Mechelle Morrison's Blog: in a world where ....

Writing science fiction would be considered 'that quaint thing the ancestors did.' I mean, who needs it if you're living it, right? We'd all hang breathless on the horizon of discovery ... new worlds, new creatures, new plants, new problems. Reality would surpass imagination at the speed of light. When you needed a break from all the crazy strangeness bombarding you 24/7, like, say, the twelve-eyed four-fingered, 14-nostriled zorphomods that photosynthesize only blue-star energy recently discovered in Andromeda on Planet Ten, or even the internet, you'd pull out a copy of Zane Grey and breathe a sigh of bliss.

Curiosity would be tangible currency. People who wanted to know, wanted to learn, wanted to go where no one has gone before ... these would be the people for whom opportunity comes knocking and remains constantly so.

Visiting friends would be a once-in-a-lifetime-if-that adventure. I see my European friends maybe every five years (how they can afford international travel that often is another issue all together), but if I had friends on Mars or Io or drifting about in a neighboring galaxy? I doubt I could save that many vacation days ... let alone take them. I work a hell-job after all.

The laws that would crop up could be daunting, like where your spaceship can and cannot park, who you pay when ticketed for parking in the wrong place, or whether you can marry Bob from Zarahemla's second moon. Unless we find a way to self-correct, about a zillion new varieties of racism might form. It sounds exhausting, I know, but if there's one thing humans seem to love to dis it's other humans ... you know, the ones branded 'them' as opposed to 'us.'

I have faith in us (and them), and firmly believe we'll be past all that long before we're star-citizens--it's my childhood vision and by God I'm holding on to it. In fact I vote that in the not-so-distant future, I mean, like, next year, we spread our arms wide and embrace all living things as equal. Even dolphins and golden moles. We could exemplify this new, fresh shift in vision by voting out nationalism and voting in the 1960s Coke ad jingle as THE anthem suitable for a small blue planet drifting all alone in unfathomable space. We are all we've got, after all.

Google '1960s Coke ad song.' You'll see what I mean.

I spend a lot of time puzzling out how to connect the dots underlying why people do things, which probably explains why I like to write. Writing, if I were to define it unofficially, is a way of following threads from the fabric of LIFE; a way to examine the REASONS behind why people are what they are and why they do what they do: why they are good or hideous; happy or melancholy, miserable or carefree, driven or lazy.

The interesting thing, or maybe the bizarre thing, is that I would GUESS that people don't often know why they are who they are ... it takes MUCH inner strength to hold your own in this world. I find this the key challenge of creating characters: making them RECOGNIZABLE to others even though they are not always recognizable to themselves.

But I digress ....

I've been an artist from birth, but defining the KIND of artist I am is difficult. I only know I need to create, and whether it's a garden or a painting or a novel or a clean kitchen, CREATING is the pleasure, and when I'm done with a creation, I move on to the next. There are so many ideas waiting in the wings.

This probably explains why I self-publish. I don't come from money and I didn't marry into it (I work a full-time day job). I didn't graduate a masters program in writing; I graduated a state university with a BFA in graphic design. I don't have hours each day to market myself on the internet--I'd rather spend that time CREATING. I do manage a daily post on Instagram and an occasional blog here on Goodreads. Admittedly, I like my fingers in the dirt of reality :-)

When I write, I give myself over to the world I'm creating, and after I've edited a manuscript about a thousand times (NOT an exaggeration, BTW), I force myself to send it off to ONE beta reader and my mother (who was once an editor). I take all suggestions with a grain of salt, usually re-write about a third of my story, then labor over the self-pubbing rules of CREATESPACE (now Author Central) because every time I'm ready to publish the whole system has changed. I re-learn photoshop (I rarely use it other than to make my covers) and design a cover, upload everything then press PUBLISH.

Writing a novel is exhausting but worth it ... I have four books now and each one of them spins some secret from my life into a story. Pressing PUBLISH is daunting: it embeds a piece of my soul in the fabric of the world, forever. But publishing is the only way to feel 'finished,' so I do it.

My current WIP is called Earth, Alone. It's the sequel to SEEDS, and yes, I'm on edit 100+. I can't seem to help myself when it comes to editing, but the best way to describe it is like smoothing a VERY wrinkly cloth over a table. (So many wrinkles). Earth, Alone will appear on Amazon one of these days (probs not until 2021 or 22), I'll have a give-away and a few of you fabulous Goodreaders will get a free copy.

It's the same for me with painting ... which I try to do every day (small paintings in my sketchbook). I'll confess that for years, I had this dream that I wanted to have a solo art show, so I submitted my work to a few local places until I got myself a show. I then worked (after work and on weekends), for a solid TWO YEARS to get the art ready. When my show was over I was happy and felt pleased, but I didn't want to do another solo show (kudos to you, Georgia O'Keeffe, for solo shows spanning DECADES). I did, however, end up with my work in a small gallery.

Lately I feel my artistic journey coming into focus for the first time in MANY years. It's a bit scary, but I'll see where it takes me. In the meantime, THANK YOU, Goodreaders, for following along.

What is your artistic journey? I'd love to know.

The scene: 1:07 a.m., November 21, and my daughter stands in our bedroom shouting 'what the hell is wrong with you people?"

Here's how it went from there:
I calmly sat up (if you have kids, you know this is the pavlovian reaction to any and every middle-of-the-night awakening) and asked, 'what's up, sweetie?'

My husband, who as usual, opted to reach for his cell phone, busied himself with something while our daughter ranted in no uncertain terms that we must be DEAF or IDIOTS because the alarm had gone off and BLARED for a solid five minutes before going silent.

'Sorry about that," I said. My daughter threw her hands in the air and stomped back to her bedroom.

But my curiosity was piqued.

"It triggered in the laundry room," my husband volunteered as if reading my mind. I huffed. TG for his cell phone.

In case you're interested, it's always ME padding down the hall to check out triggered alarms (which I usually hear), crying children, odd bumps in the night or mysterious scratching noises; my husband mans the phone. On NOV 21 the wind was apocalyptic, and every inch of my part of the planet was rattling (the reason I slept through the alarm, I suppose). Once I reached the laundry room I realized the door to the garage was unlocked, and I figured the wind had pushed it and triggered the alarm, so I locked the door and made my way back to bed.

Now I'll admit, at the time I was glad the alarm company didn't send the police, because I would have had to wait around for them then serve coffee while I explained the whole thing. BUT. The experience put a gnawing question center stage in my thoughts: Why am I paying for an alarm when a courtesy turn-off and a message on my cell phone (and my husband's) was ADT's idea of follow-up to a triggered alarm that we did not turn off with the code? (The message said: 'This is ADT. We're just calling to check that you're okay.')

Um, seriously? What if the alarm had been triggered by a crazed psycho who, AS ADT KINDLY TURNED OFF THE ALARM AND LEFT A MESSAGE ON MY CELL PHONE, rampaged unfettered in my house? I mean, there's a reason why I'm the one who jumps out of bed and wanders down the hall, but the reason is NOT to meet a crazed psycho.

I never did get back to sleep that night because (a) the wind and (b) I laid there wondering WHY I pay good money for some dude on the other side of the country to over-ride my alarm then call my cell phone (which goes silent after 10) and leave a message asking if I'm okay.

What keeps you up at night?

Good evening, Goodreaders.

Having at last mailed 10 free copies of KAIROS to 10 individuals located in 10 of these United States, I can turn my attention to the riveting topic of the night: life lessons we might gain from chatting with the Ancestors.

Naturally, I've no idea from where your immediate ancestors derive, though I do know that if we go back far enough it doesn't matter; we all came out of Africa and before that, we were rodent-like subterranean creatures living literally under the feet of dinosaurs and before that, well, we were slimy little things dragging ourselves from the primordial soup for a breath of a recently new-fangled environmental development called oxygen. All the successful primordial-soup folk were trying it.

Quite frankly, chatting with the primordial folk would be nothing short of dull by our standards, as beyond the obvious observations about the lack of cars or fingernail clippers or shared language, anything crawling fresh from primordial soup has, at minimum, only the vaguest sense of anyone or anything beyond itself and ... oh. Wait. Perhaps we've not crawled that far after all.

Turning our attention to the furry varmints who, by sheer will of survival, learned to live subterranean in order to avoid the 30 ton teeth roaming above ground. Chatting with our ancestral varmints might prove far more insightful than our distant, primordial slime relatives. I mean, picture the adorable Pika--only armed with seriously long incisors--dashing about, here, there, here, there, moving stuff from one place to another and back again. Surely a prehistoric Pika would have things ... wait Whoa. I see the similarities in this one, too.

BUT, say we go back only as far as Africa, which we've all heard of and maybe even visited and can therefore relate to on some level. There the Ancestors lived in trees to avoid large predators until they figured out, through trial-and-error team-building exercises, how to get along and basically work as a group. They then fashioned tools and instantly began crossing each other's boundaries because the stuff on the other side seemed oh-so-much-better than the stuff on their side seemed to be and .... Dang.

Let's stick with the recent Ancestors. Mine are basically Brits who emigrated from the wild, warring blurry line between England and Scotland only to find themselves plunked down in the equally hazy line of Kentucky. There, after mingling with the Natives, they again gathered up their meager belongings and wandered, ON FOOT, mind you, across the yet undivided continental U.S. to land in SLC where they were instantly branded among the poor and nameless by one Brigham Young, and, as a result, were immediately dispatched to 'build up' godless places like northern Wyoming and central Idaho. If there's one thing Brigham hated, it was the poor.

This assessment has left me eerily unclear as to whether a chat with the Ancestors would prove me or anyone else to be better off than whatever crawled out of the soup, but what IS clear is that no matter how much the soup has complicated in the last billion years, whatever drove us from the soup in the first place remains basically unchanged.

There is HOPE, however, because if you watch Queer Eye (and it would be odd not to), you know that to change your perspective is to change EVERYTHING and that, my good-reading-friends, is the beautiful truth of any being in any age.

What were your Ancestors like?

The KAIROS giveaway has come to a close, leaving in its wake ten fine folk destined to receive a free copy in the mail.

Whoo hoo!

Realistically speaking, the books will ship on Saturday, each one carefully labeled to the addresses that you, dear winners, listed in your entries.

Admittedly my secret dream is that the winners, who abide in states ranging from sea to shining sea, will each post a review and rate my book. When it comes to book reviews, I value the opinions of strangers far more than those of friends and family. Objectivity is hard to find in this world, so I take it where I can.

To those of you who didn't win ...there will be other chances with other books, and some of them mine! I'm not prolific, (an ox-is-slow-but-the-earth-is-patient sort of thing), and good things come to those who wait.

And here's a bit of trivia to chew on, seeing as it's late and sometimes I fall asleep best while ruminating over trivial things: who said, "the ox is slow but the earth is patient?" Can you name the movie ... and the actors?

Some curiosities to help bide the fingernail-biting time:

-When I was sixteen I was caller number *whatever* and won a hundred dollars from a local radio station. I was so shy to give my name over the phone that I instantly hung up.

-Every year at my husband's company summer party I win the Target gift certificate or restaurant certificate or some such certificate. He doesn't win anything!

-Whenever my daughter has the unexpected good thing happen I see it in her eyes long before she has the chance to tell me with words. I LOVE this about being a parent ... that I know my child so well I read her like a book :-)

What are your curious good thing or winning stories?

I know. Dinosaurs are a thing of the past; they WAY BACK past, like, so far back our puny human brains can't grasp the time span. And since we're on the subject, I think I can say with confidence that because dinosaur existence is so distant as to leave only fossilized bones to tell their stories, dinosaurs are probably the most glamorized, romanticized, cartoon-ized, bad-assed-ized, and demonized reatily-based Earthlings to ever walk the planet.

Dinos were uber-successful as a species, BTW. Far more than we are likely to be. I mean, they were around for about 150 million years, and the whole time, they lived in environmental harmony with Mother Nature (until the mammoth asteroid arrived, anyway). To put it in comparison, we've been wandering about for maybe 150,000 years and we've pretty much brought the planet to its knees.

But I digress .....

It's the horror of dino teeth, most likely. Followed by the humongous body size. Giant gnashing teeth and monstrous bodies with claws are the things that have made dinosaurs the stuff of nightmares and stars of big-screen action films. I shudder to admit that Barney did a good job of making Tyrannosaurus Rex a cuddly friend, but let's just call that an anomaly.

I've read lots of non-fiction books about dinosaurs, mainly because from about the age of six and up into my thirties, my recurring stress dreams ALWAYS starred a T-Rex. Always. I had a T-Rex nibbling my paralyzed toes long before Stephen Spielberg thought of it. Just sayin'.

I studied dinos because I wanted to understand what it was about them that made my little-girl-brain spew stress in the form of a munching, twenty-ton beast hell-bent on eating me. I never thought I'd get to the bottom of things until I watched the Ken Burns documentary on Vietnam.

The light bulb went ON!!!

Maybe you didn't watch the documentary. A pity if you didn't. But for me, the amazing realization was that Vietnam was my dinosaur. That the war turned out to be the T-Rex of my nightmares is a story too long to get into here, so rather than digress, I'll make my point: my brain, like so many brains before and after mine, took something too real and horrid to comprehend and turned it into something fictional, fantastical and extinct, aka, something a six-year-old could control.

What is your strongest childhood dream, and how long did it follow you into adulthood?

p.s. have you ever watched a documentary on komodo dragons? For sure those things descended from the pure dino gene pool. Chickens, too, now that I think on it ...

I grew up in Utah. At the time, I didn't know it was the only state in the country basically ruled by a religion. I didn't know it has the highest melanoma rate in the U.S. And I didn't know that except for the Wasatch Front corridor (about 75 miles), Utah's population demographic is 'rural' or 'frontier.' (frontier = six or fewer people per square mile).

I knew that Utah's wilderness was pristine (not as much now as when I was a kid ... you could still find sego lilies back then). That southern Utah is one of the most fabulous places on the planet (Moab, Zions, Bryce, Escalante, Bears Ears, Monument Valley, Goblin Valley, Lake Powell, Snow Canyon ... the list goes on and on and on). That northern Utah is 'the greatest snow on earth,' though my favorite thing in northern Utah is Antelope Island (do NOT go there in the spring, people. The bugs will devour you alive.) That mountains are beautiful and terrifying (dense forests freak me out for reasons too complex to get into here).

My favorite things to do as a kid: Lying on the grass and staring into the sky in hopes of seeing something invisible become visible. Catching lizards, snakes and grasshoppers in the summertime quest for the perfect neighborhood zoo. Making tents out of my mother's heirloom quilts (I caught it for that one).

My least favorite things to do as a kid: Housework, especially emptying the dishwasher. Babysitting (I'm the oldest of six). Returning things to old-lady neighbors. Dressing up (seriously, I could wear pajamas all day).

We all start somewhere ... where did you grow up?

Barbed wire sucks.

I prick my finger as I separate the strands, lifting one while stepping on another so that I can dip between the two the way the others did. I come away bleeding and with a small rip in my shirt.

It doesn’t matter. Looking across the dark landscape, a thrill races through me. I’ve been itching to come here, though I can’t explain why—it’s not like this is my first dinosaur dig site. There’s no moon tonight, so I don’t think we’ll get caught, but if Mom finds out I’m here she’ll be furious. She runs a tight ship and this site is her restricted-access baby.

I smile to myself. With luck she’ll catch the others—the kids we’re following. It’ll make her mad as hell, so mad that even if she catches me, she won’t have anger to burn.

Beck leads the way, so I ask as loud as I dare, “You know who we’re after, right? Why do you think they snuck in here?”

He slows until he’s alongside me. “My bet is they’re from school.”

I glance at him, trying to make out his espresso-colored eyes and stellar hair, and walk straight into a clump of sagebrush.

He laughs, “You okay?”

“Yeah.” But I feel stupid. It’s our first date. I know him, if sharing a few classes together qualifies as knowing, which is more than I can say for his friends, Cam and Olivia. I just met them an hour ago.

“Kate’s one of them,” Olivia whispers. “She runs like a guy so she’s easy to pick out. They went in that tent.”

“You mean they went in that moth magnet,” Cam corrects. He scrubs his fingers through his hair, and the muscles in his back flex. I stare at him. Weird, how I noticed that, even through his shirt and with the help of only starlight.

“The tent’s called Central,” I say quietly. Central is Mom’s name for her office and lab, no matter where it is. I haven’t been in this Central, but I’d guess it’s her usual set up. From a distance, it looked like a giant lantern floating in the night. Now we’re close enough that its glow helps light the way. The people we’re following went in, but they haven’t come out, and Mom’s red Jeep is parked to one side of the tent. My guess is she’s got them cornered.

An owl hoots as we peek through the tent flaps. No one is there. In fact the place is empty, except for spotlights and a few moths. No tools or racks of tagged specimens. No desks. Just a thick white hatchway door that lies open to reveal a hole in the ground.

We creep into the tent and stand around the hole, looking in. The view gives me butterflies—it’s a long way down to a brightly lit white floor. Power cables snake from under the tent and into the hole to drop alongside a heavy rope ladder.

“You think they went down there?” Olivia asks.

“Who cares?” Cam says. “This is too good to pass up.” He steps onto the ladder and starts down.

“I’m staying here.” Olivia folds her arms across her chest.

“That makes you look-out,” Beck says.

Fear sparks in my chest as I watch him descend. Mom hasn’t said anything about an underground space, but the lack of tools and stuff makes me wonder what she’s up to. So after a few minutes of small talk with Olivia, I follow Beck.

I’ve gone ten steps down the ladder when the hole opens up to a large room about fifty feet high and as big as an arena. I finish my descent slowly, gawking at a vast circular wall paneled in random squares and rectangles from ceiling to floor. Dark doorways mark the perimeter at regular intervals, but other than that, the room is as white as five-star bed sheets. I’ve never seen anything like it.

I step from the ladder and into the center of the room. The floor is cushy underfoot, and there’s a second hatchway nearby. I peer in to see another ladder that leads to another white floor far below, then catch my breath when computer noises rise up, mingled with science chatter. Mom must be down there with her grad students and techs.

I’m about to ask Beck what now when rumbling sounds come from one of the dark doorways. Beck glances toward the noise just as a tall guy bursts from a doorway and into the room, screaming at us to “Get out of the way!” A girl follows after him.

The guy races across the floor, jumps for the ladder and climbs. The girl starts up the ladder, too. More people spill from the dark doorway, all of them shouting and pushing, all of them racing each other for the ladder. Maybe it’s instinct, but I move away from them. I’m still moving when the lights go out.


I’ve never experienced perfect darkness and from the sounds of it, neither has anyone else. The darkness fills with screams. So much fear heightens my senses in a bad way; it’s like listening to the soundtrack of a horror movie. Someone begs for a flashlight.

I shiver and rub my arms. Where is Beck?

I’m about to call for him when something touches me. My fear explodes and I freak out, flailing and shouting at nothing and everything. It takes a while to pull myself together and even then, my heart pounds like it wants to run.

“Calm down.” I yell it as much to myself as to the others. Whatever happened, Olivia is up there and she’ll get help.

If I could find the ladder, I could climb up and get help myself. I know how my mother runs a site. There’s a back-up lab, somewhere, and it’s got an emergency communication system. I open my eyes wide, searching for a hint of the ladder, but the black is so complete that I don’t even see shapes. I stretch my arms and turn around without blinking. I take a few steps forward, then stop. On a scale of one to ten the darkness is like, fifteen.

It’s possible that the hatchway closed. If that happened, it might have damaged the power cables or even disconnected them from the generators. I heard whipping sounds, come to think about it, just after the lights went. Then for a second the floor shook—what else but the cables could have hit with such force? But the power cables ran alongside the ladder. If they fell, did they bring the ladder down with them?

A girl shrieks, “My phone’s dead,” and I jump at the shrill edge in her voice. I’d forgotten about my phone. Rustling noises tell me I’m not the only one digging into a pocket.

I press the home button with shaking fingers. It doesn’t light. I tap it. Nothing happens. I thump it against my thigh as someone crashes into me. My phone slips from my grasp.

A husky voice asks, “Kate?”

“No.” I crouch and feel around for my phone. I can’t find it.

The guy shuffles on, shouting, “Hey, Kate? Where are you?”

I breathe in the darkness, filling my lungs. I shouldn’t be here for a lot of reasons. And this dig is restricted, which is unusual. Now I wish I knew why.

A voice calls, “Maya?”

I stand and turn toward my name. “Beck?” It’s weird how I can’t picture him. Dark hair, dark eyes—but the details aren’t there. I walk a few steps in the direction of his voice, trip over something and fall.

A guy screams, “Get off me, man.” He punches my leg.

I back away mumbling, “Sorry.” I think he’s crying.

“Maya!” Beck sounds scared or irritated or maybe both.

“Over here.” I sound the way I feel—impatient and annoyed.

Beck calls again, “Maya? Maya!”

“Beck. Over here.” I inch forward and step on something hard. When it doesn’t slap me I bend down and touch a twist of cable. I stand with a shiver of panic. I think we’re trapped.

I breathe in gulps, willing myself to stay calm. This place is constructed and constructed means the doorways along the wall lead somewhere, maybe even out. Not that I see any of it at the moment. I hold my hand in front of my face. It’s like I don’t exist.

“Maya?”

“Here, Beck.” I wave. Like it will do any good.

I sigh with relief when we find each other. Beck says, “It’ll be okay.” He touches me and I flinch, but I let him wrap his arms around my waist and pull my back to his chest. He smells like campfire smoke and sweat. “Until we know what’s going on,” he says, “stay still.”

There’s caution in his voice, but before I can question it, clicking noises echo in the black. Beck’s body tenses while people whisper, “What’s that?” The clicking grows louder, the sound wheeling over us like gulls over water.
Someone shouts, “Hey, Cam. That you clicking?”

“I’m not a clicker,” Cam says into the void.

Fear tingles my scalp. “If it isn’t one of us clicking, then what is it?”

“Hard to know,” Beck says.

We call out to each other and crowd together.

“It followed us,” a girl says in a trembling, squeaky voice. “It’s here.”

“What followed us?” Cam sounds curious more than anything.

Beck whispers, “Shhhh.” Everyone quiets.

The clicking continues—sometimes loud, sometimes soft. It must be an animal or maybe a bird. What if it sees by sonar? What if it’s fast? If it’s a giant bat I’ll freak. I hate bats.

Someone screeches and someone else shouts, “Don’t DO that.” The air stinks of breathy fear. I catch a whiff of something bad and gasp. Someone smells like road-kill.

“Did anyone see it?” a girl whispers. “Does anyone know what it is?”

“Define it,” Cam says.

“Someone stinks,” a guy complains.

A harsh voice yells, “Shut up.” Beck grips me until I can barely breathe.

“We all heard it,” a trembling, squeaky voice offers. “Back in the hall—”

“I said shut up! You guys are gonna get us killed.”

I whisper, “That’s Lance Monson, right?” I recognize his voice. He’s a total jerk, but does he know what’s out there?

Another guy says, “So Lance, you think that’s what happened to Dustin? ‘Cause man. Like, you know I think he bit it.”

“Who’s Dustin?” I ask.

The clicking intensifies. A girl whispers, “We don’t know Dustin’s dead—”

“Shut the freakin’ hell up or I’ll shut you up myself.”

Even the clicking quiets. Then a moist jet of air tickles my ear. I freeze as the darkness sniffs me with reeking breath. My eyes open wide, burning to see. “Wh … wha—?”

Beck exhales, “Shhhhh,” as he lets go of me.

Prickly fur or whiskers touch my cheek. My skin crawls hot then cold. “What is that?” I whisper.

Beck doesn’t answer. I whirl around, grabbing at nothing. “Beck? Beck? Where are you?” He was right behind me.

A girl yells, “I can’t take this.” She sounds hysterical.

Something slams into me and I punch it with everything I’ve got. But a warm hand catches my wrist. A quiet voice says, “Maya. Stop.” Beck pulls me into a full body hug. I breathe in his smoky smell and cough until I cry.

“It’s okay,” he whispers. “It’s just me.” He hunches forward and buries his face in my hair. He’s shaking everywhere.

“Where were you?” I wrap my arms around him. “What happened?”

“Shhhh.”

The thing clicks again, but I can tell by the sound that it’s moved away from Beck and me. A girl calls, “Anna? Come back.”

“No! I want to go home.”

Beck’s body tenses. He whispers to himself, “Shit.”

Anna. Do I know her? Her voice isn’t familiar, but that doesn’t mean much. Except for Beck, Cam and Lance, I don’t recognize any of the voices.

Anna yells, “I can’t do this. I can’t just stand around in the dark and wait.” She stifles a shriek. “I want out of here.”

Beck groans. Then he fills his lungs with air, lifts his face to the dark and calls, “Anna.”

Lance shouts, “Shut the hell up, B.”

“You shut the hell up.” Beck gulps. “Anna. You shouldn’t be away from the group. Stay where you are. Just—stand still. We’ll find you.”

“I can’t, B. I can’t just stand around and wait. You know I hate the dark.” Anna’s voice sounds small and far away. She cries, “I hate being alone.”

“You’re not alone,” Beck says. “Please Anna. We’re all right here. I’m right here. Just—be still. Be quiet.”

“No. I want my mom. I’m scared. B … I’m so … I’m so sorry.” Anna sobs, “I have to find the way out.”

I don’t hear movement but it, whatever it is, moves. I feel it in the floor, which seems insane. I feel the thing’s weight—it’s heavy—and I think it’s big. But I don’t know what it is.

Anna’s crying stops. We crush in on each other in breathless silence. Then Anna screams and screams and screams.

A grinding crack splits the dark, followed by a gurgling choke. I try to bolt but Beck’s hold is too strong, so I cover my ears.

Beck wraps himself around me. “Don’t move.” he whispers.

“But she needs help—”

“It’s too late for that.” He forces my face against his shoulder.

The darkness pulses with grunting, with Anna’s cries. Beck’s body wracks with silent, heaving sobs. “Oh God, Anna. I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Anna calls out, “Mama,” in a pitiful, broken voice and my stomach turns. “Please,” she begs. “Just make it … stop.”

The floor trembles with a heavy thud. Anna gasps, then she’s silent. My knees buckle. Beck struggles to hold me up but I can’t find the strength to stand. Together we drop to the floor.

I breathe in shallow bursts, tortured by guilt because I’m glad it’s quiet. It seems gone, whatever it is. There’s no clicking. No sensation of movement in the floor. And there’s a breeze now, a hint of wind overhead.
I look up into the black.

Air drifts to meet me, cooling my face. A flash of light blurs through my tears. Someone shouts, “Up there.”

“Wait,” Beck whispers.

I cling to him, shaking. The darkness floods with pale green light.

Day two of the KAIROS giveaway ... read on for the story teaser ....

When Maya Norris sneaks into a dinosaur dig site after hours, it's the first step in a journey that will change her forever--if she survives the prehistoric secrets the dig protects.