by Ashley West
"Acknowledged."
He leaned back in the seat and watched as his shuttle drifted closer to the docking port. His eyes darted back to the scanner in short order, though, and he stared at the small screen like it was going to make something appear.
"Come on," he said. "I know you're out there. I know you're...wait." Samel had to look away and then look back just to make sure his eyes weren't playing tricks on him. He saw a blip on the scanner, something large enough that it should have shown up when he first engaged it. He looked outside the shuttle and there was nothing there, but the scanner was insistent. "Cloaked maybe," he murmured to himself. "Record scan."
"Recording."
At least he'd have something to show the Generals when he got back. And then they'd have a reason to send him or someone back out to find whatever this thing was.
It wasn't the irrefutable evidence he'd been looking for, but it was enough. It was--
WHAM
Something slammed into the side of his shuttle, rocking it off balance on the dock. Before he could so much as look around to see if he could spot it, the shuttle was shuddering and then exploding away from the port at an alarming speed.
"Fire in engine bay one," the AI informed him in unhelpfully neutral tones.
"What in the Void?" Samel shouted over the droning of the alarm that started up. The shuttle was spiraling through the air in unwieldy circles, and he tried to regain control of it, but it was no good.
They were hurtling through space at a breakneck speed, propelled by the exploding engines.
"Fire in engine bay three," said the AI.
He tried to get up so he could push the emergency button, but the ship lurched, sending him sprawling, and leaping flames were the last thing he saw before he smashed his head against the side of the shuttle and only saw darkness.
Chapter Two: Glow
"Whose turn is it to make dinner?" Priscilla asked, glaring at the chore wheel. "It's not mine."
"You said that last week."
"It wasn't my turn last week, either."
"Naomi!"
Naomi sighed as she made her way into her the house, loaded down with groceries and still pink cheeked from the walk from her car to the door. "Coming home here is like having a bunch of grown children who somehow can't manage to handle themselves," she said.
"I'm insulted," Finn said, coming over to help her take the groceries. "I haven't said anything."
"That's because it's your turn to make dinner, and you don't want them to find out."
Finn made a face at her and hauled the bags to the counter. "You going to rat me out?"
"I'm not your mother."
He laughed, leaning against the counters. Naomi moved around the kitchen, ignoring the argument that was raging between three of the other residents. She shed her coat, brushing snow off of it before she stuck it in the hall closet, gloves tucked into the pockets.
"It's really coming down out there, huh?"
She jumped and then smiled, not even understanding how Camille still managed to startle her every time. She was the youngest resident of the house, a teenaged girl who had turned up one night with bruises on her face and arms. No one had asked any questions, that wasn't their way, and it had been six months already, and no one had turned up to ask about her. So they were assuming it would be a permanent addition to their home.
Naomi was fine with that. Camille was a sweetheart, small and quiet. She stayed to herself for the most part, and didn't argue or cause problems like some members of the household Naomi could mention.
"It is," she agreed. "Just started as soon as I stepped into the store. Which is typical. Then I come home to this chaos. Never a dull moment."
Camille tucked a smile into the collar of her sweater. "It's Finn’s turn to make dinner."
Naomi smiled back. "It is, but we're not telling them that. They have to work it out on their own."
"And Finn can't cook anyway."
That made her laugh. Camille had a way with saying things that everyone was thinking, in her quiet, gentle way, so it was funny and no one was offended. But she had a point. Finn was a terrible cook, and no one was going to suffer for him missing his turn making dinner that night.
Priscilla was the best cook in the house, but she hated doing it, or so it seemed from how she usually tried to shirk her duties. Matthew and Raven were decent cooks and would usually pick up the slack, but somehow Naomi knew that they were going to end up having pizza for dinner for the second night that week, even though she had just come back from the store with fresh veggies and fruit.
Sometimes she didn't know why she bothered.
Priscilla referred to the house as a home for misfits, and she wasn’t far off. It had a proper name for tax reasons and all that, so they would be official, but it was definitely a home for those who had nowhere else to go. Most of the people who came to the door (painted a bright, vivid blue because it was supposed to be seen as a ‘safety color’) were running from one thing or another. They were lost or hurt, vulnerable and looking for somewhere to belong.
Naomi knew what that was like. Before the house had come into her possession, she’d been in the same boat. Alone and looking for somewhere to go. So it only made sense for her to open the place up for others like her.
There were currently six residents, not counting Naomi. Four women, and two men. They were spread out across ages and backgrounds, from Samantha, who was probably pushing seventy to Camille, who couldn’t have been older than fifteen.
They all had their stories, their pasts, but one of the defining rules of the house was that no one had to talk about them if they didn’t want to. No one was going to demand that you lay your life story out to be examined. This wasn’t therapy. It was their home.
Most of the time, things ran smoothly. Even with seven people living in it, the house was large and spacious. There were nine bedrooms, two living rooms, a library, a kitchen, a dining room, and four bathrooms, so they weren’t always tripping over each other when they wanted to get anything done. It was one of those old victorian homes from a time in the past, lovingly restored and kept in good working order by the previous owners. When it had been left to her, there'd been some structural issues, some rooms that needed to be turned into different rooms, but in the end, it had been perfect.
It stood now, gleaming and whole, with its clean windows and neat, white paint, a symbol that you didn't have to stay in a terrible situation if you didn't want to. There was another place to go.
And some of the kids in the neighborhood were convinced that a coven of witches lived in the house. Naomi supposed she could see why. It had the old look of a haunted house with its turrets and wrought iron gates. Every halloween they decorated the outside of the house and the yard with things that kept the kids laughing and just a little afraid to come too close.
It was a good life. She couldn't deny that.
She could only speak for herself, of course, but things had done a complete one eighty from how they'd been before. If someone had told her teenaged self that this was how things would work out, she wouldn't have believed them for a second, but Naomi liked to think she was living proof that things could change spectacularly with a little help and a little luck.
It kept her going when things got hard. Or when the residents were giving her a headache, as they were now.
Priscilla was still refusing to make dinner, Finn was putting groceries away, which mostly looked like him opening bags and boxes and sampling everything before he found a home for it. Camille had disappeared from her perch on the stairs, taking her aura of serenity and peace with her. Raven was shouting, Matthew was lecturing, and Samantha was probably sleeping through it all.
The whole thing was a big, sloppy mess, and it was home.
"Alright!" she said, drawing in a breath as she stepped into the kitchen, prepared now to take on the role of house mother as she always seemed to, even though half the residents were older than she was by several year
s in some cases and several decades in Samantha's. "No one's making dinner."
Priscilla looked pleased, Matthew looked like he was going to argue, and Raven was scowling.
"Then what are we going to eat?" she asked, arching an eyebrow.
She was a slender, dark woman, around the same age as Naomi, twenty four or so. Everything annoyed her, and she was a sarcastic and bitter person, but everyone loved her all the same. In a moment of weakness, she'd confessed some of her story to Naomi, so Naomi knew that there were reasons for why Raven acted the way she did.
"Pizza or Chinese," Naomi replied. "Finn's going to call it in."
"Who's paying for it?" Matthew asked, money conscious as always.
"The house money is paying for it, Matt," Naomi replied, reaching up to pat him on the cheek. "It's fine. And it'll get us all fed quicker than standing around bickering about who's turn it is to cook, don't you think?"
Everyone had to agree with that, and Matthew nodded and began organizing. "Okay. Get the menus, Rae. And someone go up and ask Samantha if she wants anything."
"Crab rangoons," Camille said, appearing seemingly out of nowhere.
No one even jumped. "Well, of course," Matthew said. "But what else?"
As they all started debating the benefits of noodles over rice, Finn sidled up to her, chewing on a pretzel stick. "That was well handled."
Naomi rolled her eyes. Finn was at least twenty eight, and he was massive. Over six feet tall and muscular with bright blue eyes and curly dark hair. He could probably bench press a car, but he was as sweet and gentle and fun loving as a giant puppy. His hair was always curling into his eyes, and Naomi was adult enough to admit to herself that she had been messily into him when he'd first moved in. When he smiled he had dimples, for crying out loud. She didn't think anyone could blame her.
"Thanks," she replied. "I do what I can. Especially when you're not helping."
Finn gave her his heart stopping smile, dimples deepening. "At least I wasn't adding to the chaos."
"You were the cause of the chaos. Now be a good boy and call in the order."
"Yes, Mother," Finn said, finishing his pretzel and giving her a salute.
“Don’t call me that.”
He grinned and headed off to find out what the consensus was about the food. Naomi sighed and leaned against the counter. She was proud of what she had accomplished, that much was true. All of this was possible because of a stroke of luck and someone else’s money, but she was the one who had put in the hard work. She’d jumped through all the hoops and dealt with all the drama involved with getting something like the house off the ground, and now she had a house full of happy, lightly bickering residents to show for it.
It was a good accomplishment, there was no mistake about that, but sometimes she wondered…
Sometimes she wondered if there was supposed to be more. If she was supposed to have more. She hadn’t seen her family since the day she’d walked out of her parents’ house without looking back. Naomi didn’t know if they were looking for her, and she didn’t care. When they’d told her not to come back, it had been the best thing for all of them. Maybe they were happy together now that she was gone. Maybe her father had finally wised up and stopped letting himself be bullied. Maybe they were both still miserable and trapped.
It was probably the definition of ‘not her problem’ but she couldn’t deny that she thought about them sometimes. She had her house full of people who were as good as her family now, but she still wondered if there was something she was missing.
Even with being essentially homeless since she was a teenager, she’d found time for relationships of sorts. Sometimes when she’d stayed in shelters, there had been others there. Young men with heated gazes and haunted eyes, who’d looked at her and thought she was worth taking a chance on for a night. All of them had been skinny, scruffy, and most of them had smelled like cigarette smoke. They’d held her in hands that shook, hands that wandered, hands that hesitated. She’d kissed them with their chapped lips on her chapped lips, and they’d huddled together for warmth under thin blankets on beds that creaked and smelled like mildew.
Intimacy was something hard to come by.
They all knew that anything they started wouldn’t last. No one stayed at a shelter. They weren’t designed for that. You came in, you got hot food and a place to sleep for a while, and then you went on your way. So nothing permanent was going to come out of something started in a shelter.
And even if they’d wanted to keep in contact, how would they? It wasn’t like you could call or text or write to someone who didn’t have a permanent address or a credit history. You just had to make do with the moment when you were in it.
The point was, she hadn’t been alone. She’d had more dalliances in shelters than she probably would have had if she had still been living with her parents, with the way her mother was. Fleeting connections were still connections, after all, and she’d made plenty of them.
And yet.
And yet.
And yet, she still felt like there was a gap somewhere. Something missing. Surely, she was meant to be doing this with a partner.
“You’re young yet,” Samantha always said whenever Naomi complained about things like that, and compared to her, everyone was young yet.
“You always say that,” Naomi always replied.
“And I’m always right. Look at what you have done with your youth so far,” Samantha would continue, coughing slightly as she got worked up, gesturing around them at the room they were in and the house in general. “You have given us this.”
“Technically,” Naomi felt obliged to point out. “My uncle gave us this.”
And Samantha would give her the ‘don’t sass me’ face, and Naomi would relent.
They talked in circles about that point, but it never really made Naomi feel better or less like there was something she was missing. She knew that she had accomplished a great deal, especially for someone coming from the situation she had been in, but that didn’t mean she had to stop hoping, did it? It didn’t mean she had to give up on the things she wanted, the things that would make her happy in the long run.
And how long had it been since she’d had someone? How long since someone had taken the time to know her and care for her and make things right for her? She was in the business of doing that for other people now, but what she wanted more than anything was to be able to relax and be taken care of.
It didn’t seem like too much to ask, but then, she didn’t know if she even deserved it. There were times when she wondered if she was just being selfish with all of this, setting up a home for people who needed it, making sure she was never alone.
Someone had once suggested that she should go to therapy. "I don't mean that in a rude way!" they'd rushed to clarify. "I just think you've been through a lot, and you could probably use someone to talk to."
And sometimes she thought they were right. Sometimes she felt like she was being crushed under the weight of everything that had happened to her, and she thought that having someone impartial there to tell her that yes, she was a horrible person or no, she was a victim would be nice.
But she hadn't made any moves towards doing that. It was expensive, and it was embarrassing, and there were people who needed the help more than she did.
Her brain was refusing to shut up, though, and she knew there was only going to be one thing that would let her get some peace.
"I'm going out," she announced to the room at large.
"Weren't you just out?" Raven asked, looking at her like she'd lost her mind.
"Yes, Raven, but I'm going back out," she said, trying to seem like there was nothing wrong. She could feel Finn's eyes on her, and she didn't look at him.
"Okay then," Raven said, shrugging. "We'll save you some dinner."
"Thanks," Naomi replied, and then made for the door. She had to double back to get her coat and her scarf because she wasn't in a hurry to freeze to death while she was out, bu
t she was out the door in record time.
Being alone didn't help when she was in a mood like this. It just made her feel isolated. But staying at the house where there were people just made her feel guilty. Because she didn't deserve to wallow in her own crap while those people had suffered so much more than she had.
So when she felt like that, she took herself into town. The downtown square was always full of people, and even though Christmas was another month and a half away, it was already cold and snowing and people had started their Christmas shopping, too.
It was a hub of activity, and she parked her car and let herself get lost in it.
She caught snatches of conversation here and there, things like "Did you hear that loud explosion and see the smoke?" and "Do you think gloves are a bad gift for a teenage boy?"
Having something else to focus on cleared her head, and she wandered with the throng of people, looking in shop windows and buying a hot, spiced apple cider from one of the vendors on the side of the road. It warmed her hands and her throat, and she sighed, exhaling a cloud of breath into the frigid air.
Once she was away from her thoughts, she started to feel silly. Samantha was right. She was still young, there was still time for her to have all the things she wanted. She supposed that spending so much time getting the exact opposite of what she wanted was enough to make her wonder if that was just her lot in life, but it wasn't something she wanted to dwell on.
Instead she sighed and threw away her paper cup when she'd finished her drink and decided to cut through the alley to get back to her car without having to duck and dodge through streams of people.
She had just started down the long, dim alley way when she heard something behind her. A dull scraping sound, like nails on stone, and she turned her head.
What she saw didn't make any sense.
A tall, gangly creature with dragging arms was behind her, seemingly staring at her as she stared at it. She swallowed hard and backed up slowly.
When another of the creatures showed up to join the first, she gave up on being slow, swearing under her breath as she turned and ran.
