Author's Note: This is set a year after the events in the last book, Entertain the End. I'll be switching off the first-person narratives in the order they went in the series... Don't expect much from this first one, because David is my least favorite character. =\ I'm using songs from the Smashing Pumpkins double-CD set, "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness" for chapter titles because I feel like it and they usually kinda fit well. "Where Boys Fear to Tread" is also a SP song and it'll make a lot more sense later on... The lyrics are at the bottom of the page. I'll be sticking in a few fitting lines from the chapter-title-lyrics, too.
Jessica "Jei" Lee
Chapter One : Zero
emptiness is loneliness, and loneliness is cleanliness
and cleanliness is godliness, and god is empty just like me
i never let on, that i was on a sinking ship
i never let on that i was down
( David )
I crouched behind a standing stone, bloodstained sword gripped tightly in a hand that had long since gone numb, torn between running for cover and making a mad, suicidal dash at the Sennite closest to me. Eight yards or so, I could make it before he cut me down... As long as he didn't hear me coming, as long as he didn't, for whatever reason, turn enough to see me coming...
The Sennites weren't the brightest crayons in the box, but they caught on pretty fast. They were firing random bursts into the trees, and it was enough. What was left of Goewynne's elves were falling from the branches like ripe fruit, if fruit poured blood from a dozen bullet wounds and tumbled screaming to the ground. Odin lay motionless some distance away, surrounded by a handful of Sennites who kept letting out wild war whoops and pumped his corpse full of bullets. I couldn't see where the others had gone.
I couldn't keep hiding. I had to move. Shifting my hold on the sword so I could grip the hilt with both hands, I stepped out from behind the standing stone, blade rising. The Sennite turned. Saw me. Leered. And raised the machine gun he'd been cradling in his hands. I stood frozen in place, pitiful and helpless, a Native American looking confusedly into the barrel of the white man's musket.
Then April came flying in out of nowhere; a flash of steel, the glittering arc of a sword blade on its downstroke, and suddenly the Sennite dropped his gun and both of his hands with it. He screamed, blood pumping from the stumps of his wrist, and stumbled back. April looked away, her face blank and white with the kind of shock that allowed her to function in battle nowadays. She spotted me, grabbed my arm, started to drag me away.
"We have to go, David. We're losing. We have to go."
I knew she was right. "Fall back," I yelled. "Fall back, retreat!" But there was no one left to hear me. And like the coward that I knew was curled tightly in the heart of my being, I ran.
Another Author's Note: Told ya it'd be short. Bah David. The real story starts in the next chapter. And here are the lyrics, as promised.
by the Smashing Pumpkins
candy cane walks down
to build a bonfire, to break my fall
my baby, my sweet thing
just maybe we could lose ourselves this time
king of the horseflies, dark prince of death
his tragic forces are heaven sent
in sweet things, in a lovers breath
in knowing this was meant to be the last
a go-go-kids, a go-go-style
a suck suck kiss, a suck suck smile
as always, in young need
a veiled promise to never die
on dead highways, her black beauties roam
for june angels, so far from home
for a love lost, a faded picture
to tread lightning, to in the lavender skies
so get on the bomb
get back where you belong