Soul Less: Escape From Reality Series

By Erin Lee

Be wary who you give your heart to. 
They may steal your soul.

***This book can be read as a standalone***

Soul Less is the full length novel based on Erin Lee's popular horror shorts including Praying Mantis. Readers are calling it one that will "haunt my nightmares" and "scary as heck."

The seventeenth book in a twenty-author, multi genre series, Soul Less is sure to leave you with hairs standing on the back of your neck and wondering if people are really who they say they are.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Crazy Ink
• Release date: Sep 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9781540124197

Erin Lee

Erin Lee lives in Queensland, Australia and has been working with children for over 25 years. She has worked in both long day care and primary school settings and has a passion for inclusive education and helping all children find joy in learning. Erin has three children of her own and says they have helped contribute ideas and themes towards her quirky writing style. Her experience working in the classroom has motivated her to write books that bring joy to little readers, but also resource educators to help teach fundamental skills to children, such as being safe, respectful learners.

Book preview

SOUL LESS

Escape from Reality Series Book 17

Based off Erin Lee’s original

Praying Mantis short

Written by

ERIN LEE

Copyright © 2018 by ERIN LEE/Crazy Ink

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

***

Crazy Ink

www.authorerinlee.com

www.facebook.com/gonecrazytalksoon

www.crazyink.org

@CrazyLikeMe2015

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Publisher’s Note: This novella is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental. The town of Escape, Colorado as used in this series is entirely fictional and the product of its authors’ wills and keystrokes.

Book Layout: Crazy Ink

Formats: Crazy Ink

Cover: Lee Ching of Under Cover Designs

Cover modifications/sizing: Crazy Ink & RJ Wright Design

Editing: Samantha Talarico

Proofing: Kimberly Lee

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Definition of Soul

(Merrian Webster Dictionary)

1:  the immaterial essence, animating principle, or actuating cause of an individual life

2a :  the spiritual principle embodied in human beings, all rational and spiritual beings, or the universe bcapitalized,Christian Science :  

3:  a person's total self

4a :  an active or essential part b :  a moving spirit 

5a :  the moral and emotional nature of human beings b :  the quality that arouses emotion and sentiment c :  spiritual or moral force 

Warning

This book is dark fiction dealing with disturbing, undiagnosed psychological issues. It dives into the mind of a twisted killer and includes violent, graphic material only suited for adults. It is not suitable for minor children.

This novel is intended for entertainment purposes only, not for clinical research, case study or diagnosis. Soul Less was born, in part, as the result of multiple interviews with people convicted of murder in three states, combined with years of graduate level research on the pathologies that contribute to violent acts of murder and their architects.

Interviews, correspondences and all research—including clinical case reviews and professional journal articles—for this project was conducted in the author’s capacity as a novelist, for this project and for her Diary of a Serial Killer series, not a psychologist. While none of the convicted killers Lee interviewed for either project were female, she uses the same pathologies, motivations and states of dissociation here as tools to drive the fictional character that is Tendra.

Read at your own risk.

And try to hang on to your soul.

You may need it.

SOUL

LESS

It was as if Tendra Sinensis was born without a soul. But that couldn't be true, her parents reasoned. After all, they’d taken her to a dozen specialists to find out why she didn’t cry and why she refused to be held. For years, pediatricians sent them home and told them there was nothing wrong with the little girl whose first word was die. You probably heard her wrong, they'd said, brushing off the worried couple.

Still, her parents knew. They couldn’t ignore it when Tendra threw sand in a blind girl’s eyes, cackling. Sandbox brawls were only the beginning. By the time she entered high school, Reality County Secondary School, her parents had given up. She cut into adult life with a long resume of tools she needed: Manipulation at the top, viciousness at the bottom, lies all over. Things like computer skills were unnecessary. A woman like her could always find someone to do her bidding.

That is, until Colby Vincent came along. A graduate student studying the natural habitat and benefits of insects, Colby had better things to do than listen to the brass words of a spoiled vixen. This, of course, only enticed Tendra. She was willing to do whatever it took to earn her prize. And, more importantly, keep it. But Colby has a few tricks of his own. He has learned to be cautious when dealing with the soulless...

***

By reader request, from the author of the DIARY OF A SERIAL KILLER SERIES, Soul Less is a full-length novel based on Erin Lee’s horror shorts, Praying Mantis, Black Widow, and Widow’s Prey.

For anyone who has ever lost all sense of reality in the name of love and knows the bittersweet taste of failure.

Chapter One

Fun facts about praying mantises:

1. There are 1700 different types. These insects aren’t a one-size-fits-all species.

2. They use their legs, with sharp blades like jack-knives, to kill their prey.

3. Female mantises eat their male partners after mating.

4. Praying mantises bite the backs of their prey’s neck to paralyze them.

5. Common belief is that it’s illegal to kill a mantis in North America because they are endangered.

The truth is, they are not. They are all around us. It just might not appear that way.

***

1991

"But isn’t she supposed to cry? There’s never been any of that. Not even when she was born. It just seems strange."

Sandra Sinensis plops down onto the plastic bench in the fourth pediatrician’s office she’s visited this week. Determined to get answers, she stares at the young doctor listening to her daughter’s heartbeat. Only a few years out of med school, his boy-like blond bangs cause Sandra to clench her fists and wonder if, maybe, the next doctor will know what to do. There’s no way he has a clue. It’s another waste of time. Another copay out the window. He’ll say nothing’s wrong and look at me like I’m one of those mothers who fakes her kid’s illness just to get attention. A doctor shopper or something. Fabulous.

On cue, Dr. Tann shrugs. Every kid is different. Babies meet certain milestones at different times. It’s all in the range of normal. She’s not really old enough for more testing. And, there’s no reason to. She looks perfectly fine to me, he says.

What about autism?

Ma’am, that’s not something we would diagnose until she is in her speaking years. She’s just a baby. Take her home and enjoy her. Most new mothers would be thrilled to have a kid who doesn’t cry. Sandra is almost sure he rolls his eyes. It doesn’t matter. It won’t change that she’s just, once again, wasted her time.

Tendra, the one-year-old, pulls back from Dr. Tann’s stethoscope, giving him a cold stare that sends shivers down Sandra’s neck and the doctor seems to miss. It’s in moments like these where Sandra imagines maybe she’s the one who is crazy.

See! She doesn’t want you touching her. Is that normal too? She doesn’t bring up the dirty look. He won’t believe it. He’ll say all babies glare or that the examination room lights were just too bright. She’s heard it before.

I’m a stranger to her.

"That’s not what I mean. She doesn’t want anyone touching her. It’s not normal. I’ve been around enough kids to know. She doesn’t cry for us to get her out of the crib, and she winces when we touch her. What about some sort of nerve issue? Maybe she’s oversensitive to touch or something. Or, like I said, autism. I’ve been all over the library researching. I’ve heard autism is a new thing. The spectrum. Have you heard of it? It’s got to be that. Don’t tell me about speaking years. I know some kids get diagnosed before that. What about a specialist? Most people don’t really know about it. Maybe you just aren’t familiar..."

Dr. Tann clears his throat and cracks his knuckles before interrupting, "She is fine, Mrs. Sinensis. Just keep up with her well baby exams with her regular pediatrician and she will continue to progress at her own rate. Dr. Tann pulls Tendra’s cotton shirt back into place and turns to his clipboard. He looks up at Sandra. You can take her now."

Sandra presses herself against the examination bench where Tendra looks up at her, expressionless. The baby doesn’t reach out for her mother. Instead, she lays there, staring at her; taking turns between her mother and the ceiling. She doesn’t make a sound. At least, now, she isn’t glaring. Instead, it’s as if she’s studying her surroundings. If Sandra was a betting woman, she’d put her money on planning world domination, and that money would be right behind her daughter Tendra. It didn’t matter