THE ONE: An Excerpt
I am so excited to be finally publishing THE ONE. To celebrate, I’d like to share one of my favorite parts with you. Here’s Chapter Two!
Replacing the filter in the coffee pot, Jess stumbled to the sink and rinsed the pot out before filling it with water. She started it and pulled a cup out from the cabinet. The cup was lined with rabbit fur, and in her shock, she dropped it on the floor. Instead of the familiar clattering sound and ceramic shards she was expecting, when the cup hit the floor it crawled away.
She shuddered and turned back to the coffee pot, which had ceased to be a coffee pot. Instead, she had put filter, grounds, and water into a blender and a grotesque slurry awaited her. She pulled the blender off the base and swirled the mixture around. Bits of tissue and coffee grounds clung to the sides as the darkening liquid swished around. Jess poured it down the sink, wondering if it really was too messy to just dump into the garbage can.
Just then, the doorbell rang. Jess was yanked out of her contemplation. Walking towards the tinkling sound, everything around her started to blur out like she was in a tunnel. Dreading what was behind the door, she took her time answering. Everything felt like it was in slow motion. Her hand reached out. She grasped the knob. The door unlatched. She pulled it open. A package wrapped in printed paper sat at her feet, with a gift tag that read, “A Gift for You.”
It was an old fashioned iron with nails welded to the surface, rendering it useless. Confused, she put it back in the box. She backed up into a ladder, which had replaced the front door. Horrified, she looked around, fumbling for a point to orient herself to. The ladder led to a gilded mirror. A man with the left half of his beard shaved off was standing next to her holding a rifle with the bell of a trumpet at the end of the barrel.
He motioned for her to climb the ladder, and she knew she had to obey. There was a chance that the gun, just like the iron, was useless, but that wasn’t a chance she was willing to take. Jess scaled the ladder and paused at the top, facing the mirror. She faced her reflection, confusion and repulsion rippling her face. The mirror rippled as well, and she placed her hand on its surface but it fell through. The current pulled her in.
She landed in a dark room with no memory of having fallen. In her hand was a candle, already lit. Jess looked around. She was in a mansion of odd architecture. Walking down what can only be described as a hallway, she noticed abstract paintings hung on the wall. Hung was generous. They had been fastened with screws hammered into place. The painting that caught Jess’ eye was of a cage containing a single, dead sparrow. In the background, stars twinkled and a second sparrow was vanishing into the mist. The image was haunting, even though Jess did not know what it meant.
The space had no closure, and Jess searched for a ceiling. Animals were mounted above her head, from the neck down instead of head up. Slowly, a piece of paper fluttered down. She didn’t have time to read it, as the feeling of being watched overtook her. In the distance the man with the gun was holding a candle identical to her own. He gave her a sinister smile. He formed a small “o” with his lips, and she instinctively ran to shield his candle. Before she could reach him. He blew it out. Her candle went out at the exact same moment.
The dreams had started a week ago, with startling realism. She knew it wasn’t real, the way you know reality TV isn’t real, or fast food advertisements aren't real, but you still fall for both. So, the dreams weren’t real, or they weren’t reality, but in the middle of the night, suspended in a dream, it feels real and her heart races because even in her dreams she knows it's not real but it feels like it's actually happening, right now.
So Jess knew the man with the left half of his beard shaved off didn’t exist, but really she was wrong because he did exist, just not in Jess’ present reality. His name was Emmanuel Radnitzky and he passed away in 1976 and he had been haunting Jess in her dreams for a week now.
So the dreams weren’t real, but she smelled the smoke when the candle extinguished, felt the cold void of the darkness that immediately engulfed her. And that’s when she woke up. Hiccuping for no reason.
Somehow, her restlessness and hiccuping failed to wake Michael, immoveable beside her. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and on the way up and over checked the time which was six in the morning, as usual because that’s when her innate alarm went off every morning. At least this week. Carefully folding the covers back slowly as to not let in a draft, she exited the bed and sealed Michael in it, asleep.
Feeling still stuck in the hazy borderland between dreaming and lucidity, she closed the door behind her. The floors were old and creaky, but she knew exactly where to step to avoid the floorboards that had managed to escape shimming in the remodel. Her slippered feet glided easily down the stairs with practiced steps. A purple glow lit the room from the huge window overlooking the yard. At the bottom of the stairs was a table, with the kitchen stretching into the shrinking shadows to the right. Outside the window, the birds were just starting their morning song.
She stared at the coffee pot she had prepped the night before and shivered. Armed with her notebook, she sat at the table to write, hoping that putting the dream on paper would get it out of her head. Although it hadn’t seemed to help yet. Maybe it made it worse. The act of writing could be committing each night’s horror to her memory. She pushed that thought away and flipped through the notebook, landing on the first blank page. The white string from the binding peeked out from between the two sheets.
Jess stared out the window, waiting for the robin to pick a branch, any branch. It couldn’t find a spot it liked, but it was getting tired looking from the constant fluttering and bustling. Her heart went out to it, lost little creature. She was lost, too, but she hadn’t realized it yet and certainly would not have acknowledged it. Not yet.
Because acknowledging the fact that you are in uncharted waters, that you don’t know where to drop anchor, or worse yet you left your anchor at home, it was all a bit much. People don’t announce their weaknesses. Well, stable people don’t announce their weaknesses. But stable people don’t have weaknesses, do they? But Jess wasn’t thinking about any of that. She was simply staring out the window, watching the robin fly off.
An hour later, Michael came down the stairs. Jess closed her notebook and rested her elbows on the table as he crossed the room. Her stomach dropped slightly as he neared her spot, but it could have been equal parts his good looks and her desire to not talk about this last week. Brushing her ponytail off to the side, he rubbed her shoulders as he spoke.
“Good morning, Love.”
“Morning,” she sighed.
“Your muscles are so tight,” he meant tense, but he didn’t know that she was tense. That stress can cause a person to cave into themselves, using their shoulders to guard them from the world. So he just thought her shoulders were tight.
“That pinches,” she squirmed away from his grasp a little, pushing the notebook further out of his eyesight. Not that he was even aware of its existence. He had to have seen it every morning, but had yet to ask about it. Jess didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. She wasn’t ready to tell him about the dreams. Mostly because she wasn’t sure what they were about. Who knows, maybe he wouldn’t think she was crazy. It felt heavy and dark, and she was worried he would be hurt by waiting to confide in him. The dreams wouldn’t hurt him. The letters would.
Jess wondered if he had noticed their new daily routine. He hadn’t mentioned it. This week of early rising. Coffee pot prepped. Jess writing. Tight shoulders.
