Owned by the Fae Princes

And they lived happily ever after… I stared dreamily at the last line of my contraband romance novel, hidden between the beer tap and ice bucket. Reading on a slow night was the only solution for bartending at the Red Rabbit, a strip club that was classy enough to have a cereal vending machine, for those early morning munchies. “Aria, someone puked in the men’s room. It’s your turn,” a voice snapped beside me. It was Mona, my manager, and a pain in my ass. I stared at those black letters against the pure white page, my momentary high of reading the happily ever after of another fictional couple deflating, like a sad birthday balloon, three days after the party. This was real life, and endings like those only existed between the creamy pages of a book. Real life was 24/7 strip clubs at truck stops, mopping the men’s room floor and taking home barely enough to cover rent and bills. Well, it might not be real life for everyone, but I never did have even one shred of good luck, and like always, seemed to have gotten the short straw when it came to picking destinies. “On it,” I muttered, pushing myself to my feet and trying to wiggle the shortest black shorts known to man down an inch or two. They were a centimeter away from panties, which is just how Gus, the disgusting, misogynistic manager of the Red Rabbit, liked it. He’d have all his staff naked if he could get away with it. The thin mid-drift bearing camisole for the top was just as useless. At least our footwear choice was our own. I went with s**t-stomping boots that laced up past my ankle. It was the only part of my outfit I liked. As I turned, my hand brushed the book, perched on the edge of the counter, and with a graceful plop, it fell into the slushy remains of the nearly empty ice bucket. Several of the leering drinkers propping at the bar cheered and clapped drunkenly. “Oops, guess you should have changed that bucket an hour ago like I told you to,” Mona said sweetly in my ear, before sauntering off. I watched as the water soaked through the pages of the sweet love story I’d spent the best part of today trying to hide in. I never did have any kind of luck. The shift dragged. This week, I was on nights. That meant I started at ten, worked through the small hours, and staggered back to my trailer on the outskirts of town about seven, and fell into a dead sleep, usually until I had to drag myself back in. My life was going nowhere fast, just like the car I drove to and front the truck stop where the strip club was, about five miles out of town. The parking lot of the Red Rabbit was deserted at this time in the morning, except for one or two trucks. It was probably the safest time to go home. As I walked to my car, however, I felt an eerie sense of awareness, like eyes tracking my moves, or icy fingers walking slowly down my spine. I shook off the feeling. I was used to a certain kind of fear, working where I did, and living alone. Young women alone in my part of town were always at risk which is why I spent half my check one month on pepper spray and a second-hand taser. Happenstance, USA, wasn’t a great town, hell, it wasn’t even an average one. It was decidedly below average in every way, so I should fit right in. I started my beat-up wreck of a car. I should take it for a service or something, but last time, the mechanic had tried to convince me to get rid of it, and upgrade. Not only could I not afford it, but this car was important to me. It wasn’t just my car, it had been Billy’s car, and I’d never give it up without a fight. I headed west along country roads, passing signs for the smallish town I’d grown up in. Happenstance was one of those dead-end, middle of nowhere kind of places that was truly depressing. Everyone with a brain made a run for it as soon as they could, and the only ones who stayed weren’t exactly the kind of people I wanted to hang with. I couldn’t make a run for it, but I hated to stay as well. Maybe I was just a miserable b***h, I’d certainly been called one enough times, but it seemed that there had to be more to life than the hard-scrabble living I’d done since Billy died, and left me all alone. The trailer park was at the edge of town, and I pulled in, and slowed right down, passing kids playing ball on the dirt track that ran through the middle, and their mothers, who were standing in the way, gossiping, maybe even about me. I rolled past, and they stared at me. Wherever I went, I never seemed to belong. Maybe it wasn’t just bad luck. Maybe I was cursed? The trailer I’d lived in for the best part of ten years sat right at the end of the park, looking out to the river and fields behind. I liked to sit and look out the back, and stare at the dark forest that was only about a twenty-minute walk, after you crossed the river. Heldon Woods was my secret sanctuary. I loved to wander under the tree cathedral, bare feet in the dirt, sitting on the mossy ground and breathing the clean, green scent of life. It was the only good thing about working nights, I could go the woods during the day. However, that was about to change. I’d picked up a second job, waitressing at a small diner in town. I had to make some more money if I was ever going to get out of this place. When Billy and I had first moved here, I’d been ten, and I’d remembered how scared I was. There was little I remembered about those first few years here, except how the fear had taken a long time to ebb. Looking back now, it was odd. I didn’t know why I’d been so scared. Inside the trailer, I checked the fridge for something to eat. A lone banana sat on the top shelf. I took it as well as the end of a jar of peanut butter and went out back. If there was a favorite part of the crappy trailer I’d lived in way too long, it was the little deck that looked toward the woods. I sat down at the lawn furniture Billy had found by the side of the road one day and dragged back here and opened the peanut butter jar. A slice of banana, a smear of peanut butter, and I was getting two of my five a day. I stared at the woods; my mind fixed on the past. Around me, the day was already heating up. It was July and the area got hotter than the ninth circle of hell. The cicadas sang in the long grass, and there’d be plenty of snakes hiding in the field, ready to be stepped on. I miss you, Billy. I always thought of my godfather when I sat out here. It had been our spot, ever since we moved here. My thoughts returned to my first memories of the town, and the trailer park, all tinged by that overwhelming fear that had taken me years to shake. The strangest thing of all about that time, was those memories weren’t just the first of the town. They were my first memories, period. I couldn’t remember a single thing before I arrived in Happenstance. Seeing as I’d been ten years old, that was odd. Odd indeed. I presumed I’d had a family at one point, or at least, a mother. Billy never told me about it, and I never asked. Fear, I supposed, held me back. Maybe I was f****d up enough to belong here after all. While I had never tried to find out what the hell happened to me, before it was too late, and Billy got too sick, I had cooked up all sorts in my imagination. I was quite sure that the truth was mundane. I was an orphan, and Billy, a well-meaning friend of the family, had taken on the burden of me, and died just when I got old enough to help him out. Fate had a f****d-up sense of humor.   A movement in the long grass caught my eye, and I stared. A deer stood tall in the waving green, his antlers looking like raw bones in the morning light. Deer, in Happenstance? Sure, I guessed it could happen. Enough locals went hunting that I could believe it, even though I’d never seen one in ten years of living here. It stared at me, and I stared back. Its ears pricked forward and I had the impression it wasn’t just watching me, just listening, like it could even understand me. Happenstance was making me loopy. Being stuck in a nightmare town with no escape was melting my brain. A truck backfired in the distance, the sound sending a flock of birds up from the trees of Heldon Woods, and the deer jolted. It turned and ran towards the pines. “Take me with you,” I muttered to it’s departing back. It never stopped or turned again. I couldn’t blame it. I wouldn’t want to take me either. I ate my last piece of banana, and headed inside. I had to sleep a bit before starting my new diner shift. Making enough money to get the hell out of here was my only goal, and I’d do it, one day. I’d promised Billy that I would, after all. The dream only came when I was over tired. Maybe when I wasn’t too exhausted, my subconscious was able to bat it away, but this morning, with the sun shining on my bed, and my alarm set for only two hours from now, it came. It always started the same. Darkness and fire, the sound of screaming. I never had shoes on in this dark world. I didn’t know exactly why I was sure that there, wasn’t here, but I was always certain. A hand gripped mine, and pulled me. A man tugging me along. I couldn’t see his face. Cold water rushed over me, like falling into an icy fjord, and then light. Billy’s voice speaking to me, as familiar as my own face. “Open your eyes, Aria.” I blinked awake just as my alarm started to beep. Slamming it off in a practised motion, I swung my feet out of bed. Crap, I felt terrible. Maybe this second job thing wasn’t going to work out. I forced myself up and got ready. Uniform on and ballet flats, the kind without any support or padding. Long, black hair scrapped into a bun and hairsprayed into oblivion. I could only hope that I didn’t have to get too close to the fryer, my head might go up like a torch. After washing my face, I stared at my reflection. I wasn’t really a make-up girl, but it seemed something would be needed to age me up a little. I was twenty-one now, but my face seemed to insist on remaining as childish looking as a teen. Round apple cheeks and a button nose with far more freckles than anyone had a right to met my critical gaze. The only thing of any kind of exception about my face was my eyes. Green and dark as Heldon’s towering pines. I dug an old pinkish lipstick from a drawer and put it on. Urgh, now I looked like a kid wearing her mother’s make up, or worse, face paint. I rubbed it off on the back of my hand as I headed out.