Teagan's Books

Saturday, December 23, 2023

It’s wonderful to see you in Atonement, TN and reading this serial.  Whether you love the holidays and are happy that it’s only a couple of days before Christmas — or if you’re glad it’s finally almost over, I hope you’re having a wonderful holiday season, with joy to in your world. 

Geoff Le Pard, author of wildly imaginative limericks and stories, left a mindful “soundtrack” offering with a Joni Mitchell song — Both Sides now.  Geoff commented that with Pepper’s near miss with death, she had looked at things from both sides. It turns out he was right. 

Ahead

This episode brings us back to the unconscious Pepper Riley and the pondering of Maudie Rocket.

Previously

“We’ll have to leave their safety in Cade’s hands.  I hope he doesn’t abuse the situation,” Bheema added.

Deme’s bright blue eyes bulged worriedly.  She took a breath and then hurried back toward the boathouse.

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Episode 2 — Both Sides Now

Pepper

Inside the boathouse, dust motes glittered on sunbeams.  With the abrupt whooshing of a blanket being shaken out, the specks danced furiously.  Spike leapt and twirled just like the dust motes, trying to catch the blanket.  Distantly, I wondered where Maudie had found it.  Looking down, I watched her tuck the blanket around my unconscious form.

It didn’t occur to me to be concerned, although I felt bemused to realize that I was somehow looking down at myself.  I was still me, there on the boathouse floor.  Yet, I was at the same time, me — astral, autoscopic me, and somewhere else.

A little piglet that glowed softly in the shadows.  Somehow, I was sure she was one of the three from the parking lot of the Rowdy Rooster, when that disgusting biker tried to run over them.  Then I remembered seeing the same pigs the night I arrived in Atonement, Tennessee.

The streets had been deserted.  I considered running the light, but then a small pale figure darted across the road.  It was followed by two more.  They were so fast that I didn’t get a good look at them.

It must have been dogs, I had told myself.

While I waited for the light to change, I cracked open the window.  I heard the sound of grunting and snorting.  Grunt-grunt snort-snort repeated several times.  In my imagination the grunts and snorts started to sound like Wel-come Pep-per, wel-come Pep-per.

My focus returned to Maudie, who was crouched down beside the pig.  Surprisingly, they were talking — both of them.

“Maudie Rocket, put some of this in your ears, just to be safe,” the pig’s voice drifted up to me.

“Eew!  Deme, as long as you’re sure it’s just wax,” Maudie commented to her.

Their conversation continued for a moment, but I didn’t pay attention.  It was hard to keep my mind on any one thing, because I felt the attraction of so many distant places and people.

Maudie nodded a final assurance to the pig.  Belatedly, I wondered what had brought such a whimsically magical creature to the boathouse.  However, the pig had already scampered away.

Sounding far away, as if through a mist of clouds, I could hear Maudie’s voice.  She shook her head saying I had changed.  It felt like a strange thing for my best friend to say.

“Still warm at least…” she murmured in a forlorn voice as she put her fingertips to my forehead.  “Pepper, I’m sure you’re in there somewhere, still alive.  I know you died for a couple of minutes when that arrow hit you.  But right now, I’m starting to think that you just decided to go back…  Back to wherever souls go,” she sniffled and wiped her nose.

I looked down curiously at her form bowed over my motionless body.  Her dyed blonde hair was in disarray, something she would never allow.

“Pepper, we’ve been best friends all our lives.  All our lives, I thought you were the strong one, even though you said that I was,” she went on and shook her head again.

“But you’ve changed…  Through any give and take, good and bad, every time you managed.  You found a way to cope.  Even if coping was to deny all the weird shit that you and I could always see…  Stuff nobody else could see.  You bore the burden of pretending to be normal.  While I, on the other hand, pretended that I understood.  I embraced being ‘flighty Maudie’ and the oddball shit was part of my personality — or so everyone thought,” she wiped her eyes and gave a derisive snort.

“Ha.  I pretended myself right into the arms of a sugar vampire, and then I was the cause of you coming here.  I know you inherited things from Uncle Salty.  You were close to him, when I never was.  But if it hadn’t been for me falling for that sugar vampire, you would probably have handled all the legal stuff from Uncle Salty’s will through a lawyer and never come her yourself.  So, it really is my fault,” she muttered with another sniffle.

Maudie’s tone altered from self-recrimination to hope.  She seemed to entreat my spirit to return.  Although I still felt the desire to leave.

“Pepper, this place — it’s enough to make anybody dizzy, but it feels like every fairy tale comes real.  And you… you’re just in denial about all of it.  Like you think it’s an illusion.  Like it’s just a show, and you’ll leave them laughing when you go,” she said and sighed.

“I know you gave up your career.  You couldn’t keep pretending to be like all the snobs and posers that were around you.  I can’t imagine how unhappy you must have been.  I get that you think you’re a failure.  You lost things and people that you cared about deeply.  But what did that song say?  ‘Something’s lost, but something’s gained, in living every day.’  I know we lost Uncle Salty here, but despite that, Atonement seems like a place where you have everything to gain — if you’ll just open up and let yourself!” she added with anger in her voice.

I watched as she put her hands on my shoulders and shook my body.

I felt sad for my best friend, my cousin.  Other than Uncle Salty, Maudie was the only one in the family who understood me.  We understood each other.

Still… it’s better to stay here.  I don’t feel the wound, and I don’t feel that other kind of pain either.  Better to feel nothing.

However, her remarks pricked at my soul, a nagging truth I couldn’t ignore.  As I looked at my life from both sides, I knew Maudie was right.

Yes, I had changed — I lost the fighting spirit I once had.  Life was too much.  All my struggles had been pointless.  However, that realization did not bring me back to my body.  Instead, I nestled down farther into the security of that strange between place where my mind had gone.  I no longer saw Maudie, or my own motionless form.  The soft darkness was comforting.

After a while, I heard Maudie and a man whose voice I didn’t recognize.  They both called my name.  They called insistently, but I felt quite distant from their voices.  The sound of my name made me want to move even farther away.  I didn’t want to go back.

Then I became aware of violin music.  The notes slid down the scale and vibrated at the base of my spine.  It was as if the notes were a hunter, tracking me.  I felt the music’s touch and with it, the bottom dropped from my stomach as it spun me around like a Ferris wheel, dizzily dancing.  I tried to pull free, but the music yanked me up through feathered canyons, through clouds that streamed like flows of angel hair.

I felt my wounded chest and my devastated pride, and with it the tears on my face.  All my fears reverberated anew, pounding in my heart.

Flickering open, my blurry eyes beheld robed a form leaning over me.  A dark hood shrouded his face.  However, his amber eyes sparked from that shadow, latching on to mine, preventing me going back to the between place.

I tried, but I couldn’t look away from his strange eyes.  Gasping from a jolt of pain, I struggled to swallow fear and to breathe.

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I love to hear from you, so friendly comments are encouraged.  Merry Christmas.  Hugs!

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Atonement in Zugzwang, Book 1

If you haven’t followed the serial, the searchable Kindle (e-book) is a perfect way to start.  Likewise, if you want a refresher since this new serial is absolutely tied to Book-1, I’ve given you an easy way to catch up.

Universal Purchase Links
Kindle: relinks.me/B0CHNX2X6T

Paperback  relinks.me/B0CHL7DL6Q

The Rest of the Atonement Series

Atonement, Tennessee

Full series of e-books with one click:  relinks.me/B087JV25JT

Kindle:  relinks.me/B00HGWKRA8

Paperback: relinks.me/1481826948

Also in Spanish, translated by Olga Núñez Miret! The title for the Spanish-speaking market is Expiación y Magia

Atonement in Bloom

Kindle:  rxe.me/5RRBLH

Paperback:  relinks.me/1726882128

The Glowing Pigs, Snort Stories of Atonement, Tennessee

Kindle   rxe.me/LTBDNH

Paperback   relinks.me/1725891972

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This is a work of fiction.  Characters, names, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2023 by Teagan Ríordáin Geneviene

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