NO ORDER TO CHAOS AND LIFE IS CHAOS_ Chapter Eleven_ THE GIRL WITH SILVER EYES

 

"Son, I know why you love to run with your wolves. It is the appeal of the wild. It hones your awareness, speeds your reactions, forces you to form a plan to survive in a frenzied heartbeat and act upon it. You are the most alive person I know because of this."

- Amaia

The shade of Henderson flowed like heated honey to become a vengeful moon-haired girl with eyes of flame.

Lucas shook his head. "Henderson ... if Henderson is who you truly are. You know theatrics don't work on me. I do them on stage."

Apparently, they worked on General Donovan. He had backed up to the nearest wall.

Henderson kept her hell-child form. "I told her that you did not scare ... that fear had been seared out of you."

Lucas didn't know about that last. His mouth was plenty dry.

Instead he said, "The book has a gender?"

Henderson snorted in a jarring adult voice from such a child's face. "I spoke of the girl with silver eyes. The Book is beyond sex."

Lucas returned her snort. "How boring for the Book."

Henderson's flame eyes grew haunted. "Not so you'd notice."

A HEART TOUCHED BY WINTER_ Chapter Ten_ THE GIRL WITH SILVER EYES

 

" Is death always a sad occasion?" 

- Amaia

Moira had gone silent. Her eyes, glazed and dull, perhaps seeing the evaporating fragments of a broken mind.

She swayed on her knees, kneading the smoldering carpet like a kitten seeking comfort from tactile sensation.

Lucas had hoped she would eventually come to herself. 

He grimaced. 

Perhaps there had been too little of a self to begin with for there to be anything to which to return.

Donovan snapped, "In God's Name, why did you bring her here in such shape?"

"At the start of the journey, she was corrupt but sentient, much like your fellow generals. I had hoped the sight of your uniform would shake the truth from her."

Lucas turned eyes of ice to Donovan. "Like you with Lt. Henderson, I underestimated her ability to endure."

"You ever going to forgive or forget?"

"I do not do forgiveness, General. As for forgetfulness, I am Basque. We forget the past ... once we get even."

Lucas' icy face was a sham done for the benefit of an observing enemy.

Moira's state he knew was his doing. He could not undo it, but he could end it.

He bent quick as the strike of a snake, twisting the woman's neck in one fluid move, 

breaking it as efficiently and calmly as a surgeon might amputate a finger ... and with as little observable emotion.

"My God!" exclaimed the general. "The doctors were right. You are a sociopath!"

Lucas shrugged. "What are names but tags we hang on people to easier deal with them without having to struggle to understand them."

Lucas' eyes flicked to the motionless body of Moira. So vibrant, even in madness. Now, nothing.

The bird had flown. In what tree did she now sing?

He turned to General Donovan. "Man is Man by  strength of mind. Man becomes Man by way of his heart."

The general spat a laugh. "Heart? What heart? Yours is a withered husk of Winter."

The voice Lucas never thought to hear again wisped from the shadows, though it was whispery as if coming from the depths of an open grave.

"Oh, General, you look but do not see. Man pays with gold for a slip of the foot, but pays with his soul for such a slip of the tongue as yours just now."

The misty form of Lt. Henderson wavered before the two men. 

Eyes even more tortured than Lucas remembered ... eyes in whose depths swam the monsters that drove him or haunted him ... or both.

Was she here to hone the edge of his razor soul ... or worse.

FOR THE DAYS ARE EVIL_ Chapter Nine_ THE GIRL WITH SILVER EYES

 

"Live wisely, redeeming the time, for the days are evil." 

- Paul of Tarsus

Something was wrong. Terribly wrong.

Lucas swore at himself. It was his fault. He had let his mind wander down dark halls of festered memories.

The first time he'd found himself in "Hell," he had lost focus.

"Eyes blurred with the past do not see clear enough to hit the mark," his mother had warned him.

Adding, "A spear has no branches."

Moira began to whimper. 

Lucas dropped her limp body to General Donovan's smoldering carpet.

Yes, he had brought them to the general's office.

But not totally.

Outraged Time and Tide demanded their penalty for being violated.

Somehow misty after-images of Renaissance Venice billowed throughout the office.

Ghostly figures in fine robes pointed aghast at the intruding visitors from the future.

Donovan's secretary, Blanche Devereaux, screamed shrill as the carpet beneath her heels misted away into the rippling Grand Canal.

The flailing woman sank into the waters, now once again billowing fog.

Donovan sprang from his chair and reached for his secretary, 

but his fingers went right through the woman's spectral wrist.

The office resumed its normal state ... except for the gibbering Moira prone on the carpet.

General Donovan turned slowly towards him as if against pressure. 

Lucas thought it might be the pressure of choices better off not made. 

Lucas knew the feeling.

  

The general snarled, "Lucas, what the hell have you done?"

Mother once said, 

"Son, no matter how badly you have bungled affairs, never admit it to your enemies. Always thrust it back upon them. They have done worse ... and on purpose."

He forced his face to become as hard as the life into which he had been born.

"Right back at you, General. You sent a trusting subordinate after a book of the damned, and she paid the price."

At Donovan's feet, Lucas hurled the movie poster emblazoned with the girl with silver eyes holding the deadly volume.

"Now, another woman, who did not see you as you were, has paid the price for it."

"Damn you, Lucas."

"Of course, I thought you knew."

Lucas wondered if his true Hell would be to roam dark streets alongside all the people he had sent there while alive.

The hate-filled eyes of the general bored into him, and Lucas felt he would find out sooner than later.

THE FIRST AND FINAL TRUTH_ Chapter Eight_ THE GIRL WITH SILVER EYES

 

"The wind that sweeps the sun and the other stars across the void swirls within you, my son. Harness it, or it will consume you."

- Amaia, Lucas' mother

"Turning the corner."

Something the mind of a terrified child would conjure to make an incomprehensible nightmare manageable.

Not that it worked.

But the "first and final truth" Lucas' mother had taught him was that sometimes no matter the odds, you just had to try.

If you failed, at least you died with your head held high ... and when you were Basque, sometimes pride was all you had.

Clutched in his right arm, Moira was moaning, her writhing lips wet with drool, her wide eyes no longer comprehending what they saw.

Mother had taken it better ... but then, she was ... Mother.

Still, Lucas had killed her taking her here.

No.

He refused to own that thought.

Sheriff Danvers had mortally wounded her. Lucas simply refused to let Mother die caged. 

She would die free ... or as free as he could arrange.

He aimed his will for the den he shared with his pack of wild wolves.

Mother had been too injured to survive this wild transition.

Mother had simply evaporated in his arms like mist from the hidden surface of a winter lake.

Moira was only the second person he had taken with him here. 

She was still solid.

Perhaps you had to be sane to be translated.

He had, of course, went back for Sheriff Danvers.

Not to be brought here. 

Lucas would not foul the last place Mother breathed with that corrupt soul.

By accident, Lucas had once ended up in Hell ... or a realm close enough to be its suburbs.

He brought Danvers there. 

Lucas let him stay long enough that the sheriff was more than happy to hang himself.

Moira was turning opaque. Not that Lucas could blame her.

Gravity was just a taunting memory, reality was only nightmare, the only sound the howling of the blood hammering within their eardrums.

This wouldn't do.

Lucas had a debt to pay Brigadier General Donovan and Moira ... and Mother had taught him to always pay his debts.

Lucas smiled grimly ... it had always worked out so well in the past, hadn't it? 

But there was always a first time.

THOSSE WHO DIE BEFORE THEIR TIME_ Chapter Seven of THE GIRL WITH SILVER EYES

 

"Sooner of later, everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences." 

- Robert Louis Stevenson

In the dim light of the desk lamp, Moira looked like someone seen for the last time.

She dropped the fist full of dollar bills and glared at Lucas accusingly.

They fluttered to the dark carpet in swirls like starlets' broken dreams. Lucas imagined the office of the famous director had seen too many of those.

"There. Satisfied?"

"Takes a lot to satisfy me."

Moira shivered. She looked as if she had given up on civilization and was ready for anything ... or nothing.

If Lucas had been born with feelings, he would have wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

His arm stayed where it was.

Lucas nodded to the carpet. "You've broken three sets of Law ... God's, Man's, and mine."

"You ain't a cop or a priest or God."

"You're not that lucky. God forgives. You betrayed your boss ... and my friend."

As she yelped, Lucas snatched the movie poster off the wall and wrapped an arm around her waist.

"Let's take a trip around the corner."

WHAT MAKES YOU THINK i'M NOT DAMNED? _Chapter Six_ The Girl With Silver Eyes

 

"Honor and Integrity are choices. They are not always easy ones ... but the only ones worth making." 

- Lucas

Moira sputtered,

"Hey, hold on there! If to know the Book is to be damned, and you know so much about it, how come you ain't damned?" 

"Who says I am not?" 

"B-But you're still alive!" 

"Am I? Perhaps I killed my mother and damned myself?" 

"You what?" 

"Long story, sad ending, post-script yet to be written." 

Moira stiffened as if Lucas' words had stirred the ghosts of badly thought-out choices with their bitter consequences.

Lt. Henderson had similar eyes to Moira's ... maybe with similar pasts but from different worlds, different ways to make sense of a senseless life.

Lucas wished them both luck with that, though some foreboding told him Henderson was already dead or worse than dead.

How could anyone be worse than dead?

Lucas thought you could only ask that question if Life hadn't taught you that ... yet.

SHORT ATTENTION SPANS and your chapters' lengths_IWSG Post

 

Michael Crichton, creator of Jurassic Park, ER, Twister, and Westworld, had a passion project he’d been pursuing for years, ahead of his untimely passing in 2008.

Knowing how special it was, his wife, Sherri Crichton, held back his notes and the partial manuscript until she found the right author to complete it:

James Patterson, the world’s most popular storyteller.

Right Author?

Two-page chapters, tons of white space, and a 400 page book that's more like 200 pages.

But it got me to thinking ... attention spans aren't getting longer ...

Should we start making our chapters shorter to keep the attentions of our readers?

What to do?

1) Give them a sense of the road ahead

2) Learn from Strip Teasers ... don't disrobe your plot all at once.

3) Don't hoard your dynamite ... use all the good stuff while you can to keep them turning the pages.

“You have whole generations being trained for shorter attention spans than books require.” 

What do you think is a solution?