One Potato, Two Potato -e

by Bliss Addison

Love can sometimes come from an unimaginable place, and what could be more unimaginable than Limbus, on the edge of Infernum?

Marissa McMurray listens to her inner voice and comes home after six years. She's never given any thought to ever returning to Chancellor Falls and finds her intense desire to do so peculiar. What she doesn't know is that there are evil forces manipulating her.

Hours after her arrival, a strange but handsome man rescues her from sexual predators, curiously in the same spot where her mother had fought for her life only six months earlier after being brutally attacked.

Later, wherever Marissa is her Good-Deed Man, as she comes to think of him, is not far away. And neither is love.

ISBN # 978-1-59431-791-0 Romance, futuristic, science fiction

Also available in HTML and RTF formats.

Chapter 1

With not an inkling that she held onto a subconscious desire to return to Chancellor Falls, Marissa McMurray was coming home after six years. Curiously as well, she had learned on the last day of last month that her duties as Associate Vice-President for the university would be taken over by the Executive Assistant and that her apartment building was being torn down to make room for a car park.

Everything that happens, happens for a reason.

She folded the flaps on the last packing box and turned in for the night. Too tired even to say her prayers, she fell quickly into a deep sleep. In the jet-black that was her dream, a hooded figure advanced toward her.

"One more step and I'll scream," she said, looking into the naked darkness for someone to help her.

He laughed. "Go ahead. There's no one to hear you."

"You don't have to do this," she said, instinctively knowing his intent.

"Do what?" he asked.

"Rape me."

He leaned his head back and guffawed. "If I wanted sex, you would come to me willingly."

No, she wouldn't. "What do you want then? I have no money." To keep him in view, she turned with him as he walked around her.

"I don't want anything from you. In fact, I want to give you something."

"I can't imagine what you have that I'd want."

He laughed again. "No? We shall see," he said and lowered his face to hers.

She realized then the hooded figure was a skeleton.

Marissa's screams woke her. She sprang upright and examined her bedroom by dawn's light. Satisfied no one lurked in the darkened recesses, she took a moment to calm herself, then threw back the covers and swung her legs over the side of the bed. She blinked away the fuzziness of sleep and looked at the bedside clock. The red digital numbers said six-eighteen. She'd wanted to get an early start to Chancellor Falls, but not this early.

Fragments of her dream appeared in her memory--darkness, thick and black as tar; silence so loud her ears ached; the skeleton who spoke with an English accent.

Dream experts claim every dream has meaning.

Damned if she could explain the significance of a gift-bearing skeleton of British descent.

In the bathroom, she gathered her shoulder length hair in a ponytail, then looked into the mirror to brush color on her cheeks, smooth on cherry-colored lipstick and press powder over the freckles on the bridge of her short nose. Violet eyes--inherited from her father, a man she barely knew and only vaguely remembered--stared back at her.

How did Daddy die?

Marissa recalled the distant look in her mother's eyes when she answered. "A horrible misunderstanding put him in harm's way."

Strange that entered her mind. She'd been four years old when he died and thirteen when she asked that question and, other than a cursory reflection, hadn't thought about her father in years, not since she left Chancellor Falls, she realized.

Her mother's lawyer, Rufus Doyle, short, fat and bald, had given her wise advice after her mother's funeral when he suggested she take time to grieve and not make decisions she might later regret. He'd also told her that her mother never gave up hope Marissa would return to the Falls one day, which was peculiar to say the least, especially since it was her mother's urging that spurred her to leave in the first place.

There's something you must know, Marissa. A secret. Something... Her mother died before she could reveal the secret she'd kept from her all these twenty-six years.

Maybe Chancellor Falls would provide answers, unveil the secret that time hadn't allowed Delia to divulge.

You can never go back home. Never. Ever.

In the hallway, Marissa took a last look around at the apartment before she trudged to the door, flipped off the light switch and, without looking back, closed the door on the past.

Behind the steering wheel of her all-terrain vehicle, Marissa phoned her landlord. "George," she said to his voice mail. "It's Marissa McMurray. My friend Jeremy will be by later today to take the rest of my furniture. He'll put the keys through the mail slot in your door when he's done. Bye and take care."

With the last loose end tied up, she dropped her cell on the passenger seat and bade farewell to the city of St. Sebastian.

***

Marissa made the usual four and one-half hour trip in four, mainly because she drove straight through. She couldn't explain the urgency. No one awaited her. Only old Rufus knew her plans, and he had vowed not to tell a soul, particularly her grandparents. They would have been disappointed if she changed her mind and decided to stay in St. Sebastian after all. She was their only living relative.

Any stranger to Chancellor Falls could easily find the McMurray house. After exiting the highway, she landed on King George Avenue, the maple-treed street that ran through the middle of the city and on which Delia's house, now hers, sat. In the town proper, the long and narrow two-story dwellings of the early nineteen hundreds suited the lots well.

She passed one cedar clapboard sided house after the other, familiar with each and every one. The Robichauds on her right lost their only son in a boating accident two days before his high school graduation. Across the street from them lived the Cooks, Judge and Mrs.

Marissa couldn't count the number of times the judge had caught her high in one of his prized pear apple trees. The man possessed an extraordinary awareness to little girls robbing his apples, which grew in abundance, as she'd often told the good judge.

"Is that your defense?" he'd invariably asked, to which she responded, "Yeah."

He'd shake his rangy head, grimace and say, "That would never hold up in my court."

"But we're not in your court now, are we?"

Marissa was all of seven years old when she learned the fun was in the pursuit, not the acquisition.

Though the judge created a great fuss over his apple trees and made a great show of despising the little hooligans who ran rampant through the city streets, Marissa knew the old curmudgeon image was one he liked to portray. How could it be otherwise when he never once reported the incidents to the police or her mother? He liked little hooligans, pure and simple.

The red metal roof caught her eye when she turned into the driveway. Rain always sounded like the rat-tat-tat of machine gun fire in the upstairs bedrooms and had kept her awake many nights. The house appeared no worse for the half-year of non-occupancy. The white painted cedar clapboard was unblemished, and the red shutters hung securely on either sides of the two upstairs bedroom windows and the living room window below.

Outside the truck, she dropped her cell into her purse, then took a shortcut across the lawn to the front door. She pictured her mother tsk-tsk-ing at her for trampling the grass.

"Sorry, Mom," she said as she took the key from under the potted geranium on the veranda. She opened the door and stepped into the foyer. A cursory look around confirmed what the scent of cleaning solvents and furniture polish suggested--the house was immaculate. Rufus must have told at least one person about her homecoming. She made a mental note to thank him for his thoughtfulness.

Hungry and thirsty, she slipped out of her running shoes and walked through the foyer and into the country kitchen. She opened the refrigerator, expecting fully stocked shelves. Rufus didn't disappoint. He, if anything, was a predictable sort. His attentiveness to her needs went beyond lawyer and client duty. She suspected that Rufus and her mother had been more than good friends at one time.

Marissa uncapped a bottle of water and shut the refrigerator door. She tipped her head back to drink and heard the second story floorboards creak.

She wasn't alone.

Someone was in the house with her.

Without delay, she grabbed the pepper spray from her purse and walked toward the stairs, stockings on her feet muting her footsteps. With one hand resting on the newel post at the base of the stairs, she peered upward. "Is anyone there?"

The floor creaked again, then silence fell on the old house. Her heart jumped then settled back into position.

"I have a weapon and I'm not afraid to use it," she said with more bravery than she experienced.

The house grew quiet.