Flash

A BOOK OF STONE

Prologue of The Archangel's Garden: A Memoir

A Psychological Odyssey

James A. Roberts, II

“How true a story is
is what matters and that someone hears it and remembers
and tells it again.” - Rosslyn Mode

CHAPTER ONE

October, 1916 - Yancy County, North Carolina

I think I may have just killed somebody.

My hands clutch the steering wheel as I fight the sudden uneasiness, the agitating pressure in my chest and arms. I return my full attention to the dark

highway in front of me, confirming that I’m still on the road, the double yellow line to my left and the solid white stripe to my right, the car moving a safe and

reasonable speed. It only took a second, like the sound of a shotgun, that moment when my eyes left the road to look at the clock on the dash. But a

second was all Doubt needed to creep in and start its sadistic tease.

You could have knocked a construction barrel into oncoming traffic! You could have forced another car off the road! You could have run down a jogger!

I take several deep breaths and try to think back to what happened: Did I loose control of the car? Did I feel an impact? Did I hear brakes screech?

So much can happen in only a second.

I pull onto the next side road, make a three-point turn, and retrace my path. The country highway shows no sympathy-it simply twists and turns before

my headlights, like a giant serpent about to swallow me whole. So all I can do is drive back to the spot of the possible accident-or at least to where I think

it was. The scenery is desolate and rather mundane-a tree here and there, an occasional farmhouse, lots of cornfields, empty for the winter. But my mind is

cluttered with all sorts of questions, wondering what type of disaster could have happened during that second: Will I come across a construction site in

disarray? Will I find a car wrapped around a tree? Will I see a mangled body on the shoulder?

And if I do, will it have been my fault?

I see the area up ahead, just past a large oak tree, its barren and twisted branches overhanging the highway. That was the site, wasn’t it? My foot hits

the brake, and the car slows to 25 mph-half the speed limit. I gawk out the side window, twisting my neck to the left and then back as I drive by. As

always, I see nothing unusual-no scattered barrels, no demolished cars, no ragged bodies. I turn the car around at the next crossroad and resume my

original route, but Doubt doesn’t give up so easily.

Are you sure you looked in the right spot?

I should be mingling with my colleagues at the office Christmas party, but as usual, I’m running late. That’s why I dared to look at the clock in the first place.

Earlier, back at the office, I went through my usual routine before leaving. I stood at the sink inside the men’s room, lathering each individual finger with

soap, moving from the tip to the base and then back again, paying attention to the space under each fingernail, then cleaning my palms and my wrists,

careful to avoid touching the backs of my hands.

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James A. Roberts, II lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan. He earned his J.D. from Cornell Law School and his M.F.A. from Western Michigan University, where he has

taught English composition. He is working on his first book.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The narrator’s confusion intrigues me, and the last paragraph identifies an important psychological component. If I were the right agent, I’d

be interested in watching how this plays out.

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“So what are you thinking of doing with your life?” my mom asked yet again. I sighed and ignored the question. It was our usual routine. We were

sitting in what everyone with a normal house would describe as a living room but what Mom always referred to as the parlor.

The parlor has been parlor-ized to the hilt. A big round antique oak table sat in the middle surrounded by an assortment of mismatched antique chairs.

Mom was sitting in one and I was across the table from her. Under the bay window was one of those Victorian style couches where comfort was a distinct

afterthought. There was also a matching chair and smaller round table which held our haunted mansion lamp. This lamp was a huge 1890s monstrosity on

the base was a large glass ball that I wished you could open up so you could fit a goldfish inside. Sadly it doesn’t. The couch, floor, and every chair are

covered in pillows none of which match each other or the heavy outdated drapes.

“I know you don’t like the question Victoria” Mom said “but you seem so directionless lately. I can’t believe your spirits haven’t been guiding you more.”

“We have been over this Mom,” I said. “I didn’t receive the family gift. I’m not psychic, or intuitive, or even particularly touchy feely. Nobody’s guiding

me.”

If you haven’t guessed by now my mother is the town psychic. Ironic since I am the town skeptic. She has the gift, her sister has the gift, all my

cousins have the gift and my little sister Charlotte has so much of the gift she once appeared on an episode of the reality show Mysterious Children.

I didn’t get the gift. I must have inherited my traits from my father’s side of the family. We don’t talk much about him since mom is angry that she didn’t

have the foresight to see that he was going to pack up and leave when I was eight.

Mom and Charlotte refuse to believe what is completely obvious. They are convinced I am in denial about my psychic abilities, but trust me if I had any

I would be using them. I wouldn’t have to study for most of my tests because the answers would just come to me, and I would be able to get money

anytime I wanted just by hitting the track instead of toiling away at my job at Andy’s Linen Outlet.

Only my family would see going to school and working a nearly full time job as being directionless. Mom doesn’t get the concept of general education

either. Yes I assume at Harvard or something you have a major and you only take classes in your major but at Stallings Community College you have to take

General education first then you transfer to a four year and pick a major there.

The reason why my mother is down on my attempt at getting an education is because she wants me to go into the family business. She has convinced

herself that because my psychic abilities have been so late in manifesting themselves I am in fact even more psychic than her or Charlotte.

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Shannon Brown is the author of Rock’N’Roll in Locker Seventeen, available for purchase online. For more information please visit www.locker17.com. She

also runs www.tshirtfort.com, a funny gift website. Shannon lives in the Bay Area and graduated from Chico State University.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: I like the bright, funny, angst-filled tone of this teenage narrator. I think she’d appeal to teenagers, and I’m always intrigued by families

with psychic abilities, so I might well request the rest of the manuscript to see how the story plays out and whether or not I could sell the manuscript.

Parlor Tricked
Or Confessions of a Reluctant Psychic

by Jan McDaniels

by Shannon Brown

Chapter 1

attack.

The flight was full. No row had two empty seats where she could have some elbowroom and sit away from Lev and his muttering about the importance of this trip to

California. Maybe she’d ask the stranger next to her if he thought the middle seat was the worst. They could chat about it. Maybe he’d feel sorry for her and offer to trade. She

didn’t long for the window seat. There was nothing to see at that altitude and it wasn’t any more spacious than where she slumped in the middle. What she wanted was for him

to become a human wall between her and her husband. A nice wall would help. A wall to stop Lev’s pointless attempts to convince her of their firstborn’s intentions.

“It’s trickery,” Lev said. “Does Samuel have to resort to trickery?”

He must have said those same words a dozen times since they left Jersey. No need to respond, he didn’t like her answers anyway. It wasn’t trickery. It was strategy, isn’t

that what Samuel called it? She closed her eyes and spelled strategy several times, hoping it would put her to sleep. S-t-r-a-t-e-g-y. S-t-r-a-t-e-g-y. It didn’t work; the

tightness in her chest prevented any relaxation.

The vice-like metal armrests hugged her hundred ten pounds, and the men’s arms on them, left no room for her to share. Hada wriggled in her seat wondering how people

with wider bodies endured plane travel. She didn’t like arguments, but arguing was better than thinking about her discomfort. “There’s no need for us to go through all this

trouble. The boys are grown men who can settle their own squabbles.”

Lev sat up straight as if ready for the challenge. “You’re missing the point. I’ve told you, it’s more than a squabble.”

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Julaina Kleist-Corwin is a creative writing instructor for the City of Dublin, California. She’s won five short story contest awards and her short stories

are published in several anthologies including the 2012 Harlequin “A Miracle Under the Christmas Tree” by Jennifer Basye Sander.

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Rosslyn pushed through laurel and rhododendron. Though their leaves were cold-time dead now and rattling like the throat of Satan, their

sallow-sapped rings and roots, firmly planted, whispered. Spring will come again. The earth sparkled all around her and filled her with that sense of

waiting to be born, a time out of time. Beneath her feet mica chips caught rays of an autumn sun as bright as a million diamonds. Warmth filtering

through the trees had already dried the prism dew on primrose and winter grass. The way to the water came to her feet as only a path long traveled

can and left her free to think of other things than where she was going.

"Someday," she whispered to the light, "I'll find that treasure." She smiled as her hand glided over the softness of hip-high sage growth. "I have

a right to it by birth."

Nevermind, she told herself, that Jesse said the story was only a tale. As if the thought invoked him, there he stood at the top of the rise, half-lost

in the thicket that would cover him completely in the summer. He was short for his age, as blond as the sage and as opposite her dark hair and olive

skin as he could possibly be.

He watched her for a few moments. Coy, not shy, she pretended not to see. She scrambled down and up the rugged path, not slipping once, on

sturdy legs uncovered below the faded dress she wore despite the chill. She could smell the river from here.

"Goin' to the Kaolin plant?" he ventured.

He knew she wasn't. Jesse knew a lot of things about her, maybe more than he should. They had been best friends the whole of their thirteen

years on this earth. She knew he had ridden his tricycle to school on his very first day, peddling down the mountain road beside his older brother, and

that he had cried when the children there teased him and tried to take the toy from him. Arthur had taken him home. She knew that his mother

spoiled him and that his heart had never been mended when she died the year he was nine. He knew that she had ruined the patent leather shoes she

received the next year at Christmas because she refused to take them off to cross the creek and had to ride to church barefoot and humbled, her legs

swinging off the back of the wagon among all her shod sisters. He also knew how her temper often got her into things she wished it hadn’t and how

she longed for her father, who had left the family to go back to his people. One thing Jesse should know by now was how her destination could never

be the Kaolin plant. He had just asked to make her notice him.

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Jan McDaniel writes about the American South and has won awards for both fiction and nonfiction. These include a Georgia Author of the Year Award for her first book

of short stories, By Train At Night.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: If I were an agent with literary contacts, I’d be drawn to the beautiful language this author uses. The characters intrigue me, and if I thought we could find

the right audience, I’d definitely want to read more. I might want to read more for my own pleasure, and I know what that says about the job agents must do.

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