Story Island (Autographed Paperback)

Prologue

Katerina knew that nothing would ever be the same the moment she heard the scream.

It bled through the sweltering darkness, wild and unhinged.

Even the full moon that night, watching over the cursed island, heard the mother’s cry for help.

And even the moon knew it wouldn’t end well.

A scream without rescue. How pointless. How tragic.

And yet it circled on endless replay through the hollows of Katerina’s mind every night thereafter and brought her back to the one place she never wanted to go again:

The island.

Even in the middle of the jungle, with its oppressive rain showers and lush vegetation, the island was a vast, empty desert. She could search for miles, days, nights, years. And still, it would elude her. One more drop of water. One more ray of endless sunshine. One more slice of charred earth. One more hallucination. One more downpour. One more blanket of ash.

And so it went.

The endless island of her mind. It was a vast, empty desert. A deep, bottomless ocean. An indigo night with no stars. A monster and a lover. All at once, and never at all.

The only remedy she’d discovered for her haunted memories was found in the calming rhythm of fingers typing on a keyboard.

Her fingers. Her keyboard.

Her stories.

And so, Katerina wrote. She wrote to escape into beautiful new worlds of her own creation. 

Even more, she wrote to forget.

To forget the island. To forget the loss. 

To forget the scream.

But deep down, Katerina knew that nothing was safe from the insidious scream. Not even her writing. 

The day it found her writing was the day it would take her to her grave. She knew this much.

The moon knew this, too.

And Katerina wrote anyway, for what else can a writer do?

Chapter One ~ Lucky Girl

The day before Katerina Joyce disappeared, she woke up feeling rested and joyful. Her joy lasted for about three seconds until she remembered who she was and the mess that had become her life.

Before that dreadful moment, Katerina basked in the blissful amnesia of the not-quite-asleep, not-quite-awake state. In that lovely in-between, it seemed as if all her mistakes had been erased. Her past, present, and future no longer held her hostage. The shackles of her identity, her body—hell, her entire existence—had been broken.

In those three seconds, she was totally and utterly free.

But as soon as the three seconds were up, she remembered.

The book. The deadline. Her writer’s block.

She’d always thought writer’s block was a load of crap made up by writers who simply didn’t want to do the work. Butt in chair. Fingers on keyboard. Do that for at least a few hours every day, no matter what, and voilà! You’ll have yourself a book!

Well, that was how it had always been for her at least.

For the past thirteen years—ever since her very first book idea had swept through her like a tsunami of inspiration—ideas and stories and characters from make-believe worlds and far-off lands had flown effortlessly and swiftly into Katerina’s mind. From there, they soared down through her heart and finally poured out through those fast-typing fingers of hers until what emerged was a beautiful book.

It was more than that, though. Writing had saved Katerina. Without it, she was certain her tragic past would’ve chewed her up and swallowed her whole.

She didn’t want to be chewed up. She didn’t want to die a miserable woman forever haunted by what had happened to her family on that island all those years ago.

And so, writing all day, every day, had become Katerina’s life vest. It was her survival tactic, and this tactic had worked surprisingly well.

That was, of course, until the fateful day three months ago when she met Charlie.

A groan escaped Kat’s lips when she thought of it all, and what had transpired since. She couldn’t let herself think through the situation again. It wouldn’t change a thing—she knew it wouldn’t—so, she had to stop. Stop seeing Charlie. Stop talking to Charlie. Stop thinking about Charlie.

“I will stop. I will stop. I will stop.”

Perhaps if she said it aloud enough times, she’d actually come to mean it.

As if on cue, her phone buzzed with a text message. She didn’t even need to look at the Caller ID—she knew it was Charlie.

Charlie was addicted to her. As she was to Charlie. They were equally hopeless.

That should have made her feel better about the whole debacle, but it didn’t. It only made it worse.

Without looking at her phone, Katerina peeled herself out of bed, put on her glasses so she could see the world around her, and vowed that today would be the day she would make a breakthrough in her partially written novel that was due to her publisher in only three short weeks. 

Partially written was being generous, considering she’d only written three viable words so far.

Katerina went straight to her desk, opened her laptop, and pulled up her extraordinarily unfinished manuscript. The one that was supposed to be her next masterpiece. The one that her publisher had paid her a lot of money to write. After the success of her last few novels, there had been no doubt in her editor’s mind that Katerina would strike gold again.

Katerina had believed so too. Until, of course, she’d met Charlie, and had allowed that magical wonderland of a human to unravel her entire existence.

Stop seeing Charlie. Stop talking to Charlie. Stop thinking about Charlie.

Even thinking the name Charlie was making her insane.

Stop. Stop. Stop.

Kat grabbed a handful of pens off her desk and hurled them across the room. As if that would change anything.

She stared at the first page of her manuscript. A mostly empty page. It felt the way her heart did now—drained of all life, all words, all energy. She had worked so damn hard to rebuild her life after it had fallen apart years ago. How had she allowed this to happen again?

The three words she’d written so far mocked her with their brevity.

Evie was gone.

“Lucky girl,” Katerina said aloud. She talked to herself often, even though there was no one at home to hear her anymore. All the guys she’d attempted to date, the cat she’d loved so dearly, even both of her parents—gone, all of them.

Gone was the theme of her life, she realized. It wasn’t only the people and the pets who’d done a mass exodus. It was her ideas, her inspiration, her ability to whip out novels like it was her job—because it was her fucking job—they were all…gone.

Her hope that Charlie would someday choose her—that was gone, too.

But now wasn’t the time to think of Charlie. Never was the time to think of Charlie.

She refocused on the screen before her and set her writing timer for one hour.

Evie was gone.

Evie was gone.

Evie was gone.

Katerina wouldn’t come to recognize the irony of these words until the next day—her 33rd birthday—when she, too, would find herself gone.