Shannon Bailey - [Blackwell 01]

by Forever David's (lit)

  A Bailey’s Books Original

  January 2009

  Published by Bailey’s Books

  P.O. Box 211

  New Castle, CO 81647

  Forever David’s

  Copyright © 2008 by Shannon Bailey

  International Standard Book Number: 978-0-9740086-6-0

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2008906936

  FIRST EDITION

  Editor: Michael R. Valentino

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, names, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or deceased, or events is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by an electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  For order information contact: www.baileysbooksonline.net

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  Morris Publishing

  3212 East Highway 30

  Kearney, NE 68847

  Forever David’s

  The Memoirs of

  Emily Rose Perkins

  By Shannon Bailey

  Chapter One

  My Beginning

  As I begin, I realize that my life before October 31, 2007, was hardly noteworthy at all. However, in the best interest of this record of events, I suppose I should get the preliminary facts out of the way.

  I was born on May 12, 1979 in Dixon, a small town in northern Illinois. My birth was planned and I came into the world as expected, making me the first and only child of John and Catherine Perkins.

  In retrospect, I’ve come to recognize that my childhood was privileged and overly protected. My teen and young adult life was uneventful, even- keeled, punctuated only by the typical milestones experienced by most American girls.

  I remember my first crush. Getting my driver’s license and first car. The prom, my high school graduation, going off to college and graduating with my degree. My father walking me down the aisle to Jeremy and four years later, the judge legally declaring the marriage over.

  It was a little over a year after that divorce when I met Cara Wagner. She joined the nursing staff at the hospital where I worked and we immediately struck up a friendship.

  Looking back, ours was an unlikely pairing and frankly, I’m surprised we had any kind of relation-ship at all. She was the direct opposite of me in every possible way: short, blonde and voluptuous. Outgoing and outspoken, even vulgar and uncouth at times.

  She was constantly challenging me and pushing me out of my comfort zone, but I suppose that’s what I thought I needed at that point in my life.

  We had been friends for almost a year before she began pestering me to go with her to a Halloween party in Chicago.

  Eventually, I gave in and that night, she arrived at my house, a quaint stone cottage, complete with blue shutters and a white picket fence around the front yard, at 6:00 p.m. sharp.

  When I answered the door and saw her, the first thought that popped into my mind was that she looked like a trampier cross version of Dolly Parton and Elvira.

  Her shoulder length, bleach-blonde hair had been teased big and brushed back away from her round face. She was heavily made up with dark eye shadow, liner and mascara, stripes of black blush at her cheeks and bright crimson lipstick. She wore black stiletto heels, a black leather mini skirt and a black leather corset that had her naturally enormous breasts practically pushed up to her chin.

  I welcomed her in and as she stepped across the threshold, she closed the door behind her and planted her hands on her ample hips. Her gauche red lips pursed and her left eyebrow, the one with a little silver bar pierced through it, raised skeptically as she looked me over.

  I watched as her brown eyes, starting at the little white cap atop my long black hair, work their way down over my shapeless, button down gray cardigan sweater, the skirt of my knee-length white dress, to my white pantyhose and white orthopedic work shoes, and then travel back up.

  “Well,” she began in her raspy, sultry voice, “I suppose if we tossed the hat, put your hair up into a sexy bun with some loose tendrils, lose the sweater entirely, unbutton the top two buttons and got you into a pair of stilettos, it could work.”

  Bristling a bit at her criticism, I politely replied, “Thanks, but I wasn’t going for the Naughty Nurse look. I was going more historical. This is my grandmother’s actual Red Cross nurse uniform from when she served in World War II. See, it even has the original patch,” I told her, shoving the sweater off my shoulder and revealing the Red Cross insignia sewn there.

  To say the least, Cara didn’t look impressed. In fact, she frowned and acted as if I hadn’t spoken at all. “You do own a pair of stilettos, don’t you?”

  I pulled the sweater back into place and snapped back, “No. You know I don’t wear shoes like that.”

  With a dismal shake of her head, she jabbed her finger at me, its nail tip painted black and sharpened to a point. “You see. This is why you’re single at almost thirty.”

  “What? My preference for sensible shoes,” I retorted. “No, I don’t think so. I’m sure I’m single at twenty-eight because of a cheating husband.”

  “True, but the divorce was finalized two years ago! I’m talkin’ about your play-it-safe attitude. I mean, damn, I thought you had to be a Catholic to become a nun.”

  The offended look I shot her sent her hands up into an apologetic gesture. “I’m just saying, you act and dress like one. For Pete’s sake. You’re gorgeous and you have a smokin’ hot bod. Hell, if I looked like you, I wouldn’t be caught dead in those shoes or that potato sack you call a dress,” she said with a frown.

  “C’mon, Emmy, loosen up a bit. Show off a little. Live a little. Love a little. Although in your case, you have so much wasted time to make up for, I say screw it! Do it all and a lot of it,” she advised with a saucy smile.

  Now I’ll admit when she said that, a part of me wanted to point out to her that teetering around, half-naked on three inch stilts and dating and sleeping with man after man, just wasn’t my thing. And it certainly didn’t make her any less single. It just made her more of a desperate tramp. But I kept my personal opinions to myself and said, “I hear what you’re saying and I’m trying. I mean, I’m going tonight aren’t I?”

  “Yeah, but only after weeks of begging and pleading. I mean, damn, I thought I was going to have to drug and kidnap your sorry ass to get you to go with me,” she said with a throaty laugh.

  Although I was used to her kind of teasing, I was growing a bit defensive. “Well, it’s just a weird day to throw a party is all,” I said, crossing my arms. “I mean, really, who throws and who goes to a party on a Wednesday night? Most of us normal people have to work the next day.”

  “Yeah, I know, hon,” she began condescendingly. “But there are those out there, you know, real people, with real lives, that can handle a party any day of the week. Besides, today is the 31st and you can’t have a real Halloween party on any other day. Now, go find another pair of shoes. Anything with a heel, and let’s haul ass.”

  “Well, I suppose I could grab those white kitten heels that I wore to my cousin’s wedding over the summer.”

  With a disgusted snort and a roll of her eyes, Cara said she would wait in the car and I hurried to my bedroom. After stuffing the most daring pair of shoes I owned into my overnight bag, I grabbed my purse and made sure Sir Galahad, my white, blue-eyed Persian, had enough food and water and we were off to Cara’s ever so importa
nt Halloween Party.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Party Ploy

  With the way Cara had pushed her little red Toyota Corolla, an early 90s model that had seen better days, we were checked into the Ramada and in our room by 7:45.

  While I immediately took out my alcohol wipes and went to work wiping down all the surfaces that we would be touching in the room, she went to the mirror to fix herself. She pressed very realistic looking fangs over each of the eye teeth, applied a generous layer of red lipstick and sprayed her hairdo with another coat of Aqua Net before turning her focus on me.

  Reluctantly, I let her brush and arrange my long hair into a massive bun atop my head, holding it secure with two strategically placed red chopsticks. At her insistence to accentuate my blue eyes, I put eyeliner and added some gray shadow for that smoky, dramatic look. I even borrowed her lipstick, wiping the pointed red shaft with anti-bacterial wipe first and dabbed a little on my puffed puckers, as she always referred to them.

  When we were finished painting and primping before the mirror, she tried one last time to get me to abandon my sweater, while I tried to convince her to wear one because it was freezing out. But neither of us was willing to give in and we were back in her car within a half an hour.

  As we left the hotel parking lot and drove south, away from the city and into the residential neighborhood of Hyde Park, I realized that I didn’t know where we were going. And so I asked whose party it was and where it was being held.

  Despite the fangs, Cara sounded normal when she casually replied that it was at “some guy’s” house.

  Now when I heard that, I felt the first twinge of unease in my stomach. “But I thought it was at a club downtown or a hotel ballroom or something.”

  “No,” she said with a dismissive shrug. “It’s a private party. At this guy Develyn’s house.”

  At that little revelation, I felt the second twinge. “Who’s the guy? How do you know him? Did you meet him on MySpace?” I demanded as I stared at her profile in the dim light.

  “No,” she shot back defensively. “He’s a friend of a friend I met on MySpace. But don’t go starting your, The Evils of MySpace, bullshit, ‘cause I fucking don’t want to hear it.”

  I bristled at her tone, but wasn’t surprised by it. Cara was a MySpace junkie, and despite her suddenly foul mood and even fouler warning, I did launch into my well-rehearsed tirade.

  I was a little freaked out. I mean, you don’t just go to some friend of a friend of a stranger-you-met-off-the-Internet’s house. You just don’t do it!

  And when I was finished pointing out all the obvious reasons why, she calmly replied, “Look, I’ve met him before. Over the summer and trust me, Develyn’s cool. Everything’s cool. So, just relax and try and have some fun tonight, will ya?”

  That’s when the third twinge struck and I felt around inside my purse for my cell phone and trusty little can of mace.

  Since I didn’t know what kind of rock star, world renowned writer, or whatever wannabe, this Develyn really was, I slipped the phone and mace into each sweater pocket. . . Just in case.

  In silence we rode on, going further into the old and established Hyde Park neighborhood where most of the home and buildings were constructed in the late 1890s through the 1920s. In my opinion, back when architecture was a practice of beauty and form, not just function.

  The streets were lined with large, aged elm and oak trees with bared branches. Their fallen leaves blanketed the sidewalks that were busy with costumed children and their parents, as they scurried from house to house, for sweet treats.

  After a kid dressed like Captain Jack Sparrow ran out in front of us from between two parked cars, Cara pulled over and parked beneath the streetlight, all the while swearing at the little boy.

  Turning the engine off and the dome light on, she applied yet another coat of lipstick and checked her fake teeth in the rearview mirror while I took off my orthopedic shoes and slipped on my heels.

  After we locked our purses in the trunk, she handed me the car keys and her lipstick to carry, since she had no possible place to put them.

  We started walking west, weaving in and around the kids and adults for two blocks before we took a right. As we followed the broken and cracked sidewalk alongside a hedge-enshrouded property, I could hear the faint thumping sound of music coming from behind the bushes and I figured this was the place we were heading to.

  When we turned the corner, I made a mental note of the street we were on. And we stopped at the property’s gated driveway I memorized the four numbers engraved in a plaque mounted on the right brick column.

  Out of the darkness, a short, pale-faced, bald man in all black approached us from behind the tall and fancy black iron gates and asked if we were there for the gathering.

  Of course at that time, I thought he was just being theatrical, calling the party ‘the gathering’, but I would later learn it really was a Vampire event known as a “Gathering.”

  When Cara smiled seductively and produced a small black card from the cleft of her impressive cleavage and he smiled, flashing fangs back at her. He flipped on a penlight and read the card before tucking it away inside of his trench coat. He then unlocked the gates with a skeleton key and in a perfected, deep voice, said, “You’ve been officially invited, ladies. Please come in and enjoy yourselves this evening.”

  When he pulled the left side of the gate, it made an eerie screech as it swung inward and as we passed by him he chuckled ominously.

  With the gate keeper’s chilling laughter and the scene before us, it was like something straight out of a horror movie and I stood frozen for a moment and I’ll admit I almost ditched Cara right then and there.

  The half moon was bright white and it hung low in the sky, seemingly looming directly over the spooky old house at the end of a very long brick driveway. It was a large house. A brick, three-story Victorian with some steep pointed gables and lots of windows, some that were narrow and rectangular and some that were cathedral-styled, but all were shining yellow from within.

  Cara’s heels clicked rapidly on the bricks as she hurried toward it and when she noticed I wasn’t beside her, she stopped and whirled around. “What the hell, Emmy? C’mon!” she called impatiently.

  Reluctantly, I followed and as we neared, the music, some type of Goth rock, grew louder. We climbed the wide wooden stairs of the front porch and when Cara knocked at the door, I doubted if we were heard. But within seconds, it opened and another pale-faced man in black invited us in.

  When I stepped through the doorway, a wave of intense heat washed over me and the scent of burning candles and sage filled my nose. Immediately, I noticed that every one of the dozen or so people milling around the foyer and staircase were dressed up as vampires. Their faces were pale and heavily made up with dark make-up. Some wore fangs and most of them wore silver crosses, varying in size and design. All the men were in black pants and shirts; some sporting long black coats, while each woman wore either a black dress of some sort or a black get up similar to Cara’s.

  Standing there, I felt like the proverbial sore thumb when they all turned to stare at me. Pulling Cara aside, I yelled over the music, “I thought you said this was a costume party!”

  “It is!” she cried back with a shrug.

  “Yeah, a Vampire costume party! Why didn’t you tell me it was a theme party?”

  She rolled her eyes in exasperation.”‘ Cause it’s not! Relax! Look! There’s a hippie, a cowgirl, and a Mr.GQ right over there!” she said, pointing them out in the crowd in the next room.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Sweet Sacrifice

  The three of them was standing together about twenty feet away. The hippie was short and skinny and since he stood with his back to us, all I could see were his faded jeans, a long brown vest with fringe at the bottom that he wore over a long-sleeved shirt of purple. A long white ponytail hung down to the middle of his back. To his left was the cowgirl.

  She was
a tall and curvy brunette dressed in red leather cowboy boots, a straw hat, a blue jean mini skirt and a red Western-styled blouse tied up at the waist and busting out at the bust. She was standing next to, and smiling up at, the man Cara had referred to a Mr.GQ.

  Now, Mr. Gentleman’s Quarterly was tall, lean and broad shouldered with pitch-black hair and eyebrows and chiseled pale features. He wore a dark gray, well-tailored and expensive-looking suit with a matching colored shirt and a bold, blood-red silk tie. There was an air of confidence about him. And as he stood there, cocked-hipped and casually cradling a silver goblet in his left hand, I thought Cara was right. He looked like a model from the pages of that magazine. In fact, he looked like he was constantly posing for a camera or anyone who happened to be looking his way. Just as I was about to turn my head, he looked right at me and our eyes locked.

  Instantly, I felt my blood warm and rise to my face. The sound of my pounding heart filled my head, drowning out everything else. I tried to break our gaze, but I couldn’t. I just stood there, watching him. Watching the turn and tilt of his head and the movement of his lips as he spoke with the hippie and the cowgirl.

  I was completely unaware of anything or anyone else. That is, until Cara leaned in, and with a snicker said, “Damn, girl! If you keep staring like that you’re gonna hurt yourself.”

  Flinching, I looked over at her and was shocked to see that she was holding a Bloody Mary cocktail. But what was even more disturbing was that I hadn’t noticed her absence or that the deafening music had stopped and the lights had dimmed dramatically throughout the house.