Welcome back to Eldritch Girl…
In this part of the novel (continuing Chapter 3 of 13), Katy has an eye-opening chat with Ricky, while Wes gets wasted and unlocks a surprising new ability.
CWs: implied cannibalism of human/human-passing organs, drugs and alcohol, background gore, amputation and torture, masturbation and xenophobia
Chapter 3 (continued)
Nathan Porter’s notes were mainly in shorthand, with doodles of strange symbols and odd landscapes and moon phases in the margins. She flicked through one, wondering if there was something interesting in it, but was interrupted.
“Looking for something, are we?”
She spun around, sending a jar flying and a book thumping to the floor.
~ C. M. Rosens, Thirteenth, p. 87
Highlighting an Easter egg (which is also a bit of foreshadowing for later… Chekhov’s notebook) because Nathan Porter and Deirdre Wend’s “courtship” is in my long short story/short novella (!) which is in the SPOOKY BY ASSOCIATION anthology.
It’s called THE RELUCTANT HUSBAND, and about how Nathan Porter thought he could access the secrets of the cosmos by wooing an eldritch horror. This went about as well as you think it did.
Katy has underestimated Cousin Ricky (again, although there’s a good reason she does this consistently – she doesn’t know him properly and believed what she was told about him, and has a lot of bad memories of him showing up to her birthdays off his face when she was little). Ricky has Grampa Nathan’s journals for a good reason, and that will become clearer later.
Meanwhile, Wes is at a live snuff show which is being streamed so people can bet on how long Sasha’s victims last. Each set is an endurance test for Sasha, since it’s no mean feat to torture three people in a row while doing a burlesque set, with each victim lasting about 15-20mins each. That’s a pretty full hour when you’re covered in blood and wielding power tools in stilettos. Wes starts to realise that the drugs he’s just taken have a really interesting (and lucrative) side effect… who needs Cousin Ricky?
C. M. Rosens 