Entity

By ANNA TELEKI

"I warn you: In the Kingdom of Darkness, you'd never imagine the number of beasts."

 

Sure you have nightmares... Ever felt that someone / something is watching you? Have you ever heard chilly wishpers? Do you know what is beyond the darkness?  Something... Magical... And in the same time... Really really...

Find out! ;) 

• Language: English
• Publisher: D&S S&M
• Release date: Mar 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201703318

Book preview

To Beatrice.

Prologue

It all started, when the Sun began to die. It was only the beginning, that drastically changed our World. I would call constantly changing because the number of Solar eruptions was forecast-ed.

The first night the electricity went out in our Manhattan home, the nightmares became real. I was barely 4 years old, I will never forget the flashing green eyes glaring at me from the darkness. The growing moonlight scarcely shone in, but I saw the shadowy, waving shape, like a dancing curtain in a tempestuous breeze. I knew it didn't intend to hurt me, but the sound the darkness emitted was horrifying. I trembled in fear, closed my eyes, feeling myself peeing my pants, I cried out in fright for my mother. The door to my room opened, and the beast vanished in the flashlight's white beam.

I warn you: In the Kingdom of Darkness, you'd never imagine the number of beasts.

I.

The Beauty

THE SHADOWY SIDE OF the Earth was completely darkened. Hot, yellowish red flame engulfed the darkness. At the stifling warmth, the little child raised her little eyes and started to scream.

MUMMY! Her voice rang sharply, but nobody responded. The bed sheet already caught fire when she heard the attic walls creaking. The wood was on fire like burning oil. The flames grew faster, and the tears of the six-year-old girl rained from her eyes. Mummy, HELP!!!

The neighbors were gathering around outside. In distance, the wailing of fire trucks could be heard, but the house's flaming light, which illuminated the toys in the yard, raged so fiercely that the mere sight of it instilled a sense of fear in everyone. The girders crackled, whistling, everything shattered and the child saw nothing but the bright flames rising all around her, she fainted.

Annabelle Montana sweated out of her nightmare and sat up on the bed. It was already dawn. Light filtered misty through her bedroom's wide window. She leaned on trembling arms, and her phone rang. 

Yes? she answered, but a horrible ache shot through her brain. Already throwing herself back, she glanced at her analog watch on her bedside table. 5:10.

Belle, you should really get a move on. Your train will be late, ringed Aunt Margrethe's elderly voice on the line. She sighed and pushed the blanket off. In the gloom, her burn scars were scarcely visible on her long limbs and slender arms.

It's only dawn... she sleepily smiled folding the blanket between her legs, turning on her side, and resting a long her left hand on the edge of the bed. She really knew how it was to grow up under prying eyes. Her aunt stood by her side in everything. Yet all her childhood had to deal not just with schoolmates, but also with her own struggles. Occasionally she could understand the disgust people felt when they glanced at her and dragged their lips. Other times, she wanted to howl in pain for the way she looked. As a small girl, Margrethe had taken her to the plastic surgeons. The school couldn't be delayed much further. So every year, Belle's surgical procedures were delayed until summer vacation. While the others holidayed on the beaches and mountains, she looked out of her room window, shrouded in a white sheet. It had been nearly 20 years since that night their Washington, D.C., the house had burned to the ground.

Slowly, out of bed, in the gloom, she made her way to the restroom. There was no tub or showers in the bathroom. There was only a four-inch shower head peering down at her white body. Inside the door, the mirror had no steam, except at the edges when she opened the shower taps. The brisk rain-like sound muffled against the white tiled walls, she just lowered her head. Her hair, rich and luscious, had turned honey-black against her back. She loathed the tickling, itching sensation. After a moment, she was reaching for her buckles and rolling up her hair. Thus, from her nude left shoulder, a palm-sized pink lacy pattern running up her neck to her ears became visible. Stopping at the mirror to reach for her dressing gown, she glared at herself angrily again. A seven-inch circular burning began below her collarbone. It seemed to have sprouted from her heart, spread in delicate tendrils across her breasts - a fine stream. Those were the only scars left to get rid of. But it meant a painful series of surgeries, sleepless nights, and nightmares.

Each time she had surgery, since childhood, the nightmares kept coming back. Whether it was the agony, perhaps the awareness of the wounds' origins, she couldn't decide for sure. Those hideous injuries, though, were keeping her from experiencing life itself.

As the train left New York, her heart sank. It wasn't because she was homesick. She simply didn't dare to consider Margrethe's response to the fact, that she was about to get under the knife again. 70% of her body was burned in that blaze, from which she mysteriously emerged. For six months, she was put in an artificial coma so that she would feel no more pain. When she woke up, she only knew that she had been left alone.

She looked out the window and puffed. Her white short-sleeved shirt warmed her, and so did her unfolded Honey blonde hair. She used to cover up her body a lot more. As a teenager, she wouldn't have worn a three-quarter-length pair of pants and short sleeves. Ashamed of who or what she used to be. A burned corpse.

The world changed. She turned to the newspaper of the man sitting opposite her. Not wanting to trust her eyes, Belle bent closer. Solar Flares are coming again, She asked aloud, the man glanced up at her, instantly spotting the ugly scar on her neck.

Belle's memory was vague, still certain: that was when it all started The Solar Flares stopped after a time. The scientists speculated whether the process could be reversed. They counted, and constantly declared, whenever there was electricity, how it would affect the Earth.

The night their house burnt to the ground, it was a magnitude seven solar eruption. Whereas, America was in shadow, in Europe things stopped. Power utilities shut down, along with all modern scientific, computing, and technological devices. All of it. Hydroelectric stations and autonomous power networks were shut down, and scientists have claimed that Planet Earth has been magnetically disrupted. A couple of months later when it was quiet, they returned to the same old story: the radio transmitter. Back in Roosevelt's time, Margrethe dusted off her great grandfather's antique radio. It was just news and conjecture at first. Later programmers reappeared, the world settled back into the silence, and they were able, to get the power back on when the disturbance diminished. Not nearly enough to get things back to normal, but at least the printing press, radio, and mobile communications were back up and working.

Belle was thinking of the New York City subways. It had been collecting dust for years and was now home to gangsters. The unemployment rate was skyrocketing. The modern man found it hard to adjust to anything. As she stared out the train window, the scenery in the far distance stood still, the wild meadows scurried beside her. For a long time now, she did not even know how or why she existed. Why only her? She wished for her own death. The marks on her hands showed it too. Now, she was nearly concealing them. Whether others judged her or not, she didn't care. She was not disturbed anymore by the contemptuous gazes. She was different, had to accept it. She would have been just, an American girl, the other billion. But... She was sealed.

THE TRAIN'S CONSTANT swaying movement wrapped black silk around her, childlike arm, a black silken thread, and her small fingers tightened on the shimmering fabric. She wanted to grip the darkness of night, the deep darkness itself, squeezed it so tight that her fingertips whitened. She could sense the material tightening along her arms, growing more and more warm and heated. Lifted her little body forcefully, and relaxed her hold again. A red trail blazed across the frilly patterned arms of the silk, it twisted around its own spindle, drawing down her legs with just one hand, clinging and stretching out fully, tightening her spine along the way, she swayed with the silk towards the middle of her room. She smiled. Opening dark brown eyes groaned.

Would I feel the cutting silk now? The black fabric dangling from the joists in the attic of her Aunt Margrethe's great Washington house. She was nine years old, a child, and wanted to be an acrobat, like the ones she saw at a Circus. A couple of artists performing in the Duran-Torch Circus. Back then, amidst the mournful silence, her childish ears barely picked up the faint weeping of black streamers taut to the point of tearing, stretching, and coiling, suspended from the sky, the couple on them danced for their pleasure. Only their whiteness was sure in the darkness, silk around them.

Before Belle's suddenly the white glow of the stretching fabric blinked, after flickered, windswept bottoms descended in front of her, which reminded her of the beast. That luminous green-eyed creature. She felt her whole body burning. Like the wounds had not disappeared, been absorbed into her bones through the years. There were three types of burn injuries. Some completely numb, others partly, there are some scars so sensitive that a sigh felt, an ache on her skin. This is why the doctor kept postponing these operations on her. It was because her nerve endings were so sensitive to her heart and her neck. She glanced at the man sitting across from her. Still, she was unable to be a part of a relationship. However much she yearned for a partner, someone who would be interested in her, for this reason, not even she would be attracted to her own. Still, she was a one-night-stander.

THEY APPROACHED DC, she saw the advertising signs. After all those years, the Circus was in town again. Maybe her aunt urged her to come because she'd wanted to visit. She fished her cell phone from her backpack to check for a signal. Used to the fact that cell phone services were also fickle. Some towers would go weeks with no signal. The moment she switched on her smartphone, it turned white and lit up, dimming towards the center of the screen. She caught sight of the faded summer fields of wheat across the window. The Flash, others had called it, appeared again. It was like a faint, but more dangerous wave of bright light spreading over the land. When it passed, everything went into darkness.

Belle's fists clenched. She was attracting harm back to Washington City. Again, if it had been nighttime, a terrible, probably lengthy black-out will occur. Moreover, Belle was certain, that Margrethe had prepared the candles.

There was a sharp sound from the train rails, the long-unused locomotive decelerated to stop. Belle picked up her backpack and leaped from the doorway. She was in good shape because she spent all her time constantly cycling and running from orphanage to orphanage. She, like most people who grew up after the first outbreak, had no formal education. She ran so much because she had to give. She encouraged children who, like her, had to tackle the bleak reality alone. She glanced at her untied shoelaces, bent down to tie them, placing her backpack next to her, she was hit from behind, and almost fell on her nose if not for her good reflexes.

Sorry! a trifle angrily, the boy grinned at her and walked on.

Nice bottom.

Belle muttered when she dusted off her palms, she felt the small tag in the back pocket of her jeans. The ornately made card, albeit black and white, was an official invitation to the evening's performance.

"The

Reviews for Entity

[Tekla Mae · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A tale for emo's. ☺️ Yeah. A creepy love traingles... Loved it.