Reviews

Title: A Lovely Shade of Gray

Chapter: one

Author: SBEdwards

Plot: Dr. Freeman makes her way to her office on a university campus. She takes her coffee to the lecture hall and begins teaching. A demon enters and puts a trance on the students. She goes after him…a chase ensues. He disappears in the library. She heads back to class.

Referencing: modern day…I take it.

Scene/setting: Plenty to picture the scene.

Characters: Dr. Freeman is a Discerner that chases Demons to keep people safe.

Grammar: If I found anything, it’s in the line by line.

Overall impression: An interesting premise. You introduce the gift of discernment in special souls. These people protect others from demons. I look forward to see a story unfold.



Line by Line:

The first frost of the year crisped the grass beneath my feet as I took a shortcut across the Quad. Another new campus, yet I’d already mapped out the quickest routes to where I needed to go. My office was located in Commonwealth less than a hundred yards from the faculty parking lot. I pulled my jacket together to ward off the early morning chill and hopped onto the sidewalk, the staccato of my heeled boots replacing the crunch of the grass.

Classes at eight in the morning are cruel and unusual punishment, but when you move around as much as I do tenure and plum class times always remain elusive. I go where my job takes me. My real job. I’m a Discerner. In other words, I’m a demon hunter and I’m good at my job. I should be. I’ve been doing it for sixty years. I am ninety-three years old.

Pulling on the glass door, I catch my reflection. The same reflection I’d found staring back at me since the day my gift had manifested. My thirty-third year. The same age as Jesus Christ when he had been crucified. It manifests in all Discerners at that age. Thirty-three seemed to be the magic number.

The halls were quiet as I headed towards my office, the last one on the right. As morning ritual demanded, I started fishing around for my office keys in the never ending pit of doom that was my purse as soon as I'd hit the hallway. Without dropping my messenger bag or my purse, I felt around finding gum wrappers, ink pens, lipstick and a…..safety pin, but no keys. I pulled my hand out and dived in again determined that I could do this without dropping everything. A few more grunts and I finally met with success, unlocking the door.

I pushed my way into the office exhausted before the day had even started. Coffee. I needed coffee and I should have just enough time for it to brew before heading back to the lecture hall. I got the coffee started and logged onto my laptop hoping for an update from the Syndicate. I sighed. Nothing of import filled my inbox unless you could count penile enhancement ads. Picking up an empty Diet Mountain Dew bottle, I tossed it into the trash can by the window and noticed my little fern looking neglected. I don’t know why I insist on buying plants. I kill them every time.

“Poor fern.” I cooed as I grabbed a half full water bottle from beside my phone and emptied it into the fledgling fern. Maybe this one would make it, I hoped as the last gurgle of the coffeepot signaled its completion.

Caffeine pick me up in hand, I grabbed my bag and locked the office behind me before making my way to class. A huge yawn assailed me causing my jaw to pop and crack as I grumbled to myself about Jake getting the easy jobs just because he was a man. Father Jacob O’Brien is my partner and the campus Chaplain. He doesn’t have to be into his office until nine. If I sound bitter, I am. Jake isn’t a Discerner. He’s my backup. Good back up, but he totally has a cushy ass job. I could do his day job with my hands tied behind my back, but Heaven forbid I get to be the priest. No can do. God just had to give me boobs. So, instead I get the PhD in Theology, which I really do have three times over now. It isn’t as glamorous as it sounds. Trust me; there isn’t anything glamorous about grading comparative essays on Calvinism and Wesleyan perspectives on a Saturday night. Frankly, it bites.

Taking a sip of coffee, I smiled at the young man holding open the lecture hall door for me.

“Good morning, Dr. Freeman,” He said, smiling hopefully. Just one of a handful that would fancy himself in love before the semester was out. I’m a decent looking woman, but nothing spectacular and certainly nothing to write home about. Their reasoning quite simply eludes me. Without any other obvious reasons I’m forced to chalk it up to brains and big boobs. Honestly, it’s probably just the boobs. Big boobs seem to cover a myriad of sins including the extra forty pounds I carried around.

“Good morning,” I replied with a manufactured smile. He towered over me by almost a foot, slim, clean cut and well-bred. He’s the type to sit up front and ask lots of intelligent questions. A suck up. I like suck ups. They make me feel better about myself.

Making my way down to the front of the class, I noted that only about eighty percent of those enrolled were in attendance, which was about the norm for a Monday, morning class. Introduction to Theology counts as one of the general education requirements, humanities, which means I get about every type of student you can imagine. The good, the bad, the ugly and sometimes it could get really ugly. A sorority girl majoring in “find myself a rich husband” was my idea of hell.

Spreading out my things, I took another fortifying drink of coffee, rubbed my temples and plastered on a smile, “Crap. Is it Monday already?”

Chuckles and murmurs of agreement, disagreement or just general moans of discontent spread throughout the hall as I launched into my morning lecture, “The Seven Major Categories of Theology.”

Typical lecture. I talked and they either fell asleep or stared off into space, their eyes covered in the glaze of the dead. On my last sip of coffee and rounding on category number four, “Dogmatic Theology” I noticed him. In a class this large comma any other professor would have assumed he was a late comer. I knew better.

Oblivious to the fact that a demon was now in residence, all eyes focused on me when I stopped abruptly mid-sentence, stunned by the fact that a demon had slipped into the lecture hall and taken the seat closest to the door. There was no use trying to find my place and restarting the lecture because in a few minutes it wouldn't matter. The quality of the air would change first. The heavy essence weighing and pressing on everyone’s shoulders including my own is the first sign. He smiled wickedly as the low thrum of electricity buzzed throughout the room, lulling its occupants into a hypnotic state. Everyone was subject to the suspended state of animation his power caused except me.

The current throbbed in my ears and concern started to permeate my mind. Overconfidence is a mandatory trait for demons, but to make his presence known like this was beyond unusual. When the foul odor of sulfur hit me, I wrinkled my nose and waited. Tension gripped my shoulders, my posture rigid as my body automatically prepared for a fight.

He leaned back, spreading his arms across the back of the chairs to his side and sneered, “I see you, Discerner.”

Walking slowly up the aisle, I nodded, my teeth gritted, “And I you, foul spirit.”

Tossing his head back, he chuckled, “Ouch. Smell me from there, do you?”

Ignoring him, I continued up the aisle at the far right of the hall, my walk slow and nonthreatening, I think this should be hyphenated. non-threatening. No? “There is nothing here for you. Go home. You know that place of eternal damnation?”

“Why ever would I do that when there is such a feast here for me to gorge myself upon?”

“I won’t allow it, demon. Be gone from here.” I said making my turn into the back aisle and less than 15 feet from the exit.

“You know,” he said standing and pulling his sunglasses off revealing pale, colorless eyes. “We don’t have to be enemies. I’m sure we can come to some sort of agreement.”

Only a few feet from him now, I snorted, “It’ll be a cold day in hell before I make a deal with the likes of you.”

Sliding his sunglasses back in place he shrugged, “Suit yourself, Discerner.”

“I always do,” I hissed making a lunge for him and coming up with empty air. He was gone. Without hesitation, I bolted from the lecture hall scanning the corridor. I caught sight of him exiting the front doors and if I hurried I could catch him before he caused any damage. You could just break this into two sentences... "...front doors. If I hurried, I could..." I tried to keep my pace a fast walk, but when he picked up a slow jog across the Quad I kicked it into high gear.

Out the door and gaining in thirty seconds, my feet hit grass that had been frost coated less than an hour before. Mentally calculating the time, I figured I had about five minutes before classes were dismissed and the Quad would be crawling with potential victims. My own class should be waking from their stupor soon, disoriented and confused, but otherwise fine.

He ducked into Zehmer with me following on his heels, my right hand stretching forward in an effort to brush his shoulder. Crap. Just a little closer. He turned giving me a confident sneer as he danced out of my reach. He was no fool; he knew he had the upper hand. A footrace with a demon is sure to end with the demon as victor. If I could only touch him, one touch and a whispered word of Latin would send him directly back to hell. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. God help us if he jumped. If he jumped comma it would open up a brand new can of worms.

The demon rounded the corner taking a hallway lined with faculty offices and the building’s copy room. Racing after him, my boots smacking the tile, I prayed that no one decided it was time to hit the Xerox machine or top off that morning cup of coffee. He wouldn't work his demon mojo on them, but he could hurt them or even worse take them as a host.

I grabbed the corner and hurled myself into the next hallway and down the handicap ramp leading towards the computer lab. Passing the open door of the lab, I heard the tell-tale noises of a class being dismissed and urged my already burning calves harder rounding the corner to exit at the end of the hallway.

The door swung open and a flood of students entered.

“Excuse me. Pardon me.” I said in passing as I weaved in and out squeezing my way through and around the crowd. If I didn’t get to him soon he’d make his jump. All it would take is one casual touch to someone in a vulnerable state and he was in there and I wouldn’t have any clue as to whom. Perhaps, "...state, and he was there. I wouldn't have any clue..." Rising up on my tiptoes, I ran into someone and muttered an apology right when I saw the navy beanie he'd been wearing duck out the door. With no more time to fool around comma I pushed through the throng rudely, manners disappearing and finally reached the vicinity of the door. A bottleneck effect had turned the wide hall into a funnel allowing only a select few to trickle in and out of the exit. They were all laughing and talking like they hadn't a care in the world, like there wasn’t a demon on the loose. Oh yeah, they didn't know there was a demon on the loose. It was my job to protect them from things that go bump in the night or as the case may be, bump on a Monday morning.

So I waited impatiently with a patronizing smile on my face although I couldn't control the urgent tapping of my foot. The tapping stopped abruptly when I spotted an opening and squeezed through the door cutting off a non-traditional student of about sixty. I threw her an apologetic look before moving forward splashing through a soggy pile of mulch. I growled when I felt the wetness seep through my over priced boots. Jumping over a small retaining wall, I ducked under a tree and squealed, my shoulder length hair tangled up in the branches overhead. Jerking it free, I hurdled a row of boxwoods landing in a flower bed of mums. I tried to step around the newly planted annuals, but failed miserably taking out two of them when I hit my elbow against the silver ashtray bolted against the brick of the library. Pretty words. Pretty words. “Stupid weenus,” I mumbled, rubbing my elbow and stumbling for the door. Lol. I pushed through and plunged into the library before coming to a complete and utter stop.

Hands on my hips and breath coming hard, I searched the library frantically. Scanning the crowd, my gaze zipping up and down the aisles of bookshelves, I evaluated. Student. Professor. Librarian. No demon. He was gone. Whether he had dematerialized or jumped I didn’t know, but I did know one thing, trouble had come a courting and I’d know soon enough just how much. With a heavy sigh, I turned to make my way back to Commonwealth trying to avoid eye contact and the stares from passersby. I imagine the sight of a half-crazed professor running wild across campus would turn out to be pretty interesting fodder for the gossipmongers, but what else was I supposed to do?

Taking inventory, I looked down at my disheveled appearance. My boots were covered in mud; my white button up shirt askew with some kind of weird yellow stain on it and I was pretty sure I now had a bald spot. With that thought in mind, I ran my hand through my hair to find a small twig. With a growl, I ripped it from my head wincing at the pain and the large amount of brown hair that came with it. If there hadn't been a bald spot before there was certainly one now. I crushed the twig and the wad of hair in my fist and stomped back across campus. I needed to talk to Jake. Looking at my watch, I huffed. He’d better be in his office if he knew what was good for him. It’s only 9:00 a.m. on a Monday morning and my week already sucked.