Titolo: Across the wire
Autore: Stella Telleria
Genere: Fantascienza
Trama: When Mia Mitchell, a hardcore but lonely former Marine, steps into an alley to pull some thugs off an unlucky foreigner, she walks into a fight she expects. What she doesn’t see coming is the foreigner making her a job offer any sane person would refuse. So, she takes it. She thinks she’s headed for some third-world country; instead she’s mysteriously transported to an Earth-like parallel world. That’s a mad left-hook.
Trama: When Mia Mitchell, a hardcore but lonely former Marine, steps into an alley to pull some thugs off an unlucky foreigner, she walks into a fight she expects. What she doesn’t see coming is the foreigner making her a job offer any sane person would refuse. So, she takes it. She thinks she’s headed for some third-world country; instead she’s mysteriously transported to an Earth-like parallel world. That’s a mad left-hook.
Mia discovers a matriarchal dystopia where freedom doesn’t exist and fighting for it means execution. Lethal force bends all to the law; women fear for their families and un-wed men suffer slavery. Mia’s job is to train an underground syndicate of male freedom-fighters for a violent revolution. However, the guys don’t want a pair of X chromosomes showing them the way.
Eben, an escaped slave, is encouraged by Mia to become a leader among the men. But when he turns his quiet determination on her, it spells F.U.B.A.R. for cynical Mia. Their unexpected connection threatens more than her exit strategy; it threatens the power struggle festering with in the syndicate.
Haunted by nightmares and post-traumatic stress, unsure who to trust or how to get home, Mia struggles to stay alive as she realizes all is not what it seems.
Stella Telleria All my life I’ve dreamed of stories or have had my nose buried in one. I live in Edmonton, Canada with my husband and my weird sense of humor.
I love old war movies, dystopian fiction, and any story with action, a good plot, and characters I'd get into a fight at the pub for. Not that I'm a brawler or anything. Unless you think that out-of-print book or vintage piece at the thrift shop is going home with you instead of me. Then, my friend, the gloves are off.
#1
I continued putting books and figurines back on the shelves. The sound of broken ceramics and ambient street traffic filled the room.
“I’ve buried three husbands,” she added.
I placed another framed picture of a different wedding on a shelf. A young Mrs. Bateman smiled in the picture. I wondered how she had survived such sadness and how so much pain could find its way to certain people’s door steps. I scratched at my left wrist but forced myself to stop. I understood why she lived alone now.
The two most insignificant words, words I’d heard a million times, came out of my mouth. “I’m sorry.”
She nodded. “Most people think it’s a joke I’ve buried three husbands.” Her voice was The glass of the picture caught a glint of sunlight. “It’s not,” I said, and heard an ambulance off in the distance through her open window.
“I don’t know why some think it is.” Her eyes seemed unfocused. “It’s not easy watching the ones you love die.”
She was hurt, she’d lost things she’d loved, and maybe she’d lost confidence in her independence. I could understand those things.
“Maybe it’s some people’s way of dealing with it,” I said. The siren became louder—getting closer.
Mrs. Bateman sat staring at me. “Of dealing with what?”
I went back to placing a bunch of unbroken records on the shelf. “That fortune holds no favorites. That everyone dies.”
A fragment of a figurine stood out of the wreckage on the floor. A decorative ceramic mask smashed roughly in half. It was white with sparkles painted on the lips and a tear glittering on its cheek. It lay there with its broken side to the floor and a wave of déjà vu hit me in the gut. The broken figurines and records became gravel. The mask became Sergeant Kosher’s head, what was left of it. The sparkled mouth became blood that caught the light. The tear was some other bodily fluid that seeped out of his remaining eye because there’d been no time for tears. His brain was scattered around his head like a halo. Kosher, the patron saint of car bombs.
He never saw that IED; he never knew what was coming. It’d made me feel better about it somehow.
“The worst isn’t what people say,” I said.
“What’s worse?” Mrs. Bateman’s voice was hushed as if we were in church.
“That there’s nothing you could’ve done or will do to make their deaths worth it. Nothing that’ll explain why you survived and they didn’t.”
#2
I found myself in an open field, it was sunny but I was cold. I turned. A smooth, polished piece of granite marked Dad’s grave. His casket was buried in the cold earth, but he wasn’t in there, inside that wooden box. He was free somewhere, roaming the world in some capacity, enjoying himself. It was I who was trapped in a box.
Strong arms surrounded me. I turned into them, to Harris, the only other man I’d ever trusted.
“It’s okay, you’re okay.” He squeezed me closer and wound the curls of my hair around his finger, knowing it relaxed me. The soothing never came. I clutched him closer in a desperate attempt to keep him with me.
He pulled away but I clung to him like a child. He took my face between his hands and wiped at the tears with his thumbs, the ring I’d given him on his finger.
“I love you.” I’d never said it enough when it had mattered. He’d always been better at saying those things.
“I know.” He smiled and his blue eyes sparkled in that mischievous way they always had when we’d been kids in Jeet Kune Do class.
He brought his lips to mine. My heart shuddered. I willed Harris to stay with me. My hands cupped the back of his head, my fingers ran through his shaved Army hair, and then through blood. His eyes were wide and scared. I didn’t know where he was hurt, they’d never told me. It’d been closed casket. I held him tighter but his arms loosened. He was gone, dissolved like sand that melted through my fingers. The band he’d given me melted too, burning my hand.
Alone and surrounded by blackness I fell to my knees. It was my fault he was gone. Why had Harris come with me?
Wind struck my face. The moon looked down on me, an insect in its path. Something else mingled with the wind and stuck in my eyes, throat, and chest. Sand. Harris. Desolation.
A berm on either side of me and a ranger graveyard before me—I was in the middle of a desert. The cold made me tremble. Then the fire came.
#3
I ground my teeth. Don’t give up.
Looking around the cell, I searched for anything that might break the collar. The bars.
Maybe if I wedged the end of the pillory between them I could twist the hinge. I struggled to get on my feet. While on my knees, someone entered through the first door of the cell. It was the same sentry that had run to the outhouse after me. My heart dropped.
Her mouth fell open as she took in the empty cell and bent bars. She turned, headed for the panic button on the wall that would trigger the alarm. It was all over now—I hoped Gavin had gotten out.
Something struck the side of the sentry’s head. She stumbled, fighting for balance, arms flailing to steady her. The man with the holster appeared from the gloom, hidden in the night by his black clothes, holding a bar in each of his hands. The sentry raised her shock-rod. The zing
of the charged rod echoed through the cell. The woman shot forward, shock-rod in hand, needing contact to electrocute unlike the stun-guns.
“Look out!” I said.
He’d blocked the woman’s attack with his rod. A spark from the shock-rod lit the cell for a second. He’d sidestepped her, hooked the sentry’s arm back with a rod, and struck her on the forearm. Bone cracked. The sentry screamed. The shock-rod dropped from her useless right hand. A second blow knocked the woman out. She crumpled like a heap of rags thrown carelessly against the wall.
He slipped through the bars and crouched next to me while he tucked the rods into a belt at his hip. How did he know how to fight like that?
“You came back?” I stared at him.
He reached for his neck and pulled the swathe off his head. Comprehension slammed me in the face. The man with the holster was a woman.
I flinched away from her. She looked me straight in the eye, and I couldn’t look away.
Her gaze held me like the collar around my neck; there was no resisting. I was that shocked.
“Listen, I’m gonna get you out of here. What’s your name?” Her hands rested on the wood around my neck.
A cough racked through me, I couldn’t get enough air. Felt like a serrated knife stabbed me in the side with each hack.
Her hands went to my face. Her touch startled me, her fingers laced through my dirty beard. I twitched again, uncomfortable with the contact, but the look on her face told me she was serious. “What’s your name?”
“Eben.” My response came out like a croak, but the cough died.
“Eben,” she said, and somehow my name sounded different when she said it. “I’m Mia and I’m not leaving without you.”
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento