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Category:
Action/Thriller
Publisher: Sortmind Press
ISBN-10: n/a
Type: Fiction
Pages: 289
Copyright: Feb. 12, 2023
ISBN-13: 9798377201915
Price: $3.99 (eBook)
A naïve and disconnected artist gives a party to celebrate his success, only to find himself drafted that same night into a mindless war against the Reunion, an unstoppable army of hallucinatory consciousness.
Artist Dave Raavenscorr picks up what he considers a neurotic college girl only to discover he’s latched onto Dr. Marina Nunn, chair of the Lake University Music Department and a refugee from the Reunion brainwashing disaster hundreds of miles south.
Fearing she’s contaminated him, Dave flees to his quirky warehouse studio where his best friend, art maven Reva McKee, hosts a celebration of his first one-man show. But a hundred fifty partygoers can’t admit that armies of the Reunion are marching on their placid college town, and before long Marina crashes the party, crowing about the hallucinations she shares with Dave and handing him his draft notice.
Excerpt
Dave checked out the girl squinting at the bulletin board. She was a typical neurotic college girl, damaged, hunched over, round-shouldered, her hair a tangled ball of muddy tones matching her tatty brown sweater. Dave had seen her type before and was certain she wore that sweater to cover mousy little breasts.
She turned, shot him an icy glare, and wrapped the loose cardigan around her.
Dave dropped his eyes to his sketchbook. A third of the way through so far. He’d recently begun forcing watercolor directly into unfixed charcoal, diffusing the charcoal, dimming the tones. He referred to this process as compromising the color. Pencil or charcoal kept the tones murky. The effect was more subtle than he’d ever achieved.
But he’d endangered his sketchbook by bringing it here tonight. He knew damn well he hadn’t intended to sketch. He’d come here to sit on the stone bench in the student union and look sensitive in front of college girls. He’d exposed his sketchbook to loss, to splashing from bicycles passing through puddles, to sand contamination from his walk on the beach.
Dinner had just finished. Students issued from the cafeteria along with the smell of pork chops. Cute girls were paired with good-looking young men. But the girls seemed so immature that Dave couldn’t imagine carrying on a conversation with them. They didn’t have the faintest inkling of his conceptual patterns. It gave him bitter pleasure to study his art and ignore them. What did eighteen-year-old females know about sex? They were just full of tension, coming at you with arrogant combativeness and fear. Who wanted to fool with that?
Outside the windows they unlocked their bicycles and laughed with the boys. Friday evening, sunset. Easy sex coming up for all of them. All a guy had to do was suggest a beer up in his room, and the girl would nod and say: “All right …” They formed pairs so effortlessly. Even when they read the bulletin board together and pointed to photos of cars or bicycles, Dave knew that within the hour they’d be greedily exploring each other’s bodies. Dave would be walking to his car with his sketchbook.
“Dammit to hell.” To his horror, he’d let his sketchbook slide off his lap onto the stone bench. It could’ve been dented. What an inexcusable lapse of discipline for an artist.
He caught the neurotic girl studying him. She had a round face and dark hurting eyes beneath disheveled hair. Dave averted his gaze, heart churning, but to his astonishment he found himself standing beside her at the bulletin board. “Uh, hello.”
The girl gave a neutral nod. “Hello.”
What were full, sensuous lips doing on a neurotic college girl? Her cheeks were coolly composed, almost frozen, yet the face was sensual. She didn’t even seem to breathe. Usually neurotic college girls bubbled with anxiety.
“I just thought I’d come over and … talk, you know.” He’d started the entire encounter without giving it a second thought. Normally he’d agonize about what to say for ten minutes before finally getting up his nerve.
“Well, that’s nice.” She checked out guitars, clarinets, and amplifiers on the bulletin board. Now he saw her hair was really a deep russet, with wild gold streaks. He focused on the odd outline of her nose. She was pretty in a weird sort of way.
“Uh, my name’s Dave.”
She turned. “You looked so lonely sitting over there. Like you were thinking about someone.” Dave was stunned by the low musical voice.
“Me? Thinking about someone?”
“Yeah, that’s what you looked like.” She bent to read some lower notices, and Dave swallowed as her sweater parted. He’d been completely wrong about her breasts. Under that nasty brown sweater she wore a transparent lime-green blouse, the top three buttons undone. Beneath that, a lacy crimson bra barely held back enormous, round, heartbreaking boobs. Everything was so sheer he could see her brown nipples. Unbelievable that he’d been checking her out all this time and missed this.
“Me? You mean--me?” She really had him going now. How could a college girl lead him around like this? “I guess I was thinking about, you know, talking to you.”
The girl caught his glance and pulled her sweater around herself. “No, I’ve seen that look before. You’re in love with somebody, and you’re thinking about her.”
Dave locked onto those unfathomable eyes and struggled to put defiance into his tone. “Well, you’re wrong there. I was just sitting there, I guess. Maybe I always look like that.”
She fingered the sweater right where Dave wished she would whip it aside. “My name’s Marina, by the way.”
“That’s a … sexy name,” Dave said, deciding to spell it out in full for this dimwitted college girl.
She shrugged. “And you said you were …?”
“Dave. I guess that’s not a very sexy name.”
“Well, then hello, Dave. Are you looking to buy a used laptop? Too bad we don’t have Internet anymore. You could’ve just texted anyone. Now we’re back to bulletin boards.”
“Uh, no, I guess I was looking at you.”
She shifted an armload of books. Dave could see from the spines that she’d been to the university library. On Friday night? She was a serious case. Again her sweater fell open. Only now did he realize how short she was, maybe five-five. Tiny, but with such a sensual face and such glorious breasts. Neurotic, definitely.
“Well, I’ve been looking at you,” Marina said. “For quite a while now. You do look lonely.”
Dave’s brain raced to keep up. Her voice was so intoxicating he was afraid she might break into song. He’d definitely latched onto something weird. He might even miss his own party. He hadn’t counted on this. “I’m not really lonely, I don’t think.”
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