139 Trilogy Read online
Contents
139 Trilogy
Copyright E
Dedication
Short Story 1
Content Warning
Book One
Content Warning
Prologue: Swing Low
Act I: A Jolly Good Fellow
Act II: But Two Days Old
Act III: Que Sera Sera
Finale: Punk Rock Never Dies
Epilogue: One More Time
Short Story 2
Content Warning
Book Two
Content Warning
Chapter 1: Year One
Chapter 2: Door to Tomorrow
Chapter 3: Life Goes On
Chapter 4: The Healer
Chapter 5: Goes in Threes
Chapter 6 : The Winter Train
Chapter 7: Last of the Wars
Interlude: Evening Tea Party
Chapter 8: Cyborg People
Chapter 9: The Final Day
Chapter 10: Future
Short Story 3
Book Three
Prologue: The Watcher
Chapter 1: Demon Eyes
Chapter 2: The Wanderer
Chapter 3: The Twin Stars
Chapter 4: Guardian Demon
Chapter 5: Triage Diplomat
Chapter 6: The Forger
Chapter 7: Time Bandit
Chapter 8: The Storyteller
Chapter 9: Omnikid
Chapter 10: Light
Chapter 11: Cold Fusion
Chapter 12: The Phantom Light
Chapter 13: Lady Fatal
Chapter 14: The Double Edged Prince
Chapter 15: The Walker
Chapter 16: Bolted Arm
Chapter 17: Dragon of Revolution
Chapter 18: Braveheart
Chapter 19: One Two Last
Interlude: Hero of Monsters
Chapter 21: The Broken
Chapter 22: The Son
Chapter 23: Algid Angel
Chapter 24: Sword of the Shadows
Chapter 25: The Lonely Mercenary
Chapter 26: The Princess of Blood
Chapter 27: Ex-
Chapter 28: Tactician Grey
Chapter 29: The Forge in Flames
Chapter 30: Lord of the Beasts
Chapter 31: Seven Leafed Clover
Chapter 32: Apparition Dragoon
Chapter 33: The Long Shot
Chapter 34: Trader of Places
Chapter 35: He Who Marched
Chapter 36: Planet Breaker
Chapter 37: The Historian
Chapter 38: The Rat
Chapter 39: Hero of the Mist
Chapter 40: -Seed
Chapter 41: The Waiting Girl
Chapter 42: Overseer
Chapter 43: The Tree of Crossroads
Chapter 44: The Dead Battalion
Chapter 45: Desolate Spectre
Chapter 46: The Lady in Waiting
Chapter 47: The Ghost of Years
Chapter 48: The Wayward
Epilogue: 139
Afterwords
About the Author
139 Trilogy
Aden Ng
2021 Aden Ng Jun Xiang
eBook Print
Smashwords Edition
The cover has been designed using resources
from Freepik.com by artist Liu Zi Shan.
ISBN: 978-981-18-2088-5
To all the names and faces
who kept me alive all these years
as I struggled with mental illness
Short Story 1
Beam
Content Warning
Story contains depiction of PSYCHOLOGICAL TORTURE
•
It's been a few weeks since I've last slept. She wrote in her journal. Her fingers quivered with each word, the lines for each letters breaking abruptly at every pause. But I can still remember the face of the boy. The way he looked at me with those pitying eyes. How when he smiles as his lips stretched and melt like rubber. I can't do it. If I sleep, he'll visit me in my nightmares again.
“You need to sleep,” her father said.
She could not focus on his face hidden by the shadows of the room. His onyx suit was cleanly pressed, as it had been his whole life in the courtrooms.
With a shaking motion, she signed out of her journal. Jesslyn Hardy.
She replied, “I can't.” The words came out in a heavy breath. Taking in oxygen had become a painful chore.
She pulled open her desk drawer which was filled with hundreds of packets of eye-drops. Her hand steadied as she picked one up, and with a practised motion, she released the liquid into her eyes.
Her father continued, “When was the last time you even blinked?”
She threw the emptied packet at a bin, the plastic bouncing off the overflow of trash. Pokes of fast food wrapping peeked from a mountain of emptied eye droppers and plastic filled paper cups. She scooped up a handful of new packets of drops from the desk drawer and stuffed them into the pocket of her jacket for later, the once white coat was now dirtied grey and stained by marks of red from food and ketchup.
She replied, “Doesn't matter. As long as I don't close my eyes, I won't see him.”
“As long as you don't close your eyes, you'll die.”
She glanced over her room. Clothes were strewn across the floor, and a burned circle on the wall marked the time she tried to defend herself with a homemade flamethrower made from a lighter and a can of deodorant. There was a pile of torn mattress fillings and springs atop broken pieces of wood where her bed used to be.
She asked her father, “What happened to my bed?”
“You took a hoe to it. Don't you remember?”
There was a faint memory at the back of her mind of her bed growing a deformed lips that flapped, asking her for a kiss. She stole the hoe from a neighbouring tool shed and coloured the frame with splinters after.
Another glance over her desk, she noted the crosses over all 31 days of December on her calender.
“What day is it?” she asked. Beyond the windows and blinds, light seeped in from the four corners blindingly white. She looked to her wall clock, glass cracked to the point where the numbers were no longer visible. “What time is it? And what happened to the clock?”
“You broke it,” her father answered.
“Yeah...” she recalled. “The ticking was annoying.”
“It's a digital clock.”
“Since when?”
“Since always.”
The clock came into clearer view. He was right. The glass to the panel had been smashed, but when focused on, the repeating time of 1:39 past midnight flashed at long intervals from the barely functioning LED panel.
“Then why did I break the clock?” she asked.
“Because the ticking was annoying you.”
“It's digital.”
“Exactly.”
The room smelled of rotting food but she dared not step out of her apartment to empty the trash. The corridor outside had a lamp brighter than the sun. Opening the door would blind her. Make her blink. Close her eyes. A knock on the door signalled the arrival of lunch. A paper bag of burgers, fries, and large bottled water was unceremoniously thrown through the doggie door.
Her father asked, “Aren't you going to eat?”
“I don't feel hungry.” She rubbed her belly, which had shrunk a size since she last felt it. She noticed how bony her hands had become.
Her eyes began to ache, so she reached into her pockets and took out another eye drop. She applied liberally. As the phone rang, she jumped and turned to the wall where the electronic hung. Her chest continued to hurt as she took in a deep breath of shock and fear.
With two quick steps over to the phone, she answer
ed, “Hello?”
“Jessy?” the gravelly male voice replied. “It's Ollie. Your office called and said you haven't been back since Christmas. Is everything okay?”
“I-I'm fine, brother. Just not feeling so good.”
“Are you sick? Have you seen a doctor? Do you want me to come over to check on you?” Despite having grown into a large and tough giant of a man, Oliver Hardy was as caring as humans got.
Hearing his steady deep voice calmed her enough to sound somewhat sane. “Really, I'm fine. Just needed some time off.”
Ollie paused, and she could imagine the gears in his brains turning to unravel the lie. Finally, he replied, “Okay, you take care of yourself. We're visiting dad next week.”
“Looking forward to it.”
They gave each other their love and hung up. The silence that followed deafened her. She rustled her pocket for another eye drop before walking over to her closet.
Her father asked, “How is Ollie?”
“He's doing fine,” she told him. Opening the closet, she found it almost empty, save for a clean teal dress that hung above another pile of dirty laundry. She decided to wear the dress for the visit. “He made detective last year. You must be proud.”
“I am.”
She stood before her opened closet in blank anger. “You were always so much more proud of him. Following in your footsteps. Fighting for law and order.”
“I was.”
Tears streamed down her face. “I just wanted you to be proud of me.” When the liquid seeped through the corner of her lips, they tasted a mix between sweet and metallic.
Her father replied, “I am.”
She felt his arms lay over her shoulders and hugged her chest tight. Harder and harder she cried. She turned to her closet mirror to see herself crying blood.
The arms that wrapped around her were small, and the face over her shoulder was not that of her father. The young boy, barely looking eight in age, hung off her back like a koala. His eyes a dark pearl, his hair golden under a black bucket hat, the boy in clean white school uniform began to smile. His dimples parted and his lips melted into the edge of his skin. The smile stretched from cheek-to-cheek, then ear-to-ear, until it was nothing but a grotesque slit slashed into the face.
She screamed.
With a heave and shout, she pulled apart the boy's arms and threw him off her back. She spun around and tried to kick at the little monster, but instead hit the door of the closet instead. She recoiled her feet in pain.
“Do you want to play?”
She spun to the wispy voice of the boy. He stood at her door, bag of food in hand.
“No!” she screamed while trying to limp away. “Go away! Stop doing this! I'm not even asleep!”
Ignoring her later comments, he replied in disappointment, “That's to bad. How about your dad? Do you still want his approval?”
“What?”
The suited man that acted as her father seemingly stepped out of the shadow of the corner of the room. Slowly, his lips parted as he smiled, and the pink red fused with the skin into another slash of a slit.
•
Detective Oliver Hardy raced through the corridor of the apartment building. Neighbours extended curious heads out from their homes into the corridor with crime scene tape was stuck onto the walls. Forensic scientists, uniformed cops, a mortician, and a flaming orange haired detective stood outside Jesslyn Hardy's apartment.
“Ollie,” the female stepped out and he nearly crashed into her in his rush.
“Julie,” he halfheartedly greeted. “What happened? Where's my sister?”
“You don't want to see this,” she persuaded.
He rarely ignored his partner's advice. When he did though, he was an unstoppable force. A mountain of a man, he pushed past the woman, went under the tape and ignored the protest of his other colleagues as he stepped into the room.
The whiff of rot burned his nose. Dimly lit with the buzzing of flies abound, he was reminded of scenes from movies of death pits and mass burial ground. A muddied shovel laid against the wall. Layers upon layers of emptied eyedroppers littered the floor.
In the small room, lying on a neatly made bed, Jesslyn sat motionless in a muddied teal dress. Her eyes were dug out with dried blood covering her face. She smiled a cheek-to-cheek grin locked in by rigor mortis. The desecrated and decomposing body of their father wrapped her in an embrace.
Book One
In Evening
Content Warning
Story contains depiction of SELF-HARM AND SUICIDE
Prologue: Swing Low
2 months earlier,
03:45 P.M.
Price stood at the store window, gentle snow falling atop his baseball cap. His golden, cat-like eyes stared back at him from the reflection. Smell of sewage floated up from the drains, of rotting eggs and flushed faeces, the lovely smell of the city. Boots and jacketed, with his school bag hanging lazily at the side, Price watched as the newscaster continued her report from the store television. The newscaster was a redhead, and he liked redhead. Not just a preference for them, but a full blown sexual attraction. His entire porn collection consisted solely of redheads.
The newscaster reported, “It seems the illness that causes death inducing nightmares has spread. Reports are coming in of more and more fatalities throughout the world.” He raised up his energy bar and took an uninterested bite. “The CDC have officially named the phenomenon, the Vashmir Pandemic, known more colloquially as Suicide In Nightmare, or Sin. Locally, there have been but thirty-six known cases of Sin, but that number is expected to rise over the following weeks.”
He gave a derisive snort. “Sucks to be them.” He took the final bite of the energy bar and unceremoniously tossed the wrapper on the ground. “World's unfair,” he said aloud.
“As the number of cases rise, so have the demand for the controversial sleep-aid drug, Somnidin. The drug is known to be highly addictive, but continues to be the only medication so-far that is capable of combating Sin.”
With a final glance at the television set as the newscaster went on to cover celebrities, Price whistled as he walked off. A police car, horns blaring, lights flashing, zoomed past him, leaving a trail of dust and lines of light in its wake.
Thinking he had nothing better left to do that day, Price decided to follow, jogging after the fading car, jaywalking across as a passing motorist honked him fiercely.
“Asshole!” Followed after.
The city was filled with short cuts and he darted into an alleyway to cut off the pursuit at the next junction. He made a mental note though that if the car went past the block, he was not pursuing it further. No point in wasting his energy just to satisfy his curiosity.
Luckily for him, the police car came to a stop at just the turn of the corner. Joining the ranks of a ring of other law enforcement vehicles surrounding a pharmacy, the spinning lights of red and blue turned the streets into a dizzying disco. The perimeter of the scene was fenced off by impromptu yellow tapes. Like talismans, they warded off the crowd that had gathered. Shivering officers stood behind them as guards in the freezing temperature, forced to put on a professional front despite the cold.
From the passenger's side of the newly joined vehicle, a bald, burly, coat wearing man stepped out.
“Ugh...” Price voiced his displeasure. The man was as ugly as he looked brute.
Then, from the driver's side, a woman stepped out. Slender, tall, flowing red hair, and long-legged in grey pantsuits, he inadvertently wolf whistled as she stood.
The female heard him and shot him an angry glance that made his heart skip a beat in fear. But he wondered how a woman as sexy as that ended up with a man as ugly as a troll.
The pair headed towards one of the officer standing guard. From where Price stood, he could just hear the female ask, “What's the situation?”
“Attempted robbery, detectives,” the officer replied. “One suspect, armed with a shotgun. He's got a hostage.”
/> “Robbery?” the male detective replied. “At a pharmacy? What drug was he trying to steal? Ritalin? Xanax?”
“Somnidin,” the officer answered. “The man says he has Sin but doesn't have the money to buy the medication.”
As the officer and detectives continued to discuss the situation, Price caught sight of a man in the crowd opposite him. A man in a sleek onyx suit, black bowler hat, and sharp sunglasses. He stood unwavering, intently writing into a small notebook in his hands. Price thought he might be a reporter, but the lack of the boisterous personality of one made him think otherwise. After staring at the man for a while, Price puffed over-dramatically, turning his attention away and back to the pharmacy.
But nothing happened. No gunshots or screams or shouts. The robber did not storm out with a ransom demand like they do in movies. No red-dots aimed menacingly at the building. No SWAT team busting down doors. Just a long period of silence and bored tension that hung in the air with the snow. A couple of people within the crowd let out a contagious yawn.
Price clicked his tongue in frustration. “This is lame. I'm going home.”
Just as he said that, the loud echoing blast of a gunshot rang through the streets and the crowd jumped. The police scrambled, cutting through the barricade and running towards the pharmacy, guns drawn. Another shot and the glass window of the pharmacy shattered. The crowd started screaming and dispersed, running away from the scene in which they had recently given their rasp attention. The two detectives ran towards the danger at flank.
Price stood in the midst of the chaos, unmoving, stunned by the events that are so quickly unravelling before him as crowds rushed to pass him. He did not turn to look when a man walked up beside him and did not even give him full attention when he started to speak.
“Makes you wonder, doesn't it?”
Price mumbled a meek reply. “Wonder about what?” Opposite him, the man in the bowler hat and suit continued to stand his ground, a lopsided grin on his face.
“Just what kind of nightmare these Sin victims are having that makes them desperate enough to kill.”
139 Trilogy