Modern Rituals Read Online Free PDF Page A

James to follow in his stead. The law lulled James to sleep—he was much more interested in computer engineering as well as drawing and painting, and the act of combining art and tech enthralled him. While his father supported computer engineering—“ Engineering has a future—a purpose, son,”— he abhorred the idea of his son practicing liberal arts. “You’ll end up like one of those hippy-dippy, pot-smoking, nobodies.”
    James did enjoy smoking pot but he was far from a hippy nobody. He sighed—he loved his dad and wanted him to be proud. He wanted to be proud of himself. Something was amiss, however. He couldn’t put his finger on it, which was odd since his intuition tended to be spot on, but the idea that the universe had more in store for him stared him in the face.
    A numbness crawled into his brain—his bed invited him to nap.  

    A shadowy James lurked in a hallway lined with gold—beside him, a mountain of a man crouched, eyes fixed down the hallway, his hand held high as if about to give a signal. Next to the man knelt a woman dressed in a leather tunic, her hair knitted into a complex braid adorned with a crown of leaves. Beside her, another man squatted—he was smaller than the mountain, but strong, James knew, with jagged muscles and piercing eyes.
    The mountain swept his hand forward and they ran—James as well, his feet following instructions not his own, as if he inhabited a foreign body and watched these events through a mask. The hallway blurred into squiggly lines and he came upon a vast chamber that held a solitary throne. On it reclined a figure draped in venomous black garb—a hood over the figure concealed an ominous, dark hole where a face should have been.
    James settled into a line with his companions, and they aimed their weapons at the onyx figure. With some effort, James coerced his loose, fleshy mask to look down at a new item in his hands: a lethal, silver dagger. The woman now held a bow and arrow, and the smaller man clutched a mace whose handle glittered with rubies and inlets of bronze. The giant brandished nothing more than his fists, one of which he raised toward the figure. He spoke words in a language foreign to James.
    The earth rumbled.
    Snakes slithered from the figure’s vacant face and wound themselves around James—commotion and cracks in the earth—shouts and screams—a tugging, and the ground sucked James down, down, down… He clawed, grasped for anything—a rock? No. Shadows. He grasped at shadows. He was shadow: a consciousness adrift.

    James came to—eyes shuttering open like an aperture gone haywire, sweat draping his brow. He rubbed the sleep away and massaged his temples.
    That damned dream again.

    7

    Jordan’s grip slackened on top of Olivia’s hand.  
    “I’m sorry,” he said.
    Olivia pleaded with the tears in her eyes to return to their ducts. She reluctantly removed her hand from Jordan’s and placed it on her lap—she wanted nothing more than to touch him, to embrace him, but she couldn’t bring herself to cross that chasm.  
    They were supposed to see Belfast through. Jordan saw it otherwise, treating their relationship like a funfair.
    Jordan’s blue eyes, wet and glassy like diamonds, begged her lips to move. She kept mum. All the love she held for him balled together with the fear of being alone, of her facing a life in Belfast without another’s comfort. It drove her stark mad.
    She glanced at the window, its curtains were drawn, and it let in a cold, washed-out light—clouds hung low over the Belfast sky and a trickle of rain spattered against their flat’s exterior—rather, her flat, now that Jordan was leaving. He wasn’t the first to leave.  
    “Are you sure?” she said.
    “Yes, I mean, my mum is better and she wants to go back to England,” Jordan said. “Are you sure you can’t come?”  
    Olivia wouldn’t have been in Belfast, wouldn’t have applied for a position there, if it weren’t for the