QSFer Lauren Jane Barnett has a new queer time travel book out (lesbian, non-binary): Occam’s Dream.
Dream Analyst Ursula is experiencing painful visions of an unknown desert. At first, her therapist, Jill, suggests it’s only a dream. But as the visions become more intense, both realise there is more at stake.
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Excerpt
In.
And out.
In —
CRACK.
Her brain twisted and split. The sound was sucked from her ears.
A bright, harsh yellow ruptured the darkness of her eyelids. Her heart stopped. Her lungs halted. A single image seized her in a violent visual grip: a wide, dusty, expanse suspended beneath an unforgiving pale sky. The jaundiced desert scorched her mind.
An unbearable feverish heat smothered her, and her eardrums pulsed against a rapid swell of pressure. She felt an excruciating stab just above her left eyebrow. The force and precision of it felt like being shot.
Her eyes flew open.
She tried to scream but there was no air in her lungs. Her mind scattered searching for her heart and willing it to beat. By some miracle it did. The movement forced her mouth open in a gasp, and she scraped air into her lungs in a laboured breath. Her heart thudded, lurching in her chest like a frantic animal. Each individual blood cell strained for oxygen.
After a few wheezing breaths, her muscles seemed to recover, and her body became familiar once more. Somewhere in the aftermath sound had returned to her ears. She could hear the wretched drawl of her broken breaths, and the pounding of her heartbeat overlaying a faint distant hum of the ocean. She latched onto the sound, and it carried her back.
The world around her reassembled in pieces, beginning with the horizon line of the ocean. The rough texture of the carpet returned, prickling her sensitive skin. The heat of her body jarred against the chilly air. The curdling sick rising in her throat.
She swallowed and it held back.
Her trembling fingers found the spot above her left eyebrow that had, for the briefest of seconds, stung with blinding force. She could only liken it now to an ice-pick being driven through her skull. The skin was burning, but there was no sign of blood.
I’m alive, she reminded herself. I’m okay. A rush of tingles spread over her body, falling in a gentle but swift cascade.
Forcing her mind away from the shadow of pain, she turned to the image that had come with it. Though it had only appeared for a moment, the details sprung vividly to mind: a barren, cracked desert stretched out beneath a faded sky, broken by a single train of dust curling up in the wind like Death’s beckoning finger.
Ursula shuddered. A tingling ran over her legs.
What if it was a stroke?
She jostled her muscles into a swift, aching smile. Her false grin stretched evenly on both sides. She thrust out her arms, fingers splayed and straight. Carefully, she examined them. The skin was paler than usual, making the twist of blue veins in her hands stand out, but they were steady. And level.
A gasping laugh burst out of her. It wasn’t a stroke. Her breath returned – when had she stopped breathing? – and her hands started to tremble.
Ursula had never been to a desert, but she had seen them on film and in dreams. This one seemed crueller: a skeletal corpse of land bleached by unforgiving sunshine. Somehow the harsh reminder sent an icy chill through her body. She watched as the skin on her arm raised into a tiny forest of bumps. Her eyes followed the gooseflesh as it spread over her skin until it became lost under the smooth plastic black band of her watch.
As if it sensed her though, the band glowed blue with the time. 7:42.
She leapt before she could think, and ran to the shower. She couldn’t miss her train. Not today.
Author Bio
Lauren Jane Barnett is a screenwriter and author best known for “Death Lines: Walking London’s Horror History” and the award winning short film “Robot Armadillo”. “Occam’s Dream” is her latest foray into science fiction after her segment in “Video Shop Tales of Terror II” She works in London, where she loves to walk.