Y B F J

Excerpt from Chapter One: “The Tree”

I was in a tree the day everything tilted. High above the ground, where breath thins and the branches no longer care to hold your weight, I crouched like a shadow, knowing I was doing wrong. Somewhere below, or maybe across the street on the iron-laced balcony, I thought I saw Father. Yelling, or barking, or praying — it’s hard to tell with the deranged. The air was wet with smoke and something sharper. I didn’t climb down. I leapt — not to the ground, but to the overpass.

I walked. And walked. Way past where I was allowed to be, beyond the edge of what they called the township, out past the dust and the shrines and the whispering blackbirds. I don’t recall the return. That part is blank, like a photo that never developed. But what followed… I remember. I remember the windowsill in the basement — the basement. The evil basement.

The walls were wet with something that never dried. Military leftovers. Torture shadows. Screams soaked into brick. I’d sit there, bones folded inward, listening to the crickets trying to pretend it was still night. But the light never came. Not in that part of the house.

Abuse? I don’t carry that word in my pocket. I carve it off. I spit it out. Wipe it from the mirror of my face. It leaves a residue, sure — but not one I let linger.

The crawling — out of the skin, the sheath, the soul — came later. Foreskin dreams, pulsing with negative light. The sulcan — that creature, that man, that memory — he never did get the good ectoplasm. I kept it for myself. The leaking came from the navel, from the holes in the mind, from the tattoo of the finger and thumb inked onto my back.

My name is Leviathan Dean Star Finger, born under an eclipse and raised in a house that fell into ruin long before it burned. I wear black — not for fashion, but because I’m not permitted anything else.

To work for the Queen is to obey shadows. She sends me. She dresses me. Every audition. Every monologue. Every whispered lie on a commercial line — black. The Queen collects silence like it’s silver. She says I am her dark charm.

I think I’ll go out tonight. Let the rain hit me hard. Rev up the night a little, see what bites. The Reverend Deborah Bishop has a client in the other room, her voice a gentle blade through the air. I water her plants. I drink from a red cup. A red ruby cup that won’t crack if I throw it. I like that.

I like things that don’t break.
Even when I do.