The Sleeping Beauty - Book 1 - Chapter 11
“How long does it take to heal from a vampire bite?” I asked as we walked across campus.
Fairy tales are real.
Rose Briar is a diabetic college student without insurance. She’s been scraping by through a combination of maxing out credit cards and relying upon the kindness of strangers.
Unfortunately, she’s spent every dollar at her disposal. There’s no money left to buy her life-saving insulin.
Without her medication, Rose falls into a diabetic coma. She tumbles into a deep slumber and wakes up in a fantastical place called the Dream Realm, where fairy tales and legends of old are still very much alive.
She has one chance to wake up.
She must trek across the world, visit the most powerful object in the land, the Obsidian Spindle, and entreat with the fates; the only beings powerful enough to send her soul back to Earth.
But evil forces don’t want her to leave. They will stop at nothing to capture her and make sure she never goes home again.
Now, with the help of her half-gorgon girlfriend and a mysterious red rider, Rose must race across the land fighting dragons, monsters, and the forces of the Wicked Witch, Nimue, in order to reach the Obsidian Spindle before her body dies on Earth and she’s trapped in the Dream Realm forever.
Will she be able to wake up? Can she survive? Find out by reading The Sleeping Beauty today. If you love mythology, fairy tales, and dark fantasy, then you’ll love the first book in The Obsidian Spindle Saga.
Paid subscribers can access the entire archive of this series from the beginning, along with other series and every article I’ve ever written. If you aren’t a paid subscriber, you can access the archive for free with a 7-day trial.
“How long does it take to heal from a vampire bite?” I asked as we walked across campus. The blood was still seeping from my wound, but I was just glad it didn’t gush. Teddy had plenty of gauze and bandages to fix me up after he finished harnessing my blood.
“Less time than you’d think,” Jamil replied. “By tomorrow morning, it should be fine.”
“That soon?”
“Magic, man. It’s crazy. Something about Teddy’s saliva that makes it heal faster. Like Neosporin.”
“He’d make a fortune if he bottled it.”
Jamil smiled, opening the door to her car. “Who’s to say he didn’t? How do you think he got so rich?”
I opened the passenger side door. “I don’t know. I figured after a million billion years he would just have made a couple wise investments.”
“He probably did that, too, but he made a killing selling his saliva to rich, white women as a cure all. They literally bathe in his spit at $1,000 a pop.”
“That would be disgusting, if it wasn’t so hilarious.”
The address Teddy gave us was in Fresno, about two and a half hours from Sacramento. He told me that the man working the counter would help me get to the Dream Realm. When I pressed him about how, he clammed up and forced us to leave. I didn’t even know the person’s name we were looking for.
After a long drive, we pulled up to the address Teddy gave us. It was at the end of a derelict road, on the corner of a run-down strip mall. The brick façade was crumbling, and piles of ruddy bricks lined the ground in front of the shop. Based on the discolored stains left on the discolored window, I could tell the sign out front once clearly said “Pet Shop,” but now the letters in the window only said “ET S OP.”
“There is no way whoever’s in there is going to help us get Rose back,” I said, staring in disgust at the building.
“Maybe,” Jamil said, opening the car door. “But if we don’t try, then you let Teddy suck your blood for nothing. Not to mention, we drove to Fresno for nothing. Fresno. I for one never thought I would be caught dead in this town. If we don’t at least go in and try, I might just drop dead from shame.”
“Fine,” I said, getting out of the car. “But I don’t have to like it.”
“Bitch. I have no dog in this fight and I’m here. I don’t want to hear ANY of your mouth.”
I couldn’t disagree with her. Jamil was a decent friend, but she didn’t know me particularly well. She was more friendly with Rose than me, but that was usually the case. People tended to love Rose, and Rose loved people. Meanwhile I hated everybody, and everybody kept their distance from me.
When I pushed open the pet shop door, I left a handprint on its thick layer of dirt. The grime came off on my hand, and I wiped it on my pants with a groan.
“Hello,” a slender man said from the back of the store. He was ganglier than I thought possible for a human, but then I assumed he probably wasn’t a human at all—not if he could help us. His arms hung low, all the way to his knees, and his face sagged as if the muscles had been eaten away.
“Hi,” I said, walking up to the counter. The cages in the store were all empty and the haunting silence made each one of our steps echo off the walls. There wasn’t one animal in the store, except for a small white rabbit on the counter that the slender man pet continuously.
“How may I help you?” the man said. He attempted a smile but lacked the musculature. “I’m afraid we’re short on stock, but I can special order anything you would like. People just don’t come to pet stores like they used to, I’m afraid. It’s very sad.”
“Sure,” I said, not sure how else to respond. “But I am hoping you can help me. Do you know a Teddy?”
The man raised his slinky arm up to his chin. “It’s possible. There was a time that my store was quite popular. In those days, I knew all sorts of people.
“He’s a vampire,” Jamil added.
The man nearly choked. “A vampire, you say? My friend, I think you are reading too many fairy tales.”
Jamil shook her head. “No. I don’t think so.” She pointed to the amulet on her necklace. “You recognize this, right? I can see you wear one as well.”
I did a double take to see that, sure enough, the pet store owner was wearing the same amulet as Jamil. His had an opal in the core instead of a ruby. Teddy had given me one with an emerald inside of it, but I had yet to put it on.
“This is just a trinket,” the pet store owner replied dryly.
“What are you?” Jamil said.
The pet shop owner pressed his hands on the counter in front of him and leaned forward. His long fingers clasped the edge of the counter. “You show me first.”
I didn’t like to show myself in public, or to new people, but as Jamil made it abundantly clear, my disguises weren’t very good. With a swipe of my hand, I pulled off my wig and shook my hair free. The snakes which had been lulled into slumber by a sleeping charm woke up and hissed at the pet shop owner.
“My my,” he said, intrigue oozing with every word. “A gorgon. I thought you were all extinct.”
“Lots of people are trying to make it that way,” I replied. “But I’m not dead yet.”
“And what about you?” the pet store owner said to Jamil. “I can smell magic all over you.”
Jamil removed her amulet to reveal her wooden, dryad form. “Happy now?”
“Never,” the man said. “However, it is so nice to see you for what you really are. It warms my cold, dead heart.”
“And what are you?” I asked him.
“Regrettably, I am a human. Or, at least stuck in human form. Once, I made a deal for a soul, and learned it was a trap only too late. Since then, I have been trapped in this miserable, vulnerable form, trying to keep it alive until I find a way out.”
Jamil studied the shop owner up and down before her eyes lit up in surprise. “Are you a demon?”
The demon bristled. “That is a pejorative term for my kind. You can call me Etsop.”
I looked back at the door, at the only letters left on it. Et s op. “Well, you aren’t hiding very well.”
“I’ve long since stopped caring about hiding. Those that seek me out are few and far between, and their proclivities often get themselves killed without me having to do anything about it.”
“Well,” Jamil said. “I’m afraid we’re not much different.”
“Of course you aren’t. You mortals are all the same, no matter the manner of monster.” He leaned over the counter and rubbed his hands together. “Anyway. What can I do for you?”
“We need to get my girlfriend to wake up from the Dream Realm. She’s lost there.”
Etsop raised his eyebrows. “It’s a very dangerous place, you know.”
“I don’t care.” I shrugged. “I have to rescue her, no matter the cost.”
The demon placed his hands on either side of his mouth and curled his lips up into a cruel, disgusting smile. “In that case, I might be able to help you.”
Fairy tales are real.
Find out by reading The Sleeping Beauty today. If you love mythology, fairy tales, and dark fantasy, then you’ll love the first book in The Obsidian Spindle Saga.
Paid subscribers can access the entire archive of this series from the beginning, along with other series and every article I’ve ever written. If you aren’t a paid subscriber, you can access the archive for free with a 7-day trial.