Broke and Famous

by Elizabeth Gannon

  Broke and Famous

  Elizabeth Gannon

  Copyright © Elizabeth Gannon 2019

  All rights reserved

  Published by Star Turtle Publishing

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  Books by Elizabeth Gannon

  The Consortium of Chaos series

  Yesterday’s Heroes

  The Son of Sun and Sand

  The Guy Your Friends Warned You About

  Electrical Hazard

  The Only Fish in the Sea

  Not Currently Evil

  The Mad Scientist’s Guide to Dating

  The Window Seat Tribe

  Broke and Famous

  The War of Gold and Silver

  Travels with a Fairytale Monster

  Everyone Hates Fairytale Pirates

  Captive of a Fairytale Barbarian

  Other books

  The Snow Queen

  Books by Cassandra Gannon

  The Elemental Phases Series

  Warrior from the Shadowland

  Guardian of the Earth House

  Exile in the Water Kingdom

  Treasure of the Fire Kingdom

  Queen of the Magnetland

  Magic of the Wood House

  Coming Soon: Destiny of the Time House

  A Kinda Fairytale Series

  Wicked Ugly Bad

  Beast in Shining Armor

  The Kingpin of Camelot

  Best Knight Ever

  Coming Soon: Happily Ever Witch

  Other Books

  Love in the Time of Zombies

  Not Another Vampire Book

  Vampire Charming

  Cowboy from the Future

  Once Upon a Caveman

  Ghost Walk

  Respectfully dedicated to the Coyote, the most inspirational of all the Loony Tunes.

  He is a metaphor for modern life, as a practical mind tries to deal with an impractical world and ascribe coherent meaning to the meaningless. Coyote's inventions are all based (at least in some part) on science and the natural laws. They rely on engineering and physics and chemistry. They are the result of a rational mind and careful planning.

  But the Roadrunner escapes the trap every time, because the Roadrunner isn’t bound at all by reality. He exists outside it. He represents man’s hopes and dreams and all the weird unexplained stuff which humanity deals with on a daily basis. Everything they are forever unable to comprehend. Everything which can’t be planned for or engineered against. Their dreams. Their nightmares. The miraculous. The tragic. Their hope. Their hatred. Their failures. Their hunger which can never be sated. The unfathomable scope of the universe and their insignificant place in it.

  And in that kind of world, the Coyote’s education and inventions don’t mean a damn thing. The Coyote’s inventions— like Coyote himself— are deeply flawed. But he keeps trying anyway. That’s the point of the cartoon.

  Their conflict, in essence, is an animated serial which examines the dynamics of trans-species interbeing and the ultimate futility of all knowledge. It is a treatise on what happens when the quest for understanding crashes into the immovable rock of the unknowable. Newtonian physics meeting its match in quantum mechanics, and recognizing that the so-called "natural" laws only exist because we're incapable of seeing the big picture. That no matter how smart you are and how much control you think you have over the outcome of a situation, there are still mysterious forces outside of your understanding which will thwart your every effort and send you plummeting off that cliff.

  You might be brilliant… but you’re still going to fail.

  It’s very nihilist and quietly subversive, in a way.

  Plus, the “meep-meep” gets me every time. Road Runner is such a dick!

  This book is a love letter to failure and ever-diminishing expectation, and it is dedicated to the Coyote. Don’t ever give up on what you love, no matter how spectacular the failure or grand the success.

  One day you’ll catch him.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note/Commentary on book

  Sneak Peek!

  “Proud people breed sad sorrows for themselves.”

  - Wuthering Heights

  Prologue

  “Fantastic failures of journeys occupied me until the day dawned and the birds were singing. Then, I got up and partly dressed, and sat at the window to take a last look out...”

  Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

  20 Years Ago

  The first time he died, he told himself that it wouldn’t happen again.

  The second time he died, he recognized that there might be an issue.

  The third time he died… well, he was beginning to sense a regrettable pattern of failure.

  Thraex had killed himself three days ago.

  Again.

  It had been a bloody, protracted affair. Using a sliver of stone gradually chipped from the wall of his cell with his fingernails. It had left his nailbeds raw and bleeding, but he’d finally loosened the stone enough to pry it free. He’d used it to cut his wrists. It was painful beyond measure but it had gotten the job done.

  Which made his current predicament all the more devastating, because despite his suicide… Thraex got better.

  His father wouldn’t even let him have that. Wouldn’t even let him escape this world in an agonizing and humiliating way.

  He wasn’t even permitted to have a scar.

  Thraex had tried it twice before, with similar results. But he had hoped that this time his father would allow it, since it wasn’t exactly a merciful death. It had been the death Thraex’s father would have thought his son deserved, so Thraex had prayed that in giving it to him, he’d finally be granted his wish.

  But nothing happened in this world without his father’s say-so. Not even death.

  Xerzinax the Great Conqueror, had created the ground and the air and the world itself. Bringing them to life for no other reason than to amuse himself. Everything in existence submitted to his whim. He snapped his fingers and the universe trembled to obey.

  If he didn’t want one of his slaves killing himself… then it wouldn’t happen, no matter how many attempts Thraex made or how much he prayed.

  Prayers were useless when they were said in an attempt to overcome the will of a living god. You couldn’t exactly pray for deliverance from a vengeful and cruel god, to the very divinity you were asking to be rescued from.

  Ending his own life was the only thing that Thraex had ever actually wanted in his life, but no matter how hard he tried… he couldn’t get it done.

  Thraex was used to failure though.

  It was his only companion in life.

  Well, besides the ever-present company of his father, who haunted his drea
ms and seemed to always be watching. Listening to his thoughts and monitoring his actions at all times, waiting for any sign of disloyalty or sedition.

  Thraex’s life had consisted of nothing but this cold, dark room.

  The door was locked and there were no windows.

  He only knew there were such things as windows and doors because his father had told him so. Whispered to him in the eternal darkness of this room, and sent his mind vague images of what such a thing might look like.

  Xerzinax the Great Conqueror wanted his son to know just what Thraex was being locked away from. It was no fun to torture someone unless they recognized the joy of the alternative. They needed to know what they were missing out on.

  Pain had no meaning without joy, and presumably, vice versa.

  He showed Thraex brief glimpses of the world outside the room Thraex had called home his entire life.

  A look at his father’s newest palace, framed by huge Aberidian gold statues.

  The man himself, wrathfully seated and passing judgement on all the faceless supplicants before him.

  Things that Thraex had no way of identifying, because he had no context for them or what they might be.

  His father showed them to him anyway, then made Thraex endure the worst kinds of pain a demon god could inflict on his lowliest slave. Never once even giving him the honor of a beating in person, only by using his power to torture Thraex over a great distance.

  Thraex wasn’t worthy of being tortured and degraded by someone in person.

  In his twelve years on this planet, Thraex had endured more pains and humiliations than he could count. His rudimentary understanding of numbers didn’t go that high, and he couldn’t see his scars in the darkness of his cell.

  Over the years, he had screamed until he couldn’t scream anymore.

  He sometimes lost his mind, and those periods were nice. Restful. But his father always returned it to him, and stopped Thraex from escaping this cell through the release of insanity. Always made sure that Thraex would know where he was.

  And why.

  Yes, Thraex knew exactly why he was being locked away like this.

  And what was planned for him.

  His father had let that detail slip one day when Thraex had felt especially heretical and had tried to stand up to the demon god who had created him. Tried to make him angry enough to kill him, once and for all. But instead, Xerzinax had shared with him the reason why he’d been created. And that had simply taken away all of Thraex’s will to fight.

  It was not… it was not what Thraex would want to happen. At all. He didn’t want that from his life. It was a nightmare. But with each day that passed, Thraex found himself anticipating the arrival of his father’s ultimate design with the only joy he’d known in his dark, lonely existence.

  If he fulfilled his creator’s purpose… maybe then he’d be free.

  Yes, for that, he’d absolutely help his father’s plan along in any way he could.

  He’d be his herald. A willing co-conspirator in the horror. Gladly. Just so long as this life could finally end.

  Thraex believed, in the deepest secret part of himself, that nothing was ever going to get better for anyone though. Especially not him. His father Xerzinax was immortal and eternal and he’d continue making the world suffer until the long days of his life finally fell away. Which would be… never.

  Thraex’s suffering would never end. It would simply draw on, and on, and on…

  Xerzinax had created the world. He controlled everything from the weather to the petty destinies of his enslaved creations.

  And he had plans for Thraex. Plans which Thraex had no hope of escaping, even if he could somehow garner the will to try.

  Thraex sat naked and shivering on the cold stone floor, his wrists rubbed raw and open from the tight metal shackles which had bound him his entire life.

  He had no plans.

  He’d tried everything and he had failed.

  There was no escape from his torment.

  So… Thraex had agreed to his father’s scheme.

  Eagerly.

  Anything to make this life stop.

  He tried to stretch his legs out in front of him, but the cell was getting smaller and smaller as Thraex grew up. Every year, there was less space to sit as his body took up more of the floor. Now, he couldn’t straighten his legs all the way when lying down, so he was forced to hold them up at an awkward and painful angle, or to simply stand up for as long as he could until he collapsed in exhaustion.

  He moved his leg, producing the sound of jangling chains, which was the only sound his ears had ever actually heard, besides his own screams.

  Or… at least the only one he had heard until right now, anyway.

  His eyes narrowed in confusion at a muffled sound coming from the other side of the wall in front of him.

  He was suddenly overcome with… curiosity? He’d never really experienced that before, but it could only be the name of the sensation. Whatever it was, he found himself standing up and leaning closer to the cold stone wall on shaking legs, trying to listen to what could be on the other side.

  Before his eyes, the stones crumbled away.

  And Thraex’s mouth fell open in wonder, suddenly awestruck.

  Before him, was… He didn’t know what it was, but it was the single most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

  There was no color in this world. He’d lived his entire life in a dark cell, and even in the images his father sent him mentally, the red suns sat motionless on the horizon, casting unmoving scarlet shadows over a world of black and white and grey. Things here were hard. Rough. Nightmarish.

  But this thing… It didn’t look like that. Not at all. It had… color. The clothes it wore were… Thraex had no idea what to even call them. There had never before been a need to describe any color except black, white, grey, and red. Those were all the colors there were! But in an instant, that had all changed. There were… dozens of new colors in the world now, all competing for Thraex’s attention.

  The mysteriously colored clothes accentuated the unfamiliar but very intriguing curves of the person.

  He was quite familiar with the contours of his own body, but this person… this person wasn’t built like he was.

  An alien had landed in the dark cells which were locked away forever beneath the palace of The Great Conqueror. And that alien was staring at him from beyond the bars of his cage, meeting his hopeless eyes with…

  Confidence.

  Intelligence.

  Strength.

  The colorful alien attached a small box onto the bars on the other side of the stone wall, and the solid metal melted away in some kind of otherworldly magic.

  The door behind the alien opened, and several other similar beings walked out into the room. They stood beside the alien in front of the hole it had just created in what had formally been the edge of Thraex’s entire world.

  “My name is Sasha Westgate,” the alien announced in a foreign voice far softer and more musical than any sound he had ever heard in his life, “and my family is here to help the people of your dimension.”

  Thraex fell to his knees in wonder, grateful tears streaming down his face.

  And in that moment, bloodied and beaten and without hope… Thraex found a new god to worship.

  Chapter 1

  “Uncle Orville Westgate. Died 1964. Tried to create a self-throwin’ baseball. It worked, but it beaned him in the forehead while he was in the bathtub, and it killed him graveyard dead.”

  – Thraex, Damn Fool Ways Westgates Ended Up Graveyard Dead: Vol. 1

  Twenty Years Later

  Sasha Westgate was thinking about killing herself.

  Again.

  It had started out in an idle, “If my life is going to turn out like this, why don’t I just kill myself?” kind of thought, but then she’d been completely unable to come up with a compelling reason not to. Which had been equal parts depressing and terrifying.

  Sas
ha had seen a lot in her life. She was almost 40 now, and it felt like her life was kind of winding down. Things were getting droopier. Frown lines. The blonde hair at her temples was slowly being invaded by the occasional grey. The whole bit.

  Not that that was in any way the reason she was thinking about bowing out of her life, just that it confirmed that she wasn’t some emotional teenager who was obsessed with drama anymore. She was more than capable of making the only mature and rational decision one could make when confronted with constant and unremitting failure.

  Prison hadn’t helped matters, obviously, even if she’d only been in custody for the last few months. And it wasn’t like she could really blame them for putting her behind bars. It’s certainly where she expected to be sent. She had no money for bail and given her family’s experience with dimensional travel, she was definitely a flight risk, so it only made sense to keep her locked up until trial.

  Sasha was being ushered through the jail by a large officer who had his hand on her elbow, guiding her towards a desk near the exit.

  For some reason, Sasha was being released today. She wasn’t sure why exactly, but it wasn’t like she was going to ask a whole lot of questions. Plus, those questions would probably have to be directed at her attorney, who hadn’t seemed to care about her case much once she told the woman that she was utterly broke. But since Sasha was now being released pending trial, perhaps the woman had been working miracles behind the scenes, after all.

  The man behind the desk of the jail looked uneasy and shifted in his chair, obviously unsure about something. He tried to close his desk drawer, but it was stuck open. He hammered his fist against it in frustration for a moment, and then gave up.

  Sasha was the product of impeccable breeding, she’d been the toast of the science and superhero-ing crowd, but that didn’t mean that people would exactly be forgetting her series of… mistakes. Failures. They were burned into the consciousness of the world, unfortunately. And literally burned into the pavement at the corner of W 50th and 7th Ave. Not that her family had never experienced public disasters before, just that hers were the kind which didn’t become less horrific with time.