Reading the full Chapter One: “The Young Chimera” from Jenna Moreci’s book EVE
Jenna Moreci is a sci-fi writer, blogger extraordinaire, nerd-incognito and self-proclaimed badass. A bona fide Renaissance woman, Jenna graduated college as a Dean’s Scholar with a degree in Finance while simultaneously working as an internationally published commercial and beauty model. Naturally, she has decided to flush all of that crap down the toilet to pursue a career writing about aliens and explosions and shit.
Some of Jenna’s other talents include prolific cursing, spilling/dropping things, being asthmatic, accidentally making people cry, and drawing.
Check out Jenna Moreci’s blog here.
Follow Jenna Moreci on Twitter here.
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Chapter One: The Young Chimera
Every detail of that day was vividly engrained in her memory. The breeze was gentle, the air ripe with the scent of freshly cut grass and the heat of Indian summer. God, even the smell was so sharp, so exact. Eve was only eight years old: a little girl with bouncy brown curls and a fresh California tan. She sat in her front yard, the blades of grass tickling her toes as she hunted for ladybugs, snails, and any other critters she could possibly find crawling through the sod. Off in the distance the sun was setting, painting the sky with streaks of pink and orange like the swirls of her favorite sherbet ice cream. Her aunt was standing by the kitchen window, watching her as she did every weekday afternoon until her parents arrived from work. They would be home soon – with pizza, no less, or so they had promised – and in that instance, Eve knew it was going to be a good evening.
A single ladybug crawled down her arm, across her palm and onto the tip of her index finger where it launched itself into the sky, quickly fluttering away with the breeze. Eve’s eyes followed the insect until they caught sight of something else: a small blue car, like a faraway speck gliding up the street. Her parents were coming. She sprung from the lawn, her knees and bottom stained green from the turf, and skipped along the sidewalk toward the corner of her block where she stood and waited. The car stopped at one stop sign. Another. She could make out her mother in the driver’s seat – she waved to Eve and smiled. The moment was so perfect, as if taken straight from the pages of a children’s picture book. If she could have frozen time in that instance, she would have done so in a heartbeat.
And in a split second, a fiery red truck hurtled through the intersection and smashed into the little blue car.
The crash sounded like a thunderclap in the middle of the street: a turbulent, ear-piercing explosion. Her parents’ car flipped once, twice, three times until it slammed into a nearby telephone pole and wrapped itself around the wooden post. With a deafening boom, the truck landed upside down atop the wreck, crushing what remained of the car until it was nothing more than a mangled aluminum carcass. Suddenly, it was over: there was nothing left but silence.
Eve was motionless. She stood at her corner and gazed out at the destruction, her body crippled and eyes vacant. Her heart and lungs were frozen and heavy in her chest, and though she knew what had happened, though she had seen every detail, she remained still and unresponsive. In those few, agonizingly long seconds, she was hollow, a shell of who she once was; all she could do was stand and stare at the distant scrap pile of metal, rubber, and blood.
Movement: a bloody arm dangled from the shattered window of the truck, finally bringing life to the crumpled heap. It frantically searched for the door handle and, with an arduous tug, swung the door open. A man tumbled out of the truck and landed face first onto the pavement, his body limp and pathetic as he struggled on the ground. He forced himself to his feet – his clothes were tattered, his face smeared with blood – and as he stumbled away from the wreckage, his eyes desperately looked for a way to go until finally locking onto Eve.
“Don’t you tell anyone, little girl,” he slurred, staggering toward her. “Don’t you tell a Goddamn soul, y’hear me?”
It hit her like a ton of bricks: all of her senses began working at once in an adrenalized, feverish moment. Her heart pounded as if it could escape from her chest, and an uncontrollable pulsing surged in her brain – it was a pain she had never known, a torturous throbbing that clouded her vision with darkness. Her limbs shook furiously as tears poured down her face, and with what felt like every ounce of energy she had within her, she let out a gut-wrenching scream.
Something happened with that scream – something that Eve could not predict or explain. The contorted truck lurched from its resting spot, seemingly coming to life in an instant, and then shot high into the sky like a horrifying rocket. Just as it disappeared from sight, the truck came plummeting down to the ground until it crash-landed only a few yards away, right on top of its driver, smashing his body into the rubble beneath him.
Eve sprinted toward her parent’s car, her shrill cry echoing down the street. Her hair was plastered to her wet face as she howled for her parents, desperate to see their faces, but all she could see were scraps of metal and a steady stream of smoke oozing from the mutilated car hood. She hadn’t noticed the truck’s sudden resurrection or the death of its driver. She hadn’t seen her neighbors pouring out of their houses, nor did she hear their shrieks: “It was her!” they cried. “She killed him!” She did not feel her aunt snatch her up and grip her tightly. All she felt was the heaving of her lungs, the rawness of her throat and the strange, defiant pulse in her brain.
“Did you see what she did?”
“She’s one of them!”
“She’s so young…”
Their words reverberated in the background, fading away until all she could hear was the sound of her own piercing, terrorized scream.
Eve’s eyes shot open, and she gasped for air. She propped herself up atop her mattress, cradling her aching forehead in her hands as her breathing slowly returned to normal. It was a nightmare – an all too familiar nightmare. The same nightmare she had been having every night for the past eleven years. She turned to her left and checked her clock: 7:53 AM. With an obscenity-ridden grumble, she dragged her body out of bed and began her morning routine.
Eve stumbled across the small studio apartment and parked herself in front of the bathroom mirror. She wasn’t a little girl anymore: she was nineteen years old and nearly a grown woman. Her once corkscrew curls had softened into long waves of coffee-colored hair that cascaded down her freckled, olive shoulders. The spitting image of her late mother, she had large brown eyes, full lips and an angular face with sharp cheekbones and a pointed nose. She was slender, gangly and awkward, with legs that extended endlessly as she stood five feet ten inches tall, her height clearly inherited from her late father. As she hurriedly brushed her teeth, she stopped, just for a moment, and stared at her reflection – at the subtle hints of her parents looking back at her – and then quickly spat in the sink.
The abrupt ringing of her phone interrupted the silence. Eve checked the clock – 8:02 AM – and rolled her eyes, ignoring the noise until the call went to voicemail. With the slightest hint of urgency, she rummaged through her measly closet and pulled out a simple grey hooded sweater, a pair of faded cutoff shorts and her favorite black combat boots and shimmied the clothes onto her body, combing her hair into place with her fingers before heading for the door. She grabbed her skateboard, yanked at the doorknob and stopped; her phone still sat on her cardboard box nightstand, its message light blinking brightly as if to torment her, and she sighed with irritation as she shoved the device into her pocket and slammed the door behind her.
San Francisco was sunnier than usual. Normally, Eve wouldn’t even fathom wearing shorts in the middle of June, but the sky was a little bit more blue than grey and streams of sunlight perforated the clouds. She dropped her skateboard to the ground and pushed off, gracefully gliding down the street and swerving around the handful of pedestrians meandering through her path. The wind tossed her hair back and forth across her shoulders and the sunshine warmed her hands and cheeks, but even in that moment of peace she still couldn’t help but notice them: the disparaging faces of those who watched her speed by, their mouths twisted into angry grimaces, their eyes beady and scornful. She pulled her hood over her head as she skated down the road, though she knew it wouldn’t do her much good. They still watched her. They always did.
Eve reached Haight Street, skating by a group of lost tourists who gazed disappointedly at their gritty and less-than-impressive surroundings. She passed the rows of alternative boutiques, hole-in-the-wall restaurants and music stores, and still the scathing stares followed her. It was of no consequence to her – that, of course, was a lie, but one she told herself so frequently that she nearly believed it – and besides, she would only be there for a short while. She found her spot: Bob’s Pawn Shop, right in between the Chiquita Bonita Taquería and the Shang Wu Holistic Pharmacy. Bob himself sat outside smoking a pipe with his old, blind German Shepherd, though aside from that the entire block looked startlingly unfamiliar. A line of police cars circled the corner, their lights flashing as the officers cluttered the sidewalk. The pharmacy was a mess: the windows were bashed in and caution taped covered the entire storefront. The owners, an elderly man and woman, cried as they gave the police their statements, their voices frantic and expressions distraught. Suddenly, they stopped: they turned and stared at Eve, and soon the officers followed suit, their faces wearing the same look of disdain that had haunted her since she left her apartment. Without a single hesitation, she tucked her skateboard under her arm and made her way into the pawn shop.
The shop was dingy, poorly lit and layered with so much dust that she could feel it in her lungs. A few patrons were scattered across the room; they talked to one another, giggling at the obscure artifacts, that is until they heard the door close behind Eve and saw her walk into the room. Their faces dropped – there it was again, that horrible, ugly scowl – and the room became eerily quiet aside from the slight hum of the vintage radio. One of the patrons, a regular whom Eve had seen before, pointed her nose in the air and, with her little finger raised, turned up the volume of the radio.
“The chimera population has plagued us with disorder and mayhem since they first appeared nearly forty years ago. It’s an atrocity, really: one that this country is clearly unprepared to deal with.”
Eve’s phone rang from within her pocket, bringing her back to reality and away from the muffled voice on the radio. She stared at her phone, frowned, and immediately silenced it.
Suddenly, a paunchy, balding man scurried from the back of the store, his face riddled with anxiety as beads of sweat formed at the top of his shiny head. He was Stuart, Bob’s son and the true heart and soul of the shop, though Eve questioned whether he had either. He quickly waddled behind the glass counter and glared at her.
“What do you want, Eve?”
She nodded her head toward the door. “What happened at the pharmacy?”
“There was a raid – Interlopers tore the whole place apart.”
Eve flinched slightly, her fingers tense as they dug into the side her skateboard. “Interlopers?” she said. “Why?”
“Apparently the owners were running an underground medical clinic. For chimeras.”
The shop felt small, too small, and suddenly Eve remembered the other patrons staring at her. She turned – they were still staring, of course – and she picked at her cuticles nervously.
“Look, whatever you want, make it quick. I’ve got customers,” Stuart grumbled.
Eve plopped her board onto the counter. “I want to sell you this.”
Stuart eyed the skateboard, running his hands along the nose of the deck. “Is this a vintage Flip skateboard?”
“Yes. Released in 2017.”
“Jesus Christ, it’s made of wood and everything.” He lifted the board and examined it closely. “Good pop. The artwork is limited edition. This brand doesn’t even exist anymore. Why have you been riding it?”
“I have to get around somehow.”
“Well, your ‘getting around’ is devaluing this piece.” He rested the board back on the counter and wiped the sweat from his bald head. “How’d you get your hands on this thing in the first place?”
“It belonged to my grandpa. He gave it to my dad. Now, it’s mine.”
He scowled. “You know, I still think it’s terrible what you’re doing: selling your parents’ stuff off, God rest their souls.”
“Well, I’d love to get a job so I wouldn’t have to sell any of their things, but for some odd reason, no one will hire me,” Eve spat, her tone laced with sarcasm. “How about you, Stu? Do you want to hire me?”
Stuart uncomfortably looked away. Eve’s phone rang again, and she quickly sent the call to voicemail.
“If this board was in mint condition, it’d be worth thousands, but the grip tape is wearing off and the tail is scuffed down pretty bad.” He folded his arms and dipped his chin. “I can give you four hundred fifty.”
“Are you insane?”
“That’s the highest I can go.”
“I’ve done my research, and boards in worse condition are going for three times that amount.”
“Yes, but did those boards once belong to Evelyn Kingston?” he hissed. “Look, if people ask me where this came from, I’m going to be honest. Your name alone drives down the price.”
Eve glared back at the man – at his round cheeks and bright red nose and the gross sweat that dripped down his temples. She could feel her hands tremble, as if she wanted to ball them into tight fists, and she could sense her vision start to haze over into a deep, overpowering blackness, but she stopped herself.
“You’re a real dick.”
He smiled condescendingly. “And yet I’m the only one who will buy your shit.”
Eve nodded at the cash register, biting her lip resentfully. “Fine,” she muttered.
Stuart fiddled with his old-fashioned register, pressing his stubby fingers against the touch keys in such a way that made Eve cringe with disgust. The register drawer flung open, and as he counted out four hundred and fifty dollars in twentydollar bills, Eve’s phone rang yet again. She impatiently silenced the device, shoving it back into her pocket as Stuart watched her out of the corner of his eye.
“You’re awfully popular today. Didn’t know you had friends.”
“My school keeps calling,” she explained, apathetically. “They want to know if I’m coming to my graduation. I’m the Salutatorian – I’m supposed to make a speech.”
“When’s your graduation?”
“Today.”
“When does it start?”
The faintest shade of a smirk graced her lips. “Twenty-seven minutes ago.”
And again, her phone let out a ring, and still she ignored it. She could hear one of the patrons clear her throat and then raise the volume of the radio even higher.
“To disregard the threat that chimeras pose to this nation is moronic and downright dangerous. Are we just supposed to sit back and watch without taking any steps to control them? To contain them?”
Stuart plopped the wad of twenty-dollar bills onto the counter and let out a long, aggravated breath. “Look, I’ve got to put my foot down. You can’t come back here. You’re –”
“Bad for business, I know, you’ve told me a thousand times.” She scooped up the cash, counted it, and shoved it into the back pocket of her shorts. “Fortunately for you, you’ll never have to see me again. I’m moving; leaving for college in two months.”
“College? Where?”
“Billington University.”
“Billington?” He laughed, his entire face turning an obnoxious shade of pink.
Eve growled. “What’s so funny?”
“You’re telling me a tall tale, Eve, I know it. There’s just no way you could ever get into that school.”
“I’m smart, you know. I’m the Salutatorian of my class, remember?”
“I’ll believe it when I see it.”
Eve yanked her phone from her pocket and furiously tapped at the screen, activating the image database. A large holographic picture appeared from the screen; it was a digital acceptance letter, the text twitching and colors fading from green to grey to blue, the quality poor and hardly functional but the message as clear as day:
Evelyn Janine Kingston,
On behalf of the esteemed Billington University, it gives me great pleasure to offer you a place for admission in September 2087.
Sincerely,
Finnegan Furst
Acting Dean of Admissions and President of Billington University
“Look legitimate enough for you?”
Stuart ran his fingers through the hologram, expanding the flickering image. “Wow, your phone is really old.”
“All of my things are really old.”
He ignored her retort, his eyes wide as he read and reread the letter. “It’s impossible…” he began, his voice trailing off. “Smarts aside, the tuition must be astronomical. You could never afford it.”
“I got a scholarship: it covers my freshman year.”
“Then what? How will you pay for the rest of college?”
“I’ll find a way. I always do.”
“I can’t get over it.” He finally tore his gaze from the letter and looked at Eve. “THE Billington?”
“The one and only, down in SoCal.”
“I know where it is, I’m just –”
“An ass.” She offered him a patronizing sneer and shoved her phone back into her pocket. “Pleasure doing business with you, as always.”
As she headed for the door, she stopped: she could hear the radio far behind her, the volume raised once again, now to its highest level.
“Now, to those out there who say, ‘heck, give these people a break,’ I must correct you: chimeras are not people. They’re about as human as a dog or cat. Just because they look like us doesn’t mean they have the right to be regarded as people. They are aberrations. They are creatures.”
The back of Eve’s neck became hot, tingling with a fire that surged down her spine and illuminated her entire body. Her vision faded to darkness, a thick black that pulsed with each beat of her heart. She didn’t bother to stifle it, despite the nagging voice that begged her to stop, that insisted she walk out the door and never look back, and as she took one last calm breath she allowed the power to flow through her, making its presence known with the slightest flick of her wrist.
The patrons gasped in horror as the radio dial spun furiously as if suddenly possessed, flipping from one channel to the next until it finally stopped at a loud, booming rock anthem, the heavy bass and thumping of the drums echoing throughout the tiny shop.
Eve turned to look at Stuart and the others – their faces were drained of color, their eyes gaping with fear.
“Looks like your radio is broken,” she mumbled. “You should probably get it fixed.”
And with that she left the shop, wincing as the sunlight stung her eyes and poured across her face. She cursed to herself; she had made a mistake, clearly. What she did – the looks on their faces, the terror in their eyes – was hardly constructive, and yet she couldn’t shake the feeling of prideful retribution that festered deep within her chest. It was too much, sometimes: to hear the opinions of others. To hear that she was an atrocity – a creature. After all, she certainly looked human. Her skin, blood and bones were human. She walked, talked, laughed and cried like a human. But Eve was not like other humans, because she was a chimera.
To be fair, the correct term was humanovus: the new human. They were the first of their kind, an advanced breed with all of the same quirks, traits and DNA as the standard human, except for some reason that modern science couldn’t yet dictate, their genes were simply better. No amount of research could pinpoint a specific cause: the genetic makeup of humans and humanovi appeared identical, and scientists of every field and capacity remained frustrated by the mystery of the humanovus, for despite their physical similarities, the two beings were so very different. The new human was physically stronger with unparalleled muscle memory and stamina. They were faster, their energy boundless and bodies rarely in need of replenishing. Their immune system and healing properties were unimaginably resilient, causing doctors to speculate that the average life expectancy of a humanovus could easily surpass one hundred and fifty years, though no one knew for certain. But above all else, the most amazing, extraordinary feature of the humanovi was the power they held in their minds. No, there was no proof that they were inherently more intelligent than normal humans, but each humanovus possessed one particular brain function that no other human had ever been able to attain: the power to manipulate and move objects with the force of their thoughts. Telekinesis – it was a term linked to countless pieces of fiction, and yet it was now real, a mere concept come to fruition. Yes, the humanovi were, in fact, telekinetic, although the title itself seemed so frivolous and romantic, and thus people simply began referring to it as “the gift.”
As is common with any sudden change in modern society, the appearance of humanovi was met with fear and apprehension. Some theorized that humanovi were simply the next step in the human evolutionary chain. Others found them to be miracles, a gift to rid the human race of disease and weaknesses. Still, even more believed that the new human was brought forth by evil: they were powerful, too powerful to be good or pure. Thus, the debate began, as did the riots, the protests, the persecution and prejudice – panic ran rampant across the globe as human beings began to feel increasingly threatened by the presence of humanovi.
Humanity’s fright ultimately led to the creation of a colorful new term: the general public decided to regard these new humans as chimeras, a particularly interesting choice in Eve’s opinion. In the sixth grade, she learned that the chimera was a creature from Greek mythology: a fire-breathing lioness with the head of a goat on its spine and a snake serving as its tail. During vocabulary discussions in high school, she discovered that a chimera was also a fantasy or delusion of sorts. Finally, she learned through her own research that a chimera was a random, arbitrary blend of different tissues: a mutant. And from that, she understood how society truly saw her – as a fantastical blend of monstrous parts.
A freak.
Eve was especially freakish in the eyes of her peers. The typical chimera was hard to diagnose initially: a child with great muscle memory could simply be labeled a superb athlete, and a teenager who never caught a cold was just seen as the winner of the perfect attendance award. The only obvious distinction between humans and chimeras was the gift, and ironically, a public display of the gift was considered as crude as strolling the streets in the nude. Most chimeras kept their gift to themselves, locked away indoors where no one else could see or judge, if they could even maneuver or control it at all, which many could not. In fact, a majority of the public was ignorant to the details of emergence: the deliverance of the gift. Once chimeras reached their early adulthood, their gift would develop suddenly in what felt like a random instance of mental anarchy. Shooting pain, loss of vision, a sense of displacement from reality and, of course, the erratic misfiring of the gift – they were all associated with emergence. Scientists maintained that with age and maturity came the deliverance of the gift, although there was, of course, an exception to the rule: the emotional intensity and exaggerated brain function triggered by extreme trauma could precipitate emergence at any age. That, unfortunately, is exactly what happened to Eve – approximately twelve years too early, at the age of eight, after witnessing the gruesome death of her parents.
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Continue reading Chapter One: “The Young Chimera” from Jenna Moreci’s book EVE
Jenna Moreci is a sci-fi writer, blogger extraordinaire, nerd-incognito and self-proclaimed badass. A bona fide Renaissance woman, Jenna graduated college as a Dean’s Scholar with a degree in Finance while simultaneously working as an internationally published commercial and beauty model. Naturally, she has decided to flush all of that crap down the toilet to pursue a career writing about aliens and explosions and shit.
Some of Jenna’s other talents include prolific cursing, spilling/dropping things, being asthmatic, accidentally making people cry, and drawing.
Check out Jenna Moreci’s blog here.
Follow Jenna Moreci on Twitter here.