Wednesday has rolled aorund again. How does this keep happening? Seems like we just **WAVED** goodbye to Wednesday yesterday. As you can probably guess, today’s #1lineWed **THEME** is **WAVE**. I did some searching through my WIPs, now that GHOSTS is live–though I was tempted to check GHOSTS because I think there’s some waves there but instead, I thought I’d offer a fresh snippet. This one always touches my heart whenever I reread it.
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“Maks.”
His name whispered in the dark, enticing him to follow the sound. He didn’t move. As long as he hid in the shadows, no one could find him. He didn’t breathe for a long time as he listened.
“Maksim.”
Her voice. Sultry. Tempting.
“Maksim!”
Her voice. Strident. Taunting.
Lover.
Mother.
Both had betrayed him. And they weren’t the only ones. He’d been delivered into his own personal hell.
The faces chased each other in and out of his memory. Beautiful. Ugly. Soothing. Horrifying. The memories blended together in the shadows of his mind until he could no longer separate them and he saw only an amalgam of their faces fused together.
“Maks.”
His voice. Mikhail. The one who’d found him. Who saved him so long ago. Who couldn’t save him now. No one could save him now.
“Come back, Maks.”
He didn’t want to. He had no place to go back to. It had all been destroyed. He’d been destroyed. Body. Soul. His brain…so fragile…like it was made of glass. If he opened his eyes, if he faced the world, he would shatter like crystal thrown against the wall. Better he stay in the Stygian depths of his madness. The voices had been silenced. Finally. Likely, his imagination had conjured them like a bitter fantasy of what could never be again. He was supposed to die.
Pain. So much pain. No. He would not remember. He would not talk, would not reveal the secrets he held. No matter what they did to him. They broke him like his body was a wave crashing on jagged rocks. Over and over but he remained true to his brothers. To the Vor. He’d kept the secrets, no matter what obscenities those others perpetrated on him. More pain. Bones breaking. Joints popping. Skin splitting. The blackness swallowed him whole, and he welcomed it.
Floating. A sea of shadowed mist. The pain held at bay by…something. A miracle maybe.
What was that sound? He listened. Considered. Skin brushing paper? Yes. Maybe. Was someone folding paper nearby?
“What are you doing, Katya?”
“Folding origami cranes, Uncle Misha. If I make one thousand cranes, my wish that Uncle Maks will wake up will come true.”
“Ah, Katya.”
He heard the heartbreak in Mikhail’s voice. In the child’s. Small hands patted his cheek. Sweet lips kissed his forehead. Then the sound of rustling paper once more.
“How many more, Katya, before your wish comes true?”
“Nine hundred and ninety-nine.”
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I really need to get back to my Moonstruck Mafia Wolves. I have Irish, Italian, and Russian mobsters to choose from So many characters, so many stories. I should wave hello to the series. 😉 Writers, any wavy words to share? And readers, where do you prefer to catch your waves–at the beach or the lake?
Silver James 
I totally brainfarted out yesterday. Love the snippet! I wish I had one to share in return.
You know me. I’m totally a lake person now. Sometimes I miss the beaches in Florida, though. We had this really nice one we went to that was in a national park, so no restaurants or bars, which was almost always bereft of people. Quiet, with miles of white sand where we could swim without being bothered. It was great. There aren’t really beaches around here, per se. The one place we could swim was all rocky and hard on the feet. They closed that one a few years back. =o(
Yup, I guess you are totally a lake person now. LOL I liked walking on the beach and wading in the waves but actually hanging out there? I always got sand where it shouldn’t be! And lakes? Dude, I can’t see what’s under the water so that’s a big NOPE! For a Pisces, I’m not much of a water person–except I like to sit and watch it. 😉