Other Worlds

  Other Worlds

  Young Adult Fiction by Kody Boye

  Volume 1

  Copyright © 2023 by Kody Boye. All Rights Reserved.

  Cover created by Getcovers Design

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner, except in the case of brief quotations embodied within critical articles and reviews or works within the public domain.

  This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is coincidental.

  Contents

  After the Flood

  The Butterfly Man

  The Black Wedding

  The Devil on Blue Hill

  Delilah

  The Stairway to Heaven

  Smoke and Bone

  The Town That Hides at Dusk

  When the Last Bird Flies

  That First Hour

  That Last Moment

  A Ship Called Destiny

  Marina’s Lament

  What Best Friends Do

  Caroline

  One Last Night

  The Hope to Last Forever

  What They Say Happens In-Between

  The Seven Stages of Anna Miller’s Grief

  Whalesong

  About the Author

  After the Flood

  The net is filled with fish on this hot and unforgiving morning. Thrashing about, they are full of life and vigor—and soon, will be in me and my family’s stomachs.

  If I can pull them up.

  Normally, this would not be an issue; because as a girl of seventeen, I should be strong and full of resolve. Unfortunately for me, fate has dealt me a heavy hand, and left my body with terrible suffering.

  You have to do it is the thought that keeps repeating itself in my head. You have to.

  I am not the only mouth I have to feed on this hot and unforgiving day. My sister, Dahlia, has been asking for food since last night, and my father—

  I sigh.

  My father’s condition has worsened. No longer can he bear heavy burdens upon his back or shoulders, whether real or imagined. For that reason, the task of fishing has fallen to me.

  And I cannot dawdle.

  I can already see them moving in the distance, circling the boat they know will eventually provide them food. Their wicked fins are traitorous to my conscience, and even more threatening to my body.

  It will not be long before the sharks are drawn.

  For that reason, I must hurry.

  I brace myself for the pain that is likely to shoot through my body—for the agony that will tear through my arms—and take hold of the rope that holds the net together.

  I bite down. Grit my teeth. Pull.

  The pain is excruciating—sending stabbing needles throughout the joints in my fingers and hands—and causes me to sway as I use my body’s weight to pull the net from the waters. It is not the rope that is heavy, all things considering. It is the fish, plump and fat from years of freedom, that weigh me down.

  I lift my eyes from where they are trained on the net to look at the horizon beyond—

  Only to find that the sharks are gone.

  A flicker of panic surges through me.

  Then, I see it—the dark shape, wicked and striped, making its way toward me.

  I have less than ten seconds before it reaches the net.

  So, I do what I feel is best, considering the circumstance—throw myself backward.

  The net, and the fish in it, are ejected from the water…

  Just in time for the monster to jump from the ocean’s depths.

  I see, for one brief moment, a razor-sharp maw with multiple rows of serrated teeth. Then it crashes against the boat and sends the vessel rocking.

  I don’t know how heavy the beast is. I can only surmise that it weighs several hundred, if not a thousand pounds. Regardless, it doesn’t matter; because as the boat careens one way, I am thrown to the floor, then am dragged down by gravity and the weight of the fish.

  I scream, “Dahlia!”

  And my sister—who is awaiting the day’s catch from below deck—comes barreling up, her red braids flashing in the wind.

  She takes hold of my hand.

  I take hold of hers.

  She pulls back.

  I cry out.

  I almost lose the catch, but am able to maintain my grip on it as my seven-year-old sister drags me backward.

  It is over just as quickly as it began.

  In but a moment, the boat is righting itself, the fish are flailing out of water, and I am reeling, breathless and panicked over the experience.

  My sister asks, “Are you okay?”

  And I, with little thought to my wellbeing, say, “Yeah. I am.”

  She lifts her eyes to the waters beyond the boat. “It’s the same one,” she says, “isn’t it?”

  I turn my head to look past the railing only to find that the monster is submerging itself into the depths of the ocean.

  “Yeah,” I say. “It’s the same one.”

  My sister sighs, but considers the fish at my feet and says, “At least you caught supper.”

  I can only nod.

  In the end, that’s the only thing that matters.

  We won’t go hungry tonight.

  My father goes to work gutting and preparing the fish for the evening’s meal. I, meanwhile, lie in pain on my simple bed below deck, regretting every moment I exist.

  The pain’ll dissipate, I think, forcing myself to count backward while breathing in through my nose and out of my mouth. It always does.

  That isn’t exactly true, though. In reality, the pain could last for hours, and sometimes even wake me up after a long and restless sleep. Still, I have to have hope—and for that reason, I lie prone and still, and pray that someone, anyone, will take my pain away.

  From above, I hear my father swear. Dahlia admonishes him for his curse, then laughs as my father says something in response.

  It’s a life I should have learned to love, considering I survived the Flood.

  Some weren’t so lucky.

  As I close my eyes, and as I begin to drift into dream, I faintly remember the rain as it begun one Friday afternoon—and how I, as little more than a girl of ten, looked out at it.

  “Will it ever stop?” I remember asking at one point, after it had rained non-stop for three days straight.

  “It will,” my mother had said. “It always does.”

  Except it didn’t. Wouldn’t. Would never.

  Not for years.

  We’d been lucky, I suppose. We’d had a boat then, and lived by the coast, so we’d been able to beat the rising tides as water from both the sky above and the crack they’d found in the sea below raised the sea levels to astronomical heights.

  We’ve been sailing for nearly six years, and we still haven’t seen land.

  Not since everything else was swallowed up.

  I sigh as I try to recall what it felt like to live a life on solid ground—a life where I’d go to school, play with friends, live life normally as the world and my circumstance saw fit.

  It hurts to not remember.

  But nothing hurts as much as this.

  I flex my fingers in an effort to draw the pain into my arms, but find that it does little but cause my joints to flare in response. They are like daggers, my bones, and they struggle with all their might to pierce flesh that seems to be made of stone.

  It’s all I can do to keep from crying.

&
nbsp; Yet, somehow, I don’t. Instead, I inhale, exhale, breathe sweetly the fresh air that filters down from the deck above. I hear Dahlia’s laughter, my father’s careful words, the ebb of the ocean as waves brush against the sides of our vessel.

  Then, slowly, I drift off to sleep.

  It is not dreams that meet me. Instead, they are nightmares—cruel, harmful, and barbed. They instantly take root in my conscience and trap me in a land that is not my own, in a time that once existed.

  In a time during the Flood.

  The sea had been twisted then—violent in its intent to destroy everything that we saw fit—and though try as I did to not be afraid, I could not help but huddle below deck with my sister, who at the time had barely been little more than four.

  Stay back! my mother had said. Let your father and I handle this!

  They’d been trying to keep the sails from thrashing about, the fabric from being ripped free from the mast. Just hours before they’d been mending a tear within its length, and though they’d sworn they’d secured everything in anticipation for the coming storm, something had happened.

  Something that had caused the sail to flap loose.

  There was no way to tell what was going on at that point. Huddled beside my younger sister, I’d held her tight as above our parents called to and yelled at each other to do this or do that. Dahlia had just been a baby, and though she’d always tried her best to hold it together, she was crying, piteously, against my shoulder.

  It’ll be okay, I remembered saying. They’ll be back in a little bit.

  But of course, that we not meant to be.

  One moment, everything was fine.

  The next, the boat swelled.

  The boom holding the sail in place snapped around.

  My mother cried out.

  Then, my father screamed.

  There was no way, at that point, for me to know what was happening. But based off his cries of agony, his screams of frustration, I knew that something horrible had happened.

  By the time he’d returned, he was drenched to the core—and, worst of all: alone.

  Where’s Mommy? Dahlia had asked.

  She’s gone, my father had replied. I’m sorry. She’s gone.

  Those two words are enough to stir me from sleep.

  I awaken slowly, cautiously, with hesitation I know is born from the dread of the past rather than the facts of the present. Pulled effortlessly from the realm of sleep, I open my eyes to find that pale light is filtering down the passage, and my father and sister’s voices along with it.

  “Daddy,” Dahlia says.

  “Yes?” my father replies.

  “Is Nicky ever going to get better?”

  I inhale a breath.

  My father doesn’t respond.

  “Daddy?” Dahlia asks again.

  “We shouldn’t talk about your sister when she could be listening.”

  “But is she—“

  The sound of the wood creaking beneath my feet causes both of them to fall silent.

  In but a moment, I am rising, stretching, grimacing as old pains flare to life. Then I am climbing the stairwell, and making my way into the light of day.

  My father’s tired hands are tending to the fish above the seaweed-stoked fire. Dahlia, however, looks on at me cautiously, her bright green eyes blazing despite the fact that a certain guilt curls her lips.

  I say, “Hey.”

  She says, “Hi.”

  My father adds, “How are you feeling?”

  And I reply, “A little better.”

  “You pulled in a big catch,” he says. “We’ll eat well tonight.”

  I nod, and step past him to look at the ocean beyond. “Is he gone?” I ask.

  “Who?” my father questions.

  “Tiger?” my sister offers.

  “Yeah. Tiger,” I say, more than a bit unnerved that we’ve come to call the shark that continues to follow our boat by name.

  “I haven’t seen it since I’ve come up here,” my father says. “I’m making sure to keep everything in the bucket.”

  “A bucket of blood isn’t what’s luring it, Dad. It’s the fact that I put the net down.”

  “Surely it isn’t smart enough to know?” he offers.

  I turn my head and narrow my eyes.

  My father averts his gaze, obviously troubled. “They look done,” he says, looking down at my catch.

  And so we eat.

  While I sample my fish, and sip the water that’s been filtered from the sea via distillation, my eyes trail along the horizon, purposely seeking land that I know we will never find.

  You gotta stop hoping, a part of me says. It’s been years since you’ve seen anything.

  Is it so wrong, though, to hope that we will one day find land? Surely the whole world could not have been covered by water. Right?

  It sure feels like it, I then think, and sigh.

  My father lifts his eyes to look at me, that silent, ever-lingering question on his face.

  Dahlia turns her head in the direction I’m facing and says, “Looking for land?”

  “No,” I say, shaking my head. “I’m not.”

  “Liar,” my sister says.

  I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from responding. I know Dahlia’s simply concerned. I mean, who wouldn’t be, especially when it’s a teenage girl longing for something that she can never have? Those are fantasies my sister should be having, not me.

  A frown crosses my lips, but quickly fades when my sister begins to hum under her breath.

  “Stop that,” I say.

  “No!” Dahlia says.

  “Why are you humming anyway?”

  “Because I heard it in the ocean,” my sister replies.

  “We haven’t seen any whales for ages,” I say.

  “They’re not whales, Nicky. They’re mermaids.”

  “You know there’s no such thing as mermaids.”

  “Yes there is!”

  “No there—“

  “Girls,” my father says, and sighs.

  We both stop arguing. There’s something in the way he speaks that sets me on edge, and causes Dahlia’s upper lip to stiffen.

  “What is it, Dad?” I ask. “What’s wrong?”

  “I… I wanted to discuss what might happen in the future with you,” he says.

  “Daddy?” Dahlia asks. “What’s wrong? Why are you acting that way?”

  “Because I’m sick, baby girl. And… because I don’t think I’m going to make it much longer.”

  There are no words to describe what goes through your mind after hearing such a thing. The rumble of chaos, the hopelessness of the future, the utter shock of the present—memories of the past come flooding back at this moment, like a wave surging from somewhere far away on the ocean, and crash into me with the full malevolence of life.

  My father, standing at the rails—

  Him, coughing—

  Him, vomiting—

  Blood, spilling—

  I’ve known he was sick for some time, and have been trying to keep it from Dahlia since. The shock is not as great to me as it is to my sister, who instantly starts crying.

  “Die?” she wails. “Die?”

  “Yes, baby girl. I… I think I might be dying.”

  “No!” my sister cries, standing. “You can’t! Won’t!”

  “I can’t help what nature has in store for me,” my father sighs, lowering his eyes to hide what are undoubtedly tears. “I just… I wanted to warn you. Both of you. So… it wouldn’t come as a shock.”

  A shock, I think, would not describe what he is saying. Instead, he should have said a blow—which, with its barbed countenance, would leave first its damage, then the impressions that would last forever.

  As I sit here, staring in horror at my father, I try my hardest to allow my emotions to sink in, but find my survival instincts kicking in.

  What do I do? I think.

  How will we survive? I wonder.

  How will
I take care of Dahlia?

  The last thought is the most haunting—because I know, deep down, that I am merely a sister, not a mother, or a father. To think that I could control a wild spirit such as hers is comparable to capturing the sun and the moon—an impossible fantasy that could not be made real.

  Dahlia sobs.

  My father moves to rise.

  He stops, then, and turns his head as he reaches up to cover his mouth.

  “Dad?” I ask. “What’re you—“

  He vomits, then—

  But it is not bile.

  No.

  It is blood.

  As he retches—and as Dahlia screams for help that I cannot offer—I can only watch as the blood goes trailing across the deck, over the edge of the boat…

  And into the water below.

  Though my father’s episode lasts only for a moment, its impression in my life is enough to make me realize that the end is fast approaching.

  I can only watch as, in the distance, our angel of death appears.

  My father requests to sleep on the upper deck not long after Dahlia has abandoned her dinner to cry in her bed on the lower deck.

  You’re sure? I asked.

  I’m sure, he’d replied.

  I watch him from the far side of the upper deck and wait for something—anything—to happen. Whether or not his death will occur now or in hours I do not know, but as he lies there, wrapped in his many blankets, I wonder:

  Can I handle what comes next?

  He has taught me well. This, I know. And yet, I can’t help but feel as though I am so horribly unprepared—to take care of not only myself, but Dahlia.

  Dahlia, I think.

  I should go to her. I know I should. But, I also know that she will not accept me openly. She will ask why I did not tell, why I did not speak. And I—I will only be able to tell her the horrible truth: that I, too, was afraid of what would come, and did not want her to face it until she was ready.

  But are you?