The First Stain
An Inked in Gray Anthology
Ulff Lehmann
J.A. Mette
Samuel Hale
C.L. Thomas
Ernest Solar
Clarence Carter
Shea Ballard
Cristina Romero
K.N. Nguyen
N.K. MitzenMächer
Mileva Anastasiadou
Dakota Rayne
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 Inked in Gray
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Published by Inked in Gray
Cover Design by Dean Cole
Editing by Egg and Feather Editing
The individual stories in this anthology are copyright of their original owners and produced herein with their express permission.
Each author retains the rights to their own story and may republish that story as they so choose on or after six months from the original release date.
Contents
Foreword
Krov
Samuel Hale
Ritual
Ernest Solar
The Chain
Samuel Hale
Just Deserts
Ulff Lehmann
For the Guild
J.A. Mette
The Offering
C.L. Thomas
Beyond the Distortion
K.N. Nguyen
The Burden of Sight
Dakota Rayne
The Aristocrat, The Arsonist
N.K. MitzenMächer
Smells of Desperation
Cristina Romero
Sirens
Mileva Anastasiadou
Little Grays
Shea Ballard
Desolate
Clarence Carter
Acknowledgments
Foreword
Dear Reader,
When it came time to decide what Inked in Gray’s first work would be, we decided to focus on what it meant to be ‘inked in gray.’ It seems like such an easy concept to describe yet it encompasses so much.
Inked in Gray was founded on the idea that there’s always more to what we think we know. We are not a follow-the-crowd publisher. We want to dig deeper, between the black and the white, and give those gray areas a breath of fresh air. Tell stories that need to be told.
With their reveal, those stories often show a new perspective that challenges perceptions and pushes boundaries. Hard choices don’t have easy answers. Happiness isn’t always found at the most opportune time. Some things are not what they seem. Sometimes the darkness is really a precursor to more darkness.
These thirteen stories span different genres from fantasy to historical, but all focus on a point in time where the characters life and outlook was tested.
How many gray areas are there in our world? How many stories are out there, waiting to be told?
With each release, we hope to shed light on another gray area, tell another story that needs to be told. Thank you for giving us a chance to do that with stories from eleven wonderful authors in what we hope will be one of many anthologies by Inked in Gray.
Kindest Regards,
Dakota Rayne
Founder of Inked in Gray
Krov
By Samuel Hale
krov
/ˌkräv/
word origin: Ukraine [кров]
noun: lifeblood
1. a life-giving, vital, or animating element.
Soldiers soldier. Rebels rebel.
But people? People bleed.
It has been four days since I ate bread. Two since I drank clear water. The city is shrouded in the canopy of civil war, unveiling explosions from time to time. Snipers wait for fools who dare to tread the streets in the full, cold light of day. I burrow deeper within my blankets and mattress, moldy as they are. Waiting for the night. Waiting to scavenge once more.
“Where will you go tonight, Pyotr?” Katya asks. She sits at the edge of the mattress, hugging her knees.
I found the young woman huddled at the door of my apartment a few weeks ago, jeers and catcalls from a drunken soldier not far behind. I bribed the man to be on his way with two packs of cigarettes. Katya did not stop shaking as I repeated that she was safe, and that the danger had passed. She stays indoors at all times now.
“The construction site. Again,” I say and run a scarred hand through my greasy hair. “There is wood there.”
I reach out with my senses to the bloody tripwire at the front door. It’s still fresh and my blood does not itch. We’re safe, for now.
“What about food?”
I hide deeper within my blanket, fighting the creeping cold of Fall. “We need a fire if we are to eat.”
Katya does not speak, only hides her head between her knees. Liev, my dog, died the day before last. Hunger: that which endures, galvanizes. The thief.
I say that we need wood. To burn things.
What children might have delighted in the playground whose shadows now conceal me? What precious memories were stolen before civil war came to us? It is of no consequence now, I suppose. War has swept in like a season, and so we must endure. We wait for it to pass, just as I wait for a squad of soldiers to do the same.
Night swaddles my target; an aborted apartment building. It was meant to serve as more Soviet bloc housing—harsh right angles, small windows, uniformity.
Dull shots puncture the night’s silence not far off. Moments pass before rusting rifles spitting recycled bullets reply in kind; all things in the city enduring the entropy of economic suffocation.
Hearing the gunfire, the soldiers jog away from the apartments. I hide in the playground’s shadows another five minutes. Watching. Waiting.
I check the straps on my pack once more. Nothing to catch, no loose sounds to be uttered. I carry only the essentials: a torch, crowbar, notebook, string, putty, bandages, and some antiseptic. A knife rests in my coat pocket.
Look left. Right. All clear.
Move.
The doors to the building are splayed open. I cross the threshold and into the lobby. My sneakers disturb a thin film of dust and wood shavings, the cold air amplifying the stale yet pungent aroma.
I go to the entrance, kneeling. From my pack, I produce string and putty. From one end of the threshold to the other, I stretch the string into a tripwire, fastening it with the putty. I stop, listen.
All is wrapped in the silence of night, interspersed with sporadic gunfire and the smothered crump of artillery.
The work continues as I remove and flick open my knife. Exposing my forearm, I drag the knife across one of the few places not already healing from previous incisions. I harvest the seeping blood onto my fingertips, pinching and dragging the ichor along the tripwire. The cut is left untreated; the night is young. I pluck at the string a few times, the sympathetic itch in my veins occurring each time I do so. The connection between the tripwire and myself is coherent.
Standing, I produce my notebook. Each page represents a building I’ve scouted, each line—from the bottom up—a floor of said building.
I scan the bottom floor of the abandoned complex for anything of use. At the center of the lobby lie heaps of concrete sacks, the pallets they were delivered on having been scavenged for their wood. I step over the uneven piles of building material, seeking stairs; the
bottom floor appears to have been picked clean. I’ll need to scale a few floors if I’m to find anything of value. I make note of this and put away the notebook.
A stair creaks as I press my weight onto it. I halt, wincing.
Skip the step. Test the next. Press on.
Such hyper-vigilance desires precious time. Time to make it to the apartments. Time to find anything of value. Getting home unscathed with a full pack will bring me to night’s edge, and dawn’s dissemination. That is, assuming everything goes as planned.
Heel, toe. Heel, toe.
Stepping slow and sure now. The night takes on a solemn rhythm as I traverse dilapidated steps before disembarking on what feels to be a sufficiently high enough floor. Spray painted on the wall is the number eight. I stare at it for a moment, wondering if the construction worker who shaped the symbol is alive now. Does he hunt, scrounge, or rot?
My ruminations are truncated. War affords few queries. The thoughts evaporate, purpose imposing itself once more: find wood.
On the eighth floor, there are no doors. Only thresholds. They stretch before me, yawning at one another across a moonlit corridor. Each a choice; an investment of time.
I choose the first to my left, pulling out my torch. The sound of rough polymer against plastic is abrasive in the night’s quiet. I apologize to no one in particular.
I stand at the threshold, mind empty. Extending the torch, I flick the switch. The room blinks into view.
Tools-tarp-nails.
Torch off.
An afterimage remains. I analyze it, scrutinizing iridescent whorls for things of value.
I whisper to myself, making manifest of that which I saw. “Tools, tarp, nails.”
Tools are heavy, and I have all I need. There’s already a tarp collecting rain and moisture on the roof of my apartment complex. Nails . . .
Nails I can use.
I refer to the afterimage once more, visualizing the building materials off to one corner of the room. I step across an elongated square painted by moonlight before skulking into the dark once more. Hands quest, brushing against the dust covered tarp, hard edges, and the tapered point of what feels like a screwdriver.
There. The jingle of iron.
Unslinging my pack, I feel for and scoop up a handful of nails. They go in a side pouch lest they puncture the canvas of my main pack. A cursory check of my blood eight floors below indicates no one has tripped my alarm, though I’d know right away if someone had.
Satisfied, I look back to the lonesome square of moonlight as a point of reference. I’ve left footprints. Like the Americans that have walked on the moon, I too have left my mark on this barren landscape.
I leave the room.
If Soviet predictability is any indicator, many rooms remain on this floor. I have to budget my time wisely.
I produce my notebook, pen hovering over the page. I’d once used this journal to comment on the rigors of university. Of despising my privileged life. Now I seek scrap wood.
I press pen to paper and, in order of importance, record my findings.
801: nails, tools, tarp.
I check three more rooms.
802: paint cans.
803: empty.
I step into 804, torch at the ready.
Snapshot: concrete sacks. A pallet.
Scrap wood.
Without hesitation, I unsling my pack, resting it in this room’s stretched quadrate of moonlight and proceed to the pile resting in darkness. Tentative fingers explore the shadows, then grasp the first limp sack of concrete. It’s heavy, twenty kilograms at least.
The night dissolves into blind activity coupled with memorization as I slide or haul the sacks off the pallet. Breaks are infrequent and, during what few I permit myself, I check my tripwires—both here and at home. The latter’s blood is nearly dry, so it’s a dull sensation, but it’s enough. I steal a glance at my wristwatch. I have time. Not much, but I have time.
Back to work.
Having unloaded all the sacks off of one side, and many from the other half, I crouch low, and grunt as I lift the pallet. The remaining sacks slide off in a series of hissing thumps. I wrench the pallet out from beneath the remaining few and drag it over the concrete bags and into the moonlight, kicking my pack out of the way as I do so.
I’m sweating. Breathing heavily.
Feeling for my pack, I remove the crowbar and, flipping it around, wedge the pry bar into the first joint of wood, leveraging the nails loose. It’s slow work as I try to minimize the noise, but I’m able to remove a sizable plank of wood.
Next comes the challenging part.
The wood is too long to fit in my pack. I need to break it down. I stand the plank diagonally, then stop. Listen. No sounds other than my labored breathing.
Hands clutching the top of the wood, I kick at its midsection while simultaneously pulling toward myself. It doesn’t give.
Again. Kick-pull, leveraging the wood against my emaciated upper body. A slight crack announces itself. Kick-pull. More fissures, sawdust dancing in the moonlight.
With a final kick, the plank snaps in two. I nearly fall over myself, but raise half my prize in the air, triumphant.
But that took too long. I need to get more and fast. I pry more sections from the pallet, laying them in the moonlight. Soon I’ve accumulated ten pieces of scrap wood.
Drawing my knife, I study the fresh wound on my arm. It can go a little deeper.
Hunger: that which endures.
I drag the blade across the wound, gritting my teeth.
I wipe the blade clean before sheathing and shoving it in my pocket. I run my index and middle finger across the oozing wound, a coppery tang intertwining itself with the chill autumn air. Kneeling by the first plank, I paint a broad, bloody line across its midsection. What remains is a crimson bar tinged silver by moonlight.
Move to the next plank. My fingers go to the wound, like an artist dabbing at their paints. Another plank marked. I go about in this way until a smear of blood bisects each plank.
Waiting, the blood does its work: seeping in between the microfilaments of thirsting lumber. It’s a few minutes before my blood is fully absorbed. I approach the first piece of scrap wood, holding it diagonal once again, but I do not kick it. Instead, I make my hand rigid, pointing my fingers at the macabre stripe.
I will my blood forward.
The wood buckles beneath the sudden force, cracking and moaning as its spine is racked by magics I barely understand. I wrestle with the invisible resistance—like magnets repelling one another—but, with a final push, the plank snaps in two.
I wince, shaking out the coiled tension and cramps in my fingers and hand. The work, while quicker, is still exhausting. No time to waste though. I step over to the next plank and repeat the process.
After eight planks and a hand that feels on the verge of breaking, my blood starts itching. I stop, senses piqued.
Someone’s triggered the tripwire eight floors below me. Soldiers perhaps? A Scavenger like me, or something in between?
I have enough wood. Forcing patience, I place the planks into my pack, jaw tensing at the catastrophic hiss of splintered wood sliding against polyester. Once finished, I exhale the tension as best I can.
I collect my things and check for any loose zippers or straps. After a moment’s thought, I grab a handful of the nails out of my pack and rub them along my bloody forearm, cringing through the sensation before placing them in my jacket pocket.
Descending a few floors, I hear voices. A group of men.
I hope against hope they’ll pass; that this is just a cursory patrol. Can I wait them out? My wristwatch says that’s a bad idea. The sun will be rising soon. With it, so too will the snipers. I need to be off the streets before they resume the quiet business of cultivating terror.
Move or hide. These are my choices.
I make my way down the stairwell.
Judging by the jovial sounds below, the men have contented themselves wi
th sticking to the bottom floor. Likely, they’ve their own supplies which means one of two things: they’re rebels or soldiers. Either one is a threat to the scavenger. The former will try to conscript me. So will the latter, or they might simply prefer to torture me. There’d be no reason as to why, but reason rarely cavorts with war; the two being so dysfunctional a couple.
I arrive at the last set of stairs leading to the lobby, but keep the staircase I just came down between the men and myself. From my hideaway, I spy pale lamp light along the walls, but nothing that could reveal me.
Laughter from below, the sound of bottles clinking together. My wristwatch and I count off a few minutes to let them relax. They talk of rebels, how they’ll be crushed within the week. Soldiers, then. I’ve heard this talk before, but the rebels were supposed to have been quelled weeks ago. The banter proceeds between exhaling swigs, talk of missing family and friends, and impotent posturing.
More drinking. Words stumbling over homemade vodka and a long night.
Inhale, exhale. Bracing myself, I spread the wound on my arm wide, preventing much-needed clotting from occurring. Gathering more blood, I prepare a drawing on the wall. It’s simple, utilitarian: that of a rabbit with misshapen whiskers on account of the delicacy my cold, bloodied fingers cannot muster. The head is too small and the body bulbous. All of this is mere window dressing, however. When summoning, I have found that the intent is far more important than the presentation.
Lastly, I dab two pupils onto the sanguinary creature.
The First Stain Page 1
