotlight beneath a cracked wooden sign. It was shaped like an upright hot dog with arms and legs, likely drawing hungry children and their adults to a cheap, walkable meal. The carved letters once had golden paint on them, but now only a trace of that color remained. It wasn’t worth the effort to decipher its once-upon-a-name.

  Jasmine puckered her lips and snapped a few shots in exactly the same angle as the doctored photo she put on her dating profile. She then brought the phone right up to her face and got to work.

  I couldn’t watch this. All the pinching and zooming on her screen — she was doing it again. Taking a perfectly good picture and stretching her features until she was an augmented-reality version of herself.

  A new text message buzzed my own cell phone, setting
off a short burst of vibration in my jeans pocket.

  Selena: How’s the date going? Did she kill you and eat you yet?

  I laughed to myself. Selena was my oldest friend, and she worried about me way too much.

  Kyle: I think this one’s a dud.

  Selena: Yeah, well, it’s a bad sign that you’re texting me while you’re out with NatureLover69.

  Kyle: That’s not her handle.

  Selena: It might as well be. She wears too much makeup for all those outdoorsy photos. She’s trying too hard to be something she’s not.

  Kyle: That’s the problem. I’m not sure she is anything.

  Selena: Ditch her. Come to my house for a movie night. I’m marathoning every MCU movie again in proper chronological order before I’ll let myself watch Endgame again. Just buy some popcorn on the way here because I’m all out.

  Kyle: I’m not ditching her. She won’t be the mother of my children, but I can still get something out of this night.

  Selena: Ew. Gross, but whatever. Go indulge your lizard brain for a while. Then come over! Seriously. Movie night is better with you here.

  A photo popped up with Selena in thick-rimmed glasses and no makeup with her hands held together as if praying for me to hang out with her. Her long blonde hair was all over the place and her loose breasts separated to the sides under her oversized Hulk T-shirt. She wore it ironically, of course. It was our least favorite of the MCU movies.

  Kyle: I’ll try. Thrillville isn’t exactly next door, and there’s a storm brewing.

  Selena: Haha. Right. There is exactly one cloud in the sky and the weather channel says 0% chance of rain for the next three days. Your excuse game is weak, bro.