False Start (Love and Skate) (18 page)

Acknowledgements:

To God, for giving me a brain to make up imaginary people, the fingers to type it out, and the guts to expose it to the world.

As always, to my husband and kids,
none of this would be possible without your support and love.

To the Indie Hellcats: The rock stars of the author world, for giving a girl a place to belong.

To the rink rats: so much more than a street team, THE most kick ass group of readers on the planet.

To Mandy, Amy and Candace, for putting up with my antics on a daily basis.

The Playlist for False Start and all my other works can be found on Spotify.

Lila’s Other works:

Emerge, Perchance, Hoax, AnguiSH, Seeking Havok, the Love and Skate series and her new dystopian (release date January 3) Forced Autonomy.

Stalker Links:

www.lilafelix.com

www.authorlilafelix.blogspot.com

E-mail:
[email protected]

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/lila.felix.96

Forced Autonomy (A Novella Series, Release Date: January 3)

Prologue

It started as the other falls of the great societies did—a rumble of rhetoric in the ranks, the progression of propaganda in the populace, the ascension of anger among aspiring assassins.

Petitions were signed by citizens who truly thought a signature could change the world. Picket signs were waved in public displays of outcry. Encyclopedia thick bills were slammed on the desks of politically blinded Senators and Congressman never to see the light of day or the tick of a vote. Families and the elderly, nearly ninety percent of them, were underfed or starving—the government was no longer able to provide supplemental help nor control the prices of food. Cars were abandoned in the streets, making lines waiting by the curbs, lonely, never would their masters return. Men in suits threw themselves from buildings every day. Women resorted to ghastly measures just to buy a piddling of a meal for their children. The mentally unstable ran amuck, no longer confined to their medical facilities.

The President elected in the year 2024 walked off of the stage after a less than exuberant win and straight down, down, down into the cesspool which had become the state of our nation. The United States of America, under the various administrations, had managed to dig itself a hole to the tune of two hundred and seventy three trillion dollars, give or take a trillion. Prisoners were let go, regardless of their guilt, the non-violent first, and eventually the not
so
violent. Public and private mental facilities could no longer operate and those patients without families were simply dropped off at a homeless shelter—regardless of their threat to those around them and themselves.

Immigrants once filtering into the harbors and points of entry like sugar through a sieve were now sojourning back to their homelands, finding that the land of opportunity was more like the land of poverty and despondency. Inflation rates of electricity and fuel led to deaths by the hundreds in the winter from freezing and just as many at the peak of summer from heat stroke. Hospitals were packed with the sick and the just plain desperate, often resorting to self-inflicted injuries just to get a meal and a place to shower. Social welfare and charity organizations flopped belly up, completely overwhelmed and unable to serve the masses. Churches were packed to the brim with followers who had once fallen away and those new believers looking for even a fraction of a miracle. Revivals were
held everywhere, hoping the rising voices of a God fearing nation, or what
once
was a God fearing nation, would infiltrate heavenly ears and mercy would be reigned down upon them again.

But grace never found its way to our crumbling country, nor to its people. And when that young president, hired more for his tenacity and overall gumption than actual know how, threw his hands in the air with a white flag attached—that’s when the United Nations promised us better.

They promised our women and children would not suffer. They promised our way of life would return to us, as much as possible. They promised the United States would be restored to its former glory.

They were filthy, filthy liars.

Hope remained as long as the President of the United States sat at the White House, still on his dilapidated throne, still rubbing his temples and struggling to find an answer.

But none would ever come. Families of the president were ‘secured’ in underground vaults for protection, and Senators and Congressman were relieved of their duties, left to file in with the rest of the abhorrent population. ‘Thrown to the wolves’, that’s what one Senator called it on a radio interview.

Americans, proud and true as we were, held out hope that something would change, that the United Nations would revive us again.

Our first clue should’ve been the whispers about the procedures being done on the prisoners and the elderly. But like an infomercial for the latest and greatest gadget, we refused to believe it was true. They wouldn’t do something so heinous. They wouldn’t. Inch by inch they were turning our citizens into their mindless slaves, claiming it was for our own good. And as complacent as we’d become, we believed them.

Then one day, on a balmy Sunday in July—July 4
th
to be exact, the President of the United States and the First Lady, plus the Vice President and his wife were lined up like common criminals and assassinated by the General of the Army of Nations in front of his family—and on live, nationally broadcasted TV. The mass, mandated forced lobotomies started thereafter. Those who protested or refused quickly met their end.

That’s when we knew for sure—we were hopeless.