Post-Prep School Passion, we have reached the summer of Marco! This weekend, enjoy Marco and the Angel: A Prep School Blues Story, to be released Sunday July 26. After that, pre-order the next story, my upcoming kindle short Marco and the Apocalypse, coming out in August. Read the description and an excerpt below...
"Marco Strieber never thought he would find love again after the death of his beloved Richard Alexander, but years later he finds himself drawn to Cyrus Mendelssohn, the college roommate of fellow Beaumont boy Jack Winters. Pursuing Cyrus across the Halloween revelry of New York City, Marco finds him in a strange thrall to Tori Fimmel, a wealthy and powerful older woman who owns the speakeasy called Seventh Seal. In going up against the enigmatic Tori, Marco will face both debauchery and dangers he never before imagined."
Marco and the Apocalypse
Marco Strieber got off the bus at Port Authority, walked over to Times Square, and then took the subway down to Union Square. He did not stop to gawk at the sights of the city, although this was his first time in New York City and he had traveled a long way to get there. His thoughts were entirely on the task at hand. He had not seen his mother since the day she kicked him out on the street years ago, back home in Beaumont, Illinois. He was not sure how he would feel seeing her again, but after what his uncle told him on the phone, he knew this was something he had to do.
Uncle Wes from Wisconsin was not Marco’s biggest fan either, having kicked his nephew out as well for the same drug abuse. When Wes called a week earlier, Marco felt ashamed all over again, although he was clean by that time and working his twelve-step program for narcotics anonymous. Wes did not lecture him about past indiscretions, instead he told him about a recent business trip to New York and what he had seen there. Marco bought a bus ticket the same day.
Marco saw her almost immediately when he emerged from the subway. Cary Strieber was right where Wes said she would be, camped out on her usual park bench. From Marco’s understanding, according to the inquiries Wes had made last week, Cary was something of a local legend already among the food vendors and college students who frequented the area. Marco thought she had really changed. Her hair, once a dark brown frequently highlighted blonde, had gone completely gray, hanging in stringy unwashed strands around her face. New wrinkles creased her forehead and the corners of her eyes. She no longer wore her customary colorful muumuus. Instead, a hodgepodge of dirty, ragged sweat clothes and one coat on top of another insulated her from the autumn chill in the air. Her shopping cart, always kept within arm’s reach, contained stacks of weather beaten bibles and a variety of marker scribbled cardboard signs, which she used in rotation during her rants at passersby. Currently, she held a sign in both hands reading, “Repent, the End is Nigh!”
The sight of Cary like this hit Marco with the force of a physical blow. He had not always liked her, at times he even resented her, but he would not wish this fate on anyone. He remembered the self-assured woman she once was, hosting weekly bible studies at The Trinity, the Christian coffeeshop she once owned on Main Street in Beaumont. Maybe with time and care, she could get back to her former self. He gathered together his courage and approached her.
“Mom…Mommy?” He hated how he sounded like some little lost boy in that moment.
“You…” She saw him and narrowed her eyes before shouting across the park. “Abomination!”
“Listen to me.” He tried to stay calm. He told himself this was just her mental illness talking, although he knew her religious convictions ran deep long before she got to this point. “Uncle Wes told me where to find you. I’m here to take you home, Mom. We can figure things out and get you better.”
“Stay back!” She held up her cardboard sign as if to shield herself. “Don’t come one step closer! You are no child of mine, but a spawn of Satan. Everyone! Everyone! Hear me!”
A few people in the park turned their heads to look, but most ignored her and minded their own business. Real New Yorkers, Marco guessed.
“Mom, please…”
“This boy was once my own dear son.” She spun around in circles as she told her story to random strangers. “I tried to raise him right, even after my husband abandoned us for a common whore. I fed him, clothed him, educated him in the word of Our Lord, but he threw all of it away to be a godless sinner like his father…worse than his father! He polluted his body with drugs. He indulged in sins of the flesh. He’s a sodomite, an abomination!”
“I just want to help you…”
“Help me? Help me?” She let out a low, disturbing laugh. “Who’s going to help you when the end times come? I will be lifted up, taken in the rapture to sit at the side of Our Lord, while you and all these other sinners will suffer through the end times. You will wish that you were dead, but death will bring no relief. You will burn forever and ever in the lake of fire with the rest of your kind. Help me? Help me? Help yourself! Repent, Marco Strieber! Repent before it is too late to save your soul! The end is nigh!”
Marco slowly backed away as Cary collapsed onto her bench in a wild fit of both laughter and tears. He could not take any more. There was nothing he could do. He had come all this way for nothing. He left Union Square and walked east along Fourteenth Street, scarcely minding his surroundings, caught in a daze after that encounter in the park.
“Marco?” A vaguely familiar voice startled him. He looked up to see the face of Jack Winters, his former prep school classmate. “What a coincidence! Are you living in New York now too?”
“Jack…” He struggled to compose himself. “No, I’m just…uh…um…visiting here…on vacation. You know, seeing the Big Apple and all.”
“So good to see you!” Jack clapped him on the back. “How long are you in the city for?”
“I don’t know yet. I just got here today.”
“Well, if you don’t have any plans, why not come by my place tonight? My roommates and I are throwing a Halloween party. It’s gonna be fun!”
“Okay.” Marco acquiesced. He thought maybe the distraction would take his mind off what happened with Cary. “Is it Halloween tonight? Must have slipped my mind.”
Marco had never celebrated Halloween before. As a child, his mother had taken him to hell houses organized by local churches, which used special effects and live performances to demonstrate the terrors of hell, the same terrors that now consumed poor and destroyed Cary’s mind. Those had not been fun.
“I’m guessing you don’t have a costume.” Jack saw the small backpack Marco was carrying. “Not to worry, I have plenty of stuff you can borrow at my apartment. I’m in drama school now. Why don’t you come over now and you can pick something out?”
“Why not?” Marco followed Jack away from Fourteenth Street and south towards his apartment in Alphabet City. As they walked, he felt more relaxed. He was looking forward to playing dress up and attending a party. He had no idea that the night to come would far more terrifying than any hell house from his childhood.
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