Eden's Ashes

Contents Copyright Dedication --> Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter . Chapter Copyright Text and cover images copyright © 1987-2023 by Devon Rhys This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the Canadian Copyright Act, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author. First Paperback Edition: February 2023 ISBN 978-1-73885-780-7ISBN 978-1-73885-781-4 (ebook) Dedication I had a dream, it became words, and you were not in it, until I met you. To my beautiful mother and late father, who I cherish. Chapter One I had spent the night crying and the flesh under my blue eyes was swollen and sore to the touch. I sat on the wooden floor with my legs up to my chest, my arms wrapped around them, and my head resting on the edge of the sofa. The floor was made of oak panels, well, not oak, but rather plastic made to resemble the color and texture of oak. More durable, however, when water spilled on them, they warped just like real wood, and the edges curved upward. The couch was covered in a medium grey fabric and was supported by aluminum legs that I often stubbed my toe on. We all did, and the last time my toe was so black and blue that I had to shuffle my feet when I walked due to the pain. At least I avoided school for a week, I hated school. Above me, lay my father. He was lying on his side, in almost a fetal position. Sometime in the early morning hours, I covered him fully with the blanket he had been using to keep warm. He was dead. We lived in a two-bedroom condo on the eleventh floor in a newer building in downtown Toronto. There were windows all the way around, from ceiling to floor, a ‘fishbowl’ my mother often called it, since everyone could see everything going on inside. Even so, the outside views were spectacular. We had a balcony that overlooked a courtyard below, a luxury that few condos had, since most were built so closely together. My mother and I often ate dinners on the balcony in the summer months, since my dad habitually worked away from home, sometimes for days at a time. I didn’t enjoy sports and so other than a walk in the nearby park, I would often sit on the balcony and write music on my laptop. I was more interested in music than my schoolwork, and my father was often disappointed by this. So much did his frustration grow, that eventually he gave up looking at my report cards altogether. I had no idea what time it was. The power was out, and any electrical devices had lost their battery life weeks ago. But it was first light, and I knew that I would have to leave soon. I didn’t want to go. I had never been anywhere without my parents, not even on an overnight trip for school. Something always came up and I just never went. Only two months ago, my grade six class went to Sudbury, Ontario for a week-long trip, but my father wouldn’t allow me. Even though I had never been that far north, I figured I didn’t miss much after hearing all the stories. It was all the same kids, causing all the same problems and besides visiting the nickel mine, it didn’t sound all that interesting anyways. Then a month later the schools were closed, and I never saw any of my friends again. Hours earlier my father had whispered that I could not stay in the city and that things would get worse. He didn’t have the energy to explain, and I couldn’t imagine how. There were no planes, no cars, no visible people, no sounds from neighboring units and the noise that I had learned to tune out since I was born, left me in a blanket of quiet that was unsettling. In front of me, on the coffee table, was a map of Southern Ontario. A week earlier, he was rummaging through some old filing boxes in the closet. He knew, what I did not. He had the wherewithal to think ahead to this moment, to know where everything was going. In hindsight, he had been displaying the same symptoms that my mother had, coughing, a fever, shortness of breath and then yesterday evening, he was coughing up blood. My mother lay in the master bedroom and had died days earlier. When she passed, he wouldn’t let me see her. He held me back as I tried to enter her room, and put his arms around me tightly, as I cried uncontrollably. He told me that I needed to be brave, to be strong, and he made me promise never to enter the room. I didn’t. It was hard to make the first movement from my lifeless position on the floor, and when I did, the numbness left me, and I felt stiffness in my joints. The grooves in the faux wood floor, left reddish indents in my skin, which I massaged with my hands. I looked at the map. He had drawn a route and told me I needed to follow it exactly. He had sensed my concern when he told me I had to drive, encouraging me to take it slow. I was eleven, I had never driven in my life. Some other kids’ fathers let them take the wheel on side roads or in parking lots – not mine.