Kenneth Shumaker, A.K.A: Rusty Knight
Eren’s Challenge
Witten by Kenneth Shumaker
Episode 026 Part one, Lilac Train Car
With InUPress
Written on April 16, 2018
Part one published on Virily on May 22, 2018.
We now continue with Eren’s Challenge episode 026, ‘Lilac Train Car,’ on …
Trondel 11 of 78
I walk with Jut on the deserted beach trailing beside the mocha unicorn.
Both of them tower above me.
I wrap my leather jacket tighter as the west wind howls off of the ocean as it breaks meter high waves onto the fine yellowed sands of my beach of our industrial research city, Goral. This is the capital city of Earl Ferrent’s realm.
Gods’ I hate what this nearly ten-foot dark-blue furred dog just asked me to do! “Are you serious, Jut? You want me to approach Angel with that?”
Suddenly stopping and kneeling in front of me, the brute looks me in the eyes, locking contact. He places his hand/paw on my shoulder while he says, “Amino! She will hear you and consider it!”
I shudder right to my toes as the weight of his hand/paw rests on me, and I consider his request. “I don’t think she will Master Jut … she has it good now … she’s made it big.”
Bowing his muzzle, he whispers, “please … for our friendship … Amino!”
…..
I lay with Es, our sex just now was great, I never met a woman who wanted to experiment so much before. But the pain in my wounds now keeps me lying awake beside her. I took a double dose, taking 90 mg of codeine, with 1,500 mg of Willowrok, but be damned if it’s doing anything for these aches.
I get out of bed as quietly as possible slipping out from under the covers and dressing quickly in my old worn out wrinkled jogging clothes.
Es mumbles a few times as she turns over, flopping her arm onto my space of our bed. But she doesn’t wake.
Walking down to my secret office in my cellar, I key the com number for Angel.
The great bitch responds quickly, and I see her huge maw on my screen. She utters, “Amino!”
I offer a grin to her then say, “good evening, dog lady!”
She winks twice while lowering her brows, “Eren you disturb me to insult me?”
I shake my head slowly, once. “No, actually I’m bored and decide to call someone challenging to talk with.”
The great hound laughs at me. Settling back in her hammock she says to her com. “Go ahead. I was bored too. My mates are away on business, so I’m alone.”
Looking into my cam, I lower my brows and frown as I say, “to tell the truth … actually, its three of them who asked me to talk with you. My sweet bitch, several of your mates’ desire to go home … but are afraid to ask you … so they nominated me to ask you. They want to return to their homeworlds. With … or without you Amina.”
She stares back me silently … not twitching a nerve. Not even a blink.
“Amina?”
She blinks, and for the first time, I see her eyes droop at the corners and lips sag as I see her sad. Not upset, angry or mean. The first time I’ve seen a gnoll sad.
“Do you want time to think about it? Or talk about it, Amina?”
She nods, and then says, “come with me for a ride on my train so we can talk. I’ll send Tairence.”
…..
I get in the old beat up red sedan that Tairence arrived in to pick me up with.
He looks at me straight-faced with a grim expression. “Eren! I don’t know what you did, but Angel insisted I take you to her Lilac train car. She invites no one there but her mates or food, my friend … I’m sorry to see you go!”
I chuckle and then say, “don’t worry about me, you thug. Worry about the world after this.”
The drive is a long one, seven hours to the eastern outskirts of Goral. Driving out to the primary Trans-continental Railway Station. He doesn’t pull into the main terminal though. Instead, he drives around to the private terminals, to berth number seven.
Arriving there I see a train of eight cars, each is a different colour of the rainbow.
Tairence points and says, “that one! She calls it her Lilac car.”
Nodding twice and grudgingly I exit the safety of his red sedan when he bumps us to a stop near the violet car.
Thinking to myself, ‘this is wrong,’ I climb the two steps to the front end of the train car door, as I’m about to knock, a second vehicle, a classic red coupe pulls up beside me, and Rufus jumps out to open the passenger door for Angel to exit. Then he jumps back in and follows Tairence’s sedan away.
Angel ambles over waving her finger. “Wrong door Amino. Unless you desire to be my snack!”
Taking the lead, she opens a sliding door at mid car, allow us to enter an austere accoutred Lilac interior of the train car.
Inside a set of nine giant size rough wooden seats which surround a great rough-cut planks oak table, in a room with a coarse oak plank floor, ceiling and walls. Soft white LED light fixtures barely illuminate the Lilac painted interior where nothing else disturbs the décor.
I take the twelve-inch riser steps into the inside of this hall, and like an infant taking an adult seat, I climb up onto a chair to sit.
I patiently wait for Angel to close and lock the door; walk to the end we arrived near, open a walk-in cooler door and pull out an adult humal arm and takes a bite of raw meat.
Returning to the table, she sits across from me, and I’m jolted as I feel there is as our lurch train begins to move.
Setting the arm on the table after two more bites, she gestures to me and then the arm and raises her brows.
I shake my head as my stomach churns at being offered fresh raw humal flesh to eat.
I see my first gnoll tears as she plants her elbows on the table, arms down flat. I didn’t even know they had tear ducts. She asks, “Why? Which ones?”
This ends this Eren’s Challenge episode 026 part one, ‘Lilac Train Car,’ written by, Kenneth Shumaker.
May the words stay with you!
To be continued in the next Eren’s Challenge episode 026 part two, ‘Lilac Train Car,’ …
© 2018 by Kenneth Shumaker with Inevitable Unicorn Press
www.inupress.ca inupress@inupress.ca
‘Exhaust from the Tin Woods,’ is a novel paced through the northern woods of 1895 around Alberta’s Grouard on the north shore of Slave Lake. This steampunk novel follows the tribulations of an adopted group of science students led by the renown professor Allbrung in a time when the spiders of the demented criminal scientist who was a colleague of the professor’s from Victorian Europe. As the deranged scientist engages in an assault in the woods of Alberta with an attempt to turn the living beings of the world into functioning machines.
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Due out in May 25th, 2018, from InUPress, we hope you’ll enjoy Kenneth’s return of his first medieval fantasy book in the ‘Lost Souls’ series, with the second edition of his first novel ‘Laret: Darkness of Souls,’ returning in a new second edition titled, ‘Larret Army: Rising Souls.’
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