Sneak Peek

Silver Dark Blue Light
by Rickey Mallory

Excerpt from 
Chapter One  

      It was her fault. She knew that. She just didn’t know what to do about it. It seemed the harder she tried, the worse the results.

      “I’m sick of this, Eva. Sick of watching you pretend to enjoy my touch. Sick of how you just hold your breath and endure. Hell, I’m sick of feeling like a selfish jerk. If you could just tell me what you want—”

      “I can’t. I don’t know. I get so far, and then the images fill up my brain, and I panic. What I went through . . .” She paused, squeezing her eyes shut. “No one can imagine. Think of rape, and not just your body but your mind, too.” She shuddered.

      The long silver corridors that led to that room. The wires, the tubes, the awful sticky fingers. . . .

      “Yeah, right. Same old story.” Brad whirled and slammed into the bathroom.

      Eva heard the sound of the shower. Indescribably sad, unbearably empty, she reached for her robe and pulled it over her naked body.

      “Here.”

      A piece of paper fluttered in front of her unfocused eyes.

      “Eva!”

      She jumped, realizing Brad was standing beside the bed, speaking to her. The little rectangle of paper rested on her thigh. She picked it up. “Where did you get this?”

      He shrugged. “Somebody gave it to me.”

      She stood and wrapped the robe around her and jerked the sash tight. “You think I’m crazy? You want me to see a shrink?”

      Brad buttoned his crisp white shirt. His light brown hair was short and spiked in the latest fashion. His body was perfectly muscled, his tan the proper shade, his nails clipped and buffed, not polished.

      She met his gaze in the mirror. The double image gave her the impression of two people. The real one, standing with his back to her, and the silvery reflection.

      Silver . . . dark . . . pain. Her fingers clenched around the business card, and inevitability settled over her.

      “It’s not that I think you’re crazy, sweetheart,” he cajoled. “Obviously you have repressed memories from your childhood that cause you to freeze up. It’s not normal to be as afraid of sex as you are.” He turned, knotting his tie. “You might want to check that guy out.”

      Eva pushed her tangled hair back from her face and walked over to stand beside him. “And you expect me to believe someone just walked up and handed this card to you?”

      Brad met her gaze in the mirror. “On my way back from lunch this guy bumped into me, said ‘Sorry,’ and handed me the card. Like an apology or something.”

      A likely story. More likely Brad had combed the Yellow Pages looking for a shrink that specialized in her problem. Her heart ached. Maybe she should be grateful that he cared enough to try. But it hurt.

      “So you think this—this therapist can fix me? It says here he specializes in alien abduction cases.” She waved the card. “You know what that means. He specializes in loonies who think they were abducted. Right?”

      Standing on her bare tiptoes, she stuck her face in front of his. “Right?”

      Brad had the decency to look chagrined. “Sweetheart, if I’m going to take you down to the Keys to visit my folks this Thanksgiving, well . . .”

      Eva pulled the robe tighter around her neck. “Must put on our best face to meet the folks. If Mumsy and Dadsy don’t approve, then Brad will have to find himself a new girlfriend.”

      Brad gave her a tight smile and put his hands on her shoulders. “They’ll love you. I just think maybe with therapy—”

      “Screw you, Bradley Finch Marchant the Third.”

      Brad looked down at her, a hint of cruel amusement in his eyes. “If you could do that, we wouldn’t have a problem.”

      “You know what?” Eva ripped the card in two, then put the two pieces together and ripped them again. “Get out!” She threw the pieces of paper at his face. “Get out! And don’t call me again. “

       Brad adjusted his tie, then went into the bathroom, coming out with his shaving kit. He grabbed his suit jacket off the back of a chair. “Fine.” He scowled at her. “You’re a frigid bitch, Eva. You need help.”

      As the door slammed behind him, Eva’s tears welled and slipped down her cheeks silently. She wasn’t sure why she was crying. He was an ass.

      The trouble was, he was also right. She wasn’t normal. She thought of the only two other relationships she’d attempted since her last abduction. One had lasted a month and the other not even that long. Without sex, it was not easy to maintain a relationship. When she tried to explain, it only made things worse. Nobody believed that she’d been abducted by aliens, not once but numerous times. Many of the specifics were hazy, but if she lived forever, she’d never forget the first time or the last.

      The first time, she’d been ten years old. Her father had taken her for ice cream after dinner because her mother had a headache. When they got home, he’d tucked her into bed and turned out the light.

      When she’d awakened, the whole room had been bathed in a silvery blue glow, and an odd, pretty creature had gestured to her.

      A child of ten probably had two choices at that point—scream or obey. Eva always wondered what would have happened if she’d screamed.

      When she’d woken up, back in her bed, she’d had a fever. Her mother had let her stay home from school the rest of the week.

      For Eva, the time she’d been gone seemed endless, but her parents had acted as if she hadn’t been gone at all. She’d made a couple of tentative attempts to talk about what had happened, but her story had been so bizarre, so outrageous in her fourth grade vocabulary, that they put it down to watching too much television.

      Her last abduction had been four years ago, when she was twenty-three. As she’d done every other time, Eva had obeyed the gray hairless creature that appeared at the foot of her bed. She’d endured the same unspeakable pain and revulsion as every time before. But that last time, something had been missing. An odd, comforting sound that had always been present was gone, leaving nothing but a terrifying, aching emptiness. She’d come to depend on the soothing wordless message. Maybe it was a mind probe designed by Them to observe her reactions to different stimuli. Maybe it was a defense mechanism developed by her own brain. Regardless of its source, it had kept her from going insane from the pain and humiliation.

      The silence left by its absence was devastating. Eva had searched with her mind, calling, seeking, pleading with it to return to her, to help her, but she got no answer. She was alone in that dark place with the aliens. It had been the worst time, but it had also been the last.

Text Copyright Rickey Mallory 2004
Website Copyright ImaJinn Books 2007