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2024-10-29 19:42:56Norma walked through the small library. Now and then, she'd drop a small stack of outdated magazines or a day-old newspaper on one of the round tables, which were strewn haphazardly around the room. It wasn't much of a job, but it gave her something to do, and with a mind like hers that was prone to wandering, something to do was precious.
She had taken the job more out of desperation than any burning urge to help in the reformation of criminals, figuring there would be fewer people vying for the position than that of a more traditional library. She had been correct in this. After fingerprinting and a full background check (which came back squeaky clean) they had hired her.
Her first few nights had been a paranoid nightmare filled with every cinema image of leering, snarling prisoners, depraved murderers, sadists, and all-around bad people. She had jumped every time upon hearing an unfamiliar noise. However, she quickly adapted and found most of the girls h
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Broken Night 3
“I love it!” Claire's voice always annoyed Byron. Not only was it high pitched, but it also carried the airs that only a sheltered childhood full of money could create. She may be a great agent, one of the best, and she may have made him (and herself) a ton of money throughout the years, but that didn't mean he had to like her.“Really?” he asked, not really caring, but figuring that it was the path of least resistance in this scenario.“Oh yes. I bet I can wring half again what you made from your last one out of those misers at Billings and Jordan.” Billings and Jordan was the publisher who had handled his last two books, and in his opinion, they had always been fair to him, and far from miserly. “Not to mention the movie deal.”“Movie deal?”“Oh yes, yes. As soon as I finished reading your sample pages, I picked up the phone and called my people in Hollywood. They told me t
Broken Night 4
Byron's phone rang when he had been dozing at his desk. The sudden intruding noise startled him, almost tipping the half full coffee cup onto his expensive keyboard.“Don't you freaking dare,” he tried to hold the cup which quivered, unspilled on the desk.Staggered by the renegade coffee, Byron stumbled across the room to the still ringing phone. He was an old-fashioned guy who had a phone that hung on the wall with an earpiece and mouthpiece, even though he bowed to peer pressure a few years back and got a cell phone.“Hello,” he huffed, proud of himself for not putting the receiver against his ear upside down.A recording informed him an inmate was attempting to call him, following a less robotic voice giving him a name.Janice Rosse.The original robot voice returned and asked if he would accept the call, to which he replied in a positive tone. In a few seconds, Janice's voice fill
Broken Night 5
“This is highly unusual,” Warden Geoffry Thomas said, stunned. He was a large man, both physically and in terms of personality, also had a long, droopy mustache. So of course, everyone called him Warden Walrus, though never to his face.“I am aware,” Norma conceded, sitting on the other side of the warden's desk. “But I think I am in a unique position to help the girl, in a way no one else can.”“You are aware, Miss Schelle, we have rules against our employees becoming too emotionally invested with our inmates?”“I am, sir. But I am also aware it’s all of our jobs to help our inmates rehabilitate, and if one of us sees an opening, I feel we should do our best to assist the inmate.”The warden paused for a moment, contemplating.“I suppose these rules are in place to avoid sexual or romantic contact, which would give the prisoner untoward power over our employees.&rd
Broken Night 6
“Fuck,” Janice groaned, coming out of her trance. She wasn't supposed to be detected. Now the evil bitch knew she could travel along the thread where her enemy lived. The element of surprise was shot.She took a deep breath. “This changes nothing. Just stick to the plan, girlie.”“You talking to yourself in there, Rosse?” A voice called from outside her cell. It was one of the male guards, a tall, weaselly man who was barely old enough to shave. Janice had never quite gotten his name, but he seemed fairly harmless.“Sorry sir, but how else could I get some intelligent conversation in this place?”The guard laughed, “Just keep it down in there, 'fore I get in trouble for letting you bother the other inmates.”“Yeah, we wouldn't want that,” Janice sneered, and the guard laughed again.This changes nothing, Janice repeated, quietly in her head thi
Broken Night 7
Well, that was weird. Byron came to consciousness at his desk, which was in and of itself not an unusual occurrence, but it wasn't usually preceded by a spiritual visitation from a convicted killer.Did any of that actually happen? He wondered to himself. He might have drifted off long before he thought, and since Janice was on his mind since the phone call, it’s quite possible he dreamt the whole thing.He touched the side of his coffee cup, finding it cold. He remembered getting a fresh cup right before the (visitation?) dream started, so he knew he had been out for quite a while. He was about to get up to refresh it when his computer screen caught his attention.***Hey bYron. Sorry I suck at typing. No tipe to fix mistakes. I suck at speklling too, even though I read a lot. Ha ha. You probably think you just had a weird dream about me or maybe you're going crazy
Broken Night 8
The day was not rainy. No thunderheads filled the sky, and Byron didn't see a single crow on the way to the prison. Nor was it a sunny day, filled with birdsong and children skipping rope.At least the latter would have a degree of irony, Byron thought to himself. But no, it was an average day, slightly overcast, neither hot nor cold, and any children that would be jumping rope were probably inside playing Fortnight on their computers.Whoever's writing this isn't doing an excellent job setting the scene. Byron's thoughts wander again. No symbolic weather, no foreshadowing, not even the radio is being ominous. It's just playing the same twenty classic rock songs it always played. Byron pulled his car into the lot, making sure his visitor's pass was clearly visible behind his windshield. The last thing he needed was to get in trouble before he did anything that would get him in trouble.What
Broken Night Part III - 1
Byron got away scot-free. There had been questions, hundreds of questions asked by dozens of very frustrated officials. Each one of them was pretty sure that things didn't go down like he said, but were unable to prove otherwise. As far as anyone could prove, it was a simple combination of sudden aggression, deep planning, exploitation and laxity of the staff who had become complacent in the absence of any real problems for some time.Maybe they'll actually do their jobs now. Byron thought to himself. Before someone dangerous gets out.Claire was even more ecstatic about the book now, dreams of cash born of tragedy filling her mind. She wanted the publisher to put a sticker on the front of the book when it was completed, screaming something sensational about how the pages contained the most authoritative look at the escaped mastermind beauty. It was all the better, Claire insisted, if Janice Rosse was never caught, keeping the mystery alive and
Broken Night 2
After the laundry truck parked inside the loading bay, Janice had no problem just walking out of the industrial laundromat, making sure to lock the door behind her and careful to avoid the cheap security cameras posted along the outside walls.It was almost too easy.Now all she needed was some new clothes. Janice knew she wouldn't get very far dressed as a jailbird, especially one that was most likely on every news channel by now. Every internet blog posting and reposting her picture in every corner of the country. If she was being honest, she should probably change more than her clothes, but one thing at a time.She had been walking for quite some time when she came to the first suburb, leaving the numerous rows of warehouses and cheap apartments for the greener (and duller) environs preferred by various yuppies and rich folk who wished for the convenience of the big city without the hassle it brings.Janice knew she would likely
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Broken Night Epilogue
Two authors found at a bizarre crime scene, one dead.Dark fantasy author Emily Diamond's body was found in her home today. She was discovered by police after a call from true-crime author Byron Matthews, who was also found at the scene local law enforcement is calling “Bizarre”. Diamond had been strapped to a hospital bed, where she was seemingly being fed intravenously. According to authorities, Diamond's neck had been broken. “It would have taken a lot of force to do something like this,” One officer, who wishes to remain anonymous, informed. “We're looking for someone with incredible strength and probably some training.” Officers also found a large quantity of “Psychotropic drugs” in the house as well as what are being described as “Brainwashing accouterments.” Matthews, who is not currently a
Broken Night 13
The room beyond the door was simple; squarish and small, able to be crossed with only a handful of strides. The walls were painted eggshell white, and the paint had started to peel, just a little, at the corners. The room had probably, Janice assumed, begun its life as storage.The only things in the room were a small bed covered with hospital white sheets, slightly yellowed with age, and a small machine which filled the air with soft, rhythmic beeping. Tubes ran from the machine to the bed where they attached to the figure tucked beneath the sheets.It was Emily Diamond… the real one.***Adara felt the atmosphere change in her small apartment, the energies swell above her ritual space. She sensed (more than saw) a figure floating overhead in the shape of a majestic grey wolf.Thank you. She mouthed the words silently, not wanting the sound of her voice to break the preternatural silence that had eng
Broken Night 12
Byron heard a sniffling noise from behind him, and in his mind the demon girl had her head in the air, attempting to scent track like a bloodhound. He wondered if that was a good sign or a bad one and realized he had no way of telling.Everything has gone topsy-turvy. He thought to himself.“Clever,” The demon sneered. “Very clever. Which one of you summoned the seraph?”“Not me,” Byron grunted. “I don't even know what a seraph is.”“And not the girl… she hasn't had nearly enough time to learn how to do such a thing. It would take years of study… no...” All at once, Byron felt the stool under his feet jolt as though the demon had kicked it roughly.“Wait...” he hopelessly, foolishly grabbed the rope as though holding it would save him from hanging.“Who is helping you?” she exhorted, her voice tinged with anger. Byron
Broken Night 11
One night before all the madness started, back when Janice and her friends were looking for something, anything, to break out of the doldrums of day-to-day life, they had stumbled upon a film festival. It was being held in a shady, dirty, independent theater, one of the final 42nd Street dives that had somehow survived the New York cleanup of the early nineties.Though they had seen a handful of short films that day, one managed to somehow stick in Janice's mind all these years, though she could never find out its name. It was nearly plotless, relying on stunning, garish visuals. In the film, a group of people, dressed like gods and goddesses from mythology, participated in a party/orgy that very much took on the trappings of an occult ritual as it went on. What Janice was seeing as she carefully followed the wolf through seemingly endless hallways, reminded her very much of that nameless film.Figures would flash before her for seconds, giving h
Broken Night 10
This isn't real. Janice thought to herself. She had made her way down a long hallway, dark except for a meager supply of tea-lights which were placed in scattered recesses along the wall. Now she was standing in a room unlike anything she had seen before.Clearly, it was a living room decorated opulently with silks and overstuffed furniture. It was the sort of room where Janice expected to see Victorian men, dressed casually, sitting around smoking pipes, and talking about their latest trips to Africa. It was a nice room and not that unusual.Except that everything was wrong.This isn't real, this can't be real.For one, the walls were waving as if they were no more substantial than curtains. Shadowy things moved just beyond the walls which had taken on the opacity of theater scrims. Every once in a while, one of the things would push against the walls. Its hand (or claw or tentacle) would push out aga
Broken Night 9
At some point, the demon had lit a candle, and for the first time since being brought here, Byron could see the room that had become his prison.It was a simple room, unadorned. In the House's former life, as a normal place where normal people would live, (if it had truly ever been such a thing), the room would have acted as a sort of storage space for jackets, handyman tools, or whatever other sundry things the family had collected.He stood on a small footstool, painted black. The rope around his neck was nothing special, the same sort of thing you could buy at any hardware or department store in the country. It struck him as funny that such a simple thing could be his barrier, and possibly, if he wasn't careful, his vehicle to the afterlife.“She's coming,” the Emily demon jumped in excitement.It didn't sound very concerned to Byron, but then again, he wasn't an expert in reading the emotions of demons. He
Broken Night 8
The flickering light registered first. It seemed to come from all corners of the room beyond the door, all directions until it replaced everything in Janice's world with cold fire. The door slammed behind her with a defiant thud, leaving her alone with whatever was causing the prismatic world. Slowly, images began to come to the forefront.An animated demon perched on a mountain, summoning spectral figures from the ground.A man, standing in a busy street, throws a Molotov cocktail into an oncoming car's window. Janice could now tell the walls had been covered with sheets of thick plastic and an unseen projector was throwing up images on every possible surface. The air was full of noise, a dirty, toothache inspiring static that swelled to a volume which Janice feared would do permanent damage to her inner ear.If I ever get out of here… Janice thought to herself.A 50s era rock band plays
Broken Night 7
Looming like the villain in a million slasher films, the House cast its shadow over Janice. She stood now on its front steps, holding the vial of who-knows-what in her hand. She pulled the stopper from the vial and put it to her lips before quickly pulling it away. Whatever this concoction was, it smelled awful.Though she was no expert on drugs (that was always more Julia's domain), she knew that hallucinogenic drugs were often placed in an alcohol solvent for easy ingestion, so she had expected a grainy, yeasty smell. Whatever the liquid was, it smelled nothing like alcohol or grain. It was more like rotten eggs and the lingering fragrance you got after striking a match.“You can't be serious,” Janice said to nobody in particular. She tried the front door and was not in the least bit surprised it refused to yield. The doorknob had no give at all, not even the wiggle you get when you try to open a locked door. It was as though a mere m
Broken Night 6
Adara dropped Janice off a few blocks from the House.“I could bring you right to the door,” she proposed as Janice stepped out onto the rain-slicked pavement. “It's not far.”“No,” Janice wished for all the world that she could be dropped off at the door, or even better, she could skip the whole thing and just go back home. Her parents would be thrilled to see her even if she was an escaped jailbird. Although she knew they would probably call the police, it would be nice to see them again. Nice to know that for some people the world wasn't insane, hadn't fallen topsy-turvy; to know there were still people that only had mundane problems (like a murderess daughter...).“I don't want you to get any closer to this than you already are,” Janice said, trying to dissuade her.“If you're sure...” Adara raised one eyebrow.“I'm sure. I don't know who you are, but I know
