by Bera, Ilia
sting (verb)
Future tense; the act of jabbing someone with a stinger. Other tenses: stung (past), stinging (present).
stinger (noun)
A powerful tranquilizer, which also triggers the shifting mechanism in therians.
territ (noun)
The basic monetary unit of Theria.
Theria (place)
The whole therian nation.
therian (noun)
A bipedal species, physically identical to humans, with the ability to shift between human and animal form. In human form, therians have impressive strength and an increased speed of healing.
Thule (place)
Thule is a Therian province. Grasslands cover its remarkably flat plains. Thule has few notable features, aside from a number of freshwater lakes. Its capital city is Lemuria.
Valley of the Bears (place)
Situated North of Old Theria, the Valley of the Bears is a sacred mountain valley, occupied by the aboriginal Swiftbane Clan. The Valley of the Bears has been fought over for years because of its strategic location. It is the only safe passage between Old Theria and Quell Falls, among others.
ventice (adjective)
An article of clothing or an accessory that is made from special materials, which disappear when worn by a therian in animal form, and return when the therian returns to human form. Scientists are not sure why ventice material works. Verbs: vented (past), venting (present), vent (future).
Vianna (place)
A city built on a large lake (Lake Vianna), located in the province of Old Theria. Vianna is famous for its romantic setting, and its fashion culture.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR ILIA BERA
Ilia Bera is a young writer from the golden prairies of Alberta, Canada. Ilia’s schooling years were spent absorbed in a fantastic imagination land, writing everything from screenplays and comic books to short stories and novels.
Ilia spent years working in the film and television industry as a screenwriter as well as on the sets of big budget films across various departments. While not writing, Ilia enjoys relaxing on the beach with her adorable Ridgeback pup.
Please leave a review letting me know what you thought of Bite. I am always striving towards making my work better and better.
SHIFT
AN EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT
CHAPTER ONE
INSIDE THESE WALLS
I called him “the man from upstairs” because it was the only thing I knew about him—he worked upstairs. When he left our floor, he pressed the elevator’s up-button, and then he’d go upstairs.
It didn’t matter what I called him, because I never talked about him with anyone else. If I tried to mention him, I became a crimson-cheeked blabbering fool.
His beautiful face haunted my dreams. An ironic face: confident, charming, courageous, despite being none of those things. He came through our office every week for five years. In five years, I’d never heard him utter a word. The mystery drove me crazy, a mystery is better left a mystery.
Back then, he was the only reason I’d get out of bed, a chance to see his face. An elusive spectre appearing when least expected, emerging from the elevator and parting the sea of cubicles. For five years, I obsessed over him. In five years, I never once spoke to him.
Then, on a quiet summer's day, that changed.
I awoke to raindrops pattering against a nearby office’s window, the same sound that lulled me to sleep. It’d been pouring all day—all week—for three months straight. It always rained in Ilium, save for a few rare days when the clouds sunk down and floated, stagnant in the streets. Even then, the humidity soaked through your clothes, ran down windows, and formed puddles on sidewalks.
I couldn’t see the rain from my desk. I didn’t get a window.
I got a small cubicle in sea of small cubicles: three furry walls, five feet tall, bare, void of any images or colour. It was against company policy to tack pictures to our walls. At least in prison, inmates get to put up pictures.
Like my coworkers, I lived my life at Morgan Insurance.
Unlike my coworkers, I was a dreamer. One day, I was going to figure out my life, rise from the ashes, and make something of my life. My coworkers assured me that would change—that Morgan Insurance was my final resting place.
This was it? Listening to the torrents of rain, looking around an office that hadn’t been updated in twenty-five years. That’s what I had to look forward to? Caroline said she used to be a dreamer, too. So did Andrew, and Sharron, and Michael…
My boss would have given me hell if he’d caught me sleeping at my desk. But it was the summer, and in the summer there were no bosses at Morgan Insurance. Just thirty-two vacant cubicles. The coveted offices were empty. I didn’t get summer vacation. After five years with the company, I was still “too new.” I got three days off at Christmas and a week of sick days.
That afternoon, the office was particularly empty, emptier than before I fell asleep. Waking up from my doze-off, I was the only person there.
With my leftover dinner, I started towards the staff kitchenette, trying not to look into the office windows at the tacked-up pictures of tropical resorts, the resorts my managers were now enjoying. I turned the corner.
My face smushed up against a wall—a wall of chest—the chest of a tall man. I let out a loud shriek. I would have fallen on my ass had two strong hands not grabbed me by the waist.
He looked down at me with that familiar smile, the smile I'd obsessed over for five years; the smile I hadn’t come to realize was the smile of a coward.
Every elusive visit, our eyes would meet and he would smile. No one else ever seemed to notice; no one but me. He was a mystery. And it would turn out, it was his job to remain a mystery.
“I’m sorry,” he said with his hands still clutching my waist, “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
I opened my mouth but my vocal chords were in a knot. I stood there with my mouth open, like a complete idiot. Say something. Say anything. Say what? Nothing. He smiled and continued towards his mystery destination. “Bye,” he said with a smile and a wave. Then, he disappeared around the corner.
I just stood with my jaw hanging open. “Bye,” I managed to say, long after his footsteps had disappeared.
I�
�m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. That one sentence had already echoed a thousand times in my head. That was enough. Enough to give a voice to my fantasy. In my head, I’d already listened to him utter sweet nothings in my ear and recite poetry to me in nothing but his underwear. That poetry may have been the lyrics to Come Sail Away by Styx, but that’s beside the point.
A rush of rain rattled the office windows, snapping me out of yet another dozing daydream.
Those that had left for lunch were now back behind their desks, behind their mundane cubicle walls. The office was once again loud with pattering fingers against keyboards, employees mindlessly surfing Facebook and updating Twitter.
Between the pattering of keys was the ticking of my cubicle-neighbour’s clock. It was a novelty clock with twelve fives and a little message that read, ‘No working after five!’
The clock’s little hand pointed to the five where there should have been a two. Three more hours and I could tick another day off my life.
CHAPTER TWO
ICE CREAM, NETFLIX, & FADING DREAMS
Would I ever have a man like that in my life? Was there a man out there that could save me from mundane repetition? Every day of my life was the exact same, save for one little detail: I was a day older. What did I have that he could possibly want in his life? Job security? How could anyone say no?
I needed to quit. But I couldn’t. Job safety—it wasn’t just a selling point for my easily-impressed future husband; it was keeping me afloat, paying for my life. What life?
“Are you still watching?” Netflix asked. I could practically hear its judging voice. Even my television thought my life was a pathetic waste.
I thought about sending in my resignation and my heart skipped a beat.
One little email and I would be thrust into uncertainty. One little email, and five years of my life would have been for nothing. If I stayed, would that be any different? Are you still watching? Yes, or no?
Now leaving Ilium! Come Back Soon!
That was the view from my apartment window—the city limit sign. Beyond that sign was fifty miles of woods. Beyond those woods was a wall of mountains. Beyond those mountains, hundred of miles of more mountains. No roads went that way, no trails. Even flight paths didn’t go that way. “Don’t go that way,” they said. “It’s dangerous, and there’s nothing there.” The weather was unpredictable and the terrain was dangerous. “Nothing to see, move along.”
Streetlights painted orange patches of rain above the quiet Ilium streets. Gutters were violent seas and abandoned candy wrappers were the vessels that braved them. I imagined a small insect inside one of the rogue ships—a helpless captain, doomed and destined for the gutter.
That night, shops were closed; restaurants were closing. The town was going to sleep. Is there a place on this planet for lost souls like me?
There was. And it was open late on Wing Night Wednesdays.
CHAPTER THREE
A PLACE FOR LOST SOULS LIKE ME
The Holiday Inn Lounge was the only open bar that night.
The Holiday Inn shared a parking lot with Crazy Dave’s Used Car Emporium. It was the cheapest bar in Ilium, and it was just a few steps from the homeless shelter. It was a place where the lounge waitress was used to returning home with pockets full of pennies, nickels and dimes—if she got anything at all.
I kept the hood of my coat flipped up as I walked into the lounge, past the lounge-pianist, playing an old electric piano next to an untouched grand piano. They didn’t let him play on the grand piano because he was a terrible pianist and you can’t lower the volume on a grand piano. They couldn’t afford a real pianist, so they picked up an old electric piano at a garage sale for twenty-five bucks.
I kept my distance from the homeless man at the other end of the bar. His face was covered in dirt and he was literally dressed in rags. He swayed from side to side, staring at nothing in particular. He’d fallen straight out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon; all he needed was a bottle labelled “XXX”.
When the tired-looking bartender came by, I ordered a vodka water.
“It’s half off mojitos, tonight.” My vodka water became a mojito.
Sitting alone at a nearby table was a man, about my age, who also worked for Morgan Insurance, Randal Robert Andy. The managers called him Randy Bobandy. A shorter man with an odd body, Randy’s face and neck were thin and his body widened out from his shoulders, reaching its largest circumference around his thighs.
His gaze turned my way and mine swung forward.
What was I afraid of?
Who was I to look down my nose at Randal Robert Andy, or anyone in the Holiday Inn Lonely Hearts Club Lounge? I was there for the same reason as the rest of them. I was lost, desperate for a glimmer of purpose. Like Randy, like the rest of them, I didn’t know the first place to look, so I went to the only place that was open, and it happened to be half-off mojitos night.
Sitting alone in a booth, staring my way was an older, strangely familiar man, dressed in a cheap black suit and a tacky red tie. He winked. I looked away and there he was again, outside the window, on the giant billboard above the parking lot. Over his giant face was the slogan, “Crazy Dave’s Crazy Deals!” I don’t think Crazy Dave was his birth name. I looked back and he smiled, blinding me with his cheap veneers.
My grandfather’s voice echoed in my head. What do you want to be when you grow up, Chloe? An adventurer, I would say. One day, I would trek through the unexplored jungles of Borneo, discover lost cities in the Amazon Basin, hike the mountains of Nepal… I don’t recall describing any adventures starring Crazy Dave at the Holiday Inn Lounge.
The only other person in the bar was a man who sat alone in the far corner, a hood over his head and a dark shadow over his eyes. He had a pronounced jawline, covered in orange scruff.
He didn’t strike me as a Holiday Inn Lonely Hearts Club Lounge member. He didn’t have a thick aura of desperation lingering around him that wafted up your nostrils, a combination of pickle juice and lemon pledge. That very odour was now potent.
“What are you drinking?” someone asked.
I jumped from my barstool. In the flesh was Crazy Dave, blinding me with his cheap veneers. Without an invitation, he took a seat. His body was awkwardly long and his head was abnormally small—a peculiar resemblance to the bottle in his hand.
“Um,” I said. “Just a mojito.”
“Another mojito, Carl!” Crazy Dave was on a first name basis with the bartender. “Make that two!” He sat tall, uncomfortably straight, like a donkey imitating a stallion. “Dave.” He omitted the Crazy from his greeting. I waited a moment, expecting him to finish like James Bond. Dave. Crazy Dave. He didn’t.
“Chloe Parker,” I kept my voice low and eye-contact to a minimum. The didn’t want Crazy Dave getting the wrong idea.
“Chloe Parker,” he said. He repeated my name a few more times, each time with a different inflection. “Chloe Parker. Chloe Parker,” like an actor, memorizing lines for a very short play—or a very meaningless role. “You can learn a lot about a person from their name. I feel like I know a lot about you, Chloe Parker.”
I didn’t want to ask, but I don’t think I had a choice. I asked.
“I know that you’re a sucker for a good mojito.” Crazy Dave made the Long Island Medium look like Nostradamus. “Chloe Parker,” he said again, louder than before.
Randy looked over. I did my best to pretend not to notice.
“You’re a Ilium gal are ya?” he asked.
I held my forced smile and nodded. “I guess so,” I said.
Crazy Dave looked me up and down. I was suddenly overcome with the impulse to adjust my top and cross my legs.
He licked his dry, papery lips. The harsh, orange bar lights revealed every line in Crazy Dave’s aging face.
“You’ve got a set of beautiful eyes, Chloe Parker.”
“Thank you.” A chill crawled down my spine.
“Do you know what makes them so beautiful?”
“What’s that?” I asked reluctantly.
“They’re honest.” Crazy Dave licked his papery lips again. “Do you want to know what they’re telling me?” I didn’t, but I reluctantly asked anyway. “That its time to trade in your old car for something new and exciting. You like excitement, right Chloe? Mind if I call you Chloe?”
I tried to string a sentence together but failed.
“I know you do. Let me guess—you’re a Mazda gal. I can always spot a Mazda gal. We just got a Miata in. It’s green, like your honest eyes, Chloe. The moment you walked into this bar, I knew that little green Mazda Miata was for you.”
