Joy, Joy: The Revenge of Excalibur is finished

Joy, Joy: The Revenge of Excalibur is finished

I’m proud to announce that the 2nd book in the Excalibur saga has finally been submitted to my publisher for publication.  YEAH!!  I’m hoping it will be out in June, which will be 1 1/2 years since The Secret of Excalibur came out. 

The Revenge of Excalibur was a real challenge, as most of the outline had been lost over the years.  I really didn’t know if I could ‘write’ all the parts that were missing.  But I did, and it came out really well.  This one feels more like my baby than any of the other stories I’ve published.  I eel like I’ve really grown as a writer. 

Now that I’m done with the 2nd book, I can focus all my attention on the next one.  I’m currently on Chapter 5 of the 3rd book, so, if you haven’t read the 1st one yet, now’s the time.

Speaking of the 3rd book, I thought I’d share parts of the first three chapters.   These are still in rough draft form, so please excuse any misspelled words or wrong punctuation.

KARRIN: Warrior Child

Chapter One

“And this one’s name?” a high, whinny voice demanded impatiently.

“Ah, it’s Karen Number 1685,” stammered a woman as she peered down at the reader in her hand.  She licked her lips, glancing up at the woman who overshadowed her slight frame.

“Damn, another number,” said the whinny voice in a huff.  “Don’t people have last names anymore?  Where is her damn family?”

“Well, it says here this one’s family don’t want her, Matron.”  Her eyes darted to the little girl standing next to her.  Her head was bowed, a curtain of dark, curly hair obscuring her face.

The girl’s head jerked up, defiance flashing in her strange blue/silver eyes.  “They weren’t my family,” she retorted, chin held up high.

With a loud slap, the towering, pudgy Matron backhanded the little girl.  She smirked with glee as the unwanted waif bounced off the gray wall, into a cabinet, then fell, face-down on the cracked, green tiled floor.

Hands on beefy hips, Matron yelled, spit flying, “You, little bitchy.  You don’t talk unless I tell you to.  You don’t move unless I tell you to.  You fucking don’t even breathe unless I tell you to.”  She violently nudged the small, limp body with her steel-toed shoes.  She paid extra credits to have them made just for this purpose.  “Now, get your ass up here on this line, and keep your mouth shut.”

As the small child slowly pulled herself to her feet, Matron rubbed her right hand with a grimace.  Damn!  Either I’m getting soft, or these little bitches are getting harder.  She grinned when the child pushed her hair off her face, revealing blood running from her nose, and the right side of her mouth.  The red welt of a hand print was clearly visible against the pale skin on the girl’s cheekbone.  Matron chuckled.  Looks like I haven’t lost my touch after all.  Twenty years of backhanding insolent, little bitches had given her a lot of practice.

“Guard!” Matron yelled, making the other people in the room flinch.  “Take this useless piece of shit to a cell, and read her the rules of the Home.”  Glaring around, she continued, “And if I see any of you pansies going soft with her, you’ll be doing the sewer detail for a year.”  She snatched the reader from her cowering assistant’s hands, and slowly read the information displayed there.  “This one’s a real loser,” she said with a sneer.  “Even her own family don’t want her.  Says here she’s also retarded. Carp!  Another dummy.  I hate dummies.  Go on, get her out of my sight.”

An evil smile broke out on her pasty, pockmarked face as Matron watched the frail girl being hauled down the hallway by her collar.  As the helpless child stumbled along, trying to keep up with the longer strides of the female guard, she was body slammed from doorway to doorway.  That’ll teach the little bitch.  No one talks back to me.  In all her years as Matron, she’d only had one bitch that tired it twice.  Matron fingered the trusty nightstick at her side.  That mouthy little twerp had met her end with a hard whap up along the side of her head.  Since these bitches died all the time, one more was no big deal.

Matron stomped back into her office, where she noticed her assistant cowering in the corner.  God, how I hate weaklings.  Of course, if Mavis weren’t, scared of her, she would’ve already been transferred to another Home.  Matron stared down at her secretary.  Mavis had been an orphan here herself, and she’d learned early how to make herself useful.  Matron had a taste for young boys, and occasionally, young girls, so when a fresh, perky Mavis had offered herself in exchange for special privileges, she’d jumped on her.

Once she hit puberty, Mavis no longer appealed to her, so she’d trained her to be her assistant.   A job she performed very well.  Now, with her wrinkled skin and premature graying hair, she looked sixty instead of thirty-five.  She’s a constant reminder that age is creeping up on m, as well.  Matron signed.  Well, there were plenty more where she came from.  She’d contact Warden, and see if he wanted her for his boys.

Chapter Two

Sniffling, head bowed, the battered girl sat on a cold, metal slab, staring at her bare feet.  She still didn’t understand why she was here.  She peeked out between her mass of dark hair, peering at the tall, thin, coffee-colored Guard sitting across from her.  She had a reader in one hand, with an electronic prod lying across her lap.

“This here’n is your room now.” She patted the hard, metal slab she was sitting on.  The bed was bolted to the wall, with no mattress.  “This is your bed.  And don’t you be whining for a pillow or blanket.  You be an unwanted, and a retard at that.  Matron don’t hand out frivolous amenities to dummies.  You gotta earn em.”

The Guard resumed her reading from a list, her finger trailing across the screen.  “If I ask you a question, you gotta answer quickly.  And you better be a putting ‘Guard’ behind your answer, or you gonna get a whopping.  You understand?”

The girl quickly looked up.  “Yes. Guard.”  Her bottom lip quivered as she plucked at the hem of her ill-fitting, gray dress.  She wasn’t going to cry.  She clenched her fists into the thin material.

The Guard looked back up with a curled lip.  “Good.  If you follow the rules, you might actually live until dinner.  Now,” she said, as she flipped backwards with her finger on the screen, “it says here your name is Karrin, not Karen.  Spell you name for me, dummy, if you can.”

Gazing down at her shoes again, the small child said softly, “K. A. R. R. I. N, Guard.”

“Humph,” the guard snorted.  “You think you’re pretty smart for a dummy, don’t you?  But it don’t matter.  Here, you’re just Karen 1685.  I don’t see a last name here.  Do you have one, or can you even remember it.”

Karrin bit her lip.  Why am I being picked on? “Yes, Guard,” she replied with a touch of defiance in her voice.

The Guard glowered at the girl, her fingers tapping the handle of the electric prod.  “Well?  What is it?” With snake like reflexes, she snatched up the prod, flicked it on, and slammed it against Karrin’s bare foot.

“Ow!” the little girl screamed, her body convulsing from the shock, the back of her head striking the wall.

“I didn’t tell you you could scream, did I?” snarled the guard.  She smashed the prod into the unprotected foot again.  “What’s your last name?”

Karrin bit her tongue, trying not to cry out again.  Tears were sliding down her face.  Taking a deep breath, she muttered, “Felney.  The family I was with were named Felney, Guard.”  Tossing her head back, she glared at the black woman.  “But they weren’t my real family.”  Karrin watched with terror as the guard slowly reached out, then slapped the tip of the prod against her knee.  As the electric shock coursed up her leg, causing her muscles to twitch, she clenched her fists even harder, trying not to move or show pain.

Chapter Three

Karrin was jerked out of a fitful sleep with the clanging of the cell door, and a gruff voice.  “Hey, Yol.  You got yourself a roommate.”

Karrin slowly opened her eyes and saw an older girl with a shaved head.  “Yes, Guard,” she quickly mumbled, as her brown eyes stared back at Karrin.

“Looks like you got the short straw, Yol,” the guard mocked.  “Too bad for you.”  With a mean laugh, she turned and proceeded down the corridor, banging her electric prod on the cell doors as she went.

With slumped shoulders, Yol stepped to the toilet, hitched up her dress and sat,  “Shit,” she mumbled, leaning forward, resting her elbows on her knees.  “What did I do?  Why’d they put a dummy in with me?”  With a heavy sigh, she dropped her head in her hands.  “That means no sleep, and less food,” she mumbled, so softly Karrin barely heard her.

Lying on her side, staring straight ahead, Karrin watched the older girl out of the corner of her eyes.  She was wearing a blue dress with a white collar, her bald head gleaming under the harsh lighting.  Rising, she punched a gray button on the wall, causing the toilet to flush.  She sat on the empty bunk, hands between her knees, staring at Karrin.  Her pouting lips turned into a smirk when she saw the growing bruise on Karrin’s cheek.  Her smile widened when she noticed the burn marks on the younger girls foot, knee, and legs.

Leaning sideways, she made a big show of peering up and down the hallway, looking for any guards.  Sitting back, she whispered, “I see you’ve met Matron, retard.”  With a quirked brown, eyebrow, she pointed at the burn marks.  “Looks like Cassie’s been here too.  She likes to leave her mark, the bloody, fucking cow.  Now, listen up, dummy.  When dinner comes, I get your share too.  You hear me, retard?”

If I act like a retard, maybe  the girl will leave me alone, Karrin thought, so she laid unmoving, staring straight ahead, eyes unblinking.

“Crap,” Yol moaned.  “Hey, half-wit, can you at least talk?”

Even though her nose itched, and her eyes were burning, Karrin still laid motionless, her face expressionless.

“Fuck!  You’re not even a half-wit.  You’re a no-wit.  I bet all you do is eat and shit.”  Sliding off her bed, she leaned over Karrin, staring into her vacant eyes. In a forced whisper, she hissed, “You’re nothing but trouble for me, you little, retarded bitch! At least I’ll get a shot at the Yacht or the Farm ’cause I be the best fifteen year old Heroin Processor in the sewers.  I even get favors from guards.  But you, you’ll end up in a Prison.”  A sly smile crossed her thin face.  “I heard they do all kinds of nasty things to retards in Prison.”

Laughing, she raised her hand, getting ready to slap Karrin across the face when she froze, brows knitted in thought.  “Why’d they put you with me?”  She sat back on the bed and started biting the nail on her thumb.  “Matron never sticks little bitches with us older ones.  So one of us must be leaving.  Either you’re going with Cook, or, or, they picked me for the Yacht.”  Her brown eyes lit up with excitement.  “Yeah, that makes sense ’cause I’ll be turning sixteen in a few months.  Oh, I can’t wait to get out of this dump.”  Yolanda squealed with delight, hugging herself.

Karrin had no idea what the bald-headed girl was talking about.  She just wanted to be left alone.  Trying not to fidget, her eyes involuntarily blinked.

“Ah ha, you’re not dead after all, dummy,” Yolanda exclaimed.  “At least not yet.”  Her head jerked up at the sound of squeaky wheels echoing down the hallway. Jumping to her feet, she ordered, “Stand up, dummy, it’s dinner.”

Karrin sat up, swinging her legs over the edge of the slab, hands clasped together in her lap.

The grating noise stopped and started, getting closer and closer, until a cart stopped in front of their barred doorway.  A woman as round as she was tall, with long, greasy, brown hair stared with hard eyes at Karrin. She motioned to Yolanda, who stepped up to the bars.  “Who be the other girl?” she whispered.

Yolanda looked sideways at her new cell mate, shrugging her thin shoulders.  “I’m not sure, Ginny.  I don’t think she can hear or talk.”

Leaning closer, talking softer, the guard said, “I ain’t supposed to be atellin’ you this, but girl, you’re gonna be a leaving in a few days.”

Yolanda grabbed the bars, jumping up and down.  “I knew it, I knew it,” she squealed.  “As soon as I saw the retard, I knew I was going to the Yacht.  Am I, Ginny?”

“Shush, girl!” Ginny admonished, as she nervously glanced up and down the corridor.  You ain’t sixteen yet, Yol, so I ain’t sure.  Let me do some checking.  Here, I got to get busy,” and she pushed one, small silver tray through the horizontal slot in the bars, then took off, pushing the squeaking cart to the next cell.

Yolanda took the tray and sat cross legged on her bed, cradling the tray in her lap. 

As the smell of the food drifted to Karrin’s nose, her stomach growled.  There were two pieces of white meat, a large slice of bread, and some gooey stuff splattered in the center of the tray.  Her mouth started drooling and she licked her lips.  Karrin hadn’t eaten all day.

Yolanda stuffed a large chunk of the bread in her mouth, chewing furiously.  “This is mine, retard,” she mumbled around a mouthful of food.  “I’ll leave a small piece of rat, and some of the rice, but the bread’s all mine.”  She shoved another piece into her mouth. 

Karrin sat very still, tiny hands pressed against her rumbling stomach.  She wasn’t used to dealing with hunger.

“Ummm,” Yolanda signed in pleasure, tearing off a piece of rat meat with her teeth.  “The rat tastes so good today.”  She continued making uhing and ahing noises until the tray was empty.  Looking down with a smirk, she said “Oh, I’m sorry, retard.  Looks like I ate it all.  You should’ve grabbed a piece when you had the chance.  Here, you can chew on the bones.”  She held out a leg bone, laughing maliciously.

Karrin lay on her side, curled in a ball, facing the gray wall, Yoland’s cruel laughter echoing in her ears.  Why is everyone so mean here?  What did I do to make everyone hate me?  She just wanted to go home.  With a sigh, she remembered she didn’t have a home.  Not anymore.

******

It’s quite a bit darker, and I’m sure I’ll get dinged for not being politically correct.  But, stories have a life of their own.  So, what do you think?  Let me know in the comments.