Carved in Flesh
Lost and Lingering
Dominic Dante bowed his head to hide his face as he emerged
from the alley on Elmwood Avenue between Swanson’s Elegant Formals and Aeneid’s
Greek Cafe. He needed to find Eris and show her the evidence of his devotion.
Aeneid Veld’s rebellious eleven-year-old daughter Anna
Amalia had chosen the wrong night to sneak out of the loft above the café. The
street-savvy girl had slipped out at night many times before. She did not fear Crouch
End’s strange underbelly. She had been learning from a book of spells that she’d
purchased at Flash’s Book Studio for her birthday last year and had gained a
fair bit of respect from many of Crouch End’s Things that Go Bump in the Night.
On this night, however, Anna Amalia had run afoul of an
obsessed soul seeking an innocent to sacrifice. Dominic Dante was a tormented young
man who thirsted for both vengeance and acceptance. The stunningly sexy vampire
he met at the Church of Starry Wisdom had promised him both if he proved
himself to her.
Luckily for Anna Amalia, she had allies in the shadowed
night world and Earth’s Dreamlands. One of those allies was hurrying to find help
before the unfortunate girl succumbed to her injuries.
David Clifford was a Scottish musician who had moved to
London in 1960, the year he turned eighteen. His parents and younger siblings moved
to Crouch End three years later. David had died in 2012 from lung cancer. On
this cold November night in 2014, he roamed the streets in spirit.
David’s adopted sister, Lotus Clifford, was a nun who lived in
The Chapel of the Loaves and Fishes on Foxglove Court, along with the parish’s
priest, Father William Kroger. David knew that Lotus and Father Will would
certainly assist Anna, and he knew that Lotus would listen to him if he could
break through the static surrounding her.
Luck was with David, as at that moment, a down-on-his-luck
laborer named Robert Fitzgerald stumbled from the Istasha Tavern. Most people
thought that Rob Fitzgerald was naught but a malt-soaked malingerer, but David
was aware that the man had the second sight, even when he was seeing double.
The spirit hurried to place himself just outside the lamplight directly in
Fitzgerald’s path, allowing the lamp’s beams to illuminate him without making him
appear transparent.
Rob Fitzgerald was deep in blurry thought when he saw the
man standing near the house at the junction where Elmwood Avenue met Quartz
Street. His first inclination was to cross the street and head home another
way, but for reasons he couldn’t explain, he felt that the somehow familiar
stranger could be trusted. Still, he paused before continuing further.
“Just so’s ya know, Mate, I drank up the last of me wages in
the tavern,” Rob slurred. “So, there wouldn’t be no sense to robbin’ me, y’know.”
Acknowledgments
Mormo is the creation of H.P. Lovecraft, appearing in his
1927 story “The Horror at Red Hook.”
The setting of this chapter is based on Stephen King’s short
story “Crouch End.” It is not representative of the actual London borough.
The story utilized the October Spooky Writing Prompt “carved.”
The following prompts from https://puttingmyfeetinthedirt.com/
were also utilized in the creation of this story.
Lost and Lingering
Diligent and Debatable
A Delicate Decree
The Futureless Future
The First Line Friday prompt was utilized in the creation of
this chapter.
https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2020/11/20/first-line-friday-november-20th-2020/
The Sunday Writing Prompt was also utilized in the creation
of this chapter.
This story was posted to these places:
http://www.naughtynetherworldpress.com
https://lbry.tv/@naughtynetherworldpress:d
The Icky, Sticky, Nit-Picky Legalese If You Please (Or Don't Please)
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
This work is the intellectual property of Naughty
Netherworld Press.
Reblogging is acceptable on platforms that allow it. LBRY’s
reblog function is called repost, which makes things confusing since reposting
is considered a no-no on most platforms. It’s fine to share the post using the
repost function on LBRY. It is not okay to copy-paste the material into a new
post.
Sharing a link to the post is acceptable.
Quoting portions of the post for educational or review
purposes is acceptable if proper credit is given.
This chapter is from my WIP, The Key of Eidolon, which is
the second book in the Tales from the Dreamlands series. If you enjoyed this
chapter, please consider purchasing the first book, Ketil and Yitzy's Adventure
in the Xura Dream House.
The full chapter is available on LBRY for 10 LBC
(approximately $0.30)
https://lbry.tv/The-Key-of-Eidolon--Carved-in-Flesh:aa768b4e1a7bc2d7494c69144af013766c16d809
Buy the Kindle version of Ketil and Yitzy's Adventure in the
Xura Dream House for $3.99 https://amzn.to/2ZHmryK
Buy the PDF version from LBRY for 75 LBC (approximately
$2.25)
https://lbry.tv/@naughtynetherworldpress:d/ketil-and-yitzy-xura-dream-house-adventure:7
LBRY is a decentralized content marketplace. I price the PDF
versions of my work at approximately half of the Kindle price because I receive
the entire amount rather than a royalty percentage.
You can get a free LBRY account through this link. You can
earn LBC for viewing content on LBRY as well as from selling your content.
https://lbry.tv/$/invite/@naughtynetherworldpress:d
I'm on a mission with no permission. You can support me on
LBRY.
For weird and wonderful stories Netherworld style, slide on
over to the official Naughty Netherworld Press channel.
https://lbry.tv/@naughtynetherworldpress:d
For a unique poetic experience, take a break in LBRY's
finest poetry tea room.
https://lbry.tv/@poetryofthenetherworld:9
Most of my work is free. A tip as small as 5 LBC (approximately
$0.15) really helps, and it all goes to me.
For more information about getting the best from Naughty
Netherworld Press, follow this link:
I do hope that they are in time...
ReplyDeleteI thoroughly enjoyed this piece. The names for the characters are wonderful, very clever. I especially liked, "Crouch Ends thing that go bump in the night'.
ReplyDelete