Angel’s Gate is only 8 months away. 8 months from now and I get to share the first of the ShadowGate with the world. 8 months….feels like a lifetime away. I know you’re anxious to finally have a chance to read Angel’s Gate, so here’s the first 500 words to hold you over for a while.
“Life wasn’t supposed to move this fast. From birth to death so quickly. It was all too fast, too…over. So many words had been left unspoken, so many questions still unasked. So many things still unresolved between them, but now…now there was no more time. One sentence…one sentence had changed her life, shattered everything. Four words, one death and everything she had worked so hard to achieve seemed worthless.
Your mother is dead.
For AG Morris those words had stolen everything.
Four words and here she stood waiting for a flight to take her back to the one place she had never wanted to return. A flight that would take her home. Home…no…no, it wasn’t home. Not now. Her mother was gone.
Around her was movement, life, sound. Laughter. There shouldn’t have been laughter. Shouldn’t the world have stopped along with her own grief? The weight inside of her seemed to expand, compressing her lungs until she felt she couldn’t breathe. The grief was so huge it should have compressed the entire world. But it didn’t. The pain was only inside of her. The loss was only inside of her.
She wished those words could be erased from her mind, that they could be taken back. That she could return to that morning when everything was alright. When it mattered that the sun was shining, that she was breathing. The words didn’t fade, they didn’t go away.
So much time had been lost, there were so many things she had meant to say. So many apologies she had meant to make. Now she would never be able to apologize for words once spoken in anger. She would never be able to close the gap they had both pretended wasn’t there. She would never be able to forgive her mother for the abnormal childhood she had lived. She would never be able to ask why. Why an intelligent woman would carve spells into the window sills to ward off demons and to bind angels. She would never know now why her mother had hated her father so much that she had never even whispered his name.
Your mother is dead.
AG closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the wall. The waiting area near the terminal gate was over crowded. There were no open seats, but she didn’t care. She didn’t care that she was sitting on the floor, shoved into a corner between a stroller with a cranky two year old and an early twenty something that smelled like weed. All she wanted was to turn back time. She would have done anything to be at home, in her own house, in her own bed, and not there. Anything.
She opened her eyes slowly, hugging her knees. She watched a pair of teenagers walk across the terminal, heads bowed over their smart phones, but she wasn’t really seeing them. She wasn’t seeing anything. She was just…waiting. Waiting for her flight and waiting to wake up from what she knew wasn’t a dream. She was just…” – Angel’s Gate by L. Becker
Coming Halloween 2020
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The ShadowGate: Enter and be saved…
