Fiction Horror Novel Excerpt: Chapters 1 & 2

The Summer breeze stirred Adam’s unkempt, dirty-blonde hair as he inhaled the fresh scents wafting from the Long Lake farmers market. Food trucks lined the city block, promising myriad delicacies, both sweet and savory. The sun shone down on his exposed calves and arms, the pleasant warmth playing across his skin as they walked. The weather was never too hot in Oak Grove, with its proximity to the bay and the ever-present breeze that accompanied it as a result. The summers remained a perpetual seventy degrees, and it was the time of year he loved most. The hustle and bustle of people laughing, haggling, and taking pleasure in the company of so many strangers left an imprint on him the first time he visited when he was twelve–the same age Abby turned today. Who knew people could be so effortlessly happy? Ever since that first visit, he’d made a point to try to be like those people.

There certainly weren’t any other role models in his life that he’d care to imitate. Maybe a few of his teachers, but those often stuffy academics had rarely, if ever, exhibited the carefree aura of the people at the market.

The people here were something solid. They were alive. He looked on with longing and not a little jealousy.

And so it was that the Grove’s farmers markets were his favorite days of the month. Every first and third Saturday in the Spring and Summer he’d come here with Abby, as long as their mother let them go off on their own. She hated being woken on the weekends, and their repeat attendance of the markets had made them a sore spot with their mother. Not that she made much effort to parent the two, but she exercised a modicum of control here and there to convince herself she wasn’t a complete failure. That was Adam’s opinion, at the very least.

But enough thinking about her. He wouldn’t let her tarnish another birthday for either of them.

Although they argued from time to time, Adam set aside petty arguments and tried hard to make sure that she, too, would end up like the people at the market. That she, too, would adopt their infectious aura of happiness and joy instead of the selfish, turbulent and angry cloud their mother shed on every room she entered.

Adam and Abby were Andersons but their mother was Sharon Mitchell, leaving the children with their father’s last name because she was either too lazy or too strung out to change it after he left. Sharon could be kind, charming, enthusiastic, energetic, and, on rare occasions, loving–typically when she had enough dope, but hadn’t quite used enough to slip into artificial catatonia. The woman had her demons, and her children suffered for it. Most weeks they had enough food to get by, albeit barely, and their clothing wasn’t as bad as some of the other kids at school. But there were times when Sharon was so desperate to flee from the hell that is opioid withdrawal, that she sold her EBT funds for the month as soon as they landed in the account. There were times that Adam tried not to think about, when strange men would come and go. Those evenings they would get take-out for dinner. Those meals turned to flavorless ash in Adam’s mouth, but Abby enjoyed them, and so he put on a happy face for her sake.

The school was their saving grace, as it had a free lunch and breakfast program for families that met the criteria, but that did nothing to lighten the burden of knowing that, at home, there was not enough.

Adam had become a professional at sussing out when he could move about freely in their tiny, two-bedroom apartment and when it was time to creep. As much as he tried to protect his little sister, she had suffered at the hands of their mother as much as he had. He liked to think he was competent at drawing her ire from Abby to himself, but some days there was no stopping the beast that spoke and acted through their mother’s body.

Their mother shot her dope in the bathroom, and it was a well-known and unspoken rule that they were not to interrupt her when she fled to its thinly veiled privacy to hide her shame. Last night, she had gone in a little after 5 p.m. and her muted mumbling hadn’t ceased until half-past ten, well after Abby had fallen asleep herself. Adam stuck the bobby pin he kept for this very reason into the hole beneath the bathroom doorknob with steady hands, disengaging the lock with practiced ease before entering.

His mother had been in her usual state: rubber tube still tied loose about her arm, hair in disarray, hanging into the (thankfully) clear water of the stained toilet bowl. He stepped behind her and slipped his hands underneath each of her arms, light as a whisper, lifting her up and out of the commode. Being sure not to bump her on anything too hard lest she wake up, Adam half carried, half dragged his mother to her bedroom, laying her soft and slow onto the mattress that sat upon nothing but a box spring, which rested on the floor. He held his breath as her head descended onto the pillow, making sure she was on her side so that she wouldn’t choke, should she vomit in her sleep. It didn’t escape him how much she looked like Abby when she slept. The thought filled him with equal measures of hope and trepidation. Maybe she wasn’t too far gone? Maybe she could make it back from where she’d fallen? Only God knew how.

He hadn’t breathed again until the covers were draped over her underweight frame, her sheeted silhouette sharp with bony shoulders and hips far too prominent. That settled, he’d tiptoed backwards, away and out the door, shutting it with a soft click. After waiting a minute or two he was satisfied that she wouldn’t wake again until morning, or at least until her cravings pained her enough to shake her from her slumber.

Adam looked down at the time displayed on his digital, glow-in-the-dark Casio and calculated when she might next rise. He wasn’t the type to pray, but he’d sent out a pleading pulse to the universe, asking that his mother remain insensate through their trip to the market the next morning. It was out of his hands.

It was then that he went to wake up Abby. Adam had come to her, creeping into the pink and purple room across the hall. Worn stuffed animals lay scattered across the floor, while a smattering of meticulously hung posters lined the walls. He’d shaken her arm with practiced gentleness and her eyes had fluttered open, confused for a moment, as she emerged from what he hoped were sweet dreams. She’d stayed quiet; it was not her first rodeo.

“It’s time,” he’d whispered, smiling with genuine excitement for the next morning, glad to push their mother out of his mind. They took turns showering in the bathroom, staying as quiet as they could manage so that, come morning, they could dress and creep through the minefield that was their apartment to escape into the hopeful light of the morning.

So it was, and so it always had been, that the two siblings, bonded like survivors of some dark tragedy, searched for feelings of home elsewhere. Today that place was the market.

“Ooh, Adam! I want to get some caramel corn first! Can we pleeease?” Abby asked as she made puppy dog eyes and clasped her hands under her chin to get her big brother to say yes, blonde bangs framing her eager face.

What sort of big brother could say no to that face?

And big he was. Adam was on the shorter side throughout the majority of his childhood, but he hit a massive growth spurt the Summer after his sophomore year of high school and now stood at an impressive six-foot-two, a whole foot taller than his sister.

Her excited pleading snapped him out of his pensive state, and he quickly shoved the dismal thoughts of their mother to the locked, dark corners of his mind as he chuckled to himself and answered, “Yes, of course we can. It’s your birthday, isn’t it? Lead the way, your highness.”

He took a deep, exaggerated bow and waved his lanky left arm to point towards the popcorn stand, his own dirty-blonde locks drooping down around his downturned face as he did so. Abby giggled and pumped her fist in victory.

“Yes! Works every time,” she teased as she gave him a mischievous smirk.

He shook his head with an amused grin pulling at the corners of his mouth and followed his sister at a relaxed gait, soaking up the life that sprang up everywhere around him, marinating his soul in its savory goodness.

He wistfully watched her hand over one of the many five-dollar bills he had given her that morning (money he’d saved up from helping some of his elderly neighbors out with things like carrying groceries over the past several months), grateful for this moment. Maybe life would turn out alright. Just maybe he could bring the market everywhere he went, and Abby along with him.

With that thought, he hurried to catch up with his sister, feeling hopeful for the first time in weeks.

Adam awoke from dreams filled with the desperate search for pills at funerals attended by shrouded faces, unaware he’d left behind the last normal day of the rest of his life. The same way he had for the last thirteen years, more or less. Gray sunlight filtered through the clouds and snuck through the gaps of the wooden shutters of his apartment window, just to spite him, it seemed. He lifted a hand to block the pestering rays from his maladjusted vision, and rubbed the sleep out of the corners of his eyes with a deep sigh, looking around his bed, then his room for anything out of place.

No new holes in the sheets from cigarette burns, that was good. The dresser looked fine as well, and it wasn’t as messy as he had feared. Something at the back of his brain awoke, and Adam whipped his head quickly to his left as if his eyeballs were super-magnets suddenly fixed on a single spot, pulling him in. He looked over at the line of white powder on his modern, black nightstand with dread and hunger, everything else around the room almost darkening as he zeroed in on the remains of his last pill that he had crushed the night before.

The dread came from the small part of him that hated that little white line more than anything. More than he had hated his mother. More than he hated himself.

The hunger, though, reminded him that stopping would be an exponentially more horrible alternative: the sickness that would surely come and the inevitable confrontation with how his life had devolved into its current, tragic state, suffocatingly mundane as it was.

God, he wanted to die.

His circle was so small these days. Self imposed fencing herded him into a tighter space every passing week. Lifting the veil would have him face that terrible fact, and so the veil would remain untouched. Already he could feel a cold sweat forming on his back, icy beads threatening to form a trickle. At least today was payday. He checked his account to confirm he had the date right.

He’d wanted to stop before, had even done so, for a time. It never seemed to last, and he always came back. Adam had woken up this morning craving death more than ever before. He swore to himself ages ago that suicide would never be an option for him, that he’d always push through no matter what. Today, he thought that promise to be immature and shortsighted. His younger self hadn’t known how bad things could get. When the misery comes from within, there’s nowhere else to run.

Shaking the morbid fantasy of nothingness til it dissolved like sugar in water, he racked up the remainder of the crushed-up oxy with his debit card. He bent over the nightstand, hypnotized by his morning ritual, his hesitation already dissipating into the dark corners of his mind that he tried so desperately to avoid.

He snatched the twenty from the nightstand by his Swedish lamp, its form already curled into a loose spiral from frequent use. He rolled it tightly into a tight tube, and bent over the meticulously arranged chemical concoction, his heartbeat beginning to pick up quickly in anticipation, his bowels roiling in turn.

Cut.

Sniff.

Sigh.

Much better.

He rubbed the back of his neck and rolled it in loose circles, stretching out the kinks accumulated during his night’s rest with a pleased groan as his overworked dopamine receptors flooded him with fleeting, artificial euphoria. Only then did he open his eyes to take in the state of the rest of his room, the tunnel-vision on his nightstand alleviated for the moment.

Not too bad this morning.

Some clothes here and there that he had thrown out from under the bed in search of the nearly mythical “misplaced stash” that he may have forgotten in previous states of delirium. No such luck.

There was the cocaine, of course, but that wasn’t what he searched for with such desperate fervor. The cocaine was not what he needed. But today was payday and the mythical stash was forgotten as he thought of the very real one he’d be picking up shortly from downstairs. With the closest thing to excitement he experienced in life these days, he turned and put foot to floor, his need momentarily satiated.

He set about cleaning his relatively nice apartment before showering and dressing in his moderately nice clothes. They had been decent when he bought them three years ago, but he didn’t have the money to spend on his wardrobe these days, so they would have to do. It mattered not, because these things were simply costumes he wore so the world thought he was alright, an ongoing charade that seemed more tedious by the day. He wondered if the pitiful deceptions would remain as opaque as he needed them to be for much longer. He thought not.

Adam slid open the mirrored bedroom closet door and pulled out a cream, rollneck sweater over his polo and eyed his father’s old “battle jacket”, the denim relic from Jack Anderson’s glory days in the Los Angeles punk scene. It was covered in tears, the worst of them hidden behind sew-on patches of his favorite bands, most of them names Adam had never heard of. Tucked into its left breast pocket was a faded Polaroid of Adam sitting on his father’s lap at the age of three, Jack wearing said jacket, his long black hair flowing over both shoulders as he smiled down at the toddler with matching hair atop his knee. Concealed in the front right pocket was his father’s old .38 snub nose pistol. Adam would take it to the range for a few hours once every year on his father’s birthday. Whether he shot it to honor his father’s memory or because of his anger at being abandoned, he did not know. He patted the bulging pocket before closing the closet door and moving on to the kitchen.

After a rushed breakfast of peanut-butter and banana toast washed down with a glass of milk, he took a bump of coke from the bag he’d found underneath the bed the night before.

The best part of waking uuup is cocaine in your blooood, Adam mused, smirking despite the depressing air of his morning routine.

He checked the time on his phone before heading out the door with purpose, like a fish unaware it is being pulled on a line and thinking itself free.