Penname Project

Hello all! I'm trying something new -- probably under a penname. I figured I'd share and see if you all are interested. Thoughts? Comments? Thanks! 

Chapter 1

The last thing I expected when pulling down Chuck Stanley’s pants was the scream in the back of my head and a sensation of drowning. I’d been hungry for him, truly, excited to bring him into my room and show him that we were going to have a wonderful evening.

He smelled sweet with a hint of sweat, but that was expected after a night of dancing. His abs were tight, impressive, and what hair he had was well trimmed.

All the more reason to make me eager to feel him inside me—and since I preferred to get a good look first, that started with me on my knees.

But then that damn scream and the drowning came as before, only last time had been when I’d been alone in the shower, so at least it hadn’t been disruptive.

“Sash?” Chuck asked.

I was on the floor, arms wrapped around myself, crying. When I looked up it was to see him, exposed… but the moment was over.

“Sorry, I don’t know what happened…”

He cleared his throat, nodded at his limp cock, and seemed to want me to continue. There was no way that gonzo nose was going in my mouth. With a deep breath, I pushed myself up and stood in front of him, hand going to his chest.

“I’m going through something. It’s not you.”

His eyes went wide. “I swear, this isn’t… I mean, I’m a grower.”

Before I could answer, that scream returned and water had me. Waves crashing overhead, pummeling me and sending me spinning… and then it was over with the sound of the front door slamming shut.

My vision processed the sight of the ceiling above me. I was on my back, the taste of blood in my mouth. Had I bitten my tongue? Stinging in my hands caused me to lift them, but they were cramped, my fingernails digging into my palms.

I pushed myself up, trying to get a sense of what had happened. How could Chuck have left me in the middle of what had clearly been some sort of stroke? He was always a perfect gentleman at Green View City College, where we had met.

At least this was spring break, so I wouldn’t have to see him again for a week. The idea of facing him after what had happened horrified me.

And after it had all started so perfectly, too. Cultural Anthropology had just ended and I was packing up my notebook when he’d approached, telling me how he loved the way I tucked my hair behind my ears, and how doing so showed off my cute freckles.

We had gotten to know each other over the semester through group projects, and I’d been considering asking him out. So when he was the one to approach me, I simply handed him my number and said, “Pick me up at eight.”

That’s what he had done, and after a quaint but enjoyable meal of Spanish tapas, we had made our way over to my favorite dance club—the only one new campus that allowed for partyers under twenty-one-years old.

A perfect night, ruined by me having the first stroke or epileptic fit or whatever had happened. Wonderful.

I went to the sink and washed my hands, then put Neosporen and Band-aids on the small cuts. My mind flashed back to the image of him standing in front of me, exposed, but was instantly replaced with the sounds of water and me, staring at my reflection in the mirror.

Something was very wrong. At first I couldn’t place it because my eyes were always blue, but then it hit me—they weren’t just blue.

They were bright blue, and the color was swirling like water.

I stumbled back, stifled a whimper, and then leaned back in to look again. From what I could tell, my eyes were normal. If I’d been imagining it, something was way off.

A couple of tequila shots might have made me willing to go down on a guy after dancing without requiring him to shower first, but I wasn’t so wasted that I should be seeing things. It’s not I had taken shrooms or any hallucinatory drugs.

Frist things first, I needed to clear my head to figure this out. I would have loved a vanilla latte, but all I had was a Nespresso machine my dad had given me as a moving in gift. This was the first time I’d used it, so it took me a second to figure out. Soon I had it going, so stripped and went for the shower while I waited for it to finish brewing and then cool down enough.

Steam rose from the water as it poured down from the shower head, and I was hesitant to step in, wondering if it would cause me to hear screaming again.

I hesitantly inserted my hand into the water streams, and damn it felt good. Reenergizing more than I could have hoped for. Stepping in, I found my head clearing as if I hadn’t been drinking at all.

A perfect shower was sometimes all it took.

Done, I wrapped my towel around my body and went back for the Nespresso, then glanced over at something that caught my eye. Damn, Chuck’s wallet must have fallen out of his pocket when I’d slipped down his pants, because there it was.

The coffee wasn’t horrible, but not exactly good, either. It didn’t feel necessary after the shower, so I set the cup down.

A latent memory was working its way forward, and I closed my eyes, trying to figure out its significance. My dad with me at the edge of a swimming pool. At the time I had been focused on wanting to hop in, largely ignoring what he was saying, but then he had mentioned my mom.

This had been maybe six months after she had ran off on us, simply vanishing one night with a note, scratchy writing and too damp in spots to be tears, that said she loved us.

“Water,” my had had said. “She had said it… came for her.”

None of that made sense back then, but now that I stood in my living room in my towel and had a clear head, those words met with the thought of what had just happened. Images of water… and the scream.

Had the water come for me, too?

Shit.

My mouth seemed suddenly dry, so I picked up the coffee and took a drink—a gulp that was too much and way too hot. My mouth slightly burned, I cursed and went for something cold. Good thing I had a Sprite handy. It hit the spot.

As I put it back, I noticed that either the shower or the cold can had caused one of my Band-aids to come loose, so I was going to get a new one… but froze in place, staring at my uninjured hands.

Tearing off the other Band-aids, showed me that the other injuries from my fingernails were gone too. Not a chance I’d imagined those.

What could it mean?

All I had to go on here was that memory of my dad recounting that my mom had said the water came for her.

I had to go home and find some sort of answer. Anything to try to understand what the hell was interrupting my love life.

With a sigh, I picked up Chuck’s wallet, opening it to eye his beautiful face on the picture from his ID. If none of this had happened, we would have been lying horizontal under my sheets right now, the warmth of his body pressed against mine.

I sighed, took it with me to drop off when the time was right, and went to get dressed. It was late, but going to my dad’s as quickly as possible seemed like the only logical next step.

***

Pulling into my dad’s driveway, my heart sank. He was all alone here and I’d been selfish enough to take off for college without a glance back.

The obligatory weekly or biweekly call had felt like enough during the school year, but now that I was back home about to confront him—slightly tipsy, and enough so that I probably shouldn’t have been driving—my guilt surged.

After all, when my mom had vanished ten years prior, he had also lost a wife. Now he had practically lost a daughter… at least for the last several months.

Time to make up for that, briefly. Between searching for answers.

Ah, who was I fooling?

Being here was about me and my rapid decline into insanity, nothing else. I’d have to make up for not being daughter of the year some other time. Digging into my old keys from the middle compartment, I found the right one and then made my way to the front door.

Soon I was in, doing my best to not disrupt anything so that I could check to see if my dad was awake. He often was up in the late hours, either playing old nostalgia videogames or tinkering with his music setup in his studio.

He was like that—although his day job was something like program manager at one of the latest tech startups, he had his hobbies. As far as I knew, they kept him from falling into depression after my mom left, so I encouraged the hobbies as much as I could, having spent many a late night up helping him beat Secret of Mana or some other game I wouldn’t have otherwise ever bothered with.

To my surprise, the old man had company! Lights were on in the kitchen, just off the main hallway from the entrance. In spite of their voices being low, one was clearly that of a woman.

If he was finally moving on and hadn’t told me… I was hurt. That seemed like the kind of thing a dad should tell his daughter.

So there I was, jutting out my jaw and sticking my shoulders back, prepared to march in and confront this intruder who thought she could replace my mom, when my dad said, “No, you’re wrong about Sasha. You have to be.”

“It’s happening,” the woman replied. “Whether either of us like it… her time has come.”

The hell? I froze in my tracks, blinked in confusion, and listened to see where this was going.

“How can you possibly know that?” my father demanded.

“She’s the eldest, just like Eloise. And just like then, I sense it.”

Eloise—my mom. Meaning this was my aunt Lana. Meaning, I needed to know what they were talking about immediately.

“Excuse me?” I stepped in, anger rising up in me as I grew more and more pissed that they would be meeting to discuss my situation without me, and confused as to what my aunt was talking about. “Sense what, exactly?”

Both turned with horrified expressions, but it was my aunt who first came to me, wrapping her arms around me and asking if I was all right.

“I’m fine,” I replied, pulling back from the hug and glaring, daring her to say something that would piss me off and a reason to lose it on them. “Now why do I walk in to find my dad and aunt talking about me as if I’m dying?”

“Don’t,” my dad said, voice catching. “Don’t… don’t say that word.”

My eyes went to Lana, who had put a hand to her cheek and whose eyes were glistening as if she was on the verge of tears.

“Will someone tell me what the hell is going on?” I asked, not evening trying to hide my frustration.

“Tonight, did you…” Lana started, but then seemed unable how to finish the question.

“Did I what?”

Lana turned to my dad for help, but he simply shook his head. She sighed. “Sasha, we need to know if anything out of the ordinary happened to you tonight.”

My mind flashed back to dancing, to pulling down Chuck’s pants… and then the scream and water sensation.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

My dad caught his breath, now his eyes glistening, too. “She’s… lying.”

“What?”

“How do you know?” Lana asked.

“Her hand, there…” He pointed at my hand, thumb and forefinger running together over the fabric of my shirt. “Her tell.”

Damn. I’d have to make an effort to stop that, but he wasn’t wrong.

“A date,” I said, this time folding my arms. “Stuff I wouldn’t want my dad to know about.”

His face creased with a mixture of concern and horror.

“Focus,” Lana interjected. “Sash… We need to know—was there anything weird… with water?”

My chest constricted and for a moment I wasn’t sure I could breathe. The counter caught me as I stumbled over, one of my hands going to the cold tile, pressing hard against it for balance.

“How would you know that?” I asked.

Lana shared a concerned look with my dad, then walked over to join me. Taking my hand in hers, she stared into my eyes. “It’s the curse, dear. Same thing happened to your mom, and the same thing happened to each of the eldest sisters going back generations—always ten years in between.”

I gulped. The actual ten-year anniversary of my mom’s passing was coming up in only three weeks. But what she was saying couldn’t be true, could it?

I wanted to ask what it all meant, but my legs started moving for the door. A voice in the back of my head told me to run, to get out of there before whatever she said made too much sense and determined my fate forever.

Before I could make it to the door, my aunt had her arms around me, holding me as I collapsed. Not unconscious, but feeling as if my legs had been swept away by a river current. She pressed something into my hands—a stone—and whispered into my ear, “Hold it, focus on it… let it guide you back to us.”

I did, and a moment later my head was clear. They had moved me to the couch, though I couldn’t remember when. My dad was in the chair opposite me, bent over and holding his face in his hands, while my aunt sat with an arm around my shoulders.

My hand opened and I looked down at the rock in my palm. “What is this?”

“A talisman,” my aunt said.

“Sash…” My dad lowered his hands, looking up at me with tears streaming down his face. There had only been one other time I had seen him cry, and that had been the night my mom had run off. Wait—the night my mom had vanished, wasn’t it?

“Tell me what happened to her,” I said. “I have to know.”

“She—” my aunt started, but closed her mouth when my dad cleared his throat.

“Let me,” he said, then came over to kneel at my other side, hand on mine. “I don’t know exactly, neither of us do.”

“Maybe not, but—”

“Lana, please.”

My aunt pretended to zip her lips.

“We don’t know, but we have… suspicions. If it’s happening to you, too, then maybe those suspicions hold merit.” He took a deep breath, then continued. “There’s a legend on your mom’s side of the family. You know how you were told about many of the women had died young?”

“Yes… Grandma from cancer, her aunt from… I forget.”

“Doesn’t matter, because the reasons weren’t true,” Lana cut in. She grimaced and turned to let my down continue, but he motioned for her to instead, so she did. “Once your mom started having symptoms, for lack of a better word, our aunt great aunt came forward and told us about the curse. She didn’t have a lot of information either, but… there was a contact. Someone your grandma, our mom, had been trying to get in touch with about the matter.”

“Like a doctor?” I asked.

She sighed. “You aren’t listening. A doctor can’t help here… Not with a curse.”

“Except that… curses aren’t real.” I looked from her to my dad to see if he was buying any of this, and he just shrugged in a sort of surrendering way.

“I don’t know completely,” Lana said, “but I can tell you what she told us, and what the research your mom had found said. Or maybe I’d better show you.”

I gulped. “Show?”

“You’re going to be okay here?” Lana asked my dad.

He looked at me with wide, confused eyes, then shook his head. “No, I don’t know if I’m ever going to be okay until this is over.”

Looking to my guilt, I pushed through whatever stupid ‘I’m too cool now’ B.S. might have otherwise kept me from doing so and threw myself forward to hug him.

“It’ll all be over soon,” I told him. Hell, I didn’t even know what it was or if it was real, but he needed to hear it.

“I’m coming with,” he said after we had pulled apart. “You’ll need all the help you can get.”

Neither of us protested, so we all followed Lana out to her car. There, she motioned us in and, to my surprise, drove only a couple of blocks over to a freeway underpass.

“This isn’t good,” she said, glancing at her rearview mirror.

I turned around and saw headlights of a large truck that had stopped behind us. Then ahead, where a car had stopped, blocking our path. A roar sounded as a motorcycle came up beside it, then stopped.

The rider removed her helmet, bright-purple hair falling down to her shoulders.

“We don’t have time,” Lana said, quickly turning to me in the backseat and pulling me close. “The papers are under your dad’s seat—I was driving to a safe location, but… that doesn’t seem to be possible. Take them, run. We’ll distract them and then meet back up.”

“Sorry?”

“Go!”

My dad was already out of the car, demanding to know who these people were and what they wanted. Mind racing, I reached under his seat and found a thick manilla envelope, then pulled it out and tucked it in between my sweater and my shirt, which I tucked in—that way, it would be safe as I ran, and maybe nobody would know I had the envelope.

To my surprise, my aunt had just taken a pistol out of the glove compartment. She met my gaze, nodded, then whispered, “Run. Now.”

Exiting the car, she had the pistol up and ready as she joined my dad in a shouting match with the others.

“Get back!”

“Give us the girl!”

“Eat led, motherfuckers!”

And all I could do was sit there, frozen in fear—that is, until the first gunshot went off. I ducked down, shouting for my dad as I saw him fall. But it wasn’t the gunshot that had taken him, it was a person… or so I thought.

I threw myself out of the car and onto his assailant, trying to wrench the man free.

Snarling. Yellow eyes. A hand on my wrist that was too hairy to make sense and with claws that tore into my flash.

When the creature turned to strike, it hit with a force too powerful for me to comprehend. I was thrown back, flying through the air to collide with the railing and topple over to the other side.

My legs stung from the pain, but suddenly I had an entirely new problem as a current took me, pulling me under water. I’d been hit right into the river! My hands found a hard surface and I clawed my way up, managing to get a hold of a metal rod sticking out from the cement and lucky it hadn’t skewered me.

“Sasha!” my dad shouted, and I saw him back there, stumbling from the car, hand at his neck to stop the torrent of blood there.

He reached for me as the water pulled, my grip loosening.

Lana ran past him, retreating and still shooting at someone in the darkness beyond. Another person—or was it something else, with that hair and yellow eyes?—emerged from that darkness and charged those two, connecting with my dad to tackle him.

Before I could see what had happened, I lost my grip and the current had me.