Here’s another sneak peek. Let’s start at the beginning when Katherine Jackson, a mild-mannered senior project manager, is on the verge of burnout. Speaking of burning, she has awakened from back-to-back dreams to the smell of smoke, and then it’s gone without a trace. This story has plenty of smoke and other things that seem to come and go without a trace, except for maybe an emotional shock or two that exceed her beliefs. No spoiler here.
I welcome you to read and enjoy. This is the first chapter of Puye Prophecy, a work currently underway. I’ll share more later…
I hope you enjoy this chapter!
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Chapter #1 – Fire in the Hole
Katherine Jackson awoke with a start from deep in a bizarre dream whose content evaporated from memory almost immediately upon opening her eyes. Residual sensations of arousal lingered and began to fade away, but not nearly as fast. What had her dream been about? Why was she on the downside of arousal, or was it the upside? Before she could decide, it was gone. Why could she not remember anything about a dream intense enough to cause those feelings in her body, and why had she smelled smoke? SMOKE??? Her brain ignited with a sudden call to action, and she bolted out of bed to follow her nose to find the source of what had to be a fire.
It did not take long for her to check the extent of her tiny apartment to confirm that there was no fire or smoke. The smell had evaporated like the dream, leaving no clues or evidence of danger. Shaking her head in confusion, she stepped into the hallway outside her apartment’s front door to confirm the potential for fire in another part of the building—nothing, no smoke there either. As Katherine, who preferred to be called Kat, turned and stepped into her apartment, she leaned her back against the door to close it softly and paused in the darkness to ponder. What was the dream she could not remember? What was the unexplainable sensory overload of arousal accompanied by the smell of smoke? Her mind searched for answers and found nothing—none of it made sense.
She glanced at the digital clock glowing on the microwave; the time read —3:34 AM— and decided it was still too early to start the day. Grabbing a thick fleece throw off the back of her La-Z-Boy, she plopped into the plush leather, cranked the footrest out, and pushed into the chair back to recline. Pulling the heavy throw up to her chin, she breathed out slowly and tried to relax into the adrenaline dump from confronting the fire that never existed. Pondering the fragments of mystery did not last very long, as sleep reclaimed her almost immediately.
The log she sat upon was across a small cooking fire where three women in blankets huddled together against the cold, talking animatedly amongst themselves. Kat sat wrapped in a blanket and watched, straining to hear. It felt like she had just dropped into an ongoing conversation, so she had no real context beyond the looks of fear and frightened body language and gestures that framed their discussion.
One of the women spoke, “That massacre at Sand Creek was north of us by two days travel. That’s too far from here to worry about. Our men are safe. They’re only late. Do not worry. We are here for Puye.”
No sooner had the woman said that than the sound of horses approaching in the distance caused them to turn and look. “See, I told you not to worry. Here they come now.”
All three stood up relieved to greet their men returning from hunting party a day late.
“There are too many horses,” said one of the other women, panic evident in her voice.
She was correct; seven horses burst through the thick cluster of mesquites around their fire, surrounding the women now standing, clutching each other, frozen in terror. Kat sat still, not knowing what to do, grateful to be on the other side of the fire and so far unseen.
“Blue legs,” wailed one of the terrified women who cried out, “Please don’t hurt us; our men only hunt for food.”
The lead soldier leaned to the side and spat tobacco juice before becoming more erect in the saddle, “I’m afraid it’s a little too late for your hunting party.” He reached behind his saddle, retrieved a blood-stained burlap sack, and tossed it to the ground, landing between the women and the fire. Three heads rolled out that belonged to their men. The shock of what they saw took all three to their knees, triggering shrieks and sobs of despair.
The soldier shouted to the other six riders, “Do this now,” and they pulled their revolvers in unison and fired into the three women still on their knees.
Kat was jolted awake by the sharp crack of a lightning strike outside her apartment, simultaneous with seven soldiers pulling triggers that murdered three innocent women in her dream. Like her first dream, she smelled smoke again and fought to get untangled from the heavy throw to find herself in the recliner, not her bed. In a growing panic, she sniffed again but only drew in smoke-free air, relieving the fear of fire. Maybe what she smelled briefly came from the campfire in the dream. She knew the smoke was real from a real fire because she had been there. She felt real heat and saw real flames. Undoubtedly, anything else she saw and heard during that dream had to be real because she had experienced too many details. She questioned if this had only been a dream or was something else.
In that second dream, the murders were graphically authentic, and every detail was etched in her memory, but she barely remembered the first dream, where she was left with the remnants of arousal and the first smell of smoke. The smoke theme was common to both dreams, but Kat was so shocked by the barbarity of the second dream that she never considered they were connected.
She abandoned attempts to figure anything out, visibly upset, and decided to move on, shower, feed, and get ready for work. After escaping the throw and rolling out of the recliner, she noticed the clock on the microwave now read —3:42 AM, causing her to cock her head in wonder. Only eight minutes had passed since the first dream ended, and it shocked her that so much had happened in such a short window of time. Kat stood still, trying to wrap her mind around the hidden meanings in her dreams.
It was still too early to remain awake, but something lingered, nagging at her mind, driving away the desire to sleep. Kat recalled some of the words spoken in the second dream when one of the women referenced a massacre at someplace called Sand Creek. Where was that? Who was massacred? Why had she been inserted into that to hear such a tiny snatch of conversation? Why had she been there at all?
Kat’s curiosity had to wait while she loaded the Keurig with a little extra Expresso Blend and punched the button to deliver 12 ounces of caffeine to start the day early. Waiting for the gurgling coffee maker to stop, she poked the laptop from hibernation and announced to an empty room, “If momma’s not going to sleep, nobody’s going to sleep.”
The aroma of a steaming mug of bold potion wafted into Kat’s senses as she returned to her desk and the glowing laptop and asked Google to search for Massacre at Sand Creek. What filled her screen were details of an encampment of Cheyenne and Arapaho families that the U.S. Army massacred on the eleventh of November 1864 during an unprovoked attack. One hundred fifty were killed, two-thirds of them women and children. The words burned into her, and fresh tears fought a new fire as she sat silently, confused with growing anger despite having no history or previous memory of the world’s cruelty in 1864.
Those three women in her dream had every right to be afraid if they were connected in any way with this atrocity. Did they live in Sand Creek and were only spared by being away on a hunting trip, only to be murdered by a roving band of soldiers? It didn’t matter. Dead was dead. The violence of beheading tree hunters was incredibly cruel, not to mention the shock of throwing the heads to the ground in front of the terrified women.
The anger that stirred in Kat’s heart became inflamed, but she continued searching for the other word, “Puye,” learning that it referred to white-tail rabbits and where they assembled. Puye was a place, a hunting ground in the native Tewa language. Interestingly, Puye also referred to a specific location where Puebloan Indians built dwellings in the vertical faces of cliffs below the edges of high mesas in today’s northern New Mexico. She confirmed with an expanded map that showed Sand Creek was in southeastern Colorado and would have been accessible by horseback in a few day’s ride.
Kat sat back and took another sip of the pleasingly bitter potion before speaking to the room again and said, “Well, isn’t that just great! A hate-filled history lesson is just what I did NOT need. Why dream about the graphic murders of three innocent Cheyenne a long way from home…or were they Arapaho? Oh,” she added, “and don’t forget that the severed heads of their men had been the last things they ever saw. WHY?” she shouted, wiping away the remnants of tears.
Kat fell silent in an attempt to connect the dots…if there were any dots to connect. The only thing consistent in the dreams was the smell of smoke. She exploded, “What’s up with the fucking smoke?”
Her shouts echoed around the walls. Kat needed answers. There could be no loose ends in her OCD-riddled life. She could not let it go and reasoned there could be no smoke without fire. What was behind the distinct smell of smoke and the absence of fire? There had to be an explanation, and it bugged her not knowing. Loose ends never sat well with Kat. She needed answers. She needed to find the fire.
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I hope you enjoyed this first chapter. I’ve decided to share this story as it is being written, and I will offer chapters as they end and after I get sick of editing them. The story is consuming me at the moment, and I’m embracing it willingly. What started as a 2,800-word short story has blossomed into over 14,000 words so far, and there’s considerably more to tell, according to my Relentless Wench Muse, who manages to remain just out of reach. I’ll share more as the editing frenzy continues.
If you have any thoughts to share, ping me at gdogwise@live.com
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My 1st novel, “Mirror Mirror” or https://bit.ly/4izzxpF downloadable PDF, FREE
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This chapter was posted on my blog, Learning by Living, or https://learningbyliving.blog. It’s free; all new posts, stories, and samples appear here frequently.
Merry Christmas!
Peace! G.