Echo Paradise: Preview #1
Echo Paradise: Preview #1
The following is a free preview to my novel, Echo Paradise, releasing on Amazon in paperback and digital on Sunday, August 15th.
***
Deservation.
Not a dictionary word, but it felt right when it slipped off her tongue. Deservation. It made sense against the dim background of the high-end laptop behind her, glowing an effervescent blue as screen saver bubbles bloated and shrunk onscreen. Distractions. It had all been a distraction, one new way to cope in every new click, new playback loop, new pause. In every new scan her eyes made across the video feed on the sidebar, in every new thumbnail that would disappear to be replaced by a video preview when her cursor hovered over something of interest. What would she watch next? That’s the only question she’d asked herself over the last four hours, resulting in the consumption of two video game analyses, a rant about a popular YouTuber who’d been outed as a pornographic artist, and a three-hour superhero movie review she’d only managed to watch half of before tapping out.
Still, the word cascaded itself across her mind like a lighthouse beacon against the darkening tides of the sea: Deservation. There had been no warning, not even a miniscule hint at one, yet it had happened all the same. Something turning life itself into a surreal, frustrating attribute of what it once had been. Hence the term. While she felt she would never understand why it had turned out this way, and while she could do a good job at pretending she did, the truth of the matter lay well below its surface-level basking. Basking? In what? Sunlight? Perhaps “rotting” was a better term. Rotting against a thick, white layer of creamy moonshine as it escalated, fell apart, and broke away in the early morning light.
Thinking was such a horrendous task now. It continued to do nothing but make her feel sick and pungent, a corpse in a computer chair, watching as the bright lights coalesced into a newfound birth. Oh, how she would give anything to make sure that brightness would never coax her gaze again! But even pretending it was more dramatic than it was didn’t stop her from crawling back to the ever-familiar comforts of warm, glowing technology.
At least computers could last forever.
Sickened by her consideration, she left the chair. A frustrated twinge snapped back and forth in her head. Tonight was just like any other night, so there was no reason to feel frustrated about it anymore. Yet at the same time, a cold stirring sensation pierced the left side of her chest. Heart attack? No, it never was. Just another shard of what happened poking against the last undamaged pieces. Gripping her in their maw-like vice, another salted, self-inflicted wound. The only thing breaking tonight would be her eyes when there weren’t enough distractions to quell the river of tears.
How long had she been standing in the doorway of her office space? Well, “office space”; it was just a computer room with a bed, nothing more. Yet she’d still invested in buying a filing cabinet for the sake of sorting whatever she printed out. Though she hadn’t printed much lately, just a few poems here and there that sunk into the depths of the drawer second from the bottom. Their prose hadn’t been what she intended, even more frustrating wallows that, while good for her fingers to tap into words, had only caused her cheeks to heat up and for more tear-stained tissues to occupy her trash can. Only once had she missed, the tissue giving rise to a small plume of dust as it hit the ground without a sound. The anger that had flared up in her then. Every shot missed.
…It really was starting again, wasn’t it? She’d told herself time and time again that trying to sort things out while standing in doorways wasn’t the way to go about it. Sure, it was a bit better than sinking into her chair and clicking on whatever interested her next, but using her brain to go back and forth in circles about what she already understood was a waste of time. She liked it; it felt like a familiar pastime. But it was far from healthy, and healthy was what she needed right now.
Yes, healthy was what she needed. That must have been why she left the chair. To get an apple out of the fridge.
As if agreeing with her sentiment, a deep growl emanated from her stomach. She gulped and forced a giggle out. She should have been more careful about losing track of time. Had she sat for any more hours than she had, she may have ended up in that chair until the sun crested the horizon. It wouldn’t have been the first time, but it would have been the first in at least a week. She’d started to recover from being awake more at night than in the day. The last thing she needed was for all that progress to be washed away in an ocean of sorrow.
Sorrow, yes. Well, it was time to go to the kitchen. Her mother had bought several red delicious apples that were on sale at the local supermarket on Sunday. At a time like this, even eating one felt like an appreciative gesture. At least, she hoped that’s what it would appear like. That’s what it was, that’s what it was meant to be. Was it enough?
She walked downstairs as quietly as she could, doing her best not to wake her parents. She’d grimaced passing their door, realizing it had been budged open slightly by Muppet. She hadn’t even remembered him leaving the dog bed. Had he really not been in it when she’d confined herself earlier tonight? He must have snuck his way onto her parents’ mattress after leaving for a drink of water.
No matter. As she walked by their door, she glimpsed his fluffy white body kicking the air as he dreamed of simpler times. The surge of jealousy that ran up her back was enough to make her feel embarrassed. Which was why she turned away so quick, before her parents would notice she was still awake.
The stairs were carpeted, making the descent easy. She didn’t have to worry about creaks either: She’d lived in this house for all eighteen years of her life, so she knew what spots uttered sharp squeaks or long moans. These she avoided with as much grace as she could muster after staring blank-faced at a computer screen all night. Only once did her footing almost slip, and only out of sheer luck was she able to catch herself from pressing down any further on that portion of the staircase. After a descent that lasted a lifetime, she had made it downstairs without waking the rest of her family.
It was easier to walk freely in the night when on the first floor. Everything had been refurbished before she entered high school, the once-tiled floors now replaced with a smooth faux wood that glistened when the lights turned on. Tonight, however, it was just as dull as the rest of the house, just as unrecognizable as her own feet beneath her. The texture differed from before, yes, but in the dark, it was much easier to pretend everything under her soles was steady. It helped her get to the kitchen without hesitation, dodging in the dark all of the chairs that had been pulled out from the table after dinner. A maze memorized, she felt her way across the floor, steady as she went. It was at times like these she wished the kitchen was just a little smaller at night, instead of being the endless cavern she now traversed through. Would it not be simpler to find the fridge if it were so close?
Unimportant ideas that didn’t matter anymore. Not when she had already stopped at the door and reached out, curling her hand around its cold handle. She yanked on it in quiet focus, feeling the suction of its door seal tighten and loosen as she opened it. The deep popping sound that emanated made her freeze for a moment, listening for any possible movement from the staircase. When it was clear no one would be coming to investigate, she breathed a sigh of relief. Her shoulders that she hadn’t even realized were raised now lowered to their normal positions. At a faster pace, she reached into the fridge, grabbed up an apple, and closed the door with as much tact as she could.
Only one question remained now: Would she eat the apple down here or take it back to her room? Back to the glowing cave where distraction could ease the threat of her musing? Or down in the depths of this sewer, where every little invisible face in the darkness pushed their needy little hands on her back, making her sink further and further into the fake floor beneath…
Not much competition, was there?
She started back toward the staircase. Passing through the kitchen was just as easy backwards as it was forwards. Everything was turned in the opposite direction, but knowing this made it easy to navigate even in the pitch dark. That didn’t mean it was without event, however. Halfway through she almost tripped over a backpack, making her heart jolt in her chest as she reached her hands out in anticipation of a fall. Of course an unseen obstacle had been placed in her way this time. Fate had a way of always ensuring she had something to overcome. Whether she could was a hit-or-miss moment she didn’t want to think about. Even so, she had never tripped over anything in the kitchen before, making her wonder if perhaps it really was time to get a good night’s sleep instead of wandering the first floor this late.
…Then again. Where had a bag even come from?
The only bag they had left in the house was her backpack. Ever since last year, she was the only one who even needed something like that. There was her father’s gym bag, but he always kept it in his room, and given everything going on outside right now—and with the local gym shut down until further notice—there was little reason for him to take it out of the closet. Come to think of it, when was the last time he’d left the house with it. Six months ago? Seven? She couldn’t even remember. And there was no reason to take it downstairs. Not unless the gyms had opened back up all of a sudden. No reason for her backpack to be down here either; she’d been doing all her work on the computer since March.
So the question remained: Whose bag was this?
***
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