Society Rules

Society Rules

Katherine Whitley

Copyright © 2010 by Katherine Whitley .

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted
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without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Acknowledgements

People to thank. Well. Where to begin?

Kathy Couture, for donating her precious personal time, acting as my private editor? Without her kind words, wonderful feedback and encouragement, I don’t know where I would be.

Or maybe Raz Blackstone, for agreeing to be one of my first victims, reading, and offering excellent advice.

Suzanne Adsit and Ashley Mears, for valiantly taking home the rough draft, and TRYING to read that mess!

My mother, Kathi Fielder, for suffering my e-mail attacks, hurling chapter after chapter to her, until she finished the whole thing, and my husband, Jon, who bravely tackled the same project, and acting as my consultant on all things military and Warrior-like.

My children, for providing me with material and tolerating long periods of neglect, while I typed away into the night.

And we must not forget, my personal photographer, Erin Partlow, for her mad skills with the digital camera!

Last, but certainly not least, all of my co-workers who allowed my constant chatter, incessantly boring and repetitious talk, about

“this book I’m working on.”

Thank you and I love you all!

The game’s in full swing

Its players, intent

On besting the other

They sit with heads bent.

The Beast and his Master

Lift their cards from the table

The corners singed black

From the claws of Death’s grasp

‘You believe you can beat me?’

God hid his kind smile

‘You know not my plan’.

He lay down his cards

Never showing his hand

As the Horsemen appeared

Death smiled, then he spoke

‘Four of a kind’

Beat that if you can

His smile now a gloat

His Master, He answered

‘There’s nothing to best,

My cards I hold tightly

And close to my chest’

Your Horsemen, all four

They answer to me

Now pick up your cards

Stand well back

And you’ll see

Katherine Whitley

From “Strategy of the Apocalypse”

Chapter 1

As the sun burned brightly through the glass panes of the French doors, it painted a path of brilliant light that stretched lazily across the bedroom floor. The day promised to be unseasonably warm for early March in Vermont, and Indiana Taylor was feeling sulky.

Unreasonably so.

What she didn’t feel, was ready to face the world yet. Her bed was soft and comforting and her body was still achy with fatigue. But the official start of her day was ticking its way toward her.

“Not yet,” her mental groan echoed through her head as she breathed in and out in a slow and steady rhythm, despite knowing there was no need for the performance.

It was easy to continue a habit that had become part of her ritual for life management. Out of necessity, she’d become well practiced at feigning sleep.

The thought of leaving her four-hundred—thread—count sanctuary shoved her into a mental cringe, but Indie knew that allowing the obnoxious blast of the alarm to actually sound off was the more unpleasant option. She detested loud noises. The only exception to this rule was music, whose decibel levels never seemed to assault her in the same manner as other sounds. Music was her sanctuary, and soothed her in an almost hypnotic way.

Her ears were painfully sensitive, and her children often accused her of having “superhuman” hearing. Superhuman vision as well, but this was either a sign of her ocular acuity, or the mark of mental issues that Indie simply refused to address, because she sometimes saw things that were not only disturbing to her, but obviously unseen by others.

Still, thinking of her children’s suspicions made her smile into her pillow. Those suspicions were true and she admittedly used it to her advantage. After all, wouldn’t it be a shame not to acknowledge and use a God-given talent?

A faint click announced the impending buzz, just seconds away. Indie launched a preemptive strike against the unfortunate piece of timekeeping equipment, silencing the alarm before it sounded. Just the thought of the intrusive noise made her shudder.

Alarm clocks.

It was Indie’s personal opinion that the inventor of this instrument of torture should be forced to submit himself to the endless ringing, clanging or buzzing of a few of his creations for several hours a day. She clenched her entire body in horror at the very thought.

In spite of the knowledge that she never needed the nasty brain-smacking things, she always set one at any rate.

Just in case.

Because she never know when normal behavior would covertly steal into her life, and maybe sleep would happen.

Right. Sure it would.

As early as she could recall into her past . . . even in her childhood, Indie had never needed an alarm. This was because of the admittedly bizarre fact that she never actually slept.

It was something that Indie didn’t let get around. No, she knew the reactions news like that would prompt; one of many lessons learned the hard way at a very young age. Not sleeping seemed to be regarded by the world as a little freakish, she’d found.

When Indie was fourteen years old, a cousin with whom she had lived for a short time made Indie painfully aware of the insanity of such claims.

Kristen had indulged her with a rare moment of attention, and Indie, overwhelmed by a rush of release from her loneliness, had blurted out her secret.

“Never sleep?” Kristen had asked, skeptically. “Everyone sleeps, Indie. What you’re having is called insomnia.” Her cousin had then run down the tired list of “remedies” for curing this simple problem, from warm milk, to sleeping pills as a last resort.

When Indie tried to explain that her condition went way beyond insomnia and into the absolute absence of sleep, Kristen had become impatient.

“All human beings sleep! People cannot survive without it. You would be wild, crazy and hallucinating right now if you never slept. It is a mandatory human function!”

“But . . . but
I
don’t,” Indie had persisted in a whisper, tears stinging her eyes, mostly because she had wasted the rare moment on what had turned into an argument.

“Then maybe you’re not really human,” her cousin had stated coolly. “And by the way . . .” she tossed the words over her shoulder as she escaped into the hallway, “I wouldn’t go around telling people stories like that if I were you. You might earn yourself some special time in a padded room!”

Indie was horrified by her cousin’s sarcastic retort about not being human. Her extreme reaction to words she knew were obviously spoken with only the intention of causing pain had confused her as well.

She knew very well that her cousin didn’t believe that she was anything but a normal, if possibly crazy, human being; but something in that comment crystallized her years of unrest and feelings of not quite belonging.

A strange sweeping sensation swirled through her head that as absurd as Kristen’s statement was, she had somehow hit the nail on the head.

It had been a small but defining moment in her life. Not only did Indie feel that she now had proof that she was different, but the look on her cousin’s face inspired her to toughen up her outer shell. She had no wish to be vulnerable to anyone’s suspicious scrutiny.

And who cared if Kristen believed her anyway? Her claim of being incapable of sleep was simply the truth.

Climbing into bed at the appropriate hour was now part of her nightly show. Indie would turn off the light, and close her eyes. She could experience fatigue, exhaustion even, and feel the need to curl up in her bed, becoming comfortable . . . drowsy and warm, and her body would rest. However, Indie had long ago stopped waiting for unconscious slumber to take her to the places where people dream. That realm, she’d never visited.

She could keep her eyes closed for six to eight hours at a time, but her mind remained alert . . . aware. It was the perfect time to think . . . make plans, or simply map out her “to do” list for the following day. Perhaps ponder important issues, such as Hannaford versus Shaw’s, and whether Pricechopper really does, in fact, chop prices.

A time to listen to the small and unimportant noises that happen in a house late at night, when the occupants are supposed to be peacefully oblivious.

Indie was almost positive that she was able to hear the creaks and groans of the house as it shifted with the imperceptible rotation of the Earth. She rolled onto her back and squinted at the textured ceiling.

It wasn’t entirely impossible, she mused, that maybe she truly
was
insane. Years ago, Indie had reconciled herself to this frightening possibility, and congratulated herself with a silent round of applause for each day that she successfully completed the astounding feat of normalcy.

Indie’s husband, Will, was gloriously self-centered and unaware of any action or reaction that did not hold him accountable in some way. He never noticed anything, at least not anything concerning Indie; the two of them floating around one another in a dance that never quite included a partner.

The twins were another story. Jake and Cassidy had what Indie could only define as the extrasensory force that surrounds most twin siblings. Nothing escaped their attention and nothing remained hidden. They seemed to share the ability to reach into your head and pull out the truth within.

The sensitivity toward others was no doubt there . . . most definitely between themselves, and from the way she caught them scrutinizing her, then meeting each other’s gaze knowingly, she knew they could see through her too. In those moments, she felt outed—exposed as the imposter she feared she was.

Nevertheless, she also knew that they loved her and she them in the perfectly proper way for mothers and their children to feel about each other.

“Their love is what saves me,” Indie speculated, “and stops them from revealing what they see.”

It was funny. She had an uncanny knack for reading people; knowing what they were feeling, but the twins’ minds were a mystery to Indie. There certainly never appeared to be any sign that they were suffering any fear or self-doubt, thank God. They were cheerful and happy children, albeit somewhat on the serious and studious side. Her twins had no disability when it came to sensing her own thoughts, Indie was positive.

Jake and Cassidy would be described by anyone as perfect children. They’d always gone along with anything needed of them without question. As often as the family uprooted due to Will’s job, it might be expected that the children be overly clingy or overly anxious, or suffer some such issues common to the insecurity caused by instability.

But they were not.

They were never overly anything, and accepted all things with a serenity that defied their young age.

They had each other to supply most of their companionship needs, but spoke to others easily and when they did, people listened. Indie knew she was very lucky, and was relieved that they didn’t suffer the same shut out feelings that she had dealt with for most of her life.

Moving constantly, though stressful and a pain had helped Indie learn to become an accomplished actress, observing others and learning how to better blend in with the masses.

Who would have to do that, though,
she often wondered.
I’m pretty sure other people don’t walk around trying to figure out how to be normal!

The thought frustrated and distressed her, but also made her all the more determined to blend. If moving helped, then she was grateful for the opportunity. The most recent move, however, had nothing to do with Will.

At the family’s last address in Portland, Oregon, Indie had been restlessly flipping through the pages of an historic romance novel, which, like her IPod, were her always present addictions. She’d been turning the pages much too quickly to fool anyone into thinking that she was actually reading, when suddenly she tossed it aside. Looking up, she caught Cassidy eyeing her shrewdly.

Will noticed nothing, absorbed in a book detailing the most recent findings on the worlds beyond the “black holes”. A ridiculous thought had seized her out of nowhere. Ridiculous, and yet it demanded to be spoken aloud.

Indie drew a deep breath and tossed out her opening statement abruptly. “I think we should move to the northeast . . . Vermont, maybe.”

Will looked up from his book.

“What?” he asked, his attention surfacing slowly.

“I want to move . . . to Vermont . . .” Indie repeated, feeling a little confused herself at this revelation.

“What for?” Will had laughed. “I mean, you’re telling me that you are actually
suggesting
a move . . . one that isn’t necessary?”

“I guess I am,” Indie had replied thoughtfully. She had no idea why this had occurred to her.

Indie had absolutely no ties whatsoever to the state of Vermont. Not that she had them anywhere else either, but still, how weird was this impulse? And how crazy was it that she was going to make the move happen? She knew with a sudden unexplainable urgency that it simply had to be.

Indie made few requests and even fewer demands, but whenever she did, she got what she wanted. Indie had learned one thing over the years, and that was that whenever she made herself seen and noticed, she was a force to be reckoned with . . . she just had to demand it.

This was not her natural M.O., because these days she spent most of her time trying
not
to be noticed, but at times things just had to be made to happen. Always, her demands had been on behalf of another . . . a patient, a cause . . . something other than herself.

This was different.

It was something she knew had to be done, and it didn’t set particularly well with her that in the fact that it was all for a need of her own. To further complicate her feelings, Indie had no idea what that need was.

She pressed her case anyway, and in only a few months, the move took place. Will was able to obtain a transfer to an office complex near Burlington. After Will completed his third round of service in the Army, he was offered what was supposed to be a prestigious job working for the government, but Indie imagined him toiling away at what she assumed was a bland and grey desk position.

He had to travel often for work anyway, so the move seemed easily arranged and the family soon found themselves firmly planted in the center of the Green Mountain state.

No magical thing happened when they arrived; no amazing clarity on the issues of her life manifested themselves after the move . . . things were as they always were . . . only now they were happening here.

Indie had given up trying to understand why she’d had a sudden urge to become part of the New England landscape. She decided to attribute it to some sort of violent boredom seizure perhaps. Or maybe since she’d lived nearly everywhere else, she just naturally felt the need to be the perfect storm and hit every region.

Regardless of the reason, here she sat, and more than two years had passed with nothing more than the usual feeling of unease, and the occasional glimpse of something fleeting and momentarily terrifying in what would appear to be average citizens walking the streets.

That, along with the sometimes nail munching fear that she’d caught sight of something that didn’t belong on this astral plane . . . her teeth clacking together as she thought of the sharp-toothed
thing
that sometimes appeared in the shadowed corners of her vision.