Here’s a new episode in the blog series, FIRST CHAPTERS. It’s the first exciting chapters in each book in the Micah Reed series! Expect a new one each week.
To see all posts in the First Chapter series, click here.
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PROLOGUE
Boba Fett hasn’t spoken to me all day long. I’m not sure where we stand anymore.
I clutch the sides of the sink in the bathroom until I can no longer feel my hands. Mouth so dry I can’t swallow. I fear if I release, I might fly up and hit the ceiling. My heart screams in my chest, and I hardly hear anything else. Tha-bump. Tha-bump. Tha-bump.
My sinus passages feel clogged and my throat numb. Nothing in my body works correctly.
I stare at the inside of the sink as little droplets of blood jump from the end of my nose and plummet to the basin. Splot. Splot. Splot. The droplets of blood flow into pools and mix with the running water to form strings of pink and red as they circle the drain. Fractals and other patterns emerge in the streams. That one looks like a windmill. That one looks like argyle. As the designs swirl, the colors spread and change, the droplets of my vitality turning gray, and orange, then red, then black, palpitating between each different hue.
I look at myself in the mirror, and I don’t recognize the face looking back; it appears to be that of a stranger. My pupils have dilated like two black marbles inside slim rings. The eyebrows look wrong; too thin. The hair is brown and always has been, but it’s someone else’s hair. Like a wig.
In prison, I used to stare at my hairline in the mirror and panic at the thought of it receding. I used to dig through chunks of brown to scout any gray. Now that I’m on the downslope toward thirty, I don’t think about it. The descent to old age is inevitable. If this is me I’m seeing, that is.
Who is that person in the mirror?
“Micah Reed,” I say. “Your name is Micah Reed. Not Michael. Micah.”
Is that me? How can it be? That’s not what I look like. If it’s not me, then has someone else invaded the bathroom and found a way to enter the mirror and match my every movement?
You’re going to die. You’re going to die in this bathroom cage, and you don’t even recognize your own reflection.
Those words didn’t come from my lips, but they appear in my head as if someone said them. Who’s inside my head? Who has wormed their way in through an open orifice?
I release my grip on the sink and stumble onto the toilet, sitting down with a thud. My limbs and torso have become exceptionally dense, and I don’t know if I can rise to my feet ever again. I’m an elephant. Not literally, that would be crazy. But I am as heavy as one.
Each time my lungs expand, I can feel a thousand pounds of pressure building up in my chest cavity. It’s an immense burden to operate this body.
But, am I even in control of this body?
I am trapped inside it. Without warning, my chest lurches and the alien trying to escape my stomach roars as I vomit on the floor. Some of it only makes it as far as my throat, and I gulp that back down. Like swallowing fire, I moan from the burning, acidic sensation. A quiver signals the activation of my salivary glands, and rivers of spit fill my mouth. I lean over and let the spit dribble out. Drip drip drip. I study the vomit on the floor and see mutating fractals again.
Hello there, fractals.
Some form of ordered chaos exists in the patterns. Did I create the fractals or do they live there already, and I discovered them after the fact?
The fractals in the vomit radiate colors, shifting from brown and green to blue and orange and back again. In the fractals, I see the answer to every question I’ve ever asked. Now if I just had the key. I can’t translate.
I lower myself from the toilet to the floor, trying to avoid the pulsing, ever-changing mess I’ve made. I curl up on my side and enjoy the sensation of cold tile against my arms and head. The tile pushes against me as I push against it. Action and reaction.
The shoebox is on the floor next to me, and I remove a photograph from the top. Me and Pug in Utah, when my name was Michael McBriar. Before my arrest, before prison. Before we had any idea what was happening around us. Before moving to Denver against my will. Before Gavin Belmont and all the other insanity in my life.
A different sort of insanity then. In the picture, Pug and I are at the campsite in the desert, him smiling, dashing and handsome. Me, exhausted after hiking all morning to arrive at our destination. I didn’t realize then what would happen out there in the desert, how much we would be tested over the next couple of days. How everything we thought we believed about everything would turn out to be wrong.
The person in the picture with his arm around me is dead. I can’t fathom that fact. Don’t want to say his name or even think it.
I want a device to wipe it from my memory. Alcohol alone hasn’t worked.
I push myself to my feet and return the picture to the shoebox. Then I stash the shoebox in the cabinet above the sink, behind the bottles of cleaning liquid. The names on the bottles swirl, like they’re floating in space.
I stumble out of the bathroom, into the cabin of the recreational vehicle, and each foot lands heavy as I make my way to the door. Everyone is gone, for a change. In this rare moment, the RV is quiet, a mobile house. A machine for good instead of evil.
Out into the night air of the trailer park, it’s crisp. Almost cold. The trees sway in the breeze, branches like limbs slashing the air. Doing a dance with themselves, warding off the evil spirits.
Upon the hill, the house sits. I try not to think about what I saw there earlier today. The confusion and indecision I felt. But I can hear the screams in my memories. They won’t go away, no matter what I do.
I’m trapped inside the screams. The screams have become me.
My stomach wants to turn again. My head feels too heavy to sit atop my body. Where is everyone else? Why is no one else out tonight in the trailer park?
Then, behind me, Ash’s shotgun cocks. It’s a sound I don’t have to guess. It comes as easily as the resonance of a dog barking or a door slamming shut. I can see it with my mind’s eye, clutched in a pair of intense hands.
I turn to see the man glowering at me. He levels the shotgun at my head. He says nothing at first, but he doesn’t have to. I know he wants to kill me, and I know exactly why. It’s my own curiosity and meddling that has brought us to this place.
I know tonight I will die out here in this trailer park.
