Today is Teaser Tuesday!  In celebration of my impending birthday (and since I haven’t blogged in quite a while), I thought I would add a teaser for #book 2, The Curse of Gold and Ashes.

****Warning! If you haven’t read book 1, Heir to Gold and Ashes, you probably shouldn’t read this. Okay, consider yourself officially warned.**** 

Day 30-something
     This is not what it looks like. Nothing is real, yada, yada, you get the point. The point is, don’t trust a word they say. They locked me up and threw away the key. I don’t blame them. I hallucinate more often than not. Visions of iron-lined dungeons and hospital masks still plague my dreams. The haunting black eyes or the tinge of blood on my tongue when I wake isn’t what bothers me the most. Sure, they’re terrifying, but no, that’s not it. That’s not what wakes me up in the dead of night. It’s the silence.
    This silence is a foreign entity surrounding me in this bleach white room that acts as my personal hell. The asylum is so different from the torment of my mind. Waking up only transports me from one nightmare to the next. They say they’re only dreams. “They” being the good doctor and his goonies. He says they are figments of my imagination. Coma induced hallucinations. That’s what they’re calling it. Want to know what I call it? Bullshit.
This is a reminder to myself. As long as I read this every day, I will remember, or at least I’ll try to. The big chunks of memories are gone, but I refuse to let the remaining ones go. I will hold until there’s nothing left to hold on to. Things I can’t explain, the things I can do, they’re tangible proof of the unexplainable. Sure that mishap with Mary may have landed me in isolation for a few days, but it was worth it. She deserved what she got. The whispers in my head, well, fuck—I can’t tell if those are real or not. Here’s the gist. She will give you meds. DON’T TAKE THEM.
     I don’t know what’s real anymore. Have I already said that? Oh well, I’ll say it again. Nothing is real and I can’t stop thinking about the eyes of a man whose name I can’t recall. All I can remember is the color. Never in my twenty-seven years of living had I seen eyes like those. It wasn’t just the color or the man they belonged to.
I could almost feel the soul behind the eyes. A soul so cold and deep they were like the vast ocean they reminded her of. God, they’re like a Rembrandt painting, the colors so vibrant and blue. His eyes glow like the aftermath of a lightning strike, plaguing my dreams night after night.
    I used to know his name. It dances on my tongue when I try to sleep, when the drugs flood my veins, burning a toxic black hole into every memory I own. I tried writing the word as many times as I could. There’s no use. He’s a ghost of a memory. But ghost or not, he’s a light. A light that haunts me whether I’m awake or asleep, standing just out of reach.
This is a severe case of CRS, Charlie. Seriously, I need to snap the hell out of this before I lose my damn mind. OK, so maybe I’ve already lost it. The voices tell me I’m not crazy, but then again sane people don’t listen to the voices in their head. Or is it the other way around? Damn, I lost my train of thought, again.
Time to get serious, Charlie. Buckle up, because it’s going to be a bumpy ride. Cliche much? Whatever, you get the point. Listen to the voices. They’re trying to tell me something, tell us something. But I can’t for the life of me remember what they’ve said after I’ve woken. Don’t take the meds. That’s all I know for sure. I can’t think without a clear head. The voices are always there, whispering things to me. But as soon as the drugs fog my system everything disappears. I fear I won’t be here much longer. I hear them talking about moving me. I know as soon as they do I’ll never be seen again.
    Don’t trust anyone.
    Especially not Maxx. He’s not human. I don’t know what he is exactly. I haven’t figured that out yet. He is not your husband. He is something else entirely. Until I can make sense of this, stay the hell away from him. As long as you read this and write every day, they can’t take those memories away. No matter how foggy they may be.