Another Place, Another Time DISCONTINUED

Chapter One

This unnecessary excursion all started when James Phoenix decided to recover and resurrect the lost words of time.

This was when there was yet hope for another period of satisfaction in life. I was born in a happy place, in a happy time. It was essentially an elysian. My mother, Anna, was a life that filled a room with unknowing power. My father, David, was a deranged and dull person, who was also considered to be a dense cabbage.

Together, they made me. A blissfully senseless girl of the age of sixteen, who is locked in a wretched place that she shall never escape. I'm Verena. My name means "true," but nothing in this book is real or true. Everything is a lie. If you think like a decent human about the topic of trust, you'll find that everything is perjury, and that everything can be counteracted by more evidential features of the massive space-time continuum. One day the sun will explode and everything will be destroyed and moved to another place or another time.

But enough of this stereotypical teenage girl nonsense. I'm not a typical girl. Nothing about me is typical. I'm very smart, and I know it. I have washed out blonde hair. I have freckles dotted all over my pale, sunless face. And my eyes are blue. I've been told I look like my mother, but I have my father's eyes. I shudder just to think about the piteous man. He ruined our family. He hurt my mother, and when she ran away, he hurt me. He made everything in my life nugatory. I think nugatory is a fun word, by the way...

The door opens, and light puddles into the dark and scrappy basement.

"Verena! Have you eaten?" a drab voice calls out.

"Yes, sir." I reply, my voice trembling. I'm a strong person. But my father scares me. He is a daunting and large man. He is six and a half feet tall, and his eyes are downturned and shrewd. They're blue like a dark sky, and his country accent does not make him any sweeter.

"Good. Go to sleep before I'm home. I'm going gambling." He goes gambling almost every night.

He closes the door. I hear each lock click. First, the chain lock slides into place. Second, the bolt lock snaps shut. Dad pushes in the click lock, and finally takes his key and secures the last lock. For good measure, he screws five wooden boards in alternating directions, just in case. He pushes a mat against the crack at the bottom of the door so that any screams I may or may not make don't escape.

The basement really isn't that grim, it's just the lack of interest that makes me perturbed. I am alone with my thoughts. I shall never abscond to them.

I realize you've probably forgotten about Mr. Phoenix. I've heard of him. He's mentioned in many of my fairy tale books, and also in a biography I read about him. I just am not sure what his goal is.

We live in a small town. A minimal, secular town. It seems boring. I'm not sure where this town is. I was born and raised in North Carolina in the United States. We could be just a mile from Pine Knoll Shores, where I grew up, or we could be in Istanbul.

I'd like it if we were in Istanbul. I've seen pictures in my books. My father is cruel, but at least he doesn't strip me from literature and knowledge. I have at least every book known to humans, and I have yet to read them all. In my book about the Republic of Turkey, there's a section on Istanbul. And I think that it's lovely.

From my books I've collected a variety of crystalized knowledge. I have memorized the periodic table of elements and their atomic masses, along with countless other useless pieces of information. For example, I know that child abuse is wrong. Not that it will ever help me.

I can sometimes hear the locals talk, like on television or outside the house. They speak of the Castle of Lost Words and Mr. Phoenix and his demented, lunatic ways. For an odd reason, I feel that Mr. Phoenix is misunderstood. Like he is not a psychopath and that his ways are not so clandestine.

The story goes that a decade ago, the world was just recovering from a nuclear war. When "our" side lost, a dictator fell to power and overthrew Queen Lela Phoenix, who happened to be James Phoenix's mother. The Queen was viciously and inhumanly killed, and a new king rose. His name is King Dade. He hates words. He loathed them to a point where he banned many words. Words are one of my favorite things and this dire abolition of strong words makes my blood boil and spill out my ears and then fume through the room. These words became the lost words of time. Only some people remember them. Like me.

I make my way to the bed in the corner. I have a stuffed unicorn with soft plush and a beady blue eye. The other eye has a pink patch. Her name is, as expected, Patches.

Patches is the only emotion I show. Patches represents everything happy in my mind. My mind is only 1.15 pounds of happy.

I rest in my bed. I have a polyester blue blanket and a feathery pillow with a green pillowcase. The basement is cold. I shuffle further underneath the blanket but it does no good. I expect that it's winter. That's another perk of being held captive. You don't know the date. All I know is that I've been here for 3,381 days. That's around nine years.

I finally fall to sleep. I have a nightmare every night that makes me turn and shudder. I feel like a child sometimes. Maybe I am a child. I'm intelligent, sure. However, I haven't experienced the world since I was six. And I don't know what is happening. It's scary to be here, on the planet, without knowing the planet herself. I pray to God, or Buddha, or Brahman or whoever's up there, that one day I can be freed from this cursed place. My only friend is here. My life is here. And I selfishly want more.

The dream goes like this: I'm here in my bed. I awaken to a croaking, creaking sound echoing off the walls. I creep towards the corner and I find a box. Inside, there's a compass. The compass has four words taking the place of North, South, East and West. Love for North, jealousy for West, outcast for East. However, the word on the bottom is blurred and I can't see what it is.

I wake up ill after my dream occurs. I heave off the bed and vomit on the hard and cold floor. I sit up.

I walk over to the corner and there's the box. I open it, and inside is the glowing compass.

The word for South is lost.

I pick up the compass. A rush of energy bolts through my body. Starting at my fingertips, up my arms and down my legs. To my head, where I see a series of strange visions. A fire. A horse. Mr. Phoenix in the middle of it all. With him, a brave girl stands fierce and unafraid. She has blonde hair pulled into a messy half-up half-down, that flows all the way down her back. She has pungent and zealous green-blue eyes. Her face is covered in ash and freckles. But she stands tall, completely unknowing of the power within herself.

That girl is me.