We're starting Act 2 of Season 1 of 99geek at www.patreon.com/99geek and we've got two subscribers riding this journey with us. Going forward, I'll be releasing free preview excerpts every month a week before each chapter releases, starting with last month's prologue below of a new story being added to the rotation. Dakotah Slade Paranormal/Detective.
1x00 “Ashes”
Released on http://www.patreon.com/99geek on April 2018
Released on http://www.patreon.com/99geek on April 2018
“I hate you!”
Dakotah said with a giggle, holding her glasses in place while clenching her
legs together. “You’re the god damned worst.”
“Mmmf,” came her
boyfriend’s muffled sounds from between her thighs. He replaced his tongue with
two of his fingers, and stood up to kiss her passionately. She was tall, but he
was taller, and she’d have had to go on her tippy-toes had he not sat her on
the wooden bar of their favourite pub. His kiss was deep and passionate, and
she could taste herself on his lips as she drew him into her embrace. She
wrapped her long black boots around his torso, as he continued to play her like
an instrument.
“Stop,” she
whispered in his ear though she knew she didn’t want him to. And he didn’t seem
to want to either. With a shudder, she felt an orgasm roll through her body,
and felt her juices leak over the counter and off onto the floor.
“Oh my god!” she
said with a laugh, and her boyfriend Cale laughed too, grabbing napkins and a
towel to mop it up. “Look what you made me do.”
“I love you so
much,” Cale said, kissing her even while he cleaned up her mess with his hands.
She was about to say the same back at him, affectionately touching his large
bare muscular arms protruding from his sleeveless shirt, but she was
interrupted as the bartender came in from the back.
“You two are
still here?” Carol asked, an older short round Asian lady who ran the bar and made
a habit of putting up with them. She was like a mother figure to them, more
than their mothers had ever been. Dakotah had met Cale in that very bar; Carol
had been the one who had introduced them.
From the moment
Dakotah’s eyes landed on Cale, and locked with his own dark wells, she knew
that she loved him at first sight. She knew, before they’d ever even touched,
that her spirit or soul would be forever entangled with Cale’s, at least for as
long as they drew breadth. It wasn’t long after that moment before they were
entangling both in spirit and every other way they could come up with.
“Did you spill a
drink?” Carol asked, spotting the rag Cale had just been using. Crossing the
bar he threw out the napkins and seemed about to correct the bartender.
“Yes,” Dakotah
said quickly, glad Carol hadn’t caught what they’d been up to before she’d come
in. She gave a warning look to her boyfriend.
He answered the
bartender’s first question instead. “We’re waiting for a business associate,”
he told her, “He’ll be by soon, and then we can help you flip the chairs.”
“Will your
business associate be wanting a drink?” Carol asked with a raise of her
eyebrow.
“I can take care
of it,” Cale told her, flashing the woman a charismatic grin, a toothy smile
that made Dakotah wanna reach out and kiss him. “You can go upstairs and rest,
I’ve got things from here.”
“I love you,” Dakotah
said, reaching her arms out to Cale from her place still on the bar. He came to
her, and they re-embraced. His comforting warmth was like a safety blanket
around her. As long as she had him by her side she no longer felt afraid.
Love was
everything. It was all encompassing and all consuming. When love grabbed hold
of someone, good luck to any attempts at rationale. Good luck getting out
alive. Like John Carpenter’s The Thing, love tears at a person, rips them to
shreds. Murders the person they were. And then becomes them, or at least some
facsimile that looks like them but doesn’t act quite like they used to.
*
And then one day
it was gone. And she was alone.
She woke with a
start, lifting her head off the bar where she must have passed out the night
before. Her cheek had been resting on the very spot her butt had sat only one
year before. She could still remember all of it, as if it had been yesterday.
How he smelled, how he tasted. She could still feel his strong arms carrying
her to their bed, she could still feel his warm body pressing against her,
enveloping her.
“You’re awake,”
Carol said, coming down the stairs from her loft above in a bathrobe.
“Did I sleep here
last night?” Dakotah asked unable to remember anything from the night before as
her head pounded with the king of all headaches. There was still half a pint of
beer in a glass beside her, and she drank it down in one large gulp, feeling
the warm alcohol slide comfortably down her hatch. Her stomach twisted, and her
headache subsided slightly.
“Well if you’re
trying to suggest that I took you home last night, undressed you, put you to
bed, then redressed you in the morning with the same clothes you wore last
night and repositioned you at my bar…” Carol trailed off as Dakotah looked at
her expectantly. “I didn’t do that.”
“Well can I have
another?” Dakotah asked, raising her glass to Carol. She looked around the
large empty bar, where Carol had clearly cleaned up around her. Whatever insanity
had happened last night, there was no sign of it now as the dingy old pub had
been reset for the next night of drunken debauchery.
Carol got behind
the bar to set a kettle to boil, and she crossed her arms as she looked
disapprovingly down on Dakotah. “You still haven’t paid me for all your drinks
last night,” Carol told her surrogate daughter. “Pay me for just one and you
can have another.”
Dakotah slid her
huge black purse from her arm, and started rummaging through it. “I’m gonna
come into a little money any day now,” Dakotah insisted, pushing aside her
Witchblade comic book and eyeliner. Her tazer. Empty change purse.
“Like trip over
it on your way out the door?” Carol asked Dakotah with arms still crossed.
“Dakotah. I love you. But I’m cutting you off.”
“Come on,”
Dakotah said to herself, digging her hand deep into her purse. “I only need two
toonies and a loonie.”
Carol turned on
the TV as Dakotah continued searching every corner of her unwieldly large bag. The
bartender switched it to the news where a reporter seemed to be doing a story
out of their neighbouring town of Oakville.
“It was at the
scene behind me here,” the reporter said into the camera, standing in front of
a dock, “where sixty vampire children set sail in a large shipping barge off to
a new world where they might live free from the risk of hurting others.”
“Vampires?” Carol
repeated, with a shake of her head. “Fake news is getting worse and worse these
days.”
“I believe in
vampires,” Dakotah said, checking her coin purse for a third time in hopes she
might find some coins she hadn’t any of the previous times. “People who feed
off the social energy of others. They exist.”
“You also believe
in Witchcraft and every conspiracy theory you’ve ever read,” Carol said. “I
remain unconvinced.”
Carol returned to
her kettle as it whistled away. The reporter on screen was just finishing her
story. “This is Isabol Teung of Voice News, Signing off. Back to you Brian!”
“Ah hah!” Dakotah
exclaimed with excitement as her finger brushed against something metal. She
pulled the coin from her bag as the door to the bar opened, and she lifted it
to the light that streamed in from the open doorway.
“Damn,” she said.
Just a quarter. She looked past the coin to see two of her friends entering the
bar. Brienne and Alex. She’d gone to high school with them, so many years ago
now. They were all about the same age, and Dakotah had just turned twenty.
Brienne had long frizzled dreadlocks, and she was supporting her boyfriend Alex
who seemed to be feeling unwell.
“Dee!” Brienne
called into the bar as she helped her boyfriend through the doorway. “Help!”
“Brienne!”
Dakotah said her name in greeting, getting up to join them. “Alex! Can I borrow
five bucks?”
“Give it a rest
Dee,” Brienne said, as Dakotah took Alex’s other arm. “Something’s wrong with
Alex.”
He doubled over
against a table and Dakotah put down a chair for him to sit on. “I feel
amazing,” he insisted smiling even as he was wincing in pain. “I mean except
for my stomach.”
“He took something
new,” Brienne told Dakotah.
“What?”
“Some kind of
drug,” Brienne continued. “I told him not to. I swear to god. I was like ‘Don’t
take it Alex. You gotta have scientists like tell us it’s okay first.’ But you
know Alex and science.” Brienne rolled her eyes, obviously very concerned. Alex
was more akin to Dakotah than Brienne. He was open to new experiences, and
didn’t believe in the ‘conventional truths’ the government brainwashed society
with.
“Carol,” Dakotah
called to the bartender. “He needs some water.”
Alex groaned and
doubled over in his seat, clutching desperately at his stomach.
“What can I do?”
Brienne asked him in loud hysteria, crouching down beside him. “Tell me what I
can do!”
“It hurts!” Alex
barely managed to utter. “Feels like my stomach is burn’n up. Oh god it hurts!
It hurts!”
Brienne clutched
Alex’s hand, tears streaming down her face. She loved him, they were each
other’s entire world. Dakotah had once had a love like theirs. But love burned like
a fire, consuming everything, eating away until there was nothing left but ash.
Alex’s shirt
caught fire. Dakotah couldn’t see where the flame had originated from, but it
seemed to spread from his belly, quickly engulfing his torso. Brienne screamed,
the bright orange flames lashing at her and forcing her to release Alex’s hand.
Both women backed away from him, screaming as their friend spasmed and writhed
in his seat. As loud as their screams were, it wasn’t enough to drown out his
own, an agonizing wail the likes of which neither would hear quite the like of
again.
It took less than
a minute before his screams were nothing but a memory, and a smoking pile of
ash was all that remained of Alex. There was silence in the bar, all except for
Brienne’s sobs. Dakotah inhaled, gasping for breath though she hadn’t even
realized she’d been holding it.
“What the hell
was that?” she asked at last, as Carol picked up her phone. Dakotah heard her
finger land three times.
* * *
Anderson woke up
on his couch slowly, his hand clenching in pain. Remnants of a months-old
wound. It was the joints, specifically the ones that had been broken. His other
scars still ached as well. Two months of recovery, and he still didn’t feel
quite the same. He didn’t think he’d ever feel completely the same again.
His apartment was
a disaster. Dirty clothes littered the floor, mixed with empty potato chip bags
and other junk food wrappers. He had nothing but a bath robe on, and couldn’t
even remember the last time he’d showered. Or what day it was. He turned on the
TV to a rerun of Price is Right. Getting off his ass, Anderson fumbled into his
kitchen to cook himself up a bowl of cereal. Opening the fridge, he smelled the
milk, disappointed it had gone sour. Only a week after its best before date.
He’d had milk last twice that long.
Pouring the Fruit
Loops into the cleanest bowl he could find on a counter littered with dirty
dishes, Anderson was just about to collapse back on the couch and enjoy the
comedy stylings of Drew Carry when his phone went off. He almost spilled his
bowl of cereal in his lap as the loud ringtone blared. He’d not heard the phone
ring in weeks. Grabbing his cellphone from the table in front of him, he took
one look at the number on the screen and answered it.
“Chief,” Anderson
said into the phone before the person on the other end could talk. “Is it
time?” He glanced to the detective badge still sitting in the display case it
had been presented to him in. Untouched.
“I think two months
is long enough,” Sergeant Chief Sue Harrington said on the other end. “I have a
case I’m hoping will be perfect to ease you in.” She gave him an address.
“I’ll be right
there,” he said, hanging up the phone. Getting off his couch once more, he made
for the bedroom and opened his closet to the only clean outfit he had left. A
three piece suit.
He sniffed
himself. Probably best he washed up first. And shaved.
Next Time on Dakotah Slade Paranormal/Detective
Dakotah and
Anderson team up to uncover the cause of Alex’s Spontaneous Combustion.
Rachel and her
team get more than they bargained for when the mayor calls in the favour she
owes him.
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