The Sleeping Beauty - Book 1 - Chapter 8
My head was clouded in a nervous fog the whole way to the hospital.
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.
My head was clouded in a nervous fog the whole way to the hospital. I always knew in the back of my mind it was a possibility something would happen to Rose because of her diabetes, but I never actually put much stock in it. After all, we were young, and even though I was constantly being hunted, I would be lying if I didn’t think we were a little invincible. Crappy things happened to us, but we always survived even if we didn’t thrive.
Now, it wasn’t so certain whether Rose would be okay. Bad things were supposed to happen to me, not her. She had already been through so much. I was supposed to handle enough bad things for the both of us.
Saint Ignatius Hospital was three miles from campus, but it felt like a million. When we finally arrived, I hopped out of the car and rushed toward the sliding glass doors before Jamil had even put it in park.
“Where is she?” I said, running into the hospital and up to the front desk.
“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” the receptionist said with a thick layer of attitude. “There are like, two thousand people in this hospital.”
“Rose. Rose Briar. She was brought here in an ambulance not long ago.”
“If that’s true, you’re going to have to wait until she gets seen by the doctor before you can see her.”
“I’m her emergency contact.”
“Are you her sister? Mother? Father? Grandmother?”
“No,” I said.
“Are you two married?”
I shook my head, deflated. “No.”
The woman pointed her long, press-on fingernail toward the stiff blue seats behind me and sighed loudly. “Then, you’re going to have to sit down and wait until visiting hours. Try to get in contact with her parents. They’re the only ones who can see her now.”
“She hates her parents.”
“Then, I’m afraid she’s on her own.”
“That’s not a very good answer.”
“Well, it’s the only one I got.”
I stormed away from the counter and back toward Jamil, who had just entered the hospital. “Can I use your phone?”
I didn’t have a cell phone. Even with burners, monster hunters kept tracking me down when I had one, so it was safer to rely on the kindness of strangers when the need arose, or in this case, the kindness of a friend.
Jamil pulled out the phone from her gold purse. “Of course. Who are you calling?”
“The Devil and her husband.”
Rose’s parents lived over an hour away from us. I expected them to tell me to piss off, but they sounded legitimately concerned, and were in their car before I was off the phone with them. Rose’s parents weren’t evil people, just bad ones. They completely disavowed their only daughter when she told them she was gay, and the sting hit double when Rose revealed she was dating a black woman.
She didn’t tell them I was also half-Gorgon, but just being black was enough to make me a monster in their eyes.
“Where is she?” Rose’s mom said, barreling through the door. Well, waddling was more like it. She was not the paragon of health, nor was her pock-faced husband. They both ate too much fast food, exercised too little, and smoked a carton a week, which made them wheeze and gasp with every step they took.
“She’s—” I started, but her mother just blew past me.
“I’m not talking to you.”
Rose’s father sidled up to the reception desk. “I got a call that my daughter was in the hospital here. Her name is Rose Alice Briar.”
“And you’re her father?” the receptionist said.
He nodded. “That’s right. I have ID to prove it if you need—”
“No. I believe you. I told her to call you,” she said, pointing at me.
“Don’t believe a word she tells you,” Rose’s mom said. “She’s a liar and a home wrecker.”
“I didn’t wreck your home. You did that yourself.” I snarled back at her.
Rose’s mother clomped up to me. “Look at what you’ve done! Because of you, my daughter couldn’t call her mother for help. She ended up here. Who knows what will happen to her now?”
I took a step forward. “Imagine what would have happened if you didn’t kick her out and force her to be on her own just for loving who she loved.”
“My daughter will never love a ni—”
“Katie!” Rose’s father said. “She’s not worth it. Come on. They said we can see her.”
Rose’s father handed her mother an ID badge and they turned toward the door. “She better be okay. Otherwise, we’re gonna sue.”
“Please,” I said. “Please let me come.”
Rose’s father snarled at me. “Haven’t you done enough?”
They walked through a sliding door that the receptionist pressed open for them and it closed behind their fat butts. The receptionist looked at me, doe-eyed, as if she finally found her heart. Tears welled in her eyes before she turned away from me. God forbid she show a bit of emotion.
“Thanks a lot. All I wanted was to see the person I love. Now you’ve left her with them.”
The receptionist shook her head sadly. “I’m just doing what I’m told. Rules are rules.”
“I’m sure they are.”
I started to walk away, but the receptionist called behind me. “She’s in a coma. They don’t know when she’ll wake up, or if she’ll wake up.”
Tears welled in my eyes. “Why did you tell me that?”
“I thought you should know. Clearly, you’re somebody that loves her. Of course, if you tell anybody I said something, I’ll deny it.”
Jamil placed her hand on my shoulder. “Come on. There are other ways to help Rose.”
I turned to her. “How?”
“I know a guy,” Jamil smiled at me. “He’ll be a lot more use to us than her parents.”
“I should stay here. What if they—”
She squeezed my shoulder tight. “They won’t, and she won’t. Not unless we go now.”
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.