| Sample
Chapter For WORLD MADE FLESH by Cheryl Mullenax
He crouched at the edge of the precipice
contemplating the past and the present. Cast out when the world was in
its infancy, he was imprisoned thus in the cold ruin and furious, though
its bleakness suited him.
His eyes turned to crimson and fell upon the Earth. The
stench of disease and despair rose from that doomed, seduced breed, summoning
his most infernal adversary, which feasted upon their war and futility.
While their greed as the superior race reassured them, their belief in
their dying machines slowly faded. And even as their faith grew frenzied,
what was left were the remains of sickened souls. Oblivious, they waited,
and hoped.
His hands clenched tight. His sharp nails tore into his
palms and the blood pooled inside. He tasted its coming, savored its ending.
Lifting his fingers to his mouth, he swallowed, feeding his rising wrath.
Far from sated, he cast his raging eyes down upon the sleeping woman on
Earth. He had walked among her dreams while she slept, and she knew his
seduction through his fury that he sent to her. Though far removed from
the flood of sorrow below, he once again mourned his own loss of love.
It would be the last time, he knew. His blood streamed in rivers down
his arms to cover the ground. He did not feel any pain. He never did.
But they would.
He was pleased. It was almost time.
Chapter 1
The dark light was lovely. Her arm stretched through the
fog, reaching out to the exquisite glow. It burned, but she could not
resist. The creature, crouched at the edge of the ruin, noticed her then,
and he crawled over her, wrapping her in his heat. She drew in her breath
at the suffocating scent of sin and death, thawing at the unspeakable
touch that heated the ice in her veins and turned it to flame.
He spoke around her mind, words she didn’t know but understood,
beckoning her to his endless embrace. Following his gaze to the deep black
hole where she couldn’t bear to look, she closed her mind to the
visions, but was drawn down to the terrible darkness in her soul, and
she fell into the abyss without regret.
* * * *
Claudia Danner’s eyes popped open. She looked around
the dark, unfamiliar room. Where was she? She tried to sit up but something
held her body down. Not this again. The blurry, skewed walls swayed overhead,
the wind shrieked outside and she could feel it inside, tugging at her
lifeless body, which felt disconnected from her consciousness. Knowing
she couldn’t move, she waited for it to pass.
From the faint outline of a door, low droning noises drifted
in, slowly building into shrill, not quite human voices. Her eyes rolled
toward the ceiling. Her heart jumped. A seething, swirling black mass
with gaping mouths undulated above her and descended swiftly, enveloping
her inert limbs in smothering, cold caresses that probed her every opening.
The pulsing pressure built up inside, and through her terror came the
desire to release it, to finally let go. But she resisted, remembering
how she had wrenched herself out of this before, with a rush of adrenaline
mixed with panic. Inside her head, she screamed, Get up! Move! Get out!
“Get out!” Claudia jerked upright with a start.
Sara was staring at her from the doorway with an amused grin.
“Oh, God! Where…” She blinked at the
bright fluorescent lighting and her stomach lurched. She was lying on
the vinyl sofa in their basement office at the local police precinct.
“Get out, huh? Gee, thanks. Good morning to you,
too. Are we sleeping on the job now?” Sara Milton flashed a broad
smile and dropped a big box of donuts in Claudia’s lap.
Claudia managed a small, embarrassed smile and swung her
feet to the floor. She felt like screaming.
“Sorry about that. I had a headache and just wanted
to close my eyes for a minute. I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”
She hoped she sounded convincing. The last thing she remembered was sitting
at her desk drinking coffee and saying good morning to John as he passed
her on his way to the file room. At least she still had her clothes on.
Recently she had taken to ripping off her pajamas in the middle of the
night, always before those incidents. She didn’t know what else
to call them. She smoothed her black wool skirt over her knees and carried
the box to her desk.
Sara plopped behind her desk, took coffee out of a bag
and lit a cigarette. Immaculate and professional as always, in spite of
the weather, she wore a tailored suit and three-inch pumps. Her smooth,
shiny, dark brown bob bounced around her red glossy lips and sultry eyes.
“Is John here yet?” she asked, flipping through
a newspaper.
“I think he’s in the file room,” Claudia
mumbled, pretending to check their schedule for the day and reaching for
a donut. Silence. Claudia looked up at Sara’s intense scrutiny.
“What?” Claudia wiped powdered sugar from her chin.
“Claude, what’s up? Are you all right? You
look really pale.”
“I just didn’t get much sleep last night.
I’m okay.” She smiled to show Sara how okay she really was.
She wondered if she would ever be able to leave the safety of her house
again.
Claudia shut her eyes at the thought, and forced her attention
back to the schedule. “Are you going to see Ms. Connor today?”
“Yes, and I need you to come with me. John’s
interviewing some people this morning. God, I hope we can get someone
else in here. You really need to start getting out more with me.”
“Yeah, this list just keeps growing every day. We
can’t possibly keep this up much longer. What’s the problem?
Why is it taking so long to hire someone?”
“Oh, you know. The usual red tape bullshit. No one
wants to spend the money if they can help it. I’m really surprised
they’re letting us hire someone, anyway. I’ve heard rumors
that they want to shut this office down within the next year.”
Claudia paled at that bit of information. She would never
find another job in this godforsaken city. “How can they do that?
Are they going to fire us or move us somewhere else?”
“Who knows? Anyway, it’s just a rumor, but
I’ve heard that the CSA wants to make us a permanent part of the
police department.”
“Yes, I can understand that, since most of the calls
they get are immediately turned over to the police. But why shut down
this office? We’re overloaded as it is, and more and more kids are
slipping through the cracks.”
“I don’t know. There’s probably not
enough money to have case investigators in every precinct. The fact is,
they rarely get calls from people or schools anymore to report abuse.
No one wants to bother. By the time we find out about it, the kid’s
already dead, or close to it.” Sara stood and got her coat and briefcase.
“No point in worrying about it now. Come on, let’s get this
over with.”
Easy enough for her not to worry. Sara had Richard, and
Claudia was alone now. Two years after Claudia moved to New York, Sara
met Richard, fell in love, and moved in with him, leaving the apartment
they had shared to Claudia.
Claudia liked living by herself and enjoyed the privacy.
There was, however, the question of safety. In the eighteen years since
the end of the third world war, the climbing crime rate had swiftly escalated,
and the police simply couldn’t cope with the increase. Claudia,
like many people, carried a gun for her own protection.
When she had lived in Arizona, she saw the effect as people
poured out of the cities to flood the still relatively safe suburbs and
countryside, turning those havens into an even worse nightmare. Unwelcome
and unwanted, tensions rose between the newcomers and the locals. Although
they had their share of crime and corruption, this sudden influx of outsiders
left them bitter and ill equipped to handle the additional troubles heaped
upon them. Cheap, shoddy apartment buildings had sprung up everywhere
to accommodate the multiplying, unemployed population.
She had been glad to get away from the suburbs, but she
soon found out it was even worse here. As corporations and families steadily
left the city, many apartment buildings were vacated as well, now serving
as havens for criminals and vagrants. Rents skyrocketed to make up for
the loss of tenants, but salaries did not. So stuck here, at least for
now, Claudia had installed security gates on all her windows and carried
a small pistol, although she doubted it would do her any good. She figured
by the time she managed to fish it out of her purse, she would already
be dead.
She walked into the hallway that led to the file room.
“John? We’re leaving.”
John poked his bald head out from the doorway and pushed
his spectacles up with a forefinger. “Okay, ladies. Have fun.”
Claudia grimaced. “Yeah, sure. Lots of fun.”
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WORLD MADE FLESH by Cheryl Mullenax
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