Read Online Fiction River: Fantasy Adrift by Fiction River - Free Book Online
Authors: Fiction River
Tags: Fiction
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equilibrium. When he came back for his father he had been burning with rage. But his father had been broken a long time ago. His eyes had lost all life, even before Sam strangled him to death. The Wishing Tree did that to people.
What Sam had killed had been a pathetic old man. Not the bloodthirsty monster of his memory, three times his size. It left a void in him that would never be filled; nine hundred and ninety-nine kills later he knew that with certainty. He also knew what he had to do.
“With these bones I give you my anger. My drive. The one thing that made me an excellent killer.”
He threw the last thing he had of his father into the tree’s greedy maw. Finally it had swallowed him whole.
The resin started gushing and Sam drank it greedily, the untamed power over reality giving him the high of his lifetime.
What to wish for?
He could feel his human heart doing somersaults.
What to wish for?
He knew he had to wish for his safety from the Powers. He held on to the tree for support, as understanding dawned on him. It was this point—the threshold—when his father had made the decision. It hadn’t been the wording.
Sam knew now what he wanted to do with this chance.
I wish for the boy’s safety.
As he felt the magical power leave his body, Sam knew there was no hope left for him. He had nothing left to give. He sat down on the bones under the blood-stained wishing tree, waiting for them to come. Waiting for a painful death and sweet, sweet oblivion.
But for the first time in Sam’s life, his mind was finally at peace.
Introduction to “ Shifting Jinn”
Once upon a time, Rebecca S. W. Bates taught at the University of Colorado. Now, she writes full time. Her latest novels include The Signal, The Mound Dwellers, and The Jigsaw Window. She writes under a variety of pen names as well.
About this story, she writes, “Having lived as a child in Turkey, I grew up especially loving Arabian tales about genies. Then I moved to South America where an undercurrent of Santería runs through very modern, western cities.” But it was a visit with her daughter in the Dominican Republic that provided the setting for this wonderful tale of triumph and revenge.
Shifting Jinn
Rebecca S.W. Bates
Dark swirled around him, cocooning him like the pitiful prisoner that his human had made him become. Click. The sound came softly. Always softly at first. Did he really hear it? Perhaps it was not there. Perhaps he was not here.
Tic .
Awakening.
Trrriclickclickclick .
A bolt of alertness charged through him. Anticipation, hello. He wanted to stretch in the confines of his cocoon, but he could not. His awareness floated in the ether of his spiritual plane. He existed only as a thought at the whim of his captor. Would this be the day? His day to finally earn his wish?
It felt like a tickle at first, each time that his human summoned him. A tickle he could not scratch. The tickle started from the well of his essence, mushrooming up up up from the dark depths of his nothingness, seeping like a fountain that invaded each crevice of his awareness. Always beyond reach. An insatiable, untouchable urge. A cross between pleasure and pain.
He erupted from the dark netherworld of his hideout into the blinding light that scorched Dominican air. Surf crashed, splintering against the sharp edges of the black rocks nearby. The intensity of its sound pushed him backwards a few paces from the spot where his battered, copper vessel tipped over. A tail of smoke wisped from the tarnished neck of the container that some evil spirit had used long ago to capture him, back when the Ottomans still ruled most lands.
He drifted a little closer to the frenzied street that oozed with overloaded, dented buses and taxis and Daihatsu trucks careening over the potholes that lined Santo Domingo ’ s malecón. In a ribbon of space between exhaust fumes and an ancient seawall stood a wilting grove of
What Sam had killed had been a pathetic old man. Not the bloodthirsty monster of his memory, three times his size. It left a void in him that would never be filled; nine hundred and ninety-nine kills later he knew that with certainty. He also knew what he had to do.
“With these bones I give you my anger. My drive. The one thing that made me an excellent killer.”
He threw the last thing he had of his father into the tree’s greedy maw. Finally it had swallowed him whole.
The resin started gushing and Sam drank it greedily, the untamed power over reality giving him the high of his lifetime.
What to wish for?
He could feel his human heart doing somersaults.
What to wish for?
He knew he had to wish for his safety from the Powers. He held on to the tree for support, as understanding dawned on him. It was this point—the threshold—when his father had made the decision. It hadn’t been the wording.
Sam knew now what he wanted to do with this chance.
I wish for the boy’s safety.
As he felt the magical power leave his body, Sam knew there was no hope left for him. He had nothing left to give. He sat down on the bones under the blood-stained wishing tree, waiting for them to come. Waiting for a painful death and sweet, sweet oblivion.
But for the first time in Sam’s life, his mind was finally at peace.
Introduction to “ Shifting Jinn”
Once upon a time, Rebecca S. W. Bates taught at the University of Colorado. Now, she writes full time. Her latest novels include The Signal, The Mound Dwellers, and The Jigsaw Window. She writes under a variety of pen names as well.
About this story, she writes, “Having lived as a child in Turkey, I grew up especially loving Arabian tales about genies. Then I moved to South America where an undercurrent of Santería runs through very modern, western cities.” But it was a visit with her daughter in the Dominican Republic that provided the setting for this wonderful tale of triumph and revenge.
Shifting Jinn
Rebecca S.W. Bates
Dark swirled around him, cocooning him like the pitiful prisoner that his human had made him become. Click. The sound came softly. Always softly at first. Did he really hear it? Perhaps it was not there. Perhaps he was not here.
Tic .
Awakening.
Trrriclickclickclick .
A bolt of alertness charged through him. Anticipation, hello. He wanted to stretch in the confines of his cocoon, but he could not. His awareness floated in the ether of his spiritual plane. He existed only as a thought at the whim of his captor. Would this be the day? His day to finally earn his wish?
It felt like a tickle at first, each time that his human summoned him. A tickle he could not scratch. The tickle started from the well of his essence, mushrooming up up up from the dark depths of his nothingness, seeping like a fountain that invaded each crevice of his awareness. Always beyond reach. An insatiable, untouchable urge. A cross between pleasure and pain.
He erupted from the dark netherworld of his hideout into the blinding light that scorched Dominican air. Surf crashed, splintering against the sharp edges of the black rocks nearby. The intensity of its sound pushed him backwards a few paces from the spot where his battered, copper vessel tipped over. A tail of smoke wisped from the tarnished neck of the container that some evil spirit had used long ago to capture him, back when the Ottomans still ruled most lands.
He drifted a little closer to the frenzied street that oozed with overloaded, dented buses and taxis and Daihatsu trucks careening over the potholes that lined Santo Domingo ’ s malecón. In a ribbon of space between exhaust fumes and an ancient seawall stood a wilting grove of
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