The Coin of Valhalla Prologue 3 (The Bad One)

The Coin of Valhalla

Prologue 

Draft_3

By: Chase L. Currie

(Note to Reader: There is a moment in time when you spent all day writing that you feel as if your mind is pouring out your ears. I am about at that point but as my luck would have it dinner is soon. I’m heading off to eat with a friend for a bit.

But I wanted to put this prologue of The Coin of Valhalla up before leaving. This very prologue is the third one I wrote for my first novel, and I'm not planning on using it in the book. I wrote three different ones with all the same ending, but I couldn't tell which one I enjoy more. It wasn't that they were all good, just, they were all equally bad. I send a few out, and the one I'm using in the book was the prologue that was hated and loved the most. This one had failed the test. No one liked it. I can't say I do either, but I wish to give everyone a little taste of what my novel.

There is a lot of reason this prologue failed but the main thing I find it is to give away too much. Also, it doesn't set up the narrator the way I wanted to. I also feel as if the flow is off near the middle of the chapter.

Either way, I hope you enjoy it. Thank you for reading.)

            War changes people.

            The blood and killing on your hands forever change your soul, and all you can hope for is the Valkyries of Heaven come to your aid in the dark of night. Your heart screams out for the deeds you had to commit in the name of the greater good, and you pray for someone to understand. You pray for the nightmares to be over.

            A hand lands on your shoulder, you look up, to see the black wings of the Valkyrie sent for you. You are marked by the sin, but she understands. She is forever marked by your deeds, as well.

            The rented car from the airport pulls up to the stoplight right outside the mall and takes a right onto Concord Parkway. My foot begs me to put the pedal to the floor, but my memory quickly reminds me cops like to hang out on this road. My dress blues might get me out a ticket, but it would still slow me down. I wasn’t going to waste any more time getting home.

            My hands pulled the wheel left onto Morehead, the last stripe of the road before I get home. The car screamed down the street trying to let everyone in the town know I was home, for all to come out and see me, but they were not going to do that. 

            The dark clouds had let the massive rain drops fall from them. They let them go like a bad lover for the last time, saying goodbye and farewell as the storm hit the world below. Just one or two drops here and there remained, but the rain brought with it the leaves on the tree. The reds and oranges of the autumn day were a shout to remind me it was cold outside.

            After the years I had spent in the desert trying my best to come home alive, any cold would be deadly to me. Sometimes, my mind couldn't understand how I got home. It all felt so unreal, like a dream and I just woke up in the middle of it. I recalled getting off the airplane, but everything before the plane lost in a thick haze.

            Either way, I was home.

            The car went around the bend with the speed limit sign telling me to slow down, and I did, I came to a cold stop. There was no one behind me, and I sat there for a moment. The road was the same. They had built the sidewalk before I left, which made me so mad. Years of my life were spent walking around town with no sidewalks, and now that I was no longer a child they built them.

            There was a harsh contract between the houses, the news ones and the olds from what I could recall when the ancient town of Harrisburg was still small before I left.  Now all the people from up north came down here for cheap rent and better jobs, but all they did was change the landscape of my childhood.

            There was nothing I could do about it.

            My foot pushed the pedal down, and I was off, slowly; as the car moved along the road, I could recall the years of my life where I played games with my best friends, Cody, Allen, Steven, Dain, and his little sister Nicole. Every weekend and summers spent with each other, and all the children of the town would play games in the woods.

            For a moment, it was only a moment; I could see us walking the streets like we did back then. It felt right to see myself walking among my friends. Some of them had died, others moved away and became people I don’t know anymore. A few lost themselves in other people’s heart. We all became different people, never talking again and only being the same in each other memories.

            It was as if we died the day we grew up or the summer that changed my life. It was as if when Dain moved away, and Celine never came back, everything changed. War didn't change my life, growing up did.

            The dream of thoughts time fades with the wind, and there was no longer any sign of children walking the streets. I went passed the fire station, needing to turn left to get home but I took a right. I wanted to see if Dain’s old house was the same.

            The door was the same, a dark blue color but everything else was different. The outside walls seem to be the same, but they had changed to a dark tan color. Back then they were a red brick just like my house. The color had been changed but was the inside of the house different?

            I saw myself get out of the car walking up to the door and knocking. I would wait for whoever to open it then asked them nicely if I could come inside. I would explain it was my best friend's childhood home, and I just wanted to see how different it was. 

            I almost did as my vision asked of me but a voice, Celine’s voice told me to go home.

            I wasn’t here for reminiscing the past. I was here for a much darker matter.

            The cars of my family line the street beside my house. Everyone would be there waiting for me to get home. It would be a party if I weren't coming back for a macabre event. Death had come to my family like a thief in the night. He ripped the light from my mother's heart and the joy of her world. Death had called me home, and I listened.

I pull into the driveway; my mother would be crying on the couch by now. I didn't even have to get into the door to know the house was so quiet a mouse would fear to break the silence. My uncles would be trying to lighten the mood with some bad jokes, but it wasn't working. The jokes were their way of showing their grief while some of my friends were trying to find away outside to smoke a cigarette to be away from the crying. 

They were getting nowhere.

            My foot stepped out of the car, my hand shut the door behind me, and I stood there looking at the house. The old house that my grandfather built and my father spent all his life there. The red bricks were a castle of my youth. A castle it still seems to me. 

I made my way in between the cars to the garage when a warming voice called my name.

 Richard was standing there smoking a pipe and smiling big at me. His tired skin hung sorrowful off his bone. I put my arms around the man's fragile body. He looked at me with his dark brown eyes full of youthful energy while his body long for a moment of rest. He always looked that way, full of energy, ready to go, to do something, never being able to sit still.

            I grab the smoke from my pocket, light up a match and pulled the mild smoke to the back of my throat while Richard said, "You're looking good, son."

            “You're not looking half bad yourself,” I told him. He was shorter than I remember but still commanded a sense of power. I was standing beside him as his equal and yet, I felt like a child again, looking up at him in awe.

            He ran his bony hand through what little red hair he had left, and said, "I haven't worn this suit in a very long time.” It was a simple black suit, nothing special about it and it looked simple on him. It probably sat in Richard's closet for years until now. “But it doesn't look half bad. Not like your suit, son.”

            “Aaa . . . this old thing,” I said, “I would rather be in something else.”

            He laughed a little. “It's really good to have you back.”

            “It's good to be back,” I said, glancing back at the door.

            “You can go in if you want.”

            "Nah, I think, I need to wait," I told him, looking back at the smiling old man. He seems way too happy to be standing at a sad house on a raining day. “Not too sure, I'm ready to deal with all of that.”

            “I don't think you are either.”

            "What you mean?" I asked, raising one eyebrow, but he didn't answer my question. Instead, he pulled a silver coin from his pocket and rolled it around in his boney hand. I haven't seen the coin in years. The single coin that changed my life forever.

            “You remember the summer you stolen this from me?” He asked.

            “How could I forget,” I told him.