Finding
Perdita
by
April Grey
Genre:
Dark Urban Fantasy
Fairy
Tales can come true, it can happen to you...Run!
Down
on her luck and out-of-work, actress Cindy White's life changes for
the worse when her roommate kicks her out. Landing in new digs in an
old Chelsea tenement Cindy discovers a tunnel to the land of Perdita,
a place she'd thought her father had made up in the fairy tales he'd
once told her.
A
dangerous, ruined place of fairies, demons and captives, like her
father who she thought was dead.
In
this dark fantasy, a young woman discovers her true self and must
align it with the old in leaving the world she knows behind in an
effort to free her father.
She
stripped out of her wet clothes and ran a bath. In the note Sadie
said to use up whatever was in the apartment. So be it. One of the
old style cabinets revealed a collection of booze and there was soda
in the fridge. With a medicinal rum and coke in hand, Cindy eased
into the steaming tub.
A
furious thumping on the front door roused her from her peace.
Knocking? More like the men in blue had decided on an unannounced
raid. "Hold your horses." Cindy, wrapped in a
towel, headed through the kitchen to find out who was making such a
noise.
"Sadie,
hurry up I got news," came a bass voice from the other side of
the door.
"She's
not here. What do you want?"
Silence
for a long minute.
"Who
in blazing hell are you?"
Well,
with that attitude Mister Voice could stay where he was in the
hallway.
"I’m
the sub-lessee. Now go away. You can ask the Weird Sisters what’s
going on."
"You
let me in this moment. You’re in danger and you’ve got to get
out."
"Nice
try, buster. I’m not buying it." She heard footsteps leaving.
It was
getting dark out, yet the kitchen clock said it was only 4:10 in the
afternoon. After getting dressed in a semi-dry tee and shorts, Cindy
searched through Sadie's store of snack foods. The nacho-flavored
Doritos looked good.
Bag in
hand, she froze when she heard a key in the lock. Too late, she ran
to put the chain on the door. He was in. Oh my, he was a big one. He
looked like an escapee from the World Wrestling Federation. She took
a frying pan from the stovetop and held it over her head with the bag
of Doritos clutched to her breast.
"What
are you planning to do? Poison me?" He nodded at the Doritos. He
was taller than Josh's six feet one. He had about 20 pounds on Josh,
all in muscle. His black tee displayed rippled biceps. His
reddish-gold hair, mustache and sideburns made him look like a cross
between a Confederate Rebel and a 70’s rock musician. She held the
frying pan higher. He slid past her. "I don’t know what you’re
planning, but I like my eggs over easy." A comedian.
"Get
out." Cindy waved the pan.
"We
need to talk. I don’t know what Sadie told you, but this place
isn’t safe and she shouldn’t have involved you."
Cindy
stayed near the open door still holding her weapon.
"Go
ahead, talk." Cindy lay the bag of Doritos on the kitchen
counter only to have them snatched up by the stranger. He ripped them
open. With a wink he held half the nachos from the bag in his
bear-like paw. In the living room he plopped down, taking up the
entire couch.
"How
much did Sadie tell you?" he said with a mouthful of neon
orange-colored crunchy corn triangles.
"Thor,
she doesn’t know anything." Cindy whipped around to see her
neighbor, Leo, standing in the hallway.
"Tor?
Like a granite outcropping?" Cindy asked.
"No,
Thor like the god." The intruder smirked. “The “h” is
silent―It’s the Scandinavian pronunciation, unlike the Marvel
movies.”
April
Grey's short stories are collected in The Fairy Cake Bakeshop and in
I'll Love You Forever. She is also the author of two urban fantasy
novels: Chasing the Trickster and it's sequel, St. Nick's Favor.
She
edited the anthologies: Hell's Bells: Wicked Tunes, Mad Musicians and
Cursed Instruments; Hell's Garden: Mad, Bad and Ghostly Gardeners,
Hell's Grannies: Kickass Tales of the Crone and last year's, Hell's
Kitties and Other Beastly Beasts.
She
and her family live in Hell's Kitchen, NYC in a building next to a
bedeviled garden. Gremlins, sprites or pixies, something mischievous,
lurks therein. Someday she'll find out. Please visit
www.aprilgrey.blogspot for her latest news.
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