Ten Thousand Words

Copyright © 2016 by Kelli Jean
All rights reserved.
Visit my website at
www.kellijeanauthor.com
Cover Designer: RE Creatives,
http://recreativesdesigns.wordpress.com
Editor and Interior Designer: Jovana Shirley, Unforeseen Editing,
www.unforeseenediting.com
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

For
anyone who
has ever
picked up a book
and
fallen in love.

A Note from the Author

Preface

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Epilogue

Special Thanks

About the Author

Ten Thousand Words
is the start of a series of stand-alones. It is categorized as a dark suspense romance because it contains certain elements that will be fully actualized in the future books. If you’re looking for a beautiful romantic love story, then you can continue, knowing that will be achieved here, but please keep in mind that, in this book, the tone for the rest of the series is being set.

Each book deals with a certain aspect of the human experience that is terrifying and heartbreaking.
Ten Thousand Words
covers
insanity
, the kind that is delusional and violent.

This story is mainly based in Amsterdam. There is recreational marijuana use in this story.

This book contains some strong violence and crass language.

If you feel that any of these could be triggers for you, please proceed with caution.

Ten Thousand Words
isn’t an overly dark story though. One can read this book and feel fulfilled without the need to continue the rest of the series.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I hope you enjoy Xanthe and Oliver’s story.

Xanthe

For the last two years, I’d been sharing a flat with Opie Powys. She was one of the smartest people I knew, a botanist, which I supposed complemented her quiet demeanor. While I wouldn’t call her timid, she tended to shy away from anything that would expose her emotionally. Opie’s mental anguish ran too deep for words.

One evening, a few months after she had moved in with me, we’d stayed in and gotten smashed on some Schnapps, and she’d confessed to me the horror she’d lived through. I’d heard a lot of terrifying tales in my life, but by far, Opie’s was the worst.

Horror, no matter in what form, I understood it. It wasn’t because I had experienced Opie’s form of it. It was just that…I was drawn to horror. It was an undercurrent to my psyche for some reason. Because of my deep empathy for it, I’d been seeing a fantastic therapist, Dr. McKenna, for years.

After our finals today, Dad would be picking Opie and me up and driving us the ninety minutes from Oxford to London in the early afternoon. Opie’s plans were to move to London while I’d be boarding the last flight out to Amsterdam from Heathrow Airport.

Since I was sixteen, moving to Amsterdam to work in Great-Aunt Ellen’s bookshop was what I wanted to do. It wasn’t very ambitious for an Oxford graduate, but there was so much more to it than that. There was a secret life I was a part of, and I was ready to start living it.

“I think this is the last of it,” Opie said quietly. Giving me a familiar smile, one that forever held a hint of sadness, she taped up the box lid. “I’m really going to miss you, Xanthe,” she told me.

A slight pinch tickled my heart. “I’m going to miss you, too,” I replied.

Grabbing my knapsack off our hideous secondhand orange-and-brown couch, I shrugged it over my shoulder.

“See you in a couple of hours then,” I said. “Good luck.”

“You, too.”

The university was only a fifteen-minute walk from our flat. Heading into the literary wing, I made my way up the stairs and through the necessary corridors to reach the classroom. As always, I opted for a desk as far in the back as possible. Taking a seat, I pulled out my pens and my notebook. People slowly trickled in.

I was
so
ready to leave this chapter of my life behind. It wasn’t that I hated university or that I’d had a tough go at it. Quite the opposite, I was considered one of the top students in my double major—creative writing and psychology.

The professor stood once the clock had struck the hour. We were all silent, settling into our seats, some not so easily as others. I wasn’t worried about passing this exam. Even if I failed—which I wouldn’t—I’d still be graduating. The professor handed out a stack of packets to the head of each row, and everyone took one and passed it back. As I was the second to the last, I simply held the last packet over my shoulder without glancing back, and whoever was sitting behind me took it.

As I glanced at the instructions on the front page, my lungs hotly expelled my breath.

ESSAY TOPIC: WRITE A MINIMUM OF ONE THOUSAND WORDS ABOUT AN EVENT THAT SIGNIFICANTLY ALTERED THE COURSE OF YOUR LIFE.

Bollocks.

Two events had significantly altered the course of my life, and neither of them were anything I desired to discuss with anyone. The first one had cemented within me what I was bound to be—a writer. The second one had set me on the course to the next chapter of my life, and I was forbidden to even acknowledge it.

Resting my face in my left hand, I got as comfortable as possible in the student desk and touched my ballpoint pen to the page.

Xanthe Malcolm

Final Essay: The Discovery of Elaine H. Ford

The dead were once living, and their forgotten lives have always fascinated me. If anything, I have an obsession with death and the afterlife, and the paranormal will forever have a place in my mind, ever since the time I was a small child.

Growing up, I was always tagging along with my archaeologist parents at excavation sites, absorbing the enthralling tales, superstitions, and beliefs of ancient civilizations, fueling my imagination. Witnessing the skeletons and preserved bodies rise from their graves, so to speak, carefully revealed by trowels and brushes, I would try to picture what these people had looked like, how they had lived.

What had happened to them?

And…were they still around in some form? Were they watching the desecration of their final resting places? If they were…did they even care?

A curious child, I put my questions to my parents.

My father would tell me, “They’re just dead.”

My mother would question me in return, “What do you think they’re doing?”

My mind would run wild, scampering through my ideas of the afterlife. Ghosts, ghouls, the walking dead—some benign, others malevolent. Sites in Romania exposed the dead nailed into their coffins. Vampires! Graves of Celts and Vikings brought to life the witches. From the morbidness, my young brain churned out tales of haunted places, people, and things.

These tales, I would spin for my parents and maternal grandmother. My mother loved them—encouraging me not to only tell her about them, but to also write them down. Both she and my grandma nurtured the creative spark within me.

Dad worried about my penchant for the macabre, but Mom simply felt it was natural, what with my upbringing. She would say that it was an expected leap from curiosity to creativity.

We were a strong nuclear family, if slightly unorthodox. So, it was excruciatingly painful when tragedy struck on the day that would forever alter my life.