Here is the first chapter of Girl Possessed (Book 1 of The Girl Trilogy):
1
I rushed out of the ocean into a dark nook
along the Malibu coast. I was breathing fast. My long black hair clung to my
naked body covering the hump on my back and the edge of my skinny thighs. I
carried a chain of live fish and a bag of oysters for bargaining. The sky was
black with an orange haze along the horizon likely from the pollution of looting
fires in the city.
At the edge of the woods, I dressed in my
under garments and sundress that were still draped over a branch from yesterday
and grabbed the rope and bridle I had hidden between the rocks.
Suddenly, adrenaline rushed through me. My
body stiffened. I sensed I wasn’t alone. In the gentle rhythms of the night, I
heard the slightest sounds of breathing. I turned around, but nobody was there.
A branch snapped behind me. When I turned to
look, I saw silver eyes staring at me through a bush. My heart pounded fast.
“I’m not afraid of you,” I said trying to
feign confidence. But, before I finished the sentence, the eyes were gone.
I heard someone rush away, but I couldn’t
get a clear focus on the figure that moved very fast down the beach. I saw it
was a man or possibly a serpent person. But, a serpent person would have
attacked me instead.
I stood there dumbfounded for a moment. The
night air was still and hot as I hugged my skinny, boyish body to calm myself.
But, I couldn’t waste time. I was in a desperate hurry.
In the other direction, I saw the stray
horses sleeping as usual at the edge of the canyon, standing below the trees. I
released myself and edged closer, not allowing myself to be distracted by
thoughts of the man on the beach. I had to focus on my goal at hand.
As I neared the animals, I swung the
flopping seafood and oysters over my back. I took a deep breath and aimed the
rope, lassoing the black horse’s neck.
Startled out of his sleep, he reared. Dust flew
up into the moonlit air. The other horses ran off.
“Hey there buddy,” I whispered, approaching
with a firm grip on the rope. The gelding snorted and danced a bit, kicking up more
dust, but I had a gift with the creatures of the wild. These horses were
actually formally domesticated, but likely wandered off after their owners’
deaths. I bridled the fellow and swung my leg over his sleek back.
At a fast pace, we galloped along the dry
mountainous trails toward West Hollywood’s Sunset Boulevard. My long hair flew
behind, drying in the hot wind.
It was extremely dangerous going into the
city, but my mother needed antibiotics for her stab wound. I left her in the
cave on the island. If I was fast and didn’t get killed, I might be able to
save her.
I hadn’t been into the city since we fled to
the island after the Great Sun Scorch and the U.S. Economy Crash in 2039, but
I had heard about the serpent people and their take over. Fury ran up my spine.
They were the brutal shape shifting
descendants of the original serpent who seduced our foremother, Eve, into eating
the apple from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden.
They thrived during our times of famine and thirst, needing much less water
than humans.
The boulevard floodlights flashed through
the trees where I tied the horse to a thick branch. For a second, I thought I
saw the silver eyes watching me from another bush. But, when I looked closer,
there was nothing there.
I made my way down the dark hillside on foot
hiding behind abandoned houses as I descended.
A techball rolled across the sky. I hoped I
wasn’t spotted. I didn’t have time to worry.
Sunset Boulevard was quiet. Smoke rose from
some of the buildings. The monstrous dome cinema billboards were still intact,
some even lit up with sparkling lights. In their vanity, the serpent people
must have preserved those.
Most of the stars and famous or powerful
people of the U.S. past were serpent people shape shifted in human forms, so I
wasn’t surprised to see their ads glaring at me like false gods. The street was
quiet—most people couldn’t afford to drive speed waves anymore.
I was told I could trade fish for medical
supplies at the looted and now closed down Zapod’s Zip Shoppe where some humans
hid at night. My heart raced with fear as I entered the dimly lit dilapidated
building through the back.
The dark air was musty and smelled of urine.
I heard a scuffle. Something darted from one side of the room to the other. My
pulse accelerated. I looked around, but the place was hazy and scattered with
boxes and broken furniture obscuring the view.
Then, at once, someone grabbed me and threw
me to the floor.
“Who are you?” the person turned me over roughly
onto my back and held a blade to my neck. His breath was hot upon my face.
“Cordellia Dressemme,” I answered, afraid I
might pass out from fear. The hump on my back ached tremendously. I was always
very careful to not put pressure on it, but now a tall man with a graying beard
forced his weight upon me. “I brought seafood for trade of antibiotics. My
mother was stabbed.”
Another man, short and skinny with red hair
and a beard scanned some sort of ultra-violet light across my body. “Her legs
are dry, almost scaly like them, but she’s human.”
The tension lifted and the gray haired man
got off me.
Standing up, I handed him the chain of fresh
fish and the bag of oysters. He nodded and walked behind a counter where he sat
them down. The red head went out of the room.
“Where you come from? You’re a kid.” He was
looking through the shelves in the dim light. There were a couple of lit
candles hanging from the ceiling.
“I’m of teenage years.” I knew I looked
young and that irritated me. “We go from place to place,” I said vaguely.
“Haven’t found anywhere to settle, but my mother and I stay out of the city.”
“You’re lucky to be alive. The serpent
people rape girls and if they don’t eat them, they take them as slaves.”
I shivered even though it was extremely hot
in the room.
“You’re not ugly—you’re eyes are a pretty
aqua color, so they’d probably keep you.” He handed me a plastic bag of pills.
“Give her one twice a day for seven days.”
“Thank you.” I put the bag in my pocket. My
back was starting to feel better, but it throbbed a little.
He wiped his forehead with a cloth. “Be
careful crossing the road. If the techball spotted you, they’ll be looking. If
they come, run as fast as you can into the hills.”
I tried not to listen. It frightened me too
much to think of the danger. “Ok. Thanks.” I turned to leave.
“They look like upright snakes with arms and
legs—the size of tall humans. When they’re hungry, they can swallow a human
whole just like a snake gobbles up a mouse. Watch out.”
I went out the back door and snuck through
the darkness across the lots behind the buildings, figuring that if I had been
spotted, the serpent people would be waiting for me in front of the store. At
the next block, I would cross the street and make my way back into the hills.
When I reached the third lot, I came upon a
dimly lit building with serpent people inside. I crouched down as I passed, but
I did glimpse through the large window several serpent men and women partying.
Their voices were low grumbles muted by the glass. I don’t think anyone saw me.
But then, someone called me over in a
whisper. My body tightened. I didn’t want to look.
“Hey! Unlock the fence for us.” A human
woman waved me over. She and several other women and girls were locked inside a
roofed fence on the other side of the parking lot wedged between some trees.
“The key’s around his neck.” Her voice was pleading.
A green, scaly serpent person was sleeping
with his mouth open, holding a bottle of X in his lap, slumped back in a chair
before the pen.
As I moved closer staying out of the line of
vision from the window, I noticed a blond girl younger than me by a few years
whimpering quietly in the corner of the cage. She stood up and came to the edge
of the fence.
“Please,” she pleaded in a squeaky voice.
“My little sister will die without me. The serpents will molest us.”
Another
girl with a long neck like my mother’s and a couple years older than me said,
“He’s so blitzed that he won’t even wake up.”
I didn’t want to leave them, but I had seen
so many people die that I had grown colder with experience. “I’m sorry,” I said.
My heart tightened, but I turned and hurried away.
“One of the girls cried out, “Please! Please
save us.”
How
could I be so cruel to leave them? As much as I didn’t want it to be so,
that empathetic part in me was overcome by her cries. I couldn’t help it. This
was suicide.
I jogged back and crept up to the sleeping
serpent person. He looked like a hairless man, dressed in normal clothes with a
human shaped head, but he had snake features and green scales where humans had
skin.
Terror rose up in me. I held my breath as I
gently lifted the key off his scaly neck and over his cocked head. My heart
raced faster than I thought possible.
He shifted his position. I felt like I was
going to hyperventilate from fear as I froze. But he didn’t wake up.
The women and girls gathered in a huddle
before the pen’s exit. With the key now in my hand, I rushed to the fence and
unlocked the padlock.
There was a rattle as the lock fell out of
my hands and hit the fence. My fingers fumbled as I tried to slide it out of
the metal holes to release the gate. Lots of nervous fingers from the girls
reaching through got in my way.
The serpent person moved in his chair and
groaned. I turned to look at him and to my great terror he opened his eyes at
once.
I gasped as our gazes met.
Rage rose up in me. I wouldn’t die in the
hands of a serpent.
The blond girl whimpered slightly. I pushed
the lock out of the holes. The gate flew open. I almost lost my balance as the
metal links slammed into my face, but my adrenaline was full charge and I
managed to run away before being trampled by the caged females.
The women and girls were behind me. I could
hear them at close distance as we ran through the parking lot. Some were
screaming.
The serpent was yelling to the partiers
inside the building. I heard more ruckuses. Now the drugged out group yelled
and laughed amongst themselves as they pursued us.
I ran toward the street. The girls followed.
“Catch them and put them back into the
cage,” a serpent man called out.
“Party time!” Another serpent hollered.
The others laughed.
I could see flashes of light extending from
behind me in my peripheral vision, but I didn’t know what the flashes were,
though I assumed they were machinations of the serpents.
The girl with my mother’s long neck cried
out in agonizing pain. I looked back and saw a serpent woman with a scaly
womanly body rip off the girl’s legs with her bare hands while laughing as she
threw her to the ground. Bones cracked. Blood gushed forth. The girl’s slip-on
shoe shot through the air and hit another girl in the head.
I ran across Sunset Boulevard. The thud of
footsteps followed in close proximity. Bitter cries stung in my ears.
When I got to the other side and part way up
the hill, I heard a horrible hissing sound and then a serpent grabbed me by the
shoulder and pulled me backwards. I rolled to the bottom of the hill.