The Darkness

By Michael D. Britton

THE DARKNESS explores the feelings of one young woman who has gazed into the abyss, only to discover that it is staring right back at her. You can buy ANYTHING on the internet, but can that help Ashley overcome THE DARKNESS? [NOTE: THIS IS A NOVELLA LENGTH WORK OF FICTION]

*BONUS: Includes an extended free sample of Michael D. Britton's thriller novel, CANCELED.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Intelligent Life Books
• Release date: Jun 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465919083

Michael D. Britton

Michael D. Britton has been writing professionally for 25 years, including heading up marketing departments, working in huge private corporations, writing for government entities, supporting non-profit healthcare systems, sprinting with tiny tech start-ups, freelancing, and a producing TV news broadcasts in the 90s. His short fiction has received ten honorable mentions in the Writers of the Future contest, among other recognition; and his novels have advanced through multiple rounds of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award in various years. His list of indie-published fiction titles exceeds 65 and keeps increasing. Learn more at www.michaeldbritton.com.

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The Darkness

by

Michael D. Britton

* * * *

Copyright 2011 by Michael D. Britton

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She should listen to Tanner89. Or whatever his real name is.

Real. Huh. Whatever real is.

Most of the six hundred seventeen people living in Yachats, Oregon – a sand-swept wide spot in the road south of Waldport – are less real to Ashley Lane than her twenty-nine online friends.

Except for one.

Jonas Silage, the vile chunk of rancid meat in filthy overalls and greasy smile. For Ashley, the reality of Jonas is all too much to bear.

Which is why she should listen to Tanner89.

Ashley climbs over one of the giant driftwood logs on the desolate beach and finds her favorite secluded cove out of the wind where she can sit in private with a view of the roiling late-October ocean. She wipes the image of Jonas from her mind and flicks open the battered laptop across her gray sweat-pant covered legs.

Should’ve listened to Mom, too, she thinks, wishing she’d grabbed a jacket on her way out. The sun is out, but the salty wind whipping down the shore is ice cold. Now that she isn’t generating her own heat from climbing down to the beach, the wind that had bitten through her skin is making it hard to warm up, despite the shelter she’s found.

She inhales the odor of seaweed as she logs into her email. She smiles, her heart reflexively leaping as her computer announces she has mail. The wireless card in her laptop is her lifeline to the world outside her miserable small-town existence. These are the moments she lives for these days – a chance to touch life beyond Yachats.

Brushing a strand of her bathwater-colored hair back and hooking it behind her ear, she bites her lower lip and opens her mail:

Ashes2Ashes,

Where U been? No email yesterday or Friday. Hope JS is leaving U alone. Let me know if U want me 2 talk 2 Tanner. He says he can still help.

LazyDazy

Ashley hits REPLY and her eyes bore through the screen. She lifts her gaze and stares out at the ocean, listens to the relentless waves. The few tourists that come through at this time of year love the fact that entire stretches of coastline like this are deserted – not a soul as far as the eye can see in either direction, as if you are completely alone in the world.

Ashley hates it. Mostly. She does like having a place to communicate online without interruption, but what she wouldn’t give to be on a beach packed with sunbathers and volleyball players and musclemen and families, all glistening in the sun, spread out on their blankets and towels like gems in a jeweler’s case.

To be among humans. Lost in a crowd. Lost anywhere but in Yachats.

Instead, she sits here alone, trying not to think of the un-humans in her life like Jonas Silage. She glances back at the screen, the flashing cursor blinking in time with her own heartbeat.

She knows she has to give piano lessons to those horrid Grant twins tonight (the demon-spawn nine year olds), so she types:

LazyDazy,

Tell Tanner to meet me in our chat room tomorrow night at six. I’m ready to deal with this.

Ashes2Ashes

She hits SEND, and changes her life forever.

#

Ashley sits on the edge of her bed with its sinking middle and threadbare blankets and slips her skinny legs into her torn black jeans. She pulls on her sand-worn Nikes, a pink shirt and a jacket, then heads out the front door to school, her enormous backpack over her shoulder.

The road to Highway 101 has no sidewalks and deep puddles line the gravel shoulder. It rained again last night – hard – and only stopped a few minutes before she left the house. Now the sky is just flat and gray like her life. The rain water still drips from the power lines to disturb the muddy puddles.

Last night she’d managed to get through the piano lessons with the Grants without killing either of them, which is a plus. And she got paid cash. Today, she’ll put half in the bank for Mom, and take the other half to the Radio Shack and finally get the mp3 player she’s been saving up for. Everyone else seems to have one – it’s about time she had a way to listen to her tunes without carrying her laptop everywhere. Of course she’ll keep carrying the laptop anyway, since it’s her one window to the real world.

Everyone calls the internet the virtual world, but when you’re only virtually living in your own world, the universe that can be accessed via the web is as tangible and welcoming as any actual place.

As she approaches the highway where the bus stop is located, she passes the small antique dealer and shudders. The peeling white paint on the siding, the bizarre artifacts in the large front window of the old house, and the dull black eyes she can feel watching her from deep within the main room make her skin crawl. Silage is in there, and she knows that he knows that she knows it – the shared understanding like a violation