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I vanished into the pages and traded my life for that of a man who didn’t know he was a Seeker. I struggled with some of the English words, my mind slowly trading French for a different language. Even at my snail’s pace, I finished by Monday and returned it to the boy despite wanting very much to keep it. He thanked me profusely for finding it, letting slip that he’d stolen it from his older brother because he’d overheard him saying some woman called a Confessor was hot.
I look back now and see what I missed when I was thirteen.
The strangest pang in my body when he mentioned an older brother. The quickest memory of siblings that felt familiar before vanishing just as quick.
Thanks to him, I found a way to cope with my weekends and spent every hour in the local library from then on. I read every book in The Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind and fell in love with words because they were never silent or cold. They were messy and chaotic, giving me pages full of friends, enemies, lovers, and homes.
Reaching for the ice-cold beer an inconspicuous staff member had left for me on the side table where I wrote in the library, I swallowed a tart mouthful.
Even this short break.
Even this micro-pause where I returned to reality—everything inside me howled and snarled and left me in the eye of the hurricane that hadn’t stopped blowing.
Every time I slipped back into the present, the darkness snatched me quickly.
My skin broke out with chills.
The abyss opened wide inside me.
I felt like I was falling, falling—
Finishing my mouthful, I stretched my fingers back on the keyboard and did my best to sink back into a different time, different place.
I hadn’t wanted this story to become an autobiography, but somehow…all the words I couldn’t say to Ily poured out on the page.
The blackness inside me crushed me into the chair.
Bookshelves towered over me, whispering that perhaps it was the darkness in their pages that’d tainted me. Books full of black magic and dark wizards. Pain and suffering of fantastical and historical characters—
But…the truth blared far too bright.
This endless filth inside me was caused by one thing and one thing only.
Genetics.
A curse that flowed from father to son even though I’d never been around him.
But that isn’t true…
I sighed.
My fingers flew as if possessed, accessing archived memories, the keyboard unlocking far too many flashbacks from my past.
The monster called him Quincy.
I’d met him before.
Spied him as I was dragged through the mansion and past priceless things I wasn’t allowed to touch. The man growled at the young teenager lounging in the doorway. “Scram, you worthless child. I’m busy.”
My ears rang with his barked French, so different to the quietly spoken women in pinafores who brought us food and told us to behave.
Quincy glanced at me, his light green eyes cold and unreadable. “Where are you taking him?”
“To do what you refuse to do.”
“What? Learn the family trade?” His cold voice could’ve cut stone.
“At least he’s willing to sit and watch without trying to scurry away like a terrified rat.”
