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11
One night before all the madness started, back when Janice and her friends were looking for something, anything, to break out of the doldrums of day-to-day life, they had stumbled upon a film festival. It was being held in a shady, dirty, independent theater, one of the final 42nd Street dives that had somehow survived the New York cleanup of the early nineties.
Though they had seen a handful of short films that day, one managed to somehow stick in Janice's mind all these years, though she could never find out its name. It was nearly plotless, relying on stunning, garish visuals. In the film, a group of people, dressed like gods and goddesses from mythology, participated in a party/orgy that very much took on the trappings of an occult ritual as it went on. What Janice was seeing as she carefully followed the wolf through seemingly endless hallways, reminded her very much of that nameless film.
Figures would flash before her for seconds, giving h
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Byron heard a sniffling noise from behind him, and in his mind the demon girl had her head in the air, attempting to scent track like a bloodhound. He wondered if that was a good sign or a bad one and realized he had no way of telling.Everything has gone topsy-turvy. He thought to himself.“Clever,” The demon sneered. “Very clever. Which one of you summoned the seraph?”“Not me,” Byron grunted. “I don't even know what a seraph is.”“And not the girl… she hasn't had nearly enough time to learn how to do such a thing. It would take years of study… no...” All at once, Byron felt the stool under his feet jolt as though the demon had kicked it roughly.“Wait...” he hopelessly, foolishly grabbed the rope as though holding it would save him from hanging.“Who is helping you?” she exhorted, her voice tinged with anger. Byron
Broken Night 13
The room beyond the door was simple; squarish and small, able to be crossed with only a handful of strides. The walls were painted eggshell white, and the paint had started to peel, just a little, at the corners. The room had probably, Janice assumed, begun its life as storage.The only things in the room were a small bed covered with hospital white sheets, slightly yellowed with age, and a small machine which filled the air with soft, rhythmic beeping. Tubes ran from the machine to the bed where they attached to the figure tucked beneath the sheets.It was Emily Diamond… the real one.***Adara felt the atmosphere change in her small apartment, the energies swell above her ritual space. She sensed (more than saw) a figure floating overhead in the shape of a majestic grey wolf.Thank you. She mouthed the words silently, not wanting the sound of her voice to break the preternatural silence that had eng
Broken Night Epilogue
Two authors found at a bizarre crime scene, one dead.Dark fantasy author Emily Diamond's body was found in her home today. She was discovered by police after a call from true-crime author Byron Matthews, who was also found at the scene local law enforcement is calling “Bizarre”. Diamond had been strapped to a hospital bed, where she was seemingly being fed intravenously. According to authorities, Diamond's neck had been broken. “It would have taken a lot of force to do something like this,” One officer, who wishes to remain anonymous, informed. “We're looking for someone with incredible strength and probably some training.” Officers also found a large quantity of “Psychotropic drugs” in the house as well as what are being described as “Brainwashing accouterments.” Matthews, who is not currently a
Broken Night Prologue
Emily arched her back, letting out a small groan. She had been hunched over her keyboard since the sun poked its head over the horizon that morning, making her stiff and sore. When things went well, she could churn out a few pages in a matter of hours, leaving the rest of the day for her to do as she pleased.Today, things were not going well.Shaking her head, Emily picked up her favorite coffee cup, the one with the black chaos symbol on the side that she had bought in New York City, and took a taste test. The coffee had long since grown cold.“Time for a refill,” she mumbled. Even if it was of no consequence, she often talked to herself. Idle self-chatter often helped fill the void.Her last book had made a fair amount of money, more than everything else she had written. But even a sizable advance didn't last forever and Emily had again found herself back in the land of Ramen noodles and Taco Bell. Hopefully, this ne
Broken Night Part I - 1
Byron Matthews didn't know what to expect from the girl.His experience with prisoners was, besides those that he saw on television, pretty much nil. He had never hung out with the crowd that found themselves incarcerated, and while most families had the uncle or cousin that was always in trouble, it seemed his was the exception. Still, when he first laid eyes on Janice, he was surprised.She looked every ounce the privileged rich girl that she was, tall and blonde, with the clearest skin money could buy. Something in the way she moved and held herself even made the orange jumpsuit look good, like the work of some avant-garde fashion designer from Paris. The hardness that he assumed all inmates eventually obtained had touched her but it didn't erase the years of private school and privilege; instead, it seemed to almost enhance them, giving credence to the nonchalant disinterest that so many young girls wore like a cloak. Byron found himself impressed in
Broken Night 2
Janice opened her eyes, which had been closed the entire time she spoke. It surprised Byron at how well the girl narrated her story, more like a memoir than a casual conversation. He wondered if she rehearsed all of this in her cell, eventually deciding that there was very little that Janice didn't rehearse.“Sorry I'm spending so much time on this crap.” she fiddles with her fingers nervously.“It's fine. Just talk about whatever comes to you.”“I don’t think this is what you want to write about, is it?”“You never know.” Byron gave an encouraging smile. “And it's good to have as much background as possible. It makes for a better book, even if I don't end up writing about any of this.”Janice nodded, and Byron could tell from the girl's expression she was indeed thinking about what he had said.“I guess you're right. Besides… I'm not re
Broken Night 3
This time the girl, (Byron was still calling her that in his mind. She had yet to become Janice Rosse) seemed nervous. As soon as the guard, a new one this time with a scar on his right cheek, sat her down and removed the handcuffs. She began to drum her fingers on the table between them, creating short, staccato beats that led to nothing. Byron waited a moment to speak.“Are you ready to begin, Janice?” He finally asked, setting up the tape recorder.“Oh.” she seemed a little surprised, wide blue eye blinking rapidly as they stared through him. “Yeah.”“Is something bothering you?”“No… well, yeah… It's just that I try not to think too much about what happened, and last week, after talking to you, it's sort of hard not to, you know?”“I'm sorry. If you find these talks too distressing...”“No, I want to tell someone. To a person tha
Broken Night 4
“We've known each other forever, since before I can remember. We went to the same daycare, the same schools, we all graduated from Manhattan High School for Girls just before… before it all started. In fact, though we never talked about it, this trip was going to be our last hurrah as a group before our lives tossed us in different directions.Lacey was going on to college. We all knew that was coming. She wanted to be a scientist of some kind, something about physics, but cool… like the real Twilight Zone, Star Trek kind of stuff. If you could get her talking about it, and if you could get her to not use all the fancy math terms, it was really neat to hear about. She wanted to find out if there were really other dimensions, you know, like other worlds that were almost totally like ours, with little tiny differences.You know what I mean, right?Anyway, she was going to a college that none of us even had a prayer of getting
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