Chapter 1 of Under A Killing Moon

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The First Dream

Night time on the streets, snow and ash are falling, pooling about your feet as you walk. Its cold, bitterly so, the chill like a knife in your chest with every breath. All around you the buildings rise tall and thin like crooked grey teeth, lightless and dead. The only light from motes and sparks from a distant fire, hidden beyond the twisted shadow buildings. And the moon. The moon looms huge and brilliant, close enough to see a twisted whorl has been hacked into its surface, lambent quicksilver blood seeping up from the wound and dripping down onto the world. And then you wake up…

Waking

First to wake is Jerome, stunned and uneasy, shaking off the sensation of being trapped in the endless now of the dream for what felt like an eternity. He coasted through waking and readying himself to face the world until shaken out of his thoughts by his mom’s mothering.

As Jerome made his way to Freddy’s Fixit Shop for work, Annabel from the dream with a violent start that sent her sleepig bag and her cat flying and set the car alarm blaring. She silenced the device by pulling a few wires, calmed the startled cat and corralled it into her backpack, before heading for Memorial Park to play the sympathy card to well-off types and score enough money to eat.

Michael stirred from his third experience of the dream, worn thin and tired as sleep brought no rest. He tired to sneak out of the house to avoid drawing the attention of his father, and, when that failed, simply ran. The library would be warm and could wait until the bar opened there, where would be no-one to bother him.

Finally, Ethan, catching some sleep in a quiet room while waiting for the second half of a split shift. He refused to react to the dream, pushed it down into the well of everything else that wasn’t relevant and focussed on getting whatever food he could before he had to get back to the ER.

Needful Things

Later that afternoon, Anabell encountered Jacob. He was twitchier than usual, eyes dark with lack of sleep or withdrawal, and complaining about the cold. The police and city response to Sandoval’s disappearance was making things difficult – sure, loads of poor and homeless folks disappear and no-one cares but one teacher disappears into the Vaults and people start doing things. It would blow over soon enough, once the news found some other thing to care about, but they were hassling people, blocking accessways, sending dealers to ground. The hooch wasn’t cutting it and Jacob recruited Anabell to come help scam pain meds from the ER.

They weren’t very good at it, but they didn’t need to be. Felicity Memorial was understaffed and underfunded, and Jacob’s claims of pain from a broken arm was enough to get past the triage nurse who had more important things to care about. It was early evening by the time they were seen by Dr Clarke and things did not go well. Jacob’s story changed several times, from a new break to a sprain to an old break that never healed right, which was revealed by examination to be true. Anabell’s moral support for her poor injured friend becoming cajoling as Ethan wavered on how to help a man obviously in pain when it wasn’t essential medical care and they obviously had no insurance.

Uneasy and unsettled by something he could not identify, Ethan left the two in the examination room to seek advice from his superior Dr Monroe, accidentally leaving his prescription pad behind in a moment of distraction. Anabell seized the opportunity, copying the signature from its pressure indentation and making a counterfeit script for Vicodin, that she stuffed into a pocket just in time as the doctors returns. Dr Monroe took a long look over the room and sent Anabell and Jacob on their way with information on an addiction support group. Once alone with Ethan, she gave him a sharp warning about taking care of his equipment. The paperwork for whatever script had been made would get lost the system, but Dr Monroe made it abundantly clear that if anything like that happened again there would be serious consequences.

Paths Crossing in the Night

Late that evening, Ethan took a walk to clear his head before driving home and spotted Jacob watching him from an alleyway, battered and worn even thinner than before. He ignored the vagrant, angry at being conned and chewed out, and walked on. Footsteps behind him. Jacob, closeby, shivering and muttering so cold, so cold it burns. Unable to bring himself to walk away, Ethan draped his coat about the man and started to call 911 for an ambulance as his muttering grew odder – so cold, so hungry, its hungry, so hungry. Just as the operator picked up the call, the phone was knocked from Ethan’s hand as Jacob lunges at him and bites down on the flesh of his arm…

People Appearing

  • Jerome Gévoudan (first appearance) – Unsettled by dreams.
  • Jerome’s mother (first appearance) – Trying her best for the family.
  • Anabell McCullogh (first appearance) – Surviving any way she can.
  • Michael O’Connell (first appearance) – Keeping his head down.
  • Ethan Clarke (first appearance) – Facing the challenges of helping within a callous system.
  • Jacob (first appearance) – Worn down, on edge, needed a fix.
  • Cynthia Monroe (first appearance) – Managing the ER to help as many as she can.

Locations