The Scarlet Anniversary

by Lubowa M. Planet

  Katie wept again, though her tears were quieter and less painful this time and as night descended completely around them she felt safe for the first time since she had been dragged from the street and driven to Hell.

  YYY

  EPILOGUE

  12 Months Later

  Katherine sat in her apartment; she felt that the name Katie was as lost as the person who had owned it and in an attempt to build her life, she had reverted to the name that she had been given as a baby.

  She had stayed with her parent’s for almost nine months, and it seemed as though a new person had been gestating and finally, when the time had been right, she had been born into the world. Katherine had finally given into the public demand to hear her story and it amused her that somewhere in California there was a sound stage that had two well-known actresses bound and gagged while an Oscar winning actress exercised her not inconsiderable talents to play Madeleine Fisher. Of course the book that had fuelled the screenplay had not been hers but one that had been pieced together from newspaper stories, interviews with Portia’s friends and the Fishers neighbours. However, she didn’t care – any film that came out would not be about her – it would be about a girl called Katie and she was long dead.

  ‘She’s not dead, she’s bound and gagged inside of you and she wants released.’ Portia’s voice would sometimes whisper to her as she lay in her bed trying to sleep.

  Katherine had already been paid a considerable amount for her biography rights and somewhere in the world a ghost writer was toiling away and writing the chain of events that had happened a different lifetime ago as a narrative and that was fine. She would get money from the book and she would get money from the film and she would be able to move on and survive.

  More than survive – she would live!

  Her apartment was in a block of apartments that were surrounded by security systems that would keep her safe from everything – apart from perhaps an Asteroid strike, but if you read the brochure enough then you would even suspect that the apartments would survive even that. She also worked in a book store; it was something that she liked because it offered a stress free environment where the customers were more interested in their purchases than in the people serving them. She had, in the past month alone, sold over thirty copies of ‘The Invisible Princesses’ and had been amused at the fact that no-one had guessed that the person that put the book in a bag and taken payment had been engulfed in ropes and gagged in a room halfway around the world less than a year ago.

  She had cut her hair into a different style and had dyed it (blonde – Portia’s voice sometimes sniggered deep from the recesses of her mind), for the majority of the world, the events that had happened to her were so far removed from reality that the idea of actually meeting one of the ‘invisible princesses’ seemed as likely as meeting one of the Muppets.

  Two months after coming to Sydney, only 90 minutes away from home, she had started daring to go out at night and had built up a good, safe circle of friends. A few of them knew who she was (had been) but none of them had pressed her for details. They barely talked about it and that suited Katherine because she did not want to be defined by what had happened; She wanted to be liberated by it. She had dated a few times but the guys had given her a bad vibe and she had dumped them, of course she was being unfair on them because they had been perfect gentlemen and funny, sweet guys. She also fully understood that it would take her a long time not to get a vibe off of people in general – but she would.

  Her life was good and the vision of Maddy’s ruined face hardly ever visited her anymore. The sound of her screams as the building burnt around her had proven harder to banish and those sounds would possibly never quite go away. However, it was a small price to pay – she was still alive. Her hand was almost back to what it had been, her thumb still had a lingering numbness that would never get fully better, but she had full movement in all her fingers and she had feeling in the palm of the hand so that was good.

  Her parents had received letters from Portia’s family and although they had ignored them at first the correspondence had proven so persistent that they had relented. The poor bastards wanted some kind of reassurance that their daughter hadn’t been a bad person, not really, and Katherine had written back to them with one message.

  ‘She was an evil cunt!’

  They had never written back and she sometimes wished that she could take that letter back, but life didn’t work that way. If it did, then she would not have been strapped and restrained in ropes and chains while people decided how she would die.

  So, she sat in her apartment and looked at the bag that lay on her lap. She was in her bedroom and the doors were locked and the blinds closed. She had dressed for the occasion and as she crossed her legs she felt a slight shiver as the silk of the white stockings touched, creating a sound that echoed through her mind like a ghost. The dress she wore was white, as were the long satin gloves that were stretched from her finger tips to above her elbows.

  ‘You know who you look like?’ Portia giggled from somewhere far away.

  Of course she did, she wasn’t stupid – psychologically, she knew that what she was doing was fucked up, completely fucked up as things went but that was fine. It was a coping mechanism and there was never anything wrong with having one of those. She dressed in the short white dress and lingerie once or twice a month but tonight was the first time that she would take that final step. She felt nervous and sick all at the same time. It was frightening and exciting all at the same time and as she began to unwrap the package on her knees her heart fluttered and her stomach flipped.

  She looked at the contents of the package as they lay on her knees, terrifying and full of endless possibilities. Of course she had got this far many times before but in the end she had always backed off.

  Tonight would be different.

  She took a length of rope and began to wrap it tightly around her ankles, pulling it until it hurt and then she tied the length off in a knot.

  As she began on her legs she idly wondered what it would be like to do this to someone else.

  Maybe one day she would find out…

  Other Novels by Lubowa.M.Planet

  Available for download from Amazon.com or

  www.softerdreams.com

  Sixed Up

  After practically giving up on life and suffering several heart attacks, Jeffrey Thomas Henderson is given a choice between deaths within minutes or a new life by the strange man who has materialized in his living room.

  Choosing to leave comes at a cost; to be an experiment. A lot awaits him as he travels to a world that isn't even in the Universe, falls in love and is faced with a choice of saving those of the two worlds he's known.

  “A Science Fiction and Fantasy Romance Novel with an ending you won’t see coming”.

  *********

  The Days Before

  The days before is a novel of Fantasy and Mystery that will provide you with a good reading experience.

  In this novel, Ollie Connor is a man with many answers, but his very existence raises many more questions, just as Emylya is about to find out.

  When Emylya has an accident which brings her close to losing her life, she ends up in Ollie's world, a place between death and life. Back on Earth, her body is in a deep coma which she may never wake from. Ollie can change that. He's an Angel of Death and one with an offer to make.

  To get the offer means you’ve missed an opportunity, one that could have brought you untold happiness. Emylya can, if she chooses, go back to Earth for thirty days, and try to find her opportunity on the condition she forfeits her life entirely afterwards. Or she can lay back in her coma, and wait. It all comes down to how much she values her forever.

  Enter Sam Fisher; he’s smart, handsome and about to burst into Emylya’s life in a riot of colour, taking her on a journey that will change both of their lives forever.

  ******************

  IN TORN PAGES

  No Secret Wi
ll Stay Hidden Forever

  An eminent historian dies under most intricate conditions in the remote parts of India. Thousands of miles away, a do-gooder contemporary author, Sirius Messeley, finds himself a new perspective into his obscure past. Tracing the threads woven by his visions, he reaches the crime scene that is stowed with inscrutable symbolism and mysterious personalities knocking down doors. Meanwhile, Sirius discovers the other end of his trace locked in dark abominable corners of his own mind.

  A student of the historian, John Davis, picks up the historians message and leads his own side of a treasure hunt, while Sirius is coerced to unveil the historians dying revelations at any cost. Ranging from the conniving slopes of the Western Indian Ghats to the streets of Washington, back to the ancient caves commemorating Indian philosophies, this book puts forth a rattling tale about how the two sides collide to decipher reality behind the myth of a lifetime.

  Join the hunt for power and knowledge led by the most deadly forces only to infer that, no secret ever stays hidden forever.

  *********

  SAMPLE READING OF:

  Sixed Up

  You can Sample Chapter One Of Sixed Up.

  Chapter one

  It's a bitch getting old. Here I was, back home from my third heart attack, wondering why the doctors put so damn much effort into keeping me alive.

  I've been on this planet for 76 years. Been through three wives, a half dozen kids who don't want to have anything to do with me and have been living off my almost depleted savings since I got the letter that the company I put 37 years of my life into decided to declare bankruptcy and that the pension fund was empty.

  I struggled from the bedroom to the toilet, then into the living room where I sat in front of the idiot box. I was reaching for the remote to see what was on at 9:30 in the morning when I felt that sharp pain in my left arm and my chest tightened up again.

  I sat back, trying to catch my breath without breathing hard enough to hurt when the air started shimmering a couple of feet in front of me. A man materialized in the disturbed air. Something about him reminded me of a British butler.

  I could see his lips move and then he looked at me expectantly. After five seconds or so, a high pitched, nasally voice with a Brooklyn accent started speaking in English. Maybe a doorman instead of a butler, I thought.

  “Looks like you're going to die this time,” he said to me. I could see the hint of a smile on his face.

  “Or, if you like, we could take you away from all this,” he said, sweeping his hand around, indicating the dirty living room with its decades old furniture. “Say the word and you'll be transported to our world and put back into the shape you were in when you were a teenager.”

  “What do you get out of it?” I asked.

  “We need you for an experiment. We've been watching you.”

  “Oh? Is there something special about me?”

  “Not really. You're a human and they tend to work out well in our experiments. You've done a good job at destroying your body. Our species gets a thrill out of taking someone as close to death as you and revitalizing him. Something like restoring an old automobile.”

  “What would I have to do?”

  “Just live. We'll fix you up so you could live at least as long as you've already lived, then send you to a planet where the people are just starting to form villages. You'll have your choice of beautiful women, have plenty of game to eat and probably become the leader of a community that will worship you. But you'd better make up your mind because in five minutes your heart is going to stop.

  I looked at my life. Even if I was going to live, my life had long since stopped being enjoyable. I'd never bought into any of that life after death stuff and even if it was true, I didn't want to sit around for eternity, playing a harp and worshiping some ultimate being. I'd be happy to put off either of those outcomes for another 76 years. The whole deal was a no-brainer.

  “OK. I'm in.”

  ******************

  I woke in a dimly lit room. I could tell I was on a table of some kind, though it felt soft and molded to my body. I found that I couldn't move, almost as if I was glued to the table.

  The room gradually got lighter until I could see the ceiling. It was stainless steel and I could see myself. I was definitely on some kind of table and I was naked. The first thing I noticed was my stomach. I had a six pack to end all six packs instead of the over-the-belt gut I'd had for close to three dozen years. I moved my gaze down a bit and saw some equipment that would choke a horse. I'd always been a little shy of the norm in that department and here I was a little bigger in a relaxed state than when my old one had been at full mast.

  The rest of my body and face matched what I'd already noted. My skin looked as if it had been tanned. Not the orange of the artificial stuff that was so popular with the younger generation but the real dark tan I used the get as a kid, running around without a shirt all summer long.

  I found I was able to rotate my head and I looked to my left. The wall was the same material as the ceiling with a built in screen, maybe 50” wide. It was one large graph and there were several other displays that I took to be different bodily functions. There were two rows of screens above and below the others that showed different views of me and the room I was in.

  A door swished open and a young woman in white came in. She smiled at me, put an arm on my shoulder and ran a metallic device over my body, like Bones would have done in Star Trek. The thing gave 3 beeps and she looked at it for a moment before pressing a button and putting it away in a pocket. She reached next to my head and pushed something on the side of the table. I immediately felt freer.

  “You can sit up but you need to take care. You've been unconscious for a long time and you can get dizzy if you try to do too much, too quickly.” She held out a hand and I grabbed onto her forearm for support as I sat up. As I swung my legs around to dangle over the edge of the table, I felt a little woozy. She steadied me until I felt better. I smiled and nodded to her. She did something at the wall near where my head had been and then handed me a glass of cold water.

  “Don't drink it too fast. You'll be very susceptible to 'brain freeze' until you get used to your new body.”

  I tried to sip but got carried away. I couldn't remember water tasting so good and then I started to get the beginnings of a headache. I saw some activity on the displays out of the corner of my eye, one of those things you see but don't realize till later.

  She was back at the wall and came forth with a bowl of liquid. As she got closer, I could smell chicken soup. My mouth started watering and I'm surprised I didn't drool on myself.

  “There is more if you want it, but I doubt you'll be able to finish all that is in the bowl.” She did something to the side of the table and a tray appeared over my lap, complete with napkin and a soup spoon. She placed the bowl on the tray and said, “Let me know if it's too hot for you.”

  I dipped my spoon in it and held it up under my nose, sniffing what to me was the finest ambrosia. I opened my mouth, put the end of the spoon in and tilted it, letting the liquid flow onto my tongue.

  I must have been Goldilocks because it wasn't too hot and it wasn't too cold; it was just right.

  I swirled this essence of the gods around my mouth and swallowed. As I put the spoon back into the bowl for a second serving, my body released a sigh of contentment.

  “Oh, my,” my female attendant said as she looked at the displays. The large graph was suddenly spiking.

  “Damn, what's wrong?” I asked her. I was really liking this new body and seeing that graph made me start to panic.

  “Shh, Shh. Everything's fine,” she said, patting me on the shoulder. “I was just your looking at your ratings.”

  “Ratings? You mean, like on TV?”

  She looked offended. “I suppose you don't know any better. It's like TV the same way your TV is like the old crystal radios.”

  “Oh, I remember those,” I said. “Had one when I was a kid.
Damn thing was more trouble than it was worth, but I swear, it was damned exciting, coaxing some new sound out of it, hearing things from all over the world. I haven't felt adventure and excitement like that since I was a young gun.”

  I noticed that the big graph had risen to a new level and stayed there the whole time I was thinking about those days. I remembered my best bud Jimmy and how we huddled together in the basement under a hanging light bulb, tuning in the latest radio show, broadcast live more often than not. The graph had recovered and stayed up there while I was recalling the two of us, almost 70 years in the past.

  “So, Honey, what's your name? Or do I just call you Nurse?”

  If my TV comment shocked her, this one was a lot worse. “I'm not a nurse,” she told me. “In fact, we don't have medical personnel and haven't for centuries. All healing is done with robotics and nanites. No, I'm your producer. And I must tell you, the audience loves you.”

  “Audience. The way you say it, it's like you've got a bunch of people watching me wake up and eat my soup.”

  “It varies. Earlier, when the feeling indicator shot up so high, when you tried the soup? There were about six and a half billion hits. When you were thinking of your childhood a few minutes ago, it varied from five and a half to five and three quarters. You were averaging one and a half while you were asleep and three to three and a half since you woke up. When you were brought in and the robotics were working on you, it stayed right around four.”