Downside Rain: Downside book one
Read Downside Rain: Downside book one Online
Authors: Linda Welch
Nordic Valley Books
Photo:
Girl
in Rain, Frank Janssen/Dreamstime.com
This book is a work of
fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products 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.
Copyright ©2013 by Linda Welch. All rights reserved.
Except as permitted under
the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced,
distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a data
base or retrieval system without prior written permission of the owner of this
book.
Please do not participate in
or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s
rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
Table of Contents
Definition:
Merriam - Webster
1
:
the
likeness of a living person often seen as an apparition.
2
:
an insubstantial form or semblance
,
shadow.
3
:
a barely visible manifestation.
Definition:
Downside
1:
all of the above.
I
walk between raindrops which plummet from a bloody red sky. Castle taught me
the trick, but the rain has to fall just so. He also said to
‘walk between
raindrops’
means marginally avoiding disaster, or
‘dodging bullets
.
’
The definition is appropriate to our lifestyle, as barely escaping situations
which threaten life and limb is often an occupational hazard. But today I’m merely
dodging raindrops.
Those
who have been Upside say the red sky is not real, as if up there is the
standard by which everything is judged. I have been Upside, I came from there,
but don’t make comparisons. This is Downside, Earth’s underbelly, the darkness
to its light.
Downside
has been here forever, a refuge for those horrors Upside is reluctant to
believe in. But Upside’s myths and nightmares never truly disappeared, they
came here.
Although
Downside doesn’t let just anybody in, it may decide you belong, and once here
you can’t leave without a compelling reason. Remember that when you find the
deepest, darkest shadow you have ever seen and decide to explore.
Neon
pulses to a wild guitar riff. Voices yell and laugh and chatter. Inhaling
aromas, I pass restaurants, a bakery, vendors who sell from small wheeled
carts: deep-fried battered fish, garlic sausage, coffee and hot chocolate, soy
noodles.
Eyes
slant in my direction, a freak in a city of freaks. A few people peer longer as
they try to decide whether they see a person in the shadows or a darker shadow.
Rain
makes the shop windows glisten, prisms shimmer as water and oil puddle on the
street. Water gushes from downspouts on street corners and pushes filth along
street-side gutters. Pennants hung for yesterday’s festival sag, drowned cloth
in muted colors.
I
keep to the pedestrian-only streets, a little narrower than those for traffic. Buildings
are welded together four or five floors high in the old city center, street
after street of businesses which buy, sell and trade.
A
few raindrops get me as I avoid people who carry umbrellas. Everyone else
scurries along or walks with hunched shoulders and screwed up faces.
Approaching
Popkin’s, I increase mass and raindrops gleefully find their target. Not heavy
enough to make an impression, my low-heeled black leather boots leave no mark
on the doormat, though water beads off them to the tile floor when I step
inside.
People
and noise fill the café. Steam hisses from the espresso machine, aromas of
coffee and cinnamon strudel mingle. Voices rise and fall, silverware chinks on
china. Gene Popkin stands over a table telling a guy and gal they must order or
leave, the café is not a place to shelter from the rain. Castle sits in the
back at his usual table in a dimly lit nook, where maintaining enough flesh to
fool the casual observer is easier than near the big glass windows at the
front.
Not
that we are self-conscious of our nature, but neither are we a sideshow to be
gawped at. Full flesh requires more energy. We save the energy for when we really
need the mass and run faster half-fleshed.
Sticky
crumbs litter a plate pushed to one side. Delicately holding the handle in two
big fingers, Castle sips from a tiny coffee cup. He is my business partner and
occasional bed partner. We are not in love, sometimes we don’t like each other,
but when one of us gets the urge, the other happily obliges. Partners with benefits.
Two
female vampires sit in the back, one in white lace, the other in red satin.
Huge eyes seem to swim in their own liquid below eyebrows like narrow arches.
Instead of the usual sexy pout, the set of their mouths is odd, distorted. They
are hungry for blood, fighting to keep their fangs sheathed, but the teeth give
them problems. The silly things haven’t fed in a while and should not be abroad.
Four
human preteens watch me. Too many of the little bastards run around aimlessly,
taking up seats in restaurants, hanging out on corners, sauntering down streets
as if they have right-of-way. Humans have been Downside since the first of them
stumbled into the shadows. They breed like the rats which infest underground
sewage canals and subways.
The
observation is not derogatory. Humans and rats spit out offspring at an
unprecedented rate, their spawn overruns the city, and while a rat infestation
can be dealt with, human procreation can’t be controlled. Their greater numbers
drove the other species Downside and they believe in their own superiority, so
what will happen should they decide to take control one day in the far-flung
future?
As
for human children like the brats eyeballing me, not only do I lack an ounce of
affinity for them, I plain dislike them. Their sense of entitlement rubs me the
wrong way. Castle says human kids Upside are the same.
Yet,
sometimes, an infinitesimal envy, a yearning, stirs in my breast when I see
young human men and women walking to Gettaholt University or one of the
technical colleges. Are we of an age? Did I attend a college or university
before Castle found me?
I
wend between round tables with green- and white-checkered plastic tablecloths.
Castle twirls his tiny cup with thumb and finger as I join him. His deep voice
rumbles. “Hey, peaches.”
“Hey
yourself. Thanks for getting my coffee.”
“You’re
late. It would’ve been cold by now.”
Beings,
entities, species, creatures - the myriad types of people who live Downside
call us wraiths. Without exception we are black-haired, dark-eyed and look like
humans in their early to mid-twenties. With his height and bulk, Castle is
mistaken for a young thug and the way he drops his chin and stares from beneath
his brows lends his gaze a threatening quality which is entirely unwarranted. His
black hair is messier than usual, sticking out in spikes, caught between nape
and the collar of his brown canvas trench coat. He regards the coffee cup with
hooded dark-green eyes, but his wide mouth quirks a tad when his gaze roves to my
nipples where rain molds the cotton tee to my chest.
I
jog his elbow with my hip. Castle exclaims an expletive as coffee splashes his fingers.
“Oops!”
I remark insincerely. “It’s those little cups, you have to keep your eye on
them.”
“Yeah,
yeah.” He waves me off as I head for the counter.
I
order a latte. The white-haired human guy looks relieved, I bet because I don’t
ask for a fancy concoction. He’s working his butt off this morning with people
coming in to avoid the rain and obliged to buy a drink for the privilege. I
fancy a macchiato blend, but they cost as much as breakfast.
My
reflection stares at me from the mirror behind the counter. Under the café’s
bright, white florescent lamps, chin length blue-black hair sticks to my damp cheeks
and flattens on my skull and a stray strand meshes with lashes so thick they
look as though several coats of heavy black mascara have been applied. My
dark-blue-nearly-black eyes look huge, startled. The black T-shirt is plastered
to me, the black jeans clammy.
A
shade from monochrome, I’m a natural for the Goth look.
Passing
a bill to the barista, careful not to brush his hand, I busily add a good
measure of raw brown sugar to the cup and grab a plastic stirrer when he tries
to give me change. He drops coins on the counter. I scoop them up, go back to
Castle’s table and slide into the seat across from him.
~*~
Castle
is proud of Rain. She’s intelligent, fast and fights like an Amazon. In a way, he
helped her become what she is today, because he taught her everything, from how
to not only survive but thrive Downside, to how to kill monsters. She
assimilated more quickly than he did. The gods know he gave his mentor Beach
heartburn when he came down. She fits in as well as a wraith can. It took a
while, but not as long as some he’s heard of. Now, you’d think she’s been Downside
forever.
She
never talks about what she experienced Upside before he found her. He saw her
in the doorway of a boarded up store, struggling to hold in the fear, clamping
down on rising hysteria. He tried to get it out of her, thinking it might be
therapeutic, but except to say it was a few hours she clammed up every time. She’s
one of the lucky ones; he’s heard of new wraiths who were alone for weeks. She
is the only one he’s found. He’s spent more time looking for the lost than he
should when Upside in the past forty years and wishes he could launch a
dedicated search, but you can’t go Upside without a good reason and finding
wraiths is not one of them.
But
she must think about it. Everyone does. You never forget waking lost and alone
with no knowledge of who you are. He will never forget his time and the
hopeless panic which engulfed him.
His
gaze roves to her breasts under the wet shirt and his pants get tight in the
crotch. They haven’t taken a tumble in months. But now is not the time to get
amorous, they have a job.
He
never imagined he’d take on a partner after years of working alone. But Rain is
proficient at what she does and he can rely on her. She is his friend, and
wraiths don’t have many of those. Sometimes, when he lets himself, he worries
about losing her. It can happen. Even wraiths die, and some of their jobs are
dangerous.
Like
this one. Rain will bust her buttons. In her opinion, of all the loathsome
critters Downside, ghouls are the worst.
~*~
The
plastic stick goes around and around but the bottom of the cup remains gritty
with sugar. “So?”
Castle
gropes for a green cardboard folder on the vacant chair. He opens it on the
table and swivels it to face me. I drag it across to my side. The commission comes
from Bermstead Cemetery’s custodian. I flick one corner of the cream-colored
paper as I read, then close the folder.
My
voice sounds like an accusation. “They want us to clear out a ghoul nest.”
“Is
that what it says?”
“Ghouls.”
“Your
point is?”
“Fucking
ghouls!”
“
Fucking
ghouls,” he repeats with stress on the first word. “Now that’s something I
never want to see. Ghouls going at it like bunnies . . . well . . . ick.”
I
give up and settle for trying to strip the skin off his bones with my eyes.
He
drains his cup. “Money’s good.”
“Good,
not great,” I grump.
“It’ll
pay next month’s rent.”
“Just.”
“You’re
not hurting for cash.”
“How
do you know? Anyway, that’s not the point. They should offer more for ghouls.”
Unlike private clients, the city won’t negotiate a fee and Bermstead is a city
cemetery.
“What
are you going to do with all the dough you squirreled away? You live in a
matchbox. You could get a bigger apartment in a better neighborhood.”
“I’m
fine where I am.”
“And
a car.”
“Can’t
drive.”
“You
can learn.”
“Don’t
want to.” I furiously stir my coffee. He’s irritating me now.
I
toss the stirrer on the table, push the folder away and play with my change, trying
to stack the coins in a pyramid, but I need another coin for it to work. “Were
we first choice?”
Castle’s
lip curls and his nose wrinkles as he picks up the plastic stick and puts it on
the lip of my saucer. “Third. Bindle and Ketch are busy.”
I
heft a sigh. Maybe this job will up our rep, though dealing with ghouls doesn’t
make my heart flutter in a good way. “It sucks, you know? We’re as good if not
better.”
Castle
licks a finger and blots up crumbs. “It’s a matter of perception, sweet cheeks.
Bindle has a troll and an ogre. Ketch and his brothers
are
trolls. Clients
think they can plow through almost anything.”
“They
can.” I sip coffee, replace the cup in the saucer and tap the folder with an
index finger. “When?”
“Tonight.”
He rises to his feet and towers over me. “My place at eleven?”
“Fine.”
I pass him the folder. “You want this?”
He
swipes it from my hand and walks out of Popkin’s. I try to savor my coffee but
having to deal with ghouls sours my enjoyment. The café is clearing out now the
rain has stopped. With nothing else to do, I’ll head home.
Tales
of us say we find some isolated place at night where we become incorporeal,
floating in air as we sleep. Tales tell of many things which are not true. My
studio apartment on Glamorgan comes with bed, chair, storage, stove,
refrigerator and sink. I’m flesh most of the time. The flesh needs sustenance, rest
and shelter.
Castle
refuses to understand I’m content where I am. He says I lack ambition. I say
possessions don’t define quality of life. If I moan about a fee it’s because
the job is worth more,
we
are worth more.
“She’s
just a girl,” a young male voice whispers.
I
twist on the chair, knees sliding out from beneath the table, and get to my
feet. My shirt dried in the warm air so the café’s clientele have lost
interested in my chest.