Red and Blue make Purple

This Is Not A Novel

pumpkinspicekevinday

AN: Welcome to me attempting to write original fiction, and pretending to be an actual author. This is my Not Novel, because I have no earthly clue if I will ever actually finish it or what will become of it, but we can at least have a journey together for a while, so without further ado here is the:

PROLOGUE

Alec Summers had known pain since he was a child. The cancer that had eaten away at his body and the chemo that drained the rest had left him brittle and hollow. Every day he was awake felt like agony. But this was a new kind of pain, sharper than the cancer had been. That was a dull ache in his bones, like a pulsing bruise, but this was like the cut of a blade over sensitive flesh. This was his body on fire, every cell alight with it, screaming ‘stop, stop, stop’.

When the pain tapered off into nothingness he was in a casket, six feet down with fresh dirt piled on top. Alec took a moment to look around. He wasn’t sure what compelled him to look around. It was pitch black in his coffin, of course, as the inside of closed coffins tend to be. He was amazed to discover, however, that he could see remarkably well. He could count the individual stitches of the silk that lined the inside of his casket, and he could tell that the suit his mother had buried him in was navy and not black. Alec hated navy.

He became aware, after several seconds, that he was not dead. He was, in a manner of speaking, alive.

“Son of a bitch,” Alec cursed, clamping his eyes shut.

A series of thoughts occurred to him suddenly: If he was still alive why had his mother buried him? Why couldn’t he feel his heartbeat? How was he breathing? Was he breathing? He wasn’t. Why wasn’t he breathing? Why had his mother buried him in navy? And what was that sound?

It was a soft, scratching sound like a dog wanting to be let back inside from the rain. He could hear voices as well, which was odd since it didn’t seem like he should be hearing much of anything anymore. Alec strained to listen to them, his eyes closed shut to help him concentrate.

There was a female voice, light as a dove’s wing, fading in and out as if she were pacing, “-poor thing, doesn’t even know he’s-…-can you go any fast-…-and anyway I bet he’s starving-“

And then a male’s voice, much closer and irritated, as if he couldn’t believe he was out digging up a grave presumably in the middle of the night, “Erika, shut up.”

Now that Erika had mentioned it, Alec was starving, which also didn’t seem to make sense considering he had no heart beat and wasn’t breathing. His stomach didn’t seem to care though and gave a mighty rumble anyway.

There was a thud on the top of Alec’s coffin and he jolted in surprise despite his limited range of motion.

“Is he in there Richard?” Erika’s voice sounded closer now, not nearly as muffled.

“Where else would he be?” Richard replied.

There was another thud that made Alec jolt. And then a crack. And then the coffin lid lifted and Alec was face-to-face with his rescuer. “Hey kid,” Richard said, “Welcome to the legion of the undead.”

Undead.

Alec blinked, “Wait, what?”