The Grigori Chronicles: Book One: Transcendent

I was happy. Ecstatically happy. That kind of happy you get from just feeling satisfied with life. When you’re driving down the road and the trees look greener, and the scent that wafts in through the open windows smells of honeysuckles, fresh clean air, and all things good. The sky was cloudless and a brilliant shade of blue, reminding me of a clear, blue sea - sparkling, pure, immaculate. I peered at the rearview mirror and gazed at my beautiful daughter, Evie, who was now slumped over in the seat, mouth wide open, and asleep with that completely peaceful expression that only an innocent child can embody. I don’t know why I felt so good. I mean, yeah, I’d had a nice lunch with one of my best friends at a recently renovated local restaurant appropriately named The Lunch Box, named so because, well, they were only open for lunch. I had lunch with my good friend Amy whose husband had acquired the rundown business months earlier when the previous owners had been forced into foreclosure.

Carrie offered to watch Evie for the night and for as many nights as I needed. I was appreciative and gratuitously accepted. I went to the house and gathered up Evie’s clothes, toothbrush, and her lovey. It was while I was plundering through her drawers that I noticed something glistening beneath her bed. I knelt down to lift it from the tangles of the carpet. It was an earring. An expensive one. On my baby’s bedroom floor, and it didn’t belong to me. This brought my attention to my daughter’s bed which was tousled, the comforter folded down at the pillows. I knew I’d made it before I left this morning, and I always tucked the comforter beneath her pillows. I put my nose to the covers, and there was that smell again. The perfume, the cigarettes, the sex. With a fury like I’ve never felt, I screamed. I screamed so loud that I hurt my own ears. I did not care. I dug my fists in her bed just before I started ripping the sheets and every stitch of fabric from it. My first thought was to

We chattered and bantered through the remainder of the afternoon, called out for pizza – as none of us was fit to drive – and slovenly lazed about my new home. “You know, Sade?” Amy began, “You seriously need a vacation.” She cut her eyes in Carrie’s direction, where Carrie sat harboring an anxious grin. I looked back and forth between the two of them. “What are you two up to?” I took a big bite of the greasy pizza and another sip of the wine to wash it down as I eyed the two suspiciously. “I want to tell her,” Carrie piped up, staring at Amy with a daring gleam in her eyes. Amy nodded. “Well you know that little cabin that Amy and Chuck went to this past summer?” Carrie brimmed. I knew where this was going. I couldn’t be angry with them. They had seen the hell I’d been through the past couple of months. I would’ve done the same for them. And they knew I’d never do anything for myself. Amy cut in, “Carrie and I knew you’d never do anything for yourself,” she started, reading m

I lay in the water. My mind was aroused with so many thoughts, I could not even attempt to slow them. Despite the sound of the soothing jets desperately attempting to calm me, beating the hot cascading water all over my body, soaking me until my fingers and toes were all pruny, I could not shake the anguish that consumed me. I stared out into the twilight of the cool mid-fall night, looking for nothing, thankful for the emptiness I saw there. Nothing but columns of trees, looming in the shadowy light of dusk; giants enclosed all around me like a fortress. I pushed back tears that threatened to burn through my faux ambiance, my fingers tightly twisted around the vodka bottle like it was a pacifier. I was past this, wasn’t I? I shut my eyes tight against the onslaught of painful thoughts and allowed the crickets to lull me with their night song. Perhaps I would fall asleep here, in this hot tub, in this cabin completely out in the middle of nowhere. No one would find me until I was goo

I squinted, trying to make out the dark form but could tell nothing, just an enormous large black winged creature sitting there, so black that it almost blended with the night. As I backed away from the doors, I reached forward and down with a free finger in the hand in which I was still holding my empty glass, and pushed down the lock on the glass doors. Cautiously, I leaned toward the doors and held my hand up to the glass door in order to block the reflecting light of the fire. All the while still stealthily balancing the empty glass and the two remaining bottles of vodka. My heart was racing. What was I looking at? I couldn’t tell. Fleetingly, the memory of a night from about a month back when I’d first moved into my house came to mind. These were the thoughts going through my head as the dark figure suddenly came at me, slamming itself hard against the glass door, causing me to jump back and drop my glass. I stood there for a minute thinking I pissed on myself. Lovely. I looked