Title: The Red Bead
Author: Harper Kingsley
Chapter: 001
Genre: Alternate Universe
Rating: teen+
Summary: The story of the Lothams as seen through the eyes of their faithful lackey Lee. From beginning to bloody end.
001–
Every day of the week except Tuesday and Thursday, I hang around the living room with my brother getting high.
How the hell did my life become this steaming pile of shit? I have no fucking idea. It’s just one of those things that happened to me, like having brown hair and an inescapable love of stupid cartoons.
Which is what I was watching. My brother’s passed out on the couch and I’m watching stupid cartoons while a candle flickers in my left eye.
It’s at times like this that my mind folds in on itself and I can’t help thinking of this boy I used to know, back when I was a girl and dinosaurs walked the Earth. It seems like forever ago, that time when I was fifteen.
Everything seemed so much easier then, even though I wanted to throw my head back and scream every moment of every day. I hated the WORLD then, and I was about 100% sure that the world hated me back. I wanted to go out and burn everything down, to walk with thunder feet and send people tumbling down to their knees in my wake.
Now I just feel tired. Tired and lonely and old.
I cursed and tamped out the still burning weed with the end of the lighter. It’s a bright yellow Bic that belongs to my brother along with the weed I’m smoking up.
I feel bad sometimes that I don’t have any money to pay for my share, but life’s been pretty much the suck for me and there’s nothing I can do about that. I’m fucking poor, and it doesn’t seem to be getting any better no matter what I try to do.
Holding my laptop onto my lap with my right hand, I leaned forward to put the pipe and lighter on the table next to Keith’s coffee mug. Then I went back to tooling around the Internet, visiting and revisiting the same websites and forums I always do.
Sometimes it seems as though the voices of the Internet are controlling me. I’m trapped forever in my obsessions and my supreme inanities.
The thought brings a smile to my lips.
After an hour wasted on Cracked.com, I click the Thunderbird icon on the bottom of my screen and check my mail.
Just the usual stuff–digests from mailing list that I immediately delete without looking at, advertisements from like Amazon and tech websites, then there it is. A header I hadn’t seen in a long time but that I’ve never forgotten.
Subject: Is that you Eli?
I don’t know how he does it, but he always finds me. I’ve changed my primary email address at least five times and I’ve never responded to any of his messages, but he always finds me.
My darling Vlamindar.
[table “6” not found /]