Living Dead Girl - Book One - Prologue

I thought maybe...just maybe...a great way to get those who come across my blog interested in me and my series would be to give you a taste of it. Below is the Prologue for Book One of the Living Dead Girl Series. I'd like to thank my Editor, Juilet Grames, for helping me see how this new Prologue rocks out so much better than the one I wrote years ago!

Enjoy! -Tamsin :)

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Tamsin Silver
Living Dead Girl – Book One; The Betrayal
© 2009 Tamsin Silver


PROLOGUE

Standing there I could feel the fire burn.
I could smell the flesh of those who had died.
I could see the pain on what was left of their faces.

I looked around and all I could see were flames and death. The air was full of smoke and ash and the screams of those who watched in horror as more died. A part of me wanted to run screaming and yet a part of me was fascinated by the destruction that man can create. I moved closer to the flames, to quiet them, to try to control them. But I couldn’t. It was like I wasn’t really there; like I was a hologram. I looked down at my hands and I could see right through them. I then looked at my body and all I could see was a hollow shell of myself.

As I looked around I was confused. Had I caused this pain? Were these people dead because of me? I looked down on the ground to see a man’s torso crawling across the ground towards me, hate in his eyes. “How could you?” His scorched throat spit at me. “How could you be so selfish?”

Suddenly his burnt hand, more bones than charred flesh, reached out and took a hold of my ankle and pulled. I was strong but for some reason this half man was stronger. He pulled me down, my hands smashing onto the ground that felt soft and wet. I looked at my hands and they were no longer transparent where the blood and ash from the ground had caked onto them. I tried to wipe my hands on my body but the blood wouldn’t come off.

That was when I noticed I’d fallen down near the edge of something. I tried to pull out of his boney grasp but his grip on me was too tight. He began to drag me closer to the edge. I looked at him again and this time he smiled at me and when he did, his face filled in with flesh and his eyes were no longer hate filled. He actually looked at me like he loved me.

“This is for your own good Atty. I’m so sorry. I know it’s not what you wanted…but you have to face the pain…”

“The what?” I asked.

He didn’t seem to hear me and then, I looked down and saw a large dark hole in the ground like a grave and I began to scream.

“Atty! Wake up! Wake up!” A voice yelled, their hands shaking my shoulders.

Suddenly I was no longer looking at a dark hole in the ground, but the face of one of my two best friends.

"Alex?” I heard my weak voice whimper out as I realized I was sitting up in bed.

“There’s my girl,” he said, and pulled me into his arms as I started to cry. “Which one was it this time?” he murmured into my ear softly.

“It wasn’t specific. Just fire, and death and it was awful. I can still smell it,” I said as I buried my face into Alex’s chest.

“Naw, it’s probably just that awful cologne that jackass at the mall sprayed me with this evening.”

I laughed. Alex could always make me laugh, even after one of my episodes. I then really saw him as he sat straddling my legs; something he did to make sure I didn’t thrash or sleep walk during my dreams. He was just wearing his boxers; green with tiny black paw prints on them.

“Nice boxers.”

“Ya like? Kevin got them for me.”

“Who’s Kevin?”

“Exactly. Now, lay back down.”

I guessed that Kevin was one in a long list of pointless boyfriends Alex had had in his life and didn’t ask further. Instead, I did as he asked and laid back down asking, “What time is it?”

“Well…” Alex said as he removed himself from sitting on my legs and plopped next to me, “About three in the morning.”

“Sorry I woke you,” I said, dramatically covering my face with my covers. I always apologized though I wondered often why. It wasn’t like I’d never do it again.

“It’s okay sweetie. I don’t actually have any appointments tomorrow so, I’m all yours. You wanna talk about it?”

I shook my head and though it was under the blankets he could see enough to know my answer.

“You want me to just stay in here with you?”

I nodded my head.

“Okay, but its cold, let me under those covers!”

I laughed as Alex slipped under the covers with me and pulled me close to him.
“It’ll be okay. Just go back to sleep Atty. I’m right here,” he said kissing my head.

Atty is short for Atlanta. Not that my full name is so long it needs a nickname but alas, my friends chose it for me and it stuck.


Not all of my dreams are as disturbing as this one had been but many are. I’ve been having dreams of this nature for what feels like my whole life. Other than my immediate family only two people knew about them and Alex is one of them. Jensine is the other. She has been living in London for the past year so hence why Alex was the only roommate I could have at the moment. Funny, most people don’t want a roommate that wakes them with screaming in the middle of the night. But both he and Jensine said they didn’t mind, though I could tell it freaked Jensine out. Most of the time they’d make me write the dream out so that I could remember it later. I have notebooks upon notebooks with the ramblings of my dreams. They’re not for the light hearted by any shake of the imagination though many are repeat offenders.
I’m what most would call a psychic, though I don’t believe that’s what I am. I actually have no idea what I am but I hate the word psychic. All I do is have dreams that come true so maybe a better term is prophetic? Sometimes I even get flashes while awake, but it’s rare. Usually those only occur when something major happens, changing the course of my life as I know it.

Sometimes I have one when it’s just a big event, though it doesn’t affect me directly. An example of that might be that at the age of seven I began spouting nonsensical things one May morning about someone named Helen and how upset she was. My adoptive parents, who home schooled me for the first few years, thought I was just talking about some kid I met on the playground. Yet, on the news only moments later, they announced that Mount St. Helen erupted. If my parents put two and two together at the time I don’t know. But it was when I started to understand.
From that point on I always trusted my gut, my intuition. The times I’ve not listened have cost me…like on my sixteenth birthday…but now that I was 24 I was used to these, to an extent.


“Did you recognize anyone in the dream? Is anyone we know in danger?” Alex whispered to me.

“No. I didn’t recognize anyone. Besides, they were a bit burnt to really tell.”

“Nothing to do with a plane right?”

Jensine was returning from London the next day, on a plane.

I actually thought there might have been a plane, but I wasn’t 100% clear on it so I answered saying, “No. She’ll be fine Alex. I told you, just jet lag for our girl as per usual.”

He let out a sigh. “That’s good to hear. So, do you wanna tell me the dream?”

I drew in a long breath of air and let it out. I knew I should. I just didn’t want to. So I found a way out of it. “I think I just shouldn’t be watching Terminator before going to bed.”

“Metal skeleton’s dragging you to your death?”

“Close.”

Alex knew I was making excuses but he let me off the hook anyways. “I’ll make note, no more Terminator before bed.”

I snuggled into him. I knew Jensine was safe. It wasn’t her that was in danger in the dream, it was me.

A dream like this could only mean one thing; my life was about to change dramatically. And from how this dream was, I wasn’t so sure it was for the better.