Breaking Barriers Read online

  Breaking Barriers

  Amazon Edition

  Published by Bob Dattolo

  Copyright 2020 by Bob Dattolo

  All rights Reserved

  Cover design by rock_0407 at Fiverr.com

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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

  This book contains violence, cursing, nudity, and sex and should not be read by anyone under the age of 16. If you are offended by any of these, please consider another ebook for your reading pleasure.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  BACK PAGE SUMMARY

  Chapter 1

  Rust scraped off on my hand, but I didn’t pay it any attention as the decrepit door opened on silent hinges. Or maybe they weren’t silent? The noise in my head makes it nearly impossible to tell either way, so I have no idea. I can’t say that I would bet one way or the other on that. Not that I have anything to bet.

  Not anymore.

  The inside of the…wherever this is, isn’t quite what I expected. The building is massive, and I expected to see a huge space filled with trash, broken down pieces of equipment, and graffiti. It’s not that there isn’t trash and graffiti or even broken equipment, it’s that the space isn’t what I expected. Instead of a huge room that disappeared into the darkness, it’s a relatively small area, walled off from the rest of the space. I can’t see the far side due to the shadows, but it has to be at least 80 feet away. Or, the wall is, I can’t tell how far the actual building goes on. At a guess, another 400 or 500 feet possibly.

  It doesn’t matter anymore.

  I can’t make out much of the room through the tears, nor do I try to. Why bother when this is just a stopping point for me? There’s no reason to care. None.

  Nothing jumps out at me as a fantastic place to lay down and get down to business. Is there ever a good place? Maybe I should ask someone. Who, though? I only know my family, and…they’re not really my family any longer.

  There’s a huge piece of equipment coming out of the wall that I can make out through the faint light coming through the shattered windows high on the wall behind me. It looks like some sort of massive V coming down, where I guess stuff came down from some area beyond the wall? There’s a small bin at the bottom that looks like it was there to catch whatever came down. Maybe I should have looked at the fading paint outside first to give me a clue what this place might have made at one point?

  Why do I even care? All my life I’ve asked questions when allowed and tried to find answers, and it’s only as of this morning that I got answers to questions I never even thought of asking. Some that I have always wanted to ask but never dared. And yet others that I’ve asked but never had answered.

  Or, never had answered truthfully. That’s more accurate right there.

  Settling down next to the bin in the darker shadows does nothing to hide me from the reality of my life. Or what I thought was my life. I’m not sure what to think about any of it. None of it. I’m…I’m at a loss. Everything I thought I knew growing up is twisted now, tainted by everything that happened today.

  So…who am I? My name is Ceri Nawfed Driscoll. That part I’m sure about. Or, as sure as I can be about anything now. I also know that I’m 5’2”, thin, and I have dark red hair. Not reddish orange, but blood red. No idea why. All of my brothers and sisters have blond or light brown hair. Not me, though.

  And when I say all of them, I mean that. I have eight older brothers and sisters and six younger. Yeah, there are 15 of us. Or…were, I guess?

  All of my life growing up my siblings have grown and left the house when they turned 17. All of them.

  Why? Scholarships to away colleges. Jobs in other countries. We’d get letters from them periodically, for maybe six months, and then…nothing. No responses to e-mail. No responses to letters. Nothing at all. I even set up a new e-mail address for Donna and James, the last two that turned 17 and disappeared. They promised to e-mail me from school, but they never did. No responses to my e-mails, either.

  But they sent letters. Neither of them used any of the codes we worked out. Nothing. It was just generic pabulum that didn’t make any sense to any of the conversations I’d had with them.

  I had my suspicions before then, but when they disappeared like that and never contacted me, I started to think something was up. What? No idea. Just that my brothers and sisters can’t be disappearing like this without a reason. Not that I could ask my parents. Oh no, you can’t do that. Those of us that leave the compound are lost to us until and unless they come back.

  And no one comes back.

  Ever.

  I did say compound. I meant it, too. What else do you call a walled piece of land covering 300 acres where we grow most of our own crops and never leave? Other than our parents, I’ve never met anyone other than a few relatives my parents invited in for holidays. I never even got to talk to any of them. Never got to ask them any questions. Nothing.

  We lived in isolation, staying away from the filthy evil out there in the world. Since the announcement that others exist, my parents have lived alone, walled off from the world. What others? Shifters, vampires, witches, demons, you name it. The supernatural is very real.

  My parents have given us different histories at different times and won’t let us look at history books on the subject, so I have no idea when it really happened. I’m 16 and my oldest brother would be 25, so at least 25 years. According to my parents, the world turned into a nightmare of fighting and evil and we need to stay separate from it. Separate. Pure. Protected.

  Yet when we turn 17, somehow it becomes okay for us to leave the compound.

  You tell me how that makes sense.

  You can’t, can you? Yeah, you’re like me, then. My younger brothers and sisters don’t see the discrepancy. They don’t get it. I never got it either, although the discrepancy stared at me and screamed at me every day as I aged.

  My birthday is in a month and my parents let me know a few weeks back that I was accepted away at college. Supposedly, we live somewhere in Pennsylvania, although I can’t prove that. They said I was accepted at a protected school and would be safe.

  I had to fake my excitement because their delivery just wasn’t what it seemed like it should be to me. Again, another discrepancy.

  It wasn’t until this morning that I overheard a conversation between my parents that brought me here, to this point.

  Where am I? Like I said, some o
ld warehouse or industrial place. Where is it? No clue. It took nearly an hour to find a way over the wall at home when I ran. After that, I ran blindly. It’s hard to see through tears, so it’s not like I kept track of anything. I just ran. I did see trees and more trees. Some roads. Even some cars in the distance. I didn’t stop them, though, there’s no telling what kind of evil might be riding in them.

  Sort of like the evil that seems to be living back home.

  No, I didn’t pay attention to where I was running. It’s not like it matters. I can’t go back and I don’t have what it takes to go forward.

  No money. No clothes. No experience. I have a resounding lack of anything useful.

  A slight snick echoed in the space as I looked at the razor blade in my hand.

  I take that back, I don’t have anything useful to help me live my life, but I have something useful to end it. Compliments of my father, one seemingly sharp box cutter filled my hand. I don’t see a shine from the blade, but I know it does. Too shadowy here for that to really work.

  Other than the clothes on my back, this is all that I have other than a head filled with lies and parents that want to kill me.

  Why? You tell me. I have no clue. I was there for the conversation, or, at least listening to it, and I still don’t understand it.

  I let my back rest against the old concrete pillar and stared down at where I knew the knife rested in my hand.

  Can I do this? Can I really end it like this? I ran so my parents couldn’t kill me, so is it defeatist to kill myself?

  Be that as it may, I plan on doing exactly that. No one kills me but me.

  I know that’s a crappy stance to take, but it’s my stance, and here I am. One lost, lonely, and terrified girl sitting in an empty old manufacturing plant with a razor waiting to end it.

  “It’s time, Ceri. No more of their lies.” I barely recognized my own voice, but it was definitely mine.

  A male’s voice called through the shadows, “Who’s there?”

  Oh no…no, please don’t let that be my dad.

  Strange sounds in the darkness told me someone moved through it at a crazy fast pace.

  I can’t let him get me! The tip of the razor bit into my wrist, but I wasn’t fast enough before two hands grabbed me and picked me up.

  “NO!” I screamed and kicked, but the hands were like iron around my arms, stopping me from finishing the cut. As it is, I’m barely bleeding and I know it won’t be enough.

  The dark shape in front of me holds me steady and my feet eventually stop kicking as I realize it can’t be my dad holding me up. For one thing, he’d never be able to hold me in the air like this without straining. For another, my dad would have been yelling and beating me by now.

  “What have we here?” His voice came out oddly muted in my head and I doubt I’d be able to pick it out of a group of voices. There’s something strange about it that seems to hide its real sound.

  “Please let me go!”

  The voice pauses and I can tell that he cocks his head at me. “Why would I do that? What would you do if I let you go?”

  I looked into the dark shadows to the knife in my hand. “Finish it.”

  “Hmmmm, so if I let you go, you’ll kill yourself? Why would you want to do that?”

  My tears nearly overwhelmed me. “I can’t go home. They want to kill me! I can’t…I can’t do this. Please just let me go. Or kill me yourself. I don’t care which. Please!”

  Have you ever begged someone to kill you? Trust me, it’s as surreal as you’d imagine it would be. I’d be okay with it, actually, I just don’t want my parents to do it.

  He grunted and spoke some whispered words that sounded like gibberish to me before I felt something tearing at the inside of my head. I couldn’t even scream as the pain increased again and again and then faded without warning, leaving me completely pain-free.

  “Interesting. Very interesting. You think you have nothing to live for?”

  Sniffling was the only way to keep snot from running down my face, but I hated doing it. That being said, I sniffled like a 5-year-old. “My parents are going to kill me. I can’t go back. I have nothing.”

  “Silly girl, you have more than you realize, it’s just been hidden from you your entire life. Yes, so very much. You’re filled with barriers, all holding you back. I think…I think it’s time to crack one of them. Yes,” he paused, “yes, I think it is. One small crack to the keystone holding them in place, and you’ll become what you should be.”

  “What do you mean?” None of this makes sense. At all. It hasn’t pretty much all day, so I guess yet one more conversation like this isn’t too much to expect.

  “Don’t you worry, young one, this will make sense to you at some point. Or you’ll die.”

  “Die?”

  “You wanted to die anyway, yes? This way you either get your wish, or you get to become what you should have been. Either way, there will be pain. There’s no birth without pain.”

  “Pa…” my voice cut off entirely as something slammed into my neck and I felt my life being torn apart. My God, the pain. I can’t even express it properly as whatever stabbed into my neck sent waves of agony radiating into each limb and throughout my brain.

  I can’t even guess how long it took me to realize he was biting me. Biting me and drinking my blood. By the time I realized that, I couldn’t even kick. Everything felt weak and distant.

  This is why my parents kept us away from the world. This evil…vampires. I have a vampire drinking my blood. Until right now, I’m not even sure I believed they existed beyond what my parents told us. Every story is filled with hatred and fear and killing, and I grew up wanting them all to die. After all, the only good evil monster is a dead one, right?

  I have to say, he didn’t sound evil, but proof is in the pudding. So if the only supernatural you’ve ever met is trying to kill you, that would kinda mean 100% of them are evil.

  And yet I was planning on killing myself, which is also evil. So that would make both of us evil? Out of the two of us, who’s more evil? Me for wanting to die and risk going to hell for eternity due to being a suicide, or the vampire for wanting to eat?

  That’s a hard decision.

  And I’m finding it difficult to even hold a coherent thought as the darkness and shadows somehow get darker around me as he sucks harder on my neck. The pain still rips through me and I knew that even if he wasn’t holding me, I still couldn’t run. The pain is just that debilitating. That doesn’t even take into account the fact that I’m pretty sure I’m dying.

  No…no, I’m more than pretty sure.

  I can feel it. Death. When I realized it was there floating on the edges, it seemed to start stalking me. Edging closer and closer, waiting to pounce. Now it’s leaping forwards, arms outstretched for me. I’ll be damned if I know why the monstrous face seems to be smiling at me or why the deadly claws don’t seem to be extended.

  My killer pulls away, leaving me hanging in his arms. I can’t even hold my head up any longer as my heart labors in my chest to pump what’s no longer there. So it ends like thi…

  “Now, I think one more task.” He moved his hands around, one holding my neck and one prying the knife from my hand. “Soon, young one. Soon.” Then he stabbed me. Again and again and all across my body. Arms, legs, stomach, chest.

  Each stab was a tiny flare of pain that disappeared into the miasma of the rest as the monster that is death flies through the air towards me. Even though it’s moving at the speed of light, time seems to be slowed down in my mind. I originally pictured death as a tiger stalking its prey, but it’s not, it’s a skeleton monster of indeterminate origins, black cloak flapping behind it as my killer drops me into the tiny cart.

  “Get ready for your rebirth.” My shadowy killer disappeared, and I think left me entirely.

  My rebirth? The pain of him drinking my life away wasn’t my rebirth? If so, that rather sucks, because that was more pain than I ever thought existed. If there
’s more coming my way, then I think I want death to take me. Not that I can say that. I can’t say anything at all. I can barely breathe, and my heart doesn’t want to keep going. I can’t blame it. I don’t want to keep going either.

  I know I have to be bleeding what little blood I have left out of the various wounds across my body. My…what? My bare body? I can’t quite see in the shadows of the little bin thing beneath the hopper, but I swear I’m naked. When did he tear my clothes off?

  Is this a further indignity? Being killed by a monster and now I get the sin of being naked tossed onto everything else.

  C’mon death, get here already!

  The flying monster doesn’t move any quicker, yet it still seems to be moving faster than thought. Maybe it just has that much space to go through before it reaches me? That doesn’t seem possible since I would swear it’s only about 10 feet away as it gets ready to tackle me to the ground in a tangle of broken and lifeless limbs.

  My own lifeless limbs, not his. Or hers. I can’t tell sex on a skeleton monster. I think my parents forgot to teach me that skill growing up. Just like they forgot to teach me how to be a sacrifice.

  Noise reaches me through the shadowy hopper tube above me. It looks to be about four inches across, from what I can tell, but it’s all shadows within shadows as my vision decreases further. I’m left with a closing window of vision as the utter absence of sight consumes the God-made shadows around me.

  So this is death? Not quite what I expected, that’s for sure. No, it’s…

  There’s an explosion of noise through the tube and then screams that don’t make any sense. A flash of light somewhere inside the hopper fills the tiny portal of vision that I have left before it’s blocked as the entire thing gongs as something crashes down inside of it.

  Death doesn’t care for any of this as it gets closer and closer, even as something drips down from the tube, hitting me in the face and throat.

  None of that makes any difference to me, not even when there’s more screaming and yelling and bang after bang in the hopper. Whatever is dripping out on me starts to come in torrents, covering me and starting to fill the little bin that I’m cramped into.