Prologue

Prologue

 

 

My shift over, I sulk across the parking lot to my black, beat-up Cadillac. It takes three tries to start it. It's dark out, awfully dark for 10:30 at night... Being in the city, all of the lights are usually on, but not tonight, all the lights are off, and there are no stars in the sky. It's a new moon. It's dark. The-dark-plays-tricks-on-your-eyes dark. The kind of dark that makes you want a spotlight, pointed right at you, so you won't ever be without light. It's chilled out, a night of unusual temperatures for September.

I stop at a stop sign on AppleRidge Road, not far from home. I proceed through the intersection cautiously, aware of the blind turn.

And then I'm in a strange house. In a dirty kitchen. A huge, young monster-Man with knives jutting out of the ends of his fingers approaches me, wearing a black tee-shirt, and black jeans. His face is distorted; His eyes are all black, but other than that, I can't tell what makes it so distorted. It just looks weird. he's a bit taller than me, about 5' 8" compared to my 5' 6".

Blind to the road, I stomp on the brake and switch the gearshift into Neutral. I reach to find the emergency brake and pull it down, before I become paralyzed. This is a strong one.

The monster-man pulls a vinyl-seated chair, with a slatted wooden back, across the kitchen floor, picks it up, and whirls it around above his head.

But it isn't the emergency brake. It's the hood release. I don't know it's the hood release.

Then he lets go of the chair. It sails toward me, clipping the ceiling fan, breaking a chunk off of one of the spinning blades. I look around frantically to see what, or who, it will hit.

I'm numb. My foot slides off of the brake pedal. My car rolls off the road slowly, into a ditch.

But there is no one else. Only me, Raven Magdolin, and the monster-man. Until the door opens, and a middle-aged man wearing a suit and carrying a breifcase appears. The chair, sailing in slow motion, grows knives from its legs.

The car hits a mailbox. The mailbox is, luckily, strong enough founded to keep the car from rolling any further.

The chair strikes the man in the chest and the head. His head is sliced clean off, and rolls around in a small circle on the kitchen floor, leaving trails of blood behind it.

The car comes to rest in a shallow drainage ditch in the front yard of a tiny, unkempt house, the mailbox and its wooden post still standing.

I stare at the young man with knives for fingers. He walks to the dead man's head and kicks it like a soccer ball. It crashes loudly through the window. Then he falls to his knees, and sobs miserably. Then, starting as a small ball and steadily growing bigger, a ball of light appears, then becomes blinding, and then takes up the whole scene-