Imago: One day while scrapping in the mysterious, ruined city of Cogstin, Christopher Dante discovers a truth so powerful that it could destroy everyone and everything he knows.

Imago: Science Fiction

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BLURB: Imago

Christopher Dante and his Uncle Hal work for the Universal Salvage Company scrapping discarded metal and stone outside the ruined city of Cogstin. It has been four hundred years since “The Event,” an unknown expulsion of energy that wiped out this once cultural center of the world. Little is known about what actually happened, but it is rumored that “The Event” was the last-ditch effort to prevent the merging of two universes. It is a world controlled and monitored, a world of roles and selections, a top down world instituted so that “The Event” can never happen again. But one day while scrapping in the mysterious, ruined city of Cogstin, Christopher Christopher discovers a secret that forces him to face his past and his future, a truth so powerful that it could destroy everyone and everything he knows.

EXCERPT: Imago

Mr. Tough just stares at me. “Papers.”

I hand him the letter from NRM, and he looks at me, then looks at the letter…back at me. “Yes, he came through here at five twenty-three this morning.”

“Yeh, so, like I said, I’m supposed to meet him at sector 17.”

“Highly irregular.”

I’m starting to panic. My insides are jelly. Whoever took Hal is about to take me. Easy. Think. Calm down and think.“Why don’t you scan the barcode. I’m telling you, this is a letter of special permission, and if I were you…well…I wouldn’t want to be you when the NRM arrives.”

Mr. Tough looks at the letter again, then at me. He scans the letter…and I am half waiting for several more Mr. Toughs to come through hidden doors and capture me. Instead Mr. Tough hands the letter to me. “You have permission to enter Cogstin.”

“Of course, I do,” I say, but my voice is hoarse, and it takes all I can do not to run away.

I gather my backpack, just as Mr. Tough grabs me tightly by the arm. “You have been assigned Boat 23, slip 7.” He pulls me in the direction of the docks, releases me and walks away. I take the jon boat with an outboard motor, and soon I am heading up the misty, winding river toward the second gate.

Again, the cityscape is draped in fog. I wonder if it ever sees the light of the sun, if it ever has been filled with life, color, anything but ashes, dilapidated and crumbling ruins, and the reek of the dying and dead. As before with Hal, I turn the bend to my right, and see the sparks from acetylene torches, the metal workers masked in welding hoods. As I take the next bend, I come to the second gate. It is blacker and thicker and even more sinister than when I first saw it with Hal. There is the yellow-suited man with his legs spread apart, and the round copper frames of mirrored glass. He is holding an assault rifle with a banana clip. There is no one else around.

I think of turning the boat around, but I don’t. I think of the warning texts and scrolling messages over the TV and tablets and phones the last several days. The jon boat pulls up to the dock, and Yellow Suit steps over and points the gun right at me.

“Step from the boat, Mr. Dante,” Yellow Suit says through a mic.

“I need to tie up the bowline,” I say, and I reach for my backpack, then turn.

“Leave everything in the boat. This is your final warning.”

I raise my hands, and realize with astonishment the bowline has been tied already. I wobble and reel, walking unsteadily over the seats and onto the dock.

“Papers,” Yellow Suit says. The copper rimmed lens on his yellow mask are goggle-like, like a deep-sea diver’s helmet.

I hand him the paper. “They said the same thing at the first gate, and if you…”

That is all I can say because he has knocked me to the ground with the butt of his gun, the pain a white-hot heat upon my head. I know I am gashed and bleeding, my vision blurred as I blink rapidly and raise to all fours. He lifts me to my feet like I am as light as air, the grip around my bicep—a vice, and he tosses me forward so I collapse on the dock again, scraping my knee and bruising it.

“Hey!” I scream. “What are you doing? I’m here to see…”

My voice is cut off by a sweeping kick from Yellow Suit so hard the air is out of my lungs. I lay huddled in a fetal position, mouth opening and closing like a fish tossed onto dry land.

“Get up,” Yellow Suit says in his mic’d voice, calm. “Get up.”

He kicks me again in the back of my legs, spinning me like a top. I open my eyes and see Hal’s barge tied to the inner dock and feel the fear overwhelming me. I try to stifle it, catch my breath and stand. Yellow Suit pushes me with the barrel of the gun, poke, poke, poke, and we walk together toward a darkened doorway. I know if I go through that space, I will never come out. Yellow Suit pokes me again, and this time, I sweep my right arm back, turn my body and tackle him. The yellow suit a thick, slick rubber. He struggles under my weight, and I punch as hard as I can right into his mask. Punch, punch, punch. I hear the glass break, the hiss of escaping gas, but on my next swing, I am caught from behind and thrown back toward the black doorway. My arm is bloody, sleeve torn and shredded. It is Agent Smiley who heaves me to my feet and tosses me into the opening—no emotion on his pale face, his tall frame stooping as he drags me through the threshold, down stone steps, my knees banging and bashing as I struggle to keep up with the terrible force pulling me. His grasp is merciless and iron-like. I think perhaps my shoulder is pierced through with talons so long they jut from my chest and back. I finally give up trying to step with his enormous, inhuman strides, down, down, down, down, and my head fogs from the pain and the terror. All I can hear are tormented screams and howls. I do not know if it is from me or helpless souls in hundreds of cells to my right and left. There is no light, no direction, just empty space. Agent Smiley tosses me into the stone cell so hard I am knocked unconscious from the blow and fall face first to the cold floor, a fleeting thought circling through the darkness: please, please, please, do not wake up.

I do wake up, slowly, synapses not quite sparking properly from the severe beating, circuits thawing, registering the damage throughout my body and the seriousness of my predicament. Someone is whimpering then howling in the cell next to me, a clinking of chains, as if he is suspended in midair.

“Help me,” the voice says. “Oh, God, please help me. I don’t want to die. Please.” The voice loses its strength and fades to sobbing and jingling, the struggle for life fading.

My cell is pitch black, so black I cannot see my hands before me, nor my broken body. I feel them to make sure I’m actually in the world of men and time and things. It is cold, and I am shivering. My pants are soaked with my emptied bladder. I hear a noise to my left and move quickly to the opposite side until my back is against a stone wall, damp and cold.

“Who’s there? Who are you? I’ve got…a knife. You come closer, and I’ll kill you.”

I sweep my hand out this way and that, but hits only empty air. Again, I hear the noise.

“Stay back! I warn you.” That’s when I remember the Zippo in my pocket. Is it still there? I grab it, pull it out, but my fingers are numb and swollen, so it falls to the floor. I crawl about and feel a hard-cylindrical object, recognize the iron shackles with wrist and ankles still attached and recoil in disgust.

I pull back in horror, reach out again, sweeping across the floor, and find it, flip it open, chip, chip, chip. Flash! The cell explodes in light, so bright it takes a moment for my eyes to adjust. The rat’s stream across the floor, under the mounds of bones, rustling them, so many that the human carcasses seem to move on their own, and they disappear into the small hole in the corner. The rotted corpses are dried and weathered, their bodies preserved for decades in the earthen tomb, all broken and torn asunder in the same manner, a predator’s gluttonous act of violence. The lighter becomes too hot to hold and I close the lid, hopping the metal case from one hand to the next.

I flip the lid again and spark the flame to life, investigating the walls, the stone door with bars, as the howling and pleading across the hallway begins again. The desperate struggle against the chains, now in anger, now remorse, then silence. Every time the light flashes, the rats disappear into the hole, reemerging when the flame goes out. I am panicked now, and my hands shake. I pull my legs up to my chest and huddle against the wall. An hour passes, perhaps a day, a week, a year. I am lost, my mind dark, and I fade into a restless sleep, shivering and alone.

Through my subconscious I hear the growl, the thudding, and in my imagination, I see the same vision I saw in Sector 17: the tunnel, the lumbering animals, tooth and claw as they race toward me. Unfortunately, this is not a dream. I hear the screams and pleas from the people trapped around me, as the doors are flung open, growls, howls, cracking, sputtering gasps as something gorges and tears. I pull the corpses across my body and hide, cover my ears and sob. I clamp my lips tight as I hear the sniffs, taloned feet or hands on stone. In my mind’s eye I see Agent Smiley, a black void hovering over Hal in the storage building, his jaws opening wider, wider, wider still. They are outside my door now, grunting. I hear them pull on the steel bars, pull and shake the door in such violence the door may rip from the hinges.

Suddenly, from somewhere far away, beyond men and time and things, somewhere lost inside me or perhaps beyond the universe—I hear a whisper, subtle, slow, steady, increasing in force, a sound, a voice, a song, like a warm breeze in a sepulcher. I am crying now, and I cannot stop. The animals outside are pulling on the door, smashing into it with their shoulders, silt falling from the stones above.

The song is still there, louder now, a force, louder and louder. The animals outside howl then roar, clawing at the stone door, smashing more violently into it. The growls are groans, then whimpers, as the song transforms into a roaring thunderous waterfall of sound, power and violence. It is a deeply felt, piercing presence that fills the cell with resonance so that the stones above shake, the side walls shake, the door on its hinges shuddering. Still the song increases in pitch and intensity. It is no longer a song but a weapon that bursts the ear drums and penetrates steel, a beam, a shattering force that blows the stone door into fragments.

I scream against the violence, for fear it is Agent Smiley, taloned and fanged. There is only light in the doorway, then a shadow, walking closer, closer. I scream into the sound. A hand pulls away the corpses, the bones breaking as they move; another and another until I am lifted, propped from both sides and dragged out of the cell. The door next to mine is open, and I see…Hal chained and hanging naked from the ceiling. “Help me!” he says. “Help me,” and he jangles the steel in frustration.

“Go! Go!” screams a voice. “They’ll be back with force!”

They carry me down the hallway. Up and up and up and up until the gray of day and the warmth of the sun covers my face and limbs. I open my eyes, but can see very little. “Hal! Hal!” I cry. “You need to go back!”

“Shut him up!” Someone hisses from my side. My world goes black once again, as the hood is pulled over my face. To my horror, just before the darkness, I see a figure spraying an enormous butterfly over the door of the entrance to the cells. I have fallen from hell into the very jaws of the devil. IMAGO has taken me prisoner.

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LINKS

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07Y7N1K16

Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/imago-greg-belliveau/1133745161;jsessionid=DDB71841B765506A8132CCB4B3C3AFD8.prodny_store02-atgap13?ean=2940163126118

Apple: https://books.apple.com/us/book/imago/id1481363090?mt=11&app=itunes

Kobo:  https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/imago-46

Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Greg_Belliveau_IMAGO?id=SSGxDwAAQBAJ

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