Cartoon, Episode One: Shades of Gray The Portal is Opening

By John Pirillo

This story is Episode One of a Miniseries Novel. Each story leads into the next one, but is complete by itself.

Johnny wants to be a hero, but it isn't all its cracked up to be for him. He runs into a burning building to save a child in danger and finds out he was carrying a ghost. Later on he rescues a teen from a truck accident only to find out she's invisible. What's going on?

To make matters worse his favorite cartoon character, a beautiful blonde, is speaking to him from his comic book and she has a warning that he has to figure out if he wants to survive.

Being a teen isn't easy for Johnnie.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Pirillo
• Release date: Jan 11, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310337147

John Pirillo

The author was born in Washington, Pennsylvannia. He loves animals and birds. Has two pet cockatiels that keep him company while he writes. He has a lovely daughter and a rascally grandson. He is rich in friends that matter and well adjusted to a life of challenges. He writes and draws every day. He loves anything science fiction, fantasy or extremely well written. Same goes for movies and TV. Not married currently, but has an eye and ear open to possibilities. :)

Book preview

Cartoon: A Miniseries

Episode One:

Smashwords Edition

Shades of Gray, The Portals Opening

John Pirillo

Copyright 2014

Chapter One: So You want to be a hero?

It was eight o-clock at night in downtown Sacramento. It was one of the hottest nights of the year, temperature peaking at a bit over a hundred and ten. Yeah. A real cool night to be cruising the downtown strip with all the hippies, the Beach Boy wannabees, the Beatle fab-alikes, and the hoboes, who just want a quiet place to rest their aching bodies.

I should have been with the woman I love, the woman I've been after all my life. Since I was eleven as a matter of fact, though I didn't know it at the time.

But here I stood, flesh and blood, staring up at a living inferno that a madman had set on the tallest building of our State Capitol. A madman like the world had never seen before, and which it wasn't even aware of yet. Funny how that thought ricocheted throughout my mind as I watched a building that had no way up, only ways down, and all of them long and hard. Body splashing hard.

Even thought I didn't know it at that time, I was setting out on the beginning of an adventure that few had ever experienced before, except in comic books. But this wasn't the world of Superman, Batman or Peter Parker, Spiderman. This was downtown Sacramento, the state capitol of California. The place where oranges grew as big as basketballs, but were as sour and yucky as rotting eggs. Where squirrels leaped onto your lap for a friendly donation, and pigeons pecked out of your hand, humbly accepting your offerings. The state capitol. That's what it was, and I was standing with my back to that well lit place to watch a more lit up place. The Highland Towers, a modern complex recently built by Google to house their super computer cloud network.

My fingers curled into fists at the thought of all the death and mayhem I was about to face.

A Firefighter rushed past me, dragging a hose. Get out of the way, kid, people are dying up there. He was joined by several other fire firefighters, who all looked quite frankly, frightened. And I can't blame them. Forty stories of fire is a lot of territory to die in, and there were a lot of people in that building