Lunar Shore

Chapter One: Drowning

July 17th, 2019

Kiley

I am drowning.

I have made a huge mistake. I bit off more than I could chew and now my mouthful of responsibilities is melting down into my airway like toasted marshmallow, suffocating me.

Three more years. I should have had three more years to prepare for this.

I sit in my mother's office, looking at the stacks of work in front of me. Three complaints lodged by packmembers against other packmembers. Utility bills for our land that I don't know how to pay. Our pack owns a couple of businesses, and there are dozens of letters from these. Requests for funding to repair and remodel. Requests for my opinion regarding new hires. An allegation of sexual harassment against one of the managers of the restaurant we own.

I want to cry. This was a mistake. I don't know how to handle any of this.

My body is stiff, wound up as I am. It hurts to be in my mother's office. She was a bigot but she was my mother. For much of my life, she was my best friend. Only recently did the power of an alpha go to her head and twist her against minorities. I love her. I miss her. I feel guilty for both, knowing that I shouldn't mourn such a terrorist.

Worse is the guilt in knowing that I caused her death. I shouldn't have ousted her. I should have known she needed some time to calm down after being unseated as the alpha. I should have let her stay as a member of the pack. Then she wouldn't be dead.

My father still won't speak to me.

I don't let myself cry. I can't. I'm an alpha now. I have to be strong. With a shaking hand, I reach for the stack of papers. I realize that it's too late. My vision is already blurry with tears.

I put my head down on the desk and weep.

***

I am asleep. Somehow I know this. I fell asleep in the office atop a stack of work that needs doing.

I am dreaming. I recognize this, too.

My friends at school would talk about lucid dreaming. They always said that realizing you're in a dream is the first step to controlling it. But I don't feel in control at all as I experience the dream. I'm trapped inside of my own head, unable to move or look around like I want to.

I'm looking down at a laptop. I think I'm in a library. But something is different. Everything is different, actually. The feeling of my hair on my back and shoulders is gone. My neck feels weirdly cold. And my hands...

The hands that move on the keyboard of the laptop are not my hands. My hands are pale and thin, my nails often painted. The hands on the keyboard are much larger, the knuckles broader, the nails bare. The skin is dark brown on top and I see flashes of a lighter, paler beige on the bottoms.

There is no pressure of a bra around my chest. My upper half feels strangely light. I acutely feel the width of my shoulders and the bend of my knees as I sit on an uncomfortable chair.

My brain spins. This is not my body. This is a man's body. A Black man wearing a dark green sweatshirt. He won't look up from his laptop screen. I can't tell where we are.

I try to calm down and use my senses. There is a frustration growing in me and I can't tell where it is coming from.

I smell dust and old carpet. I taste coffee. I see the screen of the laptop. It looks like this man is writing an essay. The document is titled "DSAG Scholarship Essay". I feel cold even though I know it is July. I hear...

That's it. That's the frustration. This person is deaf. Not completely, though it sure seems like it. Nothing is coming through his right ear. It's a blank wall, a void of soundlessness. I ache to grab at the ear, to shift my hair away, to pull out an earplug, to fix this infuriating problem. But I feel nothing in his ear. He's just deaf.