Crack of Dawn: Eden Klein, #0.5

By Linn Strang

Her comfortable routine is about to be thrown out the window...

 

Every morning at the crack of dawn, Eden Klein wakes up, feeds the neighborhood strays, and hurries back to the safety of her apartment.

 

But then her dangerous past catches up with her in spectacular fashion, and an old acquaintance drags her back into a world she worked very hard to leave behind.

 

Surrounded by danger and intrigue, and pitted against memories best left in the past, Eden's life is about to change dramatically.

 

Is it a change for the better though?

Or will she once again find herself adrift in a world of shadows?

 

 

About the Author

 

Linn Strang spent her childhood skiing and fishing in Swedish Lapland, before moving to the scorching heat of the Middle East. Her B.A. in International Relations and M.A. in Conflict Resolution would have been perfect for a job at the UN, but instead, she makes good use of them by writing larger-than-life stories that keep readers flipping the pages. She writes full-time and lives in Jerusalem with her family and two cats, Nefi and Sisu.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gielas Publishing
• Release date: Aug 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9789657821015

Book preview

Crack of Dawn

An Eden Klein Short Story Collection

Linn Strang

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Published by Gielas Publishing

Visit our website at www.gielaspublishing.com

First published in 2022

This is a work of fiction‭. ‬Names‭, ‬characters‭, ‬places‭, ‬and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously‭, ‬and any resemblance to actual persons‭, ‬living or dead‭, ‬business establishments‭, ‬events‭, ‬or locales is entirely coincidental‭. ‬

CRACK OF DAWN

Copyright‭ ‬©‭ ‬2022‭ ‬by Linn Strang

www.linnstrang.com‬

Cover design copyright‭ ‬©‭ ‬2022‭ ‬by Linn Strang

All rights reserved‭. ‬

No part of this book may be reproduced‭, ‬scanned‭, ‬or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission‭, ‬except in‭ ‬the case of brief quotations for review purposes‭.‬

ISBN‭: ‬978-965-7821-00-8‭ (‬paperback‭)‬

ISBN‭: ‬978-965-7821-01-5‭ (‬ebook‭)‬

10‭ ‬9‭ ‬8‭ ‬7‭ ‬6‭ ‬5‭ ‬4‭ ‬3‭ ‬2‭ ‬1

To Nefi and Sisu,

who wake me up at the crack of dawn.

Contents

1. The Park

2. Frozen Snowcats

3. Sharp Little Teeth

4. The Leg in the Field

5. Unhinged

6. Marathon Day

7. In the Wind

8. Lion's Den

9. Biohazard

10. Kitten Diplomacy

11. Desert Storm

About the Author

1

The Park

EDEN KLEIN WALKED SLOWLY back and forth on the wet grass as the water soaked through her thin canvas sneakers, cooling down her too-warm feet. The park’s small lawn—resembling a grassy postage stamp in size—was separated from an equally small playground by a tall, wide hedge. The hedge was some unknown species—maybe a stunted type of cypress—the trees planted closely together in a row. 

But beyond its pretty green branches, the hedge’s robust presence created the illusion that the park was its own little world. Eden especially liked that she had the place to herself in the hour before dawn. Jerusalem was different in the early morning hours.

Barely visible from Eden’s position, beyond the hedge, the garish green, red, blue, and yellow contraptions that were a must in all good playgrounds sat dormant, useless without someone to gleefully slide down the colorful chutes. 

Despite the early hour, her faded black t-shirt already stuck to her back in the sweltering heat, and beads of sweat dripped down her temples. The city was experiencing a heat wave and it was persistent, like an itchy rash.

Having just celebrated her thirty-second birthday, it felt as if those years had all decided to crash down on her at once and her bag weighed down heavily on her shoulder, the bulky shopping bag full of large water bottles and kibble. Her scruffy old jeans weren’t at all suited to the time of year, but they protected her legs from surprise swipes made by razor-sharp claws. 

The sprinklers made a high-pitched whining sound just before the water turned from a spray into a trickle, and then…nothing. In the dry season they were turned on at regular intervals in order to keep the lawns alive through the arid Jerusalem summer that spelled death for anything lacking deep roots. 

She stood still, listening intently to the early morning sounds. A crow cawed loudly, followed by the brighter tweets of smaller birds and the occasional sound of a bus in the distance, ferrying people from their sweltering apartments to the polar freeze of their air-conditioned offices around the city. Most of them were going downtown. 

She’d been coming to the park earlier and earlier in the hopes that she wouldn’t see anybody else, but now the sun was already creeping above the horizon.

An old apartment building lumbered nearby, built some twenty years earlier. It was a building that didn’t know if it wanted to be modern or traditional, the stone facade neither classically belonging in the city, nor completely foreign. It kept its many glassy eyes trained on the park, ever watchful, day in and day out. Only on those nights when the moon came out of hiding, and the streets grew quiet, did the house slumber too. 

The couple of enormous leafy trees with branches like thick elephant trunks, that stood deeply rooted between her and the house, kept her out of sight of the people living there. 

When she was certain that nobody would suddenly creep up on her, she walked all the way to the edge of the grass, and the earthy scent of wet soil hit her hard. 

She loved that smell. It transported her right back to when she was a kid and autumn would roll around. Her parents would take her along to forage for mushrooms and they’d all compete with each other, gathering points for every edible mushroom they could find and identify. 

She emptied the water from the bottles into the bowl underneath the thick hedge and into the other bowls hidden behind bushes all around the park, glancing furtively around. She threw a quick glance also up at the balconies that were partially visible through the leafy tree canopy. Empty at the moment, they wouldn’t remain so for long. 

Nothing and nobody marred the stillness of the morning as she made her way quietly from one part of the park to the next, smacking her tongue against the roof of her mouth in a clucking sound—but the park remained empty. 

Returning to the same grassy spot from which she’d begun her furtive circling, she sat down on a bench, drenched in deep shadows, as she tried to slow her racing heartbeat. 

Despite the beautiful morning, the world closed in on her and she desperately wished she didn’t have to experience this crippling fear every time she left the apartment. The constant fear diminished some of the natural beauty around her—what details she could make out in the relatively low light. 

As she sat on the bench, waiting for the panic to pass, an elderly man exited the apartment building and walked slowly down past the playground and toward the bus stop. Her breathing only eased when he turned around a corner and passed out of sight.

She returned to the grass and quietly resumed her earlier meandering, back and forth, once more hidden by the trees. To anyone observing, it would look like she was lost in thought—or so she hoped. 

She rustled her bag with the empty water bottles, and finally, a skinny young calico tabby, her ribs and spine protruding from her thin frame, rushed out from under a lime-green bush completely covered in small white flowers that bore no scent at all. 

There you are. A plaintive note crept into the cat’s voice. 

I’ve been here a while already, Eden said. Look what I brought you. Yummy.

Eden emptied a couple of tins of cat food next to the calico, like she’d done every morning since she’d first seen the thin, skeletal creature. 

The calico jumped up on the low stone wall at the back of the park. She looked at Eden with clear citrus-yellow eyes, wary, watchful, hunger eventually overriding all hesitation ingrained in her by nature. 

Eden kept watch as she ate.

One by one, other small shadows joined them, darting out from behind bushes and climbing out of walled gardens. 

They honed in on the small individual piles of food that Eden had left on top of the wall. Accurate like small missiles, they locked in on their targets, pouncing on their meals with relish. 

The sun was bright by the time Eden left the skeletal calico and the others in the park and turned back home. A small floofy kitten, equally spotted with black and white, circled around her ankles, refusing to let her walk any farther. 

She increased her speed, but the little monster bit down on her shoelaces with a determination that was admirable in someone so little, chomping down with sharp ivory canines and forcing her to slow down again.

The surprisingly heavy kitten plopped down to sit on her left sneaker and Eden hobbled along like that for a while, with the little hitchhiker riding on top of her foot. Together, they surveyed the parking lot to their left and the construction site to their right, where a half-finished building stood like a hollowed-out cadaver. Stuck in financing purgatory for the past five years, the cats had taken it over. 

One day I’ll be in charge! the kitten announced and tugged on her pant leg with a sharp miniature claw, just short of drawing blood. He seemed to enjoy the ride-along, but realizing that each step brought him farther away from his breakfast and from the rest of his siblings he eventually scampered off, back to the safety of the park. Eden watched him for a moment, a small smile playing on her lips, before she resumed the walk back to her empty apartment. 

She crossed the street in front of her newly built apartment building, stopping for a moment to stare up at her kitchen window, visible beyond the glass balcony. The apartment complex was nothing at all like the gloomy building next to the park. The building’s lobby was a mix of large, elephant-grey floor tiles and modern black metal trims and large windows that let in generous amounts of light—but which also made the rooms harder to secure. 

The place was surrounded by lush greenery—a result of generous landscaping budgets—but even though it was the epitome of modernity—gorgeous really—all Eden wanted was to turn it all into a heavily fortified bunker that nobody would be able to breach. 

Instead of walking to the elevator, she took the stairs up to her third-floor apartment.

Once inside, she locked the door behind her and flipped the security latch into place.

In the spacious living room sat a beautiful piano, a baby grand that gleamed with a dark, inky sheen—mutely accusing her of neglect. 

Her brow was beaded with sweat as she refilled the water bottles at the kitchen sink, all the way to the brim, and watched as the water ran over the sides of the bottle mouths, one after the other, until all four bottles were full. 

At precisely a quarter past six, she sat down on a slim-legged, ornately welded balcony chair—the seat inlaid with mosaic in dusky rose and azure blue that wouldn’t look out of place in Marrakech—and looked out into