Dirty Eden Read Online Free PDF Page A

shoes, I saw that dead grass had replaced the concrete; heat had cruelly replaced the wind. The sun had burned away the stormy clouds that were going to bring exactly the kind of relief I already needed here...in this place...wherever it was. The boy and I stood in a massive field, a perfectly flat landscape of nothingness. No flowers, no rocks, no hill or hole as far as I could see.
    Only behind us, in a dense patch of forest did there appear to be any relief from the heat.
    I took a moment to myself, dumbfounded by what had just happened. Bending over, I rested my hands upon my thighs. Deep breaths. The city I grew up in seemed only a memory. Little about my life mattered anymore. I didn’t care about being late for work, or returning the money I borrowed from the petty cash box. I didn’t care about the alimony check I was due to put in the mail before the end of the day. I cared little about my favorite seat at Lou’s Coffee, the one close to the south window that allowed me to watch Kate as she worked with that beautiful smile of hers. I didn’t care about the laundry I left in dryer #6 of the apartment complex I lived in, or that my recently widowed mother was to arrive at my home in just two days. These things were strangely insignificant.
    Fear? Worry? Concern? Had the Devil lifted such nuisances from my mind? I thought that was supposed to be the job of someone else, someone higher up who, according to the Devil, was nothing more than a smartass that liked to raise His hand and show off with all the answers.
    “What’s your name, anyway?” I said to the boy.
    “Tsaeb.” He nodded once as though satisfied with the name he had only then come up with.
    “Tsaeb,” I quoted. “Odd, but alright, Tsaeb, I think you’re the brains of this operation, so what now?”
    He blinked his dark eyes.
    “Hell if I know,” he answered with a shrug.
    “What do you mean?”
    “I mean I know as much about any of this as you do.”
    My forehead had become a magnet for my fingertips. At first, it was a gesture of disappointment, but then I began wiping away the beads of sweat dripping from my hairline. Finally, I took off my trench coat and the suit jacket underneath. I loosened my tie, unbuttoned the top three buttons of my dress shirt and rolled the sleeves up past my elbows.
    “Aren’t you hot?” I said.
    “Nope.”
    “Well, I’m getting out of the heat.” I looked behind us toward the dark forest. With my coats hung over my forearm, I walked quickly toward the shade and sat against the nearest tree, hardly looking back out at the massive field that I wanted so soon to dismiss. But to ignore it entirely was futile.
    “I’ve never seen a field like that,” I said. “It’s...well, it’s not right.”
    “I guess it wouldn’t be,” said Tsaeb, finding a tree of his own and sitting at the base of it. “You aren’t exactly in any place you’ve ever been before.” He drew his knees up, relaxing his arms over them, his hands dangling at the wrists. “That’s the Field of Yesterday.”
    I needed much more than a fancy title.
    “My advice, if you want it,” Tsaeb said, “is that we don’t go that way.”
    “Obviously,” I scoffed. “And of course I want your advice. I thought that’s what I brought you for.”
    Distracted, I looked up; my eye sockets felt larger in my skull. Carefully I stood, nearly breaking my craning neck. Dangling amid the black and eerily twisted branches above us were hundreds upon hundreds of...cocoons. Enormous cocoons.
    I turned sideways to get a better view. The sound of a branch cracking and popping underneath my foot nearly startled me right out of my shoes. I froze, heart pounding so rapidly in my chest I swore it was loud enough for even Tsaeb to hear.
    The twisted tree limbs were thick and strong, with branches that coiled upward and around each other like a mass of unmoving snakes. Only in spots here and there could the hellish sun beat upon the leaf-littered land