Beyond Wild Imaginings

Beyond Wild Imaginings

By

Brieanna Robertson

World Castle Publishing

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used factiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, organizations, or person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

World Castle Publishing

Pensacola, Florida

Copyright © by Brieanna Robertson 2010

ISBN: 9781938243271

Second Edition World Castle Publishing April 15, 2012

http://www.worldcastlepublishing.com

License Notes

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book 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 recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you respecting the hard work of this author.

Cover: Karen Fuller

To Katrina—

You who began it all. The first story told. The first world created.

You will never cease to be because you will never be forgotten.

You and yours will exist in the Creative Realm for all time.

And to Arnold and Folks—who always ate the eggs.

Chapter One

The pounding on the door was persistent. It had been going on for at least five minutes, and the person was getting increasingly more demanding. Kelly gave a weary sigh, knowing that the person on the other side wasn’t going to give up. It wasn’t in her nature, and it was way too much to hope that she would actually get the hint that Kelly didn’t want to be bothered. Why couldn’t everyone just leave her be?

“Kelly, for the love of all that’s holy!” The person on the other side of the door shouted. “If you don’t open the door right this second, so help me, I will kick it down myself!”

Kelly rolled her eyes. She knew she would too. That was the problem. Deciding she didn’t need to add a locksmith bill to her pile, she hoisted herself off the couch and trudged to the door. She unlocked it and turned the knob, but then promptly pivoted and headed back toward the couch.

“It’s about friggin’ time.” The door banged open, and a tall, blonde woman entered in a gray business suit and a lavender silk shirt. She stopped in the entryway and blinked rapidly as she looked around the apartment. “Holy cow, Kelly,” she breathed.

Kelly sighed again as she sat back down. “Come on in, Rachel,” she muttered. She kicked an empty box off the chair next to the couch. “Have a seat.”

Rachel took another look around the room, and Kelly could tell by her stunned and slightly disgusted expression that she was anything but pleased. She glanced around her apartment and sighed. Boxes were stacked everywhere, and half-opened ones were purging their contents all over the floor. The coffee table sat at a bizarre angle between the couch and the dismantled entertainment center, and it was littered with trash and candy wrappers. A garbage can in the kitchen was near to bursting.

Kelly shifted her glance to herself. She was in a blue bath robe and red and blue flannel pajamas. Her strawberry-blonde hair stuck out in short, messy pigtails, and she knew that dark circles were smudged under her eyes. She knew she looked awful. She just really didn’t care.

Rachel shook her head. “Kel, good lord. You’ve been here for two weeks now. Have you unpacked
anything
?”

Dismal, Kelly slid a glower toward her sister. “You know, not everyone is an obsessive-compulsive neat freak like you.”

Rachel snorted and shut the door. “Putting your stuff away before the turn of the century is a far cry from being obsessive-compulsive.” Her expression became concerned as she went to sit in the chair Kelly had indicated. “I know you don’t want to be here. I know you’d much rather be back in your cute little suburban paradise in Jersey, but you may as well make this apartment your own. Not putting your stuff away isn’t going to make all of this a bad dream.”

Rachel’s eyes softened and she reached over to grasp her sister’s wrist. “It will get better. You have to believe that. David was a loser. The fact that he left you for his secretary while you were lying in a hospital bed proved that. Moving to the city is a good thing! It will give you a chance to start all over!”

Kelly forced a smile. Rachel was just trying to be encouraging, but she really wasn’t helping. Yeah, okay, so David had been a loser. She’d happened to love that loser, and try as she might, she couldn’t bring herself to shrug it off like everyone wanted her to. She couldn’t banish him from her memory no matter how badly she wished she could. She didn’t want to unpack her stuff. She didn’t want to go to a singles bar with her overly metro sexual friend and find someone who could “rock her world” for a night. She didn’t want to take up Pilates, or yoga, or grow bonsai trees and feng shui her apartment. She just wanted everyone to leave her alone.

Rachel stared at her for a second before she shrugged. “Well, I guess that’s what makes you a famous writer, right? Having guys like that living in your subconscious.”

Kelly giggled a little in spite of herself. Maybe that’s what the dreams were about. A hero for a future novel. Strangely, though, that wasn’t how it felt. It wasn’t the lightning bolt sensation she usually got when an idea struck her. He was just…there. He seemed very familiar somehow, and every time she dreamed of him, she slept like a baby.

“Well, I have to get to work,” Rachel said suddenly. “I just wanted to check on you. I’m coming over tonight and we’re going to start unpacking.” She stood and pointed her finger at Kelly. “I mean it,” she said with her eyebrows raised. “No more wallowing.”

Kelly rolled her eyes, waved halfheartedly, and waited for Rachel to leave. Once the door clicked shut, she leaned back against the couch and heaved a sigh. What part of “leave me alone” did no one seem to understand? She was twenty-nine years old. She wasn’t a child. She didn’t need to be treated like one.

She stared at all of her unopened boxes for a while and tried to will herself to unpack one of them, but it didn’t work. She didn’t want to look at all of her stuff. All of the things in those boxes were from a different time and a different life. She knew what would happen as soon as she opened them. Her heart would flood with tons of memories of a relationship that had all been a load of crap. She would cry, down a half gallon of ice cream, drink a bottle of wine while watching a depressing movie, and then go to bed just so she could get a moment of peace. She really didn’t want to have to go through all that again.

She hated the hours of the day when she was actually awake. Consciousness brought awareness, and with awareness came the knowledge that she had no life anymore. No routine, no path, no nothing. Her whole world had been obliterated in a matter of months, starting from the moment she’d been broadsided on the road.

She’d broken a leg and her wrist and had received a nasty gash along her side that had ended up getting a stubborn infection. She’d remained in the hospital, being pumped full of antibiotics for two weeks, and during that time, her boyfriend of three years had decided that screwing his secretary was more important than visiting Kelly, or bringing her flowers, or telling her how happy he was that she wasn’t dead.

As soon as she’d been released from the hospital, he had sent her a text message. A text message. He hadn’t even had the balls to call her. He’d told her he was in love with Kimmy, or Kami, or whatever the heck her name was, and that Kelly had only been someone he’d used to pass through a difficult stage in his life. She still had no idea what that really meant.

She’d moved out of Jersey at the insistence of her sister and her best friend Chad, and now she had nothing. Only shards of a life she’d once had, but had burnt down around her while she’d watched in stunned horror. Her editor was constantly harping on her because she had a deadline for a manuscript due in a month’s time, but Kelly didn’t really care. It was impossible to write about anything when her mind was full of crap. It was even more impossible to write about love and fantasy when all she wanted was to puncture every heart balloon she saw and blow up cars that had “Just Married” written on the back.

With a groan, she rolled herself up and then into a standing position and went over to her kitchen window. It was large and overlooked the city. She opened it up and watched as all the cars sped along below. None of them knew that she was in pain. None of them knew that her heart was shattered. No one knew, and no one cared. They just went along with their hectic lives unaware that thirteen floors above a woman had lost every vestige of light and hope in her world.

A tear rolled down Kelly’s cheek, and she bit her bottom lip. She hated that she couldn’t get out of the blackness she had fallen into. Everyone seemed to think that she could and should, but she didn’t know how. She felt so alone and so lost.

Sudden wrath filled her at the thought of her ex-boyfriend. He had done this to her. He had ripped everything away from her. He had killed her heart and destroyed her entire existence while she tried not to get gangrene and kick the bucket. He’d had so much power over her, and he’d known it. And he’d used it to his advantage. Now he was living a new life with his blow-up-doll wannabe, and she was stuck in a desolate pit still pining for him. She hated him. She loathed the very thought of him, and yet, she ached without him. It was a sick and malignant cycle.

With a snarl, she grabbed a small box that was near her and flung it out the window. She watched it sail to the street below, and she smiled in sick satisfaction as its contents burst out and rolled around on the road. A horn blaring and a car screeching to a halt reminded her that she could have very easily hit a car or a person, and her stomach twisted at the realization of how careless she had been.