Anyway, this is the beginning of Djinnocide after the rewrite had I just finished before the HV submission window opened. So, basically, no one has seen this polished version in its entirety. Tada! (Unlike the last few Beginnings posts, this is not the whole first chapter - just the first few pages.)
Enjoy.
Djinnocide
Chapter One
No one ever asked me if I wanted to
be a genie. I never even thought such a thing was possible. I was a modern
woman living in the Roaring Twenties. Against my mother’s wishes, I wore my
hair and my skirts short. I drank at speakeasies. I danced with gangsters. Hell,
I even smoked for petesakes. After
surviving for almost two whole decades, I had certainly aged too far to believe
in fairy stories anymore.
My father, Reggie, he was the
dreamer in the family. He was the one always looking for the next big thing and
if he could steal it? Well, even better. Me, I spent years looking for the next
big party. In fact, I’d been prepping for my own birthday extravaganza when the
package arrived. The shipping label said ‘Constantinople’, but whether my thief
of a dad could still be found there was anyone’s guess. Odds were he’d moved to
the next port of call and his next score. At least he’d bothered to think
enough of me to send a gift. After all, it’s not every day a gal turns eighteen.
“Marriageable age,” my mother
mumbled at me that morning in lieu of a more sentimental greeting. She’d meant
‘well past the age of finding a husband’ if her previous birthday greetings
were any indication. She wanted me married and out of the house before I could
graduate high school. To Evangeline’s thinking, she should’ve had at least a
couple grandchildren bouncing on her alcoholic knee by the time I reached this
age.
I didn’t care about her whims. Lucky
for me neither did Reggie. As he often told his dear wife, “Josephine Eugenia
Mayweather will marry when she damned well pleases”. I mentally amended that to
add ‘if ever’.
If the gifts he sent from abroad
were any indication, I’d have no problems in life if I joined the family
business. How hard could stealing really be? Reggie didn’t seem too taxed on
his infrequent visits home. In his words, he only had the law to worry about
and they hadn’t nabbed him yet.
Prison didn’t scare me. Not then. I
was young. I was invincible. And I planned to tell Reggie that I was his new
partner as soon as possible. If he couldn’t come home for my birthday, I’d go
to him. I imagined myself demanding my place in his life. He could teach me how
to relieve the world of its monetary burdens.
I was an adult. I would do as I damn well pleased. A fact
I planned on telling Evangeline, as soon as my party guests left. I’d board a
tramp steamer before the month was finished.
But even before that, I had a
package to open.
The small box, wrapped in brown
paper tied with twine, sat on the foyer table—waiting for me when I returned
from a late lunch with friends. They left with promises to return later and
ruin the party for me. Such good friends I had then. The quicker they raided
Evangeline’s special plans, the quicker I could start my new life.
I called out to tell her I was
home, but she was either soaking her brain in absinthe or sleeping off an
earlier drunk. Servants scurried around the place, preparing. Somewhere deeper
in the apartment, duck and pheasant and veal waited to be consumed. My stomach
rumbled. Too bad for it my curiosity overwhelmed my appetite.
Grabbing Reggie’s gift, I raced up
the grand staircase to my room. I kicked off my Mary Janes and flopped onto the
impossibly-girly canopy bed my mother thought proper for a female child. Unconcerned
with any black smudges the box left, I pushed it across the silk bedspread
Reggie sent from the Orient as last year’s gift and wrestled the twine free. The
paper tore away to lay forgotten on a goose-down pillow. Packing material
tumbled from the upended box along with a beige envelope.
Reggie’s bold strokes graced the
front: To my dearest Daughter. I
pushed it aside. Time enough later for his birthday wishes. I took comfort in
the certainty his note only contained professions of a father’s love—perhaps along
with when he would be home again. I knew he loved me. Whether he actually made
it home according to his schedule was a crapshoot.
My eyes centered again on the package’s
contents. Peeking hesitantly from the remaining shreds of paper, lay a rosewood
box. I didn’t have Reggie’s knowledge of antiques, but I knew a prized piece
when I saw it. The carvings were intricate, if a little primitive. The inlays
centered in each delicate flower had to be ivory.
I lay there devouring every nook and
cranny of its beauty. My fingers itched to trace the designs, but I held back,
savoring the visual meal before allowing myself to dive in. I held onto the
delicious delay as long as I could, teasing my innate impatience until I
couldn’t stand myself anymore. I reached out, caressing the silky wood the way
a loving hand might slip tenderly over its lady’s cheek.
A gentle breeze ruffled the bangs
across my forehead as I lifted the lid. I stifled my disappointment when I
realized the box itself had been my only present. Not that it wasn’t a really
lovely gift, I’d just hoped to find at least a necklace nestled in a velvet
interior.
“Expecting baubles perhaps, my
young Master?” said a voice from behind me. No sooner had the words hit my ears
then the box filled with a rainbow’s worth of light and color. I flung the
possessed thing away, scattering gems of every size and shape across my bed. A
single emerald the size of a walnut teetered on the edge for a second and then
dropped, clattering on the floor below.
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