This piece is the beginning of the novel Glorious Son currently in development by Forsaken Press author and Social Media Manager Jenna. It is being included in this section to help showcase the variety of talent and diverse writing styles that Forsaken Press and its wonderful team of writers have to offer:
Samael woke up Monday morning like every other morning. That is, the alarm went off, he took a moment to bemoan his existence where nothing exciting or interesting ever happened, and he wandered off to make coffee to ease his pounding headache. He wasn’t sure why he still set an alarm–it wasn’t like he had anywhere to be, after all. Since he lost his job a few months ago, the best he could hope for was a few hours trolling job boards for an opportunity that never seemed to come, followed by a few hours of writing things he was sure no one would ever want to buy. Sure, he could freelance enough to pay most of the bills, usually–an article here and there, after sifting through all those who wanted to pay in exposure, or worse to have you pay for the opportunity to do their work for them. But he really wanted to write something that would change the world, and clickbait was getting old fast. Still, he tried to keep some hope alive. He’d feed the cat, and turn on a podcast for some background company, as he loaded up yet another webpage filled with more of the same, and waited until a respectable hour to open a mickey. He may have been a drunk, but dammit he was a high-functioning one. At least that’s what he kept telling himself.
When he saw it, he gasped. There on the screen was an opportunity that seemed to be made exactly for him:
Wanted: Someone to collaborate on an epic fantasy novel with the broad themes of chaos and change. Research and travel will be required. We expect this to be your full-time job and will pay you accordingly. Contact Ms. Tuesday by email with a cover letter, resume, and sample of your work.
Too good to be true? Obviously. Nobody just posts out of the blue looking for someone to write a novel. If they want it written badly enough, they write it themselves. But really, what did he have to lose? He clicked apply now and got to work, expecting that any second the whole thing was going to explode in a fiery ball visible from space. That was his luck, after all. When he was born, his parents misspelled Samuel, leaving him with an unpronounceable mess. Then things got worse.
No time to think about that now. In spite of himself, he actually felt good as he hit the submit button and nothing went sideways. He got a response almost immediately, which he shook off as a form letter at first, but decided to open it just in case. He was glad he did, as he read:
Samael:
We have been expecting you. To ensure that you are up to our task, meet us tomorrow morning, 9:00, at 616 Northern Boulevard. We look forward to working with you.
Ms. Tuesday and associates
“Okay that’s odd,” he thought. But, with the misguided courage of someone with nothing to lose and everything to gain, he opened up his phone calendar, only to find the interview was already entered into it. Hey, that was easy! He talked to the cat, who was sitting in his lap, because he was just a little bit silly that way:
“Miss Princess Fuzzlebottom Squeakface! What is your Daddy going to do? Is your Daddy going to get a job? Yes he is! Yes he is! Who’s a pretty kitty? Who’s my little Princess? Is it you? I think it’s you!”
Princess Fuzzlebottom Squeakface, who answered to Princess as much as any cat answered to anything, purred and pretended to understand the happy noises coming from her servant’s face. As long as he kept the food coming, the bed stayed warm, and he occasionally scratched between her ears, she was willing to put up with him doing strange things like this.
That night, he set his alarm a little earlier, let Princess snuggle up to him, and dreamed of strange beautiful creatures he had never seen before. He woke up not sure if that was strange or not, as he usually didn’t remember his dreams. These stuck with him, though, as they were both dark and colourful at the same time, some with wings, some with horns, some with both. The strangest appeared to be created from black flames. Anyway, he felt a sense of purpose as, instead of walking over to his computer, he got dressed and made his way out the door.
A gorgeous woman in a long flowing black dress greeted him and said she was Ms. Tuesday. He thought she was overdressed for a simple interview, but pushed it out of his mind. Artsy people were always a little strange, so who was he to judge? Had he looked up at the walls, he would have seen the creatures from his dreams the night before. But he was too nervous to look anywhere but the floor. He followed Ms. Tuesday into an office where a well-dressed man already sat silently staring at him.
“This is my co-president, Mr. Lysmith. We are so glad you have come to us. Are you ready to start now?”
Samael wasn’t sure how to respond–he hadn’t even been asked any questions and they wanted him to start? What kind of interview was this? To his surprise, he heard, “Yes, what would you have me do?” emerge from his lips. He didn’t talk like that! He shrugged it off as the stress of being interviewed.
Samael was an intelligent man, and had he actually been paying attention, he would have seen parallels between the story he was to write of an everyman unknowingly contracted by forces of chaos to bring about a revolution and stave off–or was that bring about?–the end of days, and his current situation. As it was, he was trying too hard to keep from sweating through his clothes to fully comprehend what he was hearing. It didn’t even dawn on him when he was told that his first duty was to dive headfirst into researching chaos history in order to make the book more realistic. He just nodded as Ms. Tuesday handed him a thick black tome with golden runes on the cover. But he did hear one thing: Don’t look up too much information about this book before you read it. Take it as it actually is, not stories about it. Weird, but okay. Everybody’s got their quirks. This sounded like an order and it was easy enough to do.
The Book of Chaos described a world which was a lot like ours, only instead of being controlled and orchestrated by an overall lean toward order, it was controlled by chaos in all things.
Our world did lean toward order, didn’t it? Samael wasn’t sure he believed in much, but he believed in that. Whatever started the universe off started it off on some kind of trajectory–things didn’t just happen. Everything had a place and everything wrong with the universe was just stuff in the wrong place. Somehow everything would end up in the right place and everything would be great. All you had to do was keep your head down and do what you’re supposed to do, stay in your place.
Had Samael disobeyed the order and researched the book, he would have learned that its author began with the same kind of viewpoint he had, but over the course of researching beliefs about chaos came to embrace them, especially that there is a thread of chaos through everything and the best we can do is keep this chaos from being harmful. The society the author lived in labeled him as insane for this view, and he lived out the rest of his days as a hermit. Samael might not have kept reading had he known that. He liked his nice, simple worldview: black and white, right and wrong, no grey areas to confuse him. But he didn’t know, so read he did.
A week later, Samael’s eyes were buggy, but he had finished the book. He felt like he had been made privy to some kind of forbidden knowledge, although he didn’t understand what exactly it was or what any of it meant. All he knew was that somehow something was changed. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. He also knew he never wanted to read a book like that again. But if you had asked him why, he wouldn’t have been able to tell you. It was just unsettling. In any case, Ms. Tuesday wanted him to return to the office to discuss what he read and what to do next. He could do that.
He didn’t expect the warm welcome he got–the stern faces that had glared back at him last week grinned huge toothy grins and he half expected them to hug him. His back stiffened in preparation–he felt hugs were far too intimate to share between practical strangers, but if you said no, you were a social pariah. To his great relief, they noticed his discomfort and dropped the hug idea, settling for handshakes instead.
“We are very pleased. We have chosen the right person for our mission. We have promised to pay you, and we hope this is sufficient,” said Ms. Tuesday, handing him an envelope. He opened it and found $1000.
“There must be some kind of mistake! All I did was read a book!” Samael protested.
“You have done research and prepared for our mission. There is no mistake. Now you will begin to write. Should you require assistance, Mr. Lysmith acts as my eyes and ears on the ground and has been instructed to provide you with anything you may need. Next week, we expect a basic plot idea and at least one chapter.”
Samael suddenly realized he didn’t know how to contact anyone who was supposed to help him. He asked and was told not to worry; they would know, and they would be there. Ms. Tuesday’s demeanour made it perfectly clear the case was closed and there was to be no more discussion on this matter.
With more questions than answers, Samael went home to begin writing. After all, an outline and a chapter in a week was a difficult task, especially when the majority of his writing to this point was fan fiction and clickbait articles. Even though he still wasn’t exactly sure what he was supposed to be writing, he found that the words came easily, almost as though they were being given to him by some unseen force. He had a strange compulsion to keep writing and not to read what he had written. He guessed that this was what other writers called inspiration, so he kept going.
A week later, there he was in Ms. Tuesday’s office being warmly praised. Samael was still uncomfortable and couldn’t look either of them in the eye, but he could tell you every detail of the office floor: 37 black tiles, 37 grey ones, white grout that was a little too white, with white spirals that meandered along in no particular pattern, and the whole thing was altogether too shiny. He still hadn’t noticed the art on the walls, which was probably a good thing. He didn’t consciously remember the dream from a couple weeks ago, but it was tucked away in his subconscious, and seeing them would have brought it back to mind.
“But I didn’t even proofread! I don’t even know what I wrote!” protested Samael.
Ms. Tuesday smiled. “So much the better. Remember, you work for us now. We know what you are writing and that is what matters.” With that, she handed him another envelope and shooed him out the door.
$2000. Not bad for a week’s work. A guy could get used to this. But now what?
With no idea what he was supposed to do next, and everything he had written previously apparently wiped from his hard-drive during the meeting, Samael decided to return to some semblance of his old routine. Alarm. Ugh. Feed the cat. Coffee. Podcast. Write. Consider getting smashed. But there were changes. Now, someone was paying him, even if the amounts didn’t seem to have much connection to the work he did, or to any kind of logic, really. Some weeks he got $500, others $5000. The words flowed effortlessly most of the time. He began to notice that whenever they didn’t, a raven would come up to his window. Even though it was silly, he liked to think he was having a conversation with the bird about what he was writing. In any case, after the raven left, he was able to write more.
He had less time to drink now, and found himself missing the bottle as though he had lost touch with his best friend. He didn’t miss the blackouts, though. Although he was certain he had never harmed anyone–could never harm anyone–waking up not knowing what had happened the night before scared him, and it happened more often than he cared to admit.
The days turned to weeks, and he could swear the raven was following him around now. That was crazy, of course, but he couldn’t shake it. Other strange things were happening too. Like the day he went to the liquor store, only it wasn’t there. Or the way people seemed to treat him with a new fear-tinged respect, like there was some kind of dark aura around him. If he believed in those kinds of things, that’s what he would think. But of course, he didn’t.
Keep your head down, Samael. Stay in your place. You’re just working too hard. Take a break. You’re being oversensitive. You got distracted and drove too far. There are birds everywhere. You need a drink. He kept telling himself that even though it sure felt like the world was cracking and breaking around him, those kinds of things didn’t actually happen. Of course, they didn’t. A place for everything. And nothing in its place.
Forsaken Press 