Jay was sitting on the couch; the pup was sleeping beside him. On the TV played some documentary on Demonology. He liked that stuff. He watched things that dealt with hauntings all the time. He even visited a few haunted locations on tours. He wanted to go to the one in Iowa. But somehow, even though it was close, he had not gotten to yet. He sighed. There was nothing to do about the bombing until the crime labs came back in the next day or two. On his coffee table were three murderers. Two, the same killer. One, just some sick bastard removing organs. He had a lead on that one. And tomorrow morning would go to question who he thought was the best suspect. He shook his head; he grabbed the remote; he had to turn it off the demons. He loved them, but he had seen enough of them in the last couple of weeks. He had to catch the demons. The channel changed, superheroes. Nope. He liked the villains better. He hated the so-called villains in real life, but in the movies and shows, villains had the most character development. They were sometimes way too easy to connect with because humanity sucked.
He flipped off the man on the television who had enough mental issues to keep one doctor busy with their whole career. Good God, there had to be something on that was not an evening soap opera, a reality show, or demons. Hell, even his favorite Sci-Fi space show was annoying him tonight. There had to be more on than the normal. Or it seems Christmas movies were the next choice. It was fucking July; he did not need to watch some cis hetro business man lose his ice cold fiancée to a farmer. Who the hell thought Christmas in July was a thing. Oh, great, funny videos about gender reveals gone wrong. God, people were crazy. He stopped. Ah, funny movie about someone accidentally summoning a demon, and teaching them how to live on Earth. Fuck it. Humor is good. And it has a demon, that really is not a demon.
He laid his head back on the couch. He itched his arm. Damn cravings. His mind was running too fast. His addiction wanted him to scream and beg for the dark bliss of a high. He rubbed his palms hard against his eyes. He had to get some sleep. Take a cue from Rex and get some damn sleep before tomorrow and arrest his main suspect in the murder and mutilation of his victim, who was still a John Doe. Jay knew there would be no peace though, not until the multiple killer was caught too. Not until the bomber was caught and brought to justice. As he tried not to think that his serial killer might already have other victims. Kansas did not need another serial killer. Fuck. He did not want that notoriety once the nation picked it up. Already he was on the national news due to his undercover work. He took a deep breath and just kept his eyes closed.
Jay was in a room. He looked into the mirror. There was blood coming down his mouth. He reached up to wipe it off. He winced as something sharp stabbed him. He opened his mouth. Fangs. What the hell? He looked and turned around and blinked. There were bodies. People who he cared about. People he helped. People he touched in his life. They were all lifeless, with two puncture marks on their throats. He turned to the mirror. He was in a suit, it was all black, a silk black shirt, a silk black tie, and a blood black lily on his lapel. His eyes were black as coal. He turned and started to hyperventilate, as the blood started to pour onto the floor from where he had not drained all his victims. As he turned back to the mirror from the bodies and saw the demon within himself smirking in satisfaction at a job well done.
Jay sat up with a start. “Fuck!” He shook his head. It had been a long time since he had dreams like that. So real. He shook his head and reached up to check his teeth. Just a nightmare. He looked at the TV, it was playing a vampire show, must have but a subconscious thing. He shook his head and looked at the clock. Three in the morning. Devil’s Hour. Witch’s Hour. He closed his eyes and took a breath. He smiled when he felt the pup wiggle into his lap to give him a kiss. He pets his pup. “Come on, Rex. Let’s go lay in bed for a couple hours.” He stood and stretched, turned off the TV, and picked up the pup and made his way to the bedroom.
He chuckled as he prepared for bed. At least he did not fall asleep on the station obsessed with aliens. He moved and settled in; Rex curled by his side. He just pets his pup for a while. It was calming, relaxing, and for a moment everything was okay in the world. It was like Rex gripped his heart and raised him from the torment and hell that he had been through the last two years. He laid his head down, he should bake a pie this weekend, and soon he was in a dreamless sleep. At least for a couple hours, the demons within left him alone and let him have a restful slumber.
Ah prep for my Camp NaNoWriMo project is done. Bare bones outline: check Plot idea: check Cover: check
So this is the one I am sorta writing chapters as TV episodes.
I was also told about kindle vella, which may work for this type of writing.
Anyways, it is a basic LGTBQ+ Suspense type novel.
Been done to death perhaps. But it is a story line that won’t leave my head.
James ‘Jay’ Clossen never imagined life this way. Once upon a time the dream was going pro as a quarterback. But in a blink of an eye his life changed. He joined the Marines. Came home got a Behavior Psychology degree. Became a detective in his own hometown. Now at 38, his life is in shambles. Addicted to heroin from an undercover job, one night he shoots too much. On that night his life is saved by Arcas Raska. Never would Jay think this paramedic firefighter would not only save his life, but his sanity and soul. Now there is a serial killer in town. One that seems to be obsessed with Jay. Will Jay face this challenge and come our whole, or will he finally break once and for all? Arcas may just be the key to this fork in the road. Only time will tell of Arcas will answer the cry screaming ‘SAVE ME’. And save Jay from the demons within.
Then everything got muddy. Evolution. Religion. But basically, as far as cosmic timelines, in an exceptionally quick amount of time the Earth went from being a ball of rock to being able to sustain different types of life. From the first single-cell organisms to dinosaurs to humanity.
Humanity eventually ate the apple, which is just a metaphor for evolving into telling the difference between being a decent human being and being an asshole. Doubtful there was a demon disguised as a snake telling a fully developed Homo-Sapian to eat an apple. If demons, Satan, and God exist, they kept far away from humanity since the beginning.
For humanity did not just evolve into the normal beings that make up the vast majority of the world’s population. It is said that some were said to be touched by God’s divine grace.
That grace gave birth to the heroes and the villains.
In reality, it was a chromosomal anomaly.
But one many exploited.
Chaos reigned.
And it was glorious.
For life without chaos is like a superhero without a cause.
There used to be a time where superheros reigned over and protected the lands.
They reigned in the chaos.
They brought order.
They were loved.
For millennia.
Until the villains became corporate.
The Queen of Evil brought them together.
Brought order to chaos.
Tricked the world.
Used fear and the developing world into industrial and corporate to take power from the shadows.
For hundreds, thousands even, of years it was the typical bad guy blows something up, steals something, does something super villain-y, and the hero would come in and save the day. Very basic. Exceptionally ordinary. Citizens worshiped the heroes and hated the villains. The superheros, however, knew the chaos the villains caused gave them a cause and a reason to exist.
One villain loathed it. She hated the whole… flamboyance… of her… evilness.
Etain.
Also known as Doctor Arc.
And with that, she vowed to change the way the world work.
She was tired of the hero always winning.
She was tired of the hero lording over her.
Her arch-nemesis, who had the stupid ass name of Earth Phoenix. It was so not her actual name.
Back then they protected their actual name. But since Phoenix was her number one enemy, she knew her actual name. Catriona. But she never gave it up.
After all, Catriona, was hers. She called dibs.
Then she got the villains to go corporate.
And Catriona disappeared.
But Etain kept tabs on her.
Dibs was dibs, after all.
She just never figured out she would be a villain that would need a hero.
And she for sure knew that Catriona never figured she would have the Queen of Evil asking her to save the world.
The question was, would the hero answer the villain’s cry for help?
Or would this Queen Villain have to save the world on her own?
Chapter Two A Queen Rises
The past was just that to Etain. The past. And that is where it needed to stay. Nobody existed that knew her name, knew her origins any longer. Either she killed them, or the warriors of her clan had killed them. So, she would find it easy enough to lie to herself she had no past. Etain had the plan to just pretend she just came into being. Nobody would really question it, people did not care where heroes and villains came from, they just praised and worshiped the heroes and feared the villains.
She thought of anything that could tie back to her existence as Etain. The journals she kept were safe with her, and always would be safe with her. All other evidence she existed burned with her village and the two surrounding it. She knew there was a rock carving her mother had done; they carved it into the rock near the village. It depicted two little girls, with their names carved above them. But that could never lead to her. And she refused to destroy it, as that is where she laid her sister to rest.
The only piece of evidence. And it would be protected. Forever.
But besides that, nothing could exist of Etain.
Though Etain always knew.
She had a lot of guilt.
A lot of anger.
If she had just been there, she could have saved her sister.
Instead, she had thought of her own happiness.
For that, Etain felt the need to punish herself.
She denied herself emotions.
She would get to the point she needed to feel something.
Just not numbness.
That is when she took a blade and made thin, shallow cuts upon her skin.
They would be the only evidence that she could feel.
The only evidence that she punished herself for the past.
To the world, she had a new existence.
To start this new existence, she just went by Arc. It was a name she heard a village whisper when she passed through and shocked a man for daring to touch her.
She moved from village to village, stealing in the night. She had to survive. She had to live. She had her doubts. Doubts of how she would be known. Everything was against her. The most powerful heroes were judge-y bastards. The villains were heartless, soulless, so what was she? For now, she just questioned herself and feared the people, she was starting to install fear into, would find out she was just guessing the answers she needed. Just going through motions and making it up as she went along. But for now it seemed to work. So, she continued going from village to village, being a minor villain, taking what she wanted. And for a bit of time that worked for her.
Until she knew she needed more.
She needed power.
She was so tired of not having power.
Power would protect her.
She had always longed to have power.
She had planned on becoming the Clan Leader once upon a time.
She had watched in her village that all the power was with the Clan Leader. That they could do anything. Say anything. Act in any way they wanted. She was just lucky she had loved her loves. Her male lover was the heir to the Clan Leader. And she had him wrapped around her little finger. It would allow her to have him declare her the Clan Leader. And with that, she could have changed the laws.
But that all was destroyed in her father’s greed.
In her anger.
In her grief.
So, she had to figure a way to gain power once more.
But it was not going to be easy.
She knew she would have to tear down the obstacles in front of her, brick by brick. But she would make it. She was powerful. She was starting to be feared. And she could put on a mask that could fool the world. After all, she had a mask that fooled her Clan Leader and her father since she was a young child. She hid her powers. She protected herself. She could do it again.
But without power, she could not protect herself.
The first step was knowing exactly what her powers could do. And controlling them, even in her panic.
There were more than a few incidents where she could not get her powers to work to protect her in her panic. Men were barbarians. Taking what they want with no care. Not that women were much better. She did not want to live this way. She did not want to just exist. She did not want to be nameless. She had powers that could move mountains if she wanted. She had powers that could kill the Earth. So, why was she not grabbing the power owed to her?
She needed to control her powers, to have power.
She needed power.
So, why was she just standing there?
Why was she just surviving?
Was she afraid of what it would cost to cross that last line?
Had she not already cross that last line?
She longed for powers.
She was going to change the way of life for her people.
That dream was dead.
But why was she still standing in the shallow end of life?
She made her choice.
She would no longer hold back.
And nobody would ever make her feel powerless again.
Never.
So, she started to attack small villages; she killed the rapists and abusers.
She fought the monsters, the ones who took with no care, no mercy, but in the process she would become the monster.
She sat at the base of a bare tree in a cemetery. Nobody walked the cemetery after dark, it allowed her to watch the villages. Buring the bodies was a new thing, before most just burned them. But she did like the idea of burying them. They had buried her sister. Not just burned like garbage. She sat waiting for her clothes to dry. She did not care she was naked under the moonlight. She sat there in the dark, her eyes glowing and her hair blowing behind her. She watched the village that was her first target. People would rue the day they hurt her.
She sat wondering about many things. She was told the gods and Norns controlled their lives. She was told three women held the threads of life. It was not a new concept. She had to wonder about the Norns. Why they put in the pain and heartache into her thread. She heard the voice in her mind that sounded like her sister saying she did not need to go this path. But the other voice, the darker one, was louder, telling her she needed power to never be hurt again. And her soul’s grief, the ripped apart and holding together by threads heart of hers, was enough to drown out that light in her soul. The light that was there because of the love she felt for three people in her life. All three gone and that thread that tethered her to the light cut. She vowed to no longer be the Norn’s bitch. They would never cut her thread. She was given life by the Earth goddess, and until the Earth goddess chose to no longer connect to her soul and took her power away, she would live and fight.
And gain the power needed to protect herself.
Come dawn, she attacked the first village.
She showed her power. She made all fear her, fear that she would come to their village, destroy, kill, steal, and leave devastation in her wake. She seemed to kill at random. But she had watched the village for weeks before attacking each time. She fought. She took on their warriors and won. Those battles did destroy locations, but if people watched, they would have noticed she did not destroy housing. She did not destroy their crops. She went to destroy those who abused their powers to hurt. But that did not make her a hero. She did not want to give them redemption. She killed them. She stole. She took what she needed and wanted. So, she fought and battled. She licked her wounds. But this allowed her to be feared. It allowed her to test her powers.
But then she found a much simpler way when she was but eighteen.
Sex.
Give a man or woman sex and they practically gave her what she wanted. She first tried this with a clan leader and when he passed out after she dominated him and gave him his orgasm; she took what she wanted.
The reason she had tried it out was she had been at the community grouping drinking their ale and he had come up and was obvious in his desire to have her. She knew if they had been alone and not amongst others drinking, he would have tried to rape her. As it was, he was aggressive. She knew what she wanted was in his housing. So, why not try to get there by allowing him sex? She drank until she was numb. Then she let him take her back to his housing. Where he used the ropes to tie him up as she took him in her body. It was not unpleasant. She rode him hard, trying to get him to finish as soon as possible, and even felt mild enjoyment herself. When they had finished, he passed out and she left town with her prize.
It began a serious of one-night stands. A series of ‘relationships’ where she benefited. She gained power. She gained wealth. She even gained a few titles in her times. She had been able to wrap some of the world’s most powerful men and women around her fingers. She hardly had to attack villages anymore. Her Queen of Evil title had been easy to obtain once she used sex to gain a better position in life.
But she was still a villain. She would cover her face and ravage the lands, killing those who were far from innocent and taking what was of value. She even used those men and women of power wrapped around her fingers, and they too raged wars for her. It was fantastic. It was empowering.
It protected her from the evils of humanity.
It was not long before the name Arc was feared. It was not long before she could walk down a street and be respected as if she were a Queen. And as she closed her emotions off more and more, as she allowed herself to become numb, using liquors, drugs, sex, she gained more and more power. All to make sure she never had to have her heart ripped out like it was all those years ago.
But at night she could not lie to herself. The nightmares of what her sister must have gone through, of what she had gone through when she had run. So many centuries, millennium, and in the harsh light of her mind, her past was never really over. She just traveled the world, as more and more land was discovered. She had the powers to do so with no fair. She was a mess. But she did her best to lie to herself that she was more than fine, and she was the one in power. Not her past. Not her father. Not her emotions. But her mind. She was in power. She was no matter what truths screamed in her ears during her nightmares.
She lost her self-control at times running from her past. She knew she had to draw lines in the sand. A line she would not cross. She was a mess. She was not a fool. The past was the past. And she would not let it have control of her again. She would stop losing her self-control. She would make sure she did not ever cross her own self-imposed line. She may not have many morals. But she did have some. Never hurt an innocent. Never hurt a kid. All those that lost their lives deserve what she would do to them.
It was time for the Queen to rise.
It was time to be her strongest in the moments she feels like falling to her grief.
To be strong in the face of her pain.
To be her strongest when she wants to be weak.
The Queen had to rise.
And the Queen rose.
Pushing the past into the back of her mind.
Hiding her emotions behind liquor, drugs, and sex.
Kris Charles - Author 