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CHAPTER TWELVE
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Eidolon Avenue: The First Feast APARTMENT 1B
APARTMENT 1BBULLETMonday, 3:24 PMFive blue. Seven red. Four yellow.He blinked the sleep from his eyes. Lifted his head from the mattress. Saw the shit hole on Eidolon Avenue he called home. The TV with the cracked screen sitting on the plastic crate. The yellowing walls with the rust colored streaks running from ceiling to floor. The scattered pizza boxes and cheeseburger wrappers. And his friends . . .five blue, seven red, four yellowsitting on the cheap ass coffee table.That’s right, he thought. They were all there.Five blue. Seven red. Four yellow.He stretched and turned to the window. Kicked the sheet away from his legs. It was raining. And late.Fuck.Hated that job anyway.And FUCK his foot hurt.He sat up and turned his leg.What the fuck?A new tat. A snake. A small snake. A fuckin’ cartoon-ass fuckin’ garden snake or something. Some punk ass shit a prom queen flyin’ on Molly would get before getting fingered in the back of some quarterback’s Chevy.And
Eidolon Avenue: The First Feast APARTMENT 1C
APARTMENT 1CCLICKMonday, 3:24 PMThey’d made love, once, when she was warm. Now she sat at the kitchen table, her silence speaking volumes.“I’m sorry,” he said for the umpteenth time.Nothing.He’d discovered her an hour ago at the foot of the stairs in the lobby.Hair a soft brown, eyes large and kind, skin pale and freckled. She’d sat facing the mailboxes, lost in thought, her lithe body, despite the rainy afternoon, in a sleeveless sundress, her small feet in strappy sandals.Although he saw her many times before, strolling the park or sipping coffee in the cafe, he’d never approached or spoken with her. There’d never been the chance.Until now.And she was perfect.Then again, they always were in the beginning.Not wanting to startle her, he approached cautiously.Seeing him, she stood. “Oh my goodness.” Her heel caught the hem of her dress. “I’m sorry.” Balancing on one foot, her hand gripping the railing, she fought to wrestle it free. “Just let me—”“Here.” He o
Eidolon Avenue: The First Feast APARTMENT 1D
APARTMENT 1DANNIVERSARYMonday, 3:24 PMWe are a walking history of our failures,” Marta said as she snapped the napkin open and laid it across her lap. “A stumbling catastrophe of unbelievable screw ups that, as you can plainly see, screwed us up.” She laughed, the tight smile on her gleaming lips held a moment longer than needed. “Really, it’s just been an endless array of aborted endings. Until now, I mean.” Her pudgy hand lifted her champagne glass—her sixth, but who was counting?—in yet another toast to the elegant man seated to her side. “And for that, we thank you, Mr. Peabody.”“I promise, this time we’ll get it right,” the stranger said with a small nod.Even here, surrounded by the decay that was Eidolon, he seemed to fit. Untouched by the yellowing walls and the splintered baseboard, the brown stains running from the ceiling or the thin windows that rattled when the wind blew and rain pelted the glass, as it did now, this Peabody was neither tall nor short, neither han
Eidolon Avenue: The First Feast APARTMENT 1E
APARTMENT 1EUMBRAThere was something living in the walls.Still wearing her only black dress, a rose taken from the cemetery in one hand, her bright pink backpack in the other, she’d watched the stain in her new bedroom. Round and raised in the middle, like a bubble, it was different than the others.And it was alive.She’d known it the moment she’d walked in. Had felt it as she’d turned to put her backpack on the creaky bed. Had expected, when she first saw the stain two weeks ago, to see a face, two eyes, lips, a nose and cheeks and teeth, pushing from the wall.But there’d only been a wide brown circle. A stain that wasn’t a stain. One that wasn’t long and dark like the others. One that hadn’t dripped from the ceiling to the floor. One that sat alone, removed from the others. Just like her.“What kind of name is ‘Umbra?’” were the first words Gran had said when the big lady with the onion bagel breath first dropped her off. The State had decided this was where she had to be
Eidolon Avenue: The First Feast PROLOGUE
PROLOGUEThere is a place on Eidolonthat stands five stories tall.Beyond locked doors,dreams dreamt no more,the tenants await their fall.And on this dayon “Eye-da-lon,”which waits five stories tall,vindication sweetfeeds the hunger repleteas the walls inside whisperLet’s eat.
Eidolon Avenue: The First Feast APARTMENT 1A
APARTMENT 1ALUCKYMonday, 3:24 PMIt’s said all of Shanghai wept when she died.It’s said over three hundred thousand marched in a funeral procession four miles long that blustery March day in 1935. It’s also said that somewhere in the sobbing throng several women committed suicide. Their silent screen Goddess, Ruan Lingyu, ending her life with a fistful of sleeping pills at the too-young age of twenty-four spawning a grief only death could calm.Whether or not myth wrestled with fact to become legend, and some claimed it did, everyone agreed this was a sad full stop to the short sentence of what might have been a glorious career.A week later, in one of the many squalid shacks that still hug the outskirts of Shanghai, an early birth followed this now iconic end, the young mother’s overwrought anguish shocking her into the delivery of a small, sickly daughter. A dangerous unlucky beginning for a dangerously lucky life.Or at least that’s what little Ruan Liu’s family said.Dec
Eidolon Avenue: The First Feast CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER TWOIn a shining villa in the center of Shanghai, her thighs burning, her back aching, and her knees rubbed so raw they all but whimpered, Lucky kneeled, silent, waiting and more exhausted than any almost twenty-four year old should be.The Revolution had arrived almost a decade ago on the heels of a brief, bloody civil war. The Communist storm which had darkened the horizon for years had finally crept in and swept out the poor, the infirm, the religious. And now, outside the city, in the rural areas, thousands were dying in what was feared would be an historic famine. The old and weak falling first. Small children left to starve in the fields under the watchful eyes of hungry prey. The trees plucked of their leaves and stripped of their bark, the birds silent in their absence.But far from the devastation and desolation, Lucky worked.Her father dead and her mother dying, the family had abandoned Bad Luck Lucky. Closed their hearts, closed their pocket books, and closed th
Eidolon Avenue: The First Feast CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER THREENestled in a pile cluttering the coffee table sat a discarded pouch of Lipton bleeding into the sunken oval of a porcelain saucer.“It’s good, isn’t it?” Evangelical said. She lowered the mug into a nearby abyss, the porcelain finding the saucer and a watery pool of its own russet-hued blood with a gentle clank.“It can fell armies,” Lucky heard herself saying.And raise kings, came the remembered words from Madame Xuo’s red room.The vengeful wraith of the woman with the white face and a slash of scarlet for lips waited opposite Lucky. From a small, low chair that had once sat in a distant past, she was near the window in the here and now, her eyes low, her tongue crawling with secrets and lies and things best left unsaid.“I’m sorry?” Evangelical said.Madame Xuo stared at Lucky, her knees not kneeling as they rested not on the grimy grey of a familiar carpet, but on ancient boards that were cracked, splintered and covered with dust. Nearby, Yin Ying stood too ta
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- Eidolon Avenue: The First Feast APARTMENT 1E
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- Eidolon Avenue: The First Feast APARTMENT 1C
- Eidolon Avenue: The First Feast APARTMENT 1B
- Eidolon Avenue: The First Feast CHAPTER TWELVE
- Eidolon Avenue: The First Feast CHAPTER ELEVEN
- Eidolon Avenue: The First Feast CHAPTER TEN
- Eidolon Avenue: The First Feast CHAPTER NINE
- Eidolon Avenue: The First Feast CHAPTER EIGHT
