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The Skies and Lights Imbued
The Skies and Lights Imbued
The Skies and Lights Imbued
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The Skies and Lights Imbued

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Amidst the large rolling green hills and the high white capped peaks of the Appalachians, world traversing journalist Elliot Shaw finds himself in a life altering situation mirroring the tragic loss little Avalon, North Carolina faces.

From the other side of the world, Elliot learns of the deadly accident his wife and son have just been in on the country roads of their summer getaway. After making his way back to the Carolinas, questions arise from within the small, secretive town, a town that is going through its own upheaval that’s sparked attention from outsiders. Stationed amidst the disaster by his magazine Poise in Politics, Elliot and the Town of Avalon are forced to reconcile themselves to the new balance fate has set. It doesn’t take long, however, to find this new equilibrium pulled out from under the unsuspecting journalist as he discovers the truth behind a well kept secret.

Elliot’s journey takes him parallel to the various social and political trends pervading a nation that more and more seems on the precipice of a disaster.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherSteven Mohr
Release dateJan 10, 2014
ISBN9781310567704
The Skies and Lights Imbued
Author

Steven Mohr

Growing up in the obsolete world of an ex-industrial North, I—Steven Mohr—spent my early life in the midst of a very character shaping environment, an environment filled with blues riffed rock and not so business minded roles. It was an environment that encouraged humility and creativity and asked its adherents for a different kind of production. The old factory lines empty, this new production was less involved in materials and goods and more with thoughts and words and abstract images. It inspired me and others around me to produce music and literature regardless of our socioeconomic background. I spent the off time in my college days driving around from one grungy stage to another playing in bands and building memories. Then taking O’Connor’s words to heart, “Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days,” I chose to write about what I’ve seen and could have seen. These experiences, however, were only the beginning. Moving across country, marrying, and preparing for our first child, it feels like semi-autobiographical and entirely imaginative narratives could pour out in the volumes. Presently, living between the western mountains and the eastern shore, I wake up to the fresh North Carolina air every morning with my beautiful wife, Hannah and give thanks for all I’ve been given. On random weekends of pause, me and my transplant wife enjoy playing the parts of winter snowboarders and summer beach bums—at least once in a while!—but always returning to our adopted home somewhere in between in the vast piedmont.

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    The Skies and Lights Imbued - Steven Mohr

    The Skies and Lights Imbued

    Steven Mohr

    Copyright © 2014, Steven Mohr

    January 2014

    1st Edition Published by Status Quo Lit

    www.stevenmohr.us/

    ISBN: 1492841846

    ISBN-13: 978-1492841845

    Cover art by dormantwing_2107

    Smashwords Edition, License Notes

    This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

    Warning: All rights reserved. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work, in whole or part, in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, is illegal and forbidden, without the written permission of the author.

    This is a work of fiction. Characters, settings, names, and occurrences are a product of the author's imagination and bear no resemblance to any actual person, living or dead, places or settings, and/or occurrences. Any incidences of resemblance are purely coincidental.

    Acknowledgements

    I want to thank everyone who was kind enough to give their opinion on this work of fiction: Hannah Mohr, Steve W. Mohr, Lynne Wuest, Jennipher Lubik, Tim Loge, Katie Martin, Lisa Coombes, et al.

    This book is dedicated to my little Juliana incubating within the caring womb of her mother.

    The Skies and Lights Imbued

    Chapter 1 - Ring of Fire

    Ha! How do you like that one, old man! cried the off duty deputy as the dart landed just as intended, past the drink glasses piled upon each other, through the arms of the lederhosen wearing cardboard cutout, and just outside the rarely tapped bulls eye, which looked more like a lone standing bomb shelter, impervious to the pockmarked destruction surrounding it. Well, it wasn't just as intended, but with such a difficult terrain to negotiate and such a reasonably impressive result, the deputy wasn’t going to be too particular in his choice of self-congratulations.

    Eh, the senior officer shrugged, you young people and your try’n to complicate a good old fashion gentleman’s game. Sometimes, I wish all of ya would just showboat your way right to some undiscovered island in the middle of nowhere. He put down his remaining darts, picked up his drink, and took a swig. But instead, we’re the ones get’n too old to do anything about it. Soon you’re gonna be shoving us into one of those padded walls nursing homes; forced to be fed and clothed by some stink’n walking can opener!

    The sheriff was old. The deputy knew it, the other citizens of the small town of Avalon knew it, and, most importantly, he knew it. And he had no qualms with it. He had been a part of this small town since the days when it was a good thing to be old. It said a lot about a person. The elderly were acknowledged as having a wisdom unknown to the inexperienced, ill-tempered youth. When a decision needed to be made, who better to make it than those with both connections and credentials?

    These days were different. The internet and all the hardware developed to capture and use it had made every semi-literate person an expert. Suddenly, this small town wasn’t so small anymore. It’s not that it had actually grown, but with the social order upside down, it just seemed to the sheriff to have that big city feel, where, regardless of age, everyone wanted to be young. They wanted to wear scandalous clothing and employ loose morals, all like young people who didn’t understand the consequences to actions like these, consequences that affect themselves and society as a whole.

    Haha, I’m guessing you saw that news story about that hospital in Charlotte use’n automated custodians? Eh, sir? The deputy started taking down the various hurtles he had assembled to make this age old game of darts with his age old superior more fun. He walked the cardboard cutout of the Dutch barmaid over to her normal spot by the large mahogany front door of the pub. Nah, don’t worry about that. You’ve probably got another ten years left in ya before you get carted off to some nursing home, and I’ll bet by then those gentlemen politicians who run this messed up country will have run it right into some self-induced zombie apocalypse. And all the while me and my kind will be live’n the good life on the island we showboated to, put’n together some kind of free market that’s free from taxes, free from government welfare, free to do whatever the heck we feel is right for our own property and families—

    He stopped right there. After turning towards the sheriff and seeing the annoyed look on his face, he knew he needed to quit both the self-laud and political whining. The sheriff cared for neither, and as much as this deputy enjoyed pressing boundaries, he was the boss.

    Not this stuff again. I think I’ve heard all the antigovernment mumbo jumbo I can take for one week. Remember, trooper, it’s those zombie apocalypse inducing politicians who give you that paycheck. Don’t make it so easy for them to decide who they should test the first zombie serums on! He took one last sip of his drink and turned to look towards the bar. You have a good night, Jess

    You too, hun, Jess said while throwing over her shoulder a cloth she had been using to clean the counters. You sure you’re feeling good? she asked euphemistically.

    Oh, I only had a couple to drink, he pointed a thumb towards his young apprentice. Besides, any glaze I may’ve had has most certainly been sopped up by old Billy Graham here’s speech.

    He walked out of the pub and into his pickup. Clint (or the sheriff as he’s been primarily known in this small town for the past several decades) thought about how much he enjoyed driving his truck, not cars, but he definitely enjoyed a good ride on a country road in his truck. He had made a career of driving a squad car all around this county. Those low to the ground species of vehicle had no special place in his heart after so many years of carting nothing but pseudo-criminals and runaway dogs in them. He turned on the radio. Immediately, one of his favorite artists came on. As Johnny Cash sang his signature tune Ring of Fire the sheriff turned the volume a little higher. Getting old was no good for the senses, he thought. He missed the hunting days of his youth when he could go out into the woods and let his senses do the rest. If there was a buck anywhere within half a mile he knew it, whether by vision, hearing, or even smell.

    These days, things were a little different. Late night drives down Blue Ridge Mountains roads without a sign of civilization for miles were the best proof, too. The sheriff didn't know whether he had overestimated himself in regards to the bartender's feeling good comment or if in his old age these quick changes in elevation were starting to make him lethargic. Either way, he was only a few miles from his home.

    His truck started a descent on this hilly back country drive. Ahead, towards the center of the dip, he saw an intersection he’d crossed many times in his days. He’d spent many of his boyhood hours hunting in the thick wood on this side of the county—before a man needed a license to put some meat on his bones. He remembered sledding down the dangerous hillside that encased the southern border—dodging pine after pine and an occasional wilderness creature or two along the way. This was one country road that hadn’t been interrupted and changed by the pervasiveness of a completely new country. Anyone unused to this path might find it hard to see due to the thick tree coverage all around and the curvature of the intersecting road. As the vehicle came down the hill, the sheriff echoed the words of his beloved late star of rockabilly. I went down, down, down the Ring of Fire, the Ring of Fire—

    The sheriff’s serenade was suddenly interrupted by a blinding pair of headlights coming from around a bend, past a thick set of trees, and right into the side of his truck. In no more than a moment, the peaceful serenity that had been this trek through the country was shattered like a misguided bullet through glass. From a perpendicular direction, a car slammed into the back of the sheriff's truck with enough momentum to send the occupants in the small sedan flying through the windshield and the sheriff in his truck pinned against his door, struggling to hold onto consciousness. The mangled vehicles clutched each other, nearly side by side now, melded into one scrap pile streaked in blood. The sheriff’s head swam. Thick red blood streamed down his face. It was in his eyes. He didn’t feel pain. Was this really happening? Was he even alive? He couldn’t move or feel the lower half of his body. He reached for his two-way radio and mumbled a few words. He could barely comprehend the response on the other end of the radio before slipping from consciousness.

    ***

    In an unfortunate regression of military tactic, earlier this week President Bashar al-Assad, in Damascus, ordered the use of chemical weapons on rebel held territories in Syria, citing the hordes of outside militant radicals as having forced his—

    Khawaaja! Khawaaja, Elliot! the frantic tone coming from the interpreter bursting into the room broke Elliot from the news engrossed moment he was in. He stopped typing. Elliot had been working on this story for the past few weeks, and if all went well, it was set to publish in Poise in Politics by the end of the month. These past two years of writing for Poise in Politics and a few other smaller publications had been a whirlwind. They had taken him around the world in eighty days many times over. If he had told his college-days-self what kind of adventures he was soon to have, there would definitely have been a lot of high fives, a couple of cha-chings, and even a few fist bumps, but it’s amazing the kind of changes that come over a person in just a few years (times two) post-college. It isn’t so much the years that change a person, as much as what happens in those years. In between his efforts to become one of those great reporters he looked up to so much as a child, Elliot had gotten married, bought a home, and had his own child. All these standard life benchmarks that once seemed so peripheral to an accomplished life, Elliot now was beginning to see as his life—a reaction to a diligent (sometimes militant) wife! A well spent day to him now was not just one where he was the first on the scene of a technological breakthrough or the only reporter to get an up close interview with one of the Taliban leaders. It was also one where he was out playing in the yard with his son or watching a movie with his wife. Melissa’s extremely high expectations from an extremely busy dad were paying off.

    What’s up, Ibrahim? Is everything okay? A host of possibilities flashed through Elliot’s mind. When reporting from a warzone, one has to be ready to drop everything in a moment’s notice. However, this late in the article research game, things were a little different. Come hell or high water, as they say, he wasn’t about to leave all the notes and pictures and interviews he had recorded over these past grueling weeks of close calls. If he had to hold his breath for an extra minute or two in order to get his materials in the midst of a government attack with mustard gas, that is what he was going to do... or at least that’s what he told himself. In the real situation, our brain’s fight or flight response doesn’t necessarily allow time for our hardheadedness.

    There is a telephone call for you. It is very urgent! Ibrahim shoved the phone into his hands.

    Elliot still wasn’t sure how serious his thickly accented Syrian interpreter was trying to be. After all his trips to the Middle East, there is one thing Elliot knew about communication here, tone of voice and speed of gesture were not good indicators as to how upset a person was. What he hadn’t understood yet was what was a good indicator. He answered in an unsure tone, Hello?

    The voice on the other line responded.

    Yeah, it's Elliot.

    Ibrahim sat with a pensive look on his face, staring at the one sided conversation, knowing the terrible realization that was about to come over Elliot. He had grown to appreciate his American counterpart. They had only known each other for a few weeks now, but the bonds built in war are strong. The two friends had seen reactions in each other that could be expected of any human put in that same dangerous situation, regardless of race or location of birth.

    Doc, I don't think anywhere I can go in this country is a safe place to be right now. Just go ahead and tell me what's go’n on. He didn't want to be rude, especially to a caller who was attempting to be so conciliatory, but for a message that was prefaced as so urgent, things were progressing very slowly. His brow furrowed, which Ibrahim took to mean the caller on the other end had finally begun to detail the information for Elliot that he had only given Ibrahim a portion of, and he wouldn’t have done that had Ibrahim not absolutely refused to disturb his employer unless he was told why.

    Elliot’s face went pale. As a person who had made his career in communication, Elliot had no clue what life must be like for someone with a debilitating speech impediment, but for the first time he could truly feel empathy for that fellow human being. The doctor’s voice faded into the background. He could barely hold the phone to his ear. Memories flooded his mind: the first time he’d laid eyes on his wife, their first kiss, her innocence on their wedding day, the joy of the birth of their son. Hadn’t he just spoken to her the day before? Hadn’t he just promised his son that they would throw around a baseball when he returned home?

    Elliot was jolted back to the present. From the other side of the world, the doctor’s voice lunged through the receiver, Do you understand what I’m telling you, Elliot?

    The response was too much to take. Shock overtook him. Elliot dropped the phone and fell to his knees. Without any warning, this nomadic life of chasing after bloodthirsty military leaders and power starved business minds had changed. It no longer made any sense. His mind went into a state of isolation that transgressed time and made every moment as painful as the last. Seconds seemed to pass as arbitrarily as their normally larger brethren, hours. Elliot had no concept of either. Everything about his career now seemed completely meaningless. He spent so much time away from the only things that did made sense; the only things with meaning, and now they were nearly gone. The more he thought about it, the more numb his mind became. After an unperceived amount of time had passed, Elliot made an attempt to compose himself. He picked the phone up from the ground and looked up at Ibrahim. There was certainly one type of expression that crossed the many gulfs of culture between the two, one

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