Astrid the Devil Chapter 1: Uneasy (Excerpt)
Every single thing you touch or feel or say will die. Sentences will leave your mouth, ill-thought and unwise, and they’ll die halfway through the air. Some things take longer, some things take more effort. But they die.
I’m no exception. My mother is no exception. But we’re more like plastic than we are animals. We’re more like nuclear waste.
I thought about styrofoam and plastic as I read the letter, ignoring Noah’s anger as she prepped my arm for bloodwork.
“I can’t believe you opened my fucking mail,” she spat, searching for my vein. I ignored her and kept reading and rereading the letter.
Noah, my best friend for over a decade, opened my mail all the time.
I’d find opened bills on my coffee table after work, come across my children’s report cards sitting on hers. She never actually let me know that she’d taken any of it – I always had to find them. New debit cards with post-it notes that read ‘ACTIVATED IT HUN’ with whatever pin she’d chosen for me. Cell phone bills, ‘I PAID IT ALREADY DON’T GIVE THESE VULTURES ANY MORE MONEY’ written in her swirly handwriting across the top. She’d renew my car insurance. Respond to inquiries about services for my speech therapy practice. Sometimes, my husband would walk in the house with an incredulous frown, whining about a stack of my mail that he’d found sitting on top of her car. She’d always had an insane privacy issue that seemed reserved for me, my things, my personal space.
I never told her not to do it. It didn’t change my life in any way, really.
The letter I’d opened was the first thing of hers that I’d ever snooped through. And Noah was immediately vile with anger. Seething. I understood why before I’d even reached the second sentence, but I wasn’t sorry.
The letter traveled with us to our lab appointment despite her angry protests.
“Can’t even keep mail on the fucking table…it’s either covered in applesauce by the time I get to it or your ass is in my house, opening shit…”
I read the letter slowly, sucking in each word, and nodded. There wasn’t really anything to nod about. The most recent company Noah’d convinced to fund her research into my blood, to pay for the lab work, wanted to ‘change the parameters.’ ‘Go in a different direction.’
Noah waited for me to quiet my nerves before she plunged the needle into my skin.
I felt the pull of the plunger but nothing else.
We recommend burning her.
I thought about those words while Noah pulled back another plunger on another needle, sucking my almost black blood into another syringe. She swapped the containers, glancing over at me periodically, and I ignored her glances. The anger sifted out of her as she continued. Shame replaced it.
When it felt like there wasn’t any blood left to suction, she stopped.
“Same as always, hun. Eight vials get the sweet spot…you still don’t see it?” I didn’t move. Something about the practice embarrassed me. Made me feel open.
Try not to think about what you deserve…
“There’s like a yellow color in there. It’s really faint, but I can see it for sure. Can you put that down and look?” I ignored her. Noah sighed, irritated, and I yanked my arm away. A long line of blood bubbled up and slid down my arm. It hit the floor and was dry in seconds.
Just like that. Completely dry.
Noah spent a long time rolling her huge eyes. Neither one of us looked at the blood drop again.
We recommend burning her. We need to know what happens when her body is destroyed. Please note, we have yet to receive your report going over the methods you’ve tried already. Yvette Lincoln, the head of our financial department, will stop by as our most senior representative to…
“It’s really yellow now. Like the fucking sun.” Slowly, she reached her short arm over and grabbed the letter from my hand. I realized she was shaking herself. The floor seemed calm compared to our faces, our attitudes, so I watched that instead of trying to speak. I wished I could sink into it.
Noah ripped the letter in two and placed her tiny hand on my shoulder.
“Let’s get on with our day, hun.”
After the lab work was done for the day and we’d shared a solemn lunch, we traveled from her small downtown office to her house. Sitting in her living room, she passed me letter after letter. She had boxes. Some of the wording seemed nicer than others – she’d lost a lot of investors over the years as they slowly figured out she wasn’t going to meet their demands. That she was stalling. She’d been threatened with legal action too many times. She used tricky language and lied too much to convince universities and corporations to donate lab equipment and give her grant money.
She mentioned immortal cells a lot. She mentioned a lack of aging. An inability to produce tears.
Eon Tech was one of the last investors willing to work with her.
“How long has Eon been asking you to do this type of thing to me? Did you tell them that you would,” I asked. And Noah stared down at my hands instead of at my face.
“We’re going to be late to meet the boys if we don’t go soon, Astor.”
Read the rest of the chapter at Astridthedevil.com
Astrid the Devil is a serialized paranormal horror drama created and written by me, Trey Briggs, with artwork by @freemechanism. Catch up to the current chapter now at AstridtheDevil.com. New chapters and content will drop every other Thursday at 6 PM Eastern. There are also character bios, short stories, and background pages so that you can stay up to date on the creatures and inhabitants of this world.
“Astrid the Devil is an ongoing tale of generational doom. It’s an in-depth look at the lives of a few good friends, their own clashing personal struggles, and the struggle to keep from becoming the monster you just might be. It’s a story about the ocean, the uncertainty of friendship and love, and maintaining hope throughout madness. Welcome to the lives of the Snows, the Dills, and all the other ‘Things’ out there”
All writing by Trey Briggs || All art by @freemechanism
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