Available on Pre-Order: Road Trip

Road Trip, April's second stand-alone urban-fantasy short story is now available on pre-order. This time, instead of colony ships and science fiction, Road Trip takes us to the crime-ridden corners of a world where

What's It About?

In Road Trip, when a curious fairy senses a truckload of distress and goes to investigate, she finds herself in more trouble than she could have imagined. This story is built around a curious fairy, discovering a terrified cargo hidden in a truck, an illegal auction, a troll, and desperate measures.

When Mélange sneaks aboard a long-distance hauler to look for those in despair, she finds herself taken far from home, to the sinister side of humanity’s contact with the Otherworld. Faced with unfamiliar technology too big for a fairy to operate, and hunted by a troll, can she stay alive long enough for Paranormal Operations Squad to arrive and save her?

 

How Does it Start?

Mélange watched the lorry pull up at the rest-stop. It was like a hundred lorries with solid sides and doors that opened at the back, except that it made her chest squeeze tight with fear.

Now, why, she wondered, Do I feel like that?

It was a fair question. Of the hundred or more lorries that had stopped before, none had made her want to weep. Why this one?

With a flick of her trembling wings, Mélange flitted into the dense drapery of a clump of mistletoe. She wriggled her way into the centre of the clump and peered through its tendril-like foliage to watch the truck.

She saw the door swing open, and watched as the driver jumped down from the cab. He headed straight for the first place most drivers went—the long-drop toilet set to one side of the carpark. Mélange waited until the door had closed firmly behind him, and left the shelter of the mistletoe.

She tried to shake the sense of dread that clung to her, but couldn’t. Instead, she forced herself to fly through it, and land on top of the truck. Listening for the sound of running water that would tell her the driver had finished and was washing his hands, she tiptoed along the truck’s roof.

The dread rode up from the soles of her feet, chilling her as she walked.

Mélange couldn’t understand what it was. She had never felt this much fear before. It was greater than the fear she’d shared with the biggest of the creatures she’d ever encountered.

That beast had been hit by a car, and tossed to the side of the road. Its agonized lowing had ended with the thunderous crack of what humans named ‘rifle,’ but the echoes of the creature’s terror and pain had taken days to fade.

The dread Mélange felt, now, was not laced with pain. This was a dread created from pure, unholy terror, a potent mix of shared fear, and not the fear of wild, or even partially tamed, creatures. No, sentient beings rode in the container below, and she knew they wept, even though she couldn’t hear their cries.

And why is that? Mélange wondered. I should be able to hear them weeping. The walls of the container aren’t thick enough to block them.

With a quick glance towards the long-drop, Mélange fluttered over the side of the lorry, and flew along the edge of the container, inspecting where the sides met the roof. She worked her way from one end to the other, and then stopped to listen. Still no sound of running water.

The edge of the container was seamless, as Mélange had expected it would be. She flew to the back of the lorry, inspecting where the doors came together, and where they touched the roof, and floor. The seams where they came together were there, but Mélange could still not hear any weeping, although, when she laid her hand against the doors, she knew it continued.

The sound of the toilet door slamming, told Mélange she’d either missed the sound of
running water, or the driver hadn’t washed his hands. It was too late to try to fly back to the tree; she might be seen. Glancing about, she realized that the nearest sheltering trees and bushes were too far for her to reach before the driver came around to the cab.

The cab! Her only hope was to hide there. She flitted quickly to the cab, and found where the glass of the driver’s-side window didn’t quite meet the top of the frame. She slid through the narrow gap and into the cab, just as she caught sight of movement at the front of the truck—the driver coming around the bull-nosed bonnet.

It didn’t matter, though. Mélange was inside, and she was small. There were plenty of places she could hide in here. She flipped over the back of the driver’s seat and into the space between the seat and the back of the cab. There, she found a discarded jacket and crawled into it to wait.

She heard the driver open the door, and thought briefly of making a break for it, but she didn’t dare draw attention to herself—or to the existence of her people in the surrounding trees. She was sure someone had noticed her inspection of the truck, followed by her panicked dive into its cab. She was also sure they would send for help as soon as they could. The elves would know what to do.

 

Where Do You Find It?

You can find this short story in Pixie-Dust Dreaming, or as a stand-alone short story on this Books2Read page: https://books2read.com/u/4E8O5l.