Blue K Dynasty
The 1st
Seven Days
M. 0. McLeod
This is a work of fiction. The events and characters described herein are imaginary and are not intended to refer to specific places or living persons. The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author and do not represent the opinions or thoughts of the publisher. The author has represented and warranted full ownership and/or legal right to publish all the materials in this book.
Blue K Dynasty The 1st Seven Days
All Rights Reserved.
Copyright © 2013 M.O. McLeod v3.0 r1.0
Cover Photo © 2013 JupiterImages Corporation. All rights reserved - used with permission.
This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
ISBN: 9781310276408
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
For my sister, Rasheda –
We made it baby!
Contents
1.A Couple of two
2.The Earth Went Round and Upside Down
3.Let the Species Say Amen
4.K for Kurma
5.A Raptor is Born
6.These Teeth Were Made for Biting
7.Fae and the Latin Wonders
8.It’s Always the First-born
9.The Man With a Plan
10.Eat to Kill
11.The Blue Winged Thing
12.Rimselda the Rouge
13.Red Heads are No Fun
14.Two Choices, One Life
15.Lineage
16.Daggers, Scales, Claws and All
17.Snowhill
18.C.O.N.J.A.R
19.The Simplest Touch
20.The Spawns of BlueK
21.Skid Row
22.The Jeers
23.Flee or Fight
24.L for Leon the Lame
25.Night at the Flora Plume Club
26.South Side of Alexandria
27.Run and Seek
28.The Rosales Siblings
29.Raptored
30.Phantom versus Raptor
31.The Guardian
32.I, Declare War
33.Seven News Studio Report
34.Pandemonium
35.Kill to Eat
36.The After Hours
37.Blue K Dynasty
1.
A couple of two
Santino lay stretched out on the thick quilt on the bed as he tossed a worn football in the air, up and down, up and down. In all honesty he was too big for the bed; his frame was six foot three and bulky, and at the age of eighteen he was still growing.
“You know my aunt is moving in with her kids, right?” Kurma asked, looking into the mirror to stare at Santino, her first real boyfriend of a year. “So basically I’m going to be sleeping on the couch for a while. That means no more private time.” She smirked at him.
Sitting up on the twin-size bed, Santino held the football still and looked around the cramped room. “We should get our own place. You know, when the time is right.” He looked at Kurma with hope in his eyes.
“Come on now, be realistic. There are four-year waiting lists for new movers like us,” Kurma pointed out. “The city is too crowded. Hell, the country is going through a crisis. There isn’t any more space to just be moving about, babe. I mean, I would love to pick up and leave when we turn eighteen, but the government isn’t having it.” She turned to face Santino and pouted out her Popsicle-orange lips. “I still love you, babe,” she added, and smiled in his face as she fell on the already cramped bed. Santino caught her in mid-fall, wrapped his arms around her waist, and pulled her closer.
“So what? We’re just supposed to live on top of one another or pay sky-high prices to move out? That can’t be life,” he said.
“It’s life as we know it. We just have to deal with it. Our families have for more than twenty years.” Kurma hunched her shoulders as she tried to explain. “With the boost of health-insurance coverage back in the day and the mandated termination of abortions, the country has grown too fast. We just have to evolve like everything else.” She cuddled closer to Santino and looked up into his eyes.
Santino peered over Kurma’s head to the only window in the room. Breathing in deeply, he took in all he saw. The sky was murky gray and dark blue. Skyscrapers reached high into the sky, numerous tiny windows decorating them along with clotheslines, plants, and fire escapes. The whole city of Alexandria was made up of these tall buildings as well as condos, apartments, and studios. Most of the vacant areas, and parking lots had been turned into living spaces. The government required more use of bikes, scooters, motorcycles, and mopeds in order to cut down on the high levels of pollution. Trees were a rare sight. The city had become a concrete jungle.
Kissing the top of Kurma’s head, Santino closed his eyes. At times he wanted to get away from everyone. There was always someone around. He couldn’t remember the last time he was by himself. At school his classes were overcrowded. In the streets he felt as if the walking traffic’s current could sweep him away at a moment’s notice. At home Santino felt like he lived on top of everyone.
To make matters worse, he was too tall and too big for his own good. At times he believed he had been born in the wrong century. Santino felt like things were made for smaller people—for people small enough to fit into small things.
“Babe, what’s wrong?” Kurma asked, showering Santino with kisses. “We’d better get in all the alone time we can manage. We might have to start making out in the school bathroom after my aunt comes.”
“So? We do that now. That's nothing new,” responded Santino.
Kurma playfully shoved his head and dragged herself over the edge of the bed. “You want something from the kitchen?”
“Bring me some juice.”
“What kind of juice?”
“Whatever kind you got.”
“Well, we have a lot. Which one do you want?” Kurma persisted.
“Just bring me back whatever.”
“No, because I’m going to bring you back something, and then you’re going to say it’s nasty and you want some other kind of—”
“Forget it!” Santino yelled. “Do you always have to be so meticulous about everything?”
Kurma looked offended and stomped out the room. “I’m not fussy!” she yelled from the other side of the door. “You’re just indecisive.”
Heading through the living room, she caught the beginning of a news report on TV.
“The population has reached an astounding number, and land is scarcer than it has ever been. Many people have decided to move elsewhere, even onto the water. Communities on the seas have formed around the world. There’s the Aquaritime group based in the Indian Ocean. EcoWorld LLC has the highest population on water to date and some of the most eco-conscious living facilities, which are located in the Caribbean. And Island Corp West has brought upscale bunkers and apartments on water to the citizens of the Pacific. Island Corp is just behind EcoWorld as far as finances. These settlements have caused the water mass ratio to decrease steadily in the last five years, and smog and waste pollution have risen in the last three years near these water communities.”
“You’re right, Connie,” another voice chimed in.
r /> Kurma continued to watch the TV and screamed for Santino to join her. The image on the screen changed from the newsroom to open air, and then to huge boats on the water. Apartment- like structures rose from the bases of the ships into the sky, which was filled with hundreds of seagulls.
“What is it?” asked Santino as he entered the room.
“Look at that,” said Kurma, pointing at the screen. “Remember when the ocean was just an ocean?
“Yeah, but they’ve been building those bunkers and houses on the ships. Did something happen?”
“Something did happen,” she said. “I think I heard that the ships seem to be toxic because of the pollution and waste.”
“Damn. What about those eco-friendly ones?” asked Santino.
“That’s what the news talking about it. The apartments are eco-friendly, but I don’t think the ships that support them are.”
“Well, I guess we’re not gonna ever go live there now,” said Santino jokingly. “They’re going to raise the rents to fix the problem. Don’t you think?”
“I don’t know… listen.”
The room became quiet as the two focused on the TV.
The reporter continued, “ It’s been speculated that the ocean now makes up only forty-eight percent of the earth’s surface, and most of the oceans’ water will be turned into areas for more production of infrastructures. There are rumors that instead of producing more adequate base ships for the water bunkers, condos, and apartments, a new company may be emerging from the Aquaritime group to branch out to the northern ocean waters. This sister group is speculated to begin building homes for families of up to six people on the base ships.”
“Is that right?” another reporter asked Connie.
She replied, “Yes, Gill, the many families that are stuck in the inner cities will hopefully be given the chance to apply first.”
“Well, we shall see,” Gill continued. “This all may be a rumor started by the Aquaritime group to boost its business and apartment sales.”
“Gill, back to you inside the Seven News studio,” finished Connie.
Kurma flicked off the TV and looked at Santino.
He said, “I guess we’re not the only ones feeling the pressure.”
“If the ocean could talk, what do you think it would say?” asked Kurma.
Santino thought for a while. “It’s not the ocean that would have a problem. The stuff that holds the land and sea up is what we really need to worry about. The earth.”
Kurma chuckled and smiled at him. She couldn’t imagine the earth’s core, let alone if it felt anything.
Kurma slowly walked back to her bedroom, questioning the situation the whole time. Her imagination wouldn’t let her think like that. Could the earth’s core, the thing that made the earth go round and round, be bothered?
2.
The earth went round and upside down
Kurma watched as the clock hands tick-tocked. Right on cue the school’s bell rang loudly, signaling the end of the day. Kurma quickly sprang from her seat and followed her classmates out the door into the hallway. As usual she found Santino waiting for her in front of the school’s main staircase.
Kurma walked through the halls with him. “I missed you,” she said.
Santino looked down at her and kissed the top of her head. “I missed you too.”
Kurma noticed he seemed quiet and distant. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah. I mean, I just want some alone time with you, and it seems like you’ve been trying to avoid a certain situation.” He stopped and turned to her. They were a couple that did couple-like things, minus the most important one that Santino could no longer ignore. “Don’t get me wrong. I love you, but I’ve been patient enough.”
Kurma stopped walking down the stairs and faced him. She knew where this conversation was headed. “All you care about is one thing, and once you get that thing, you won’t want me anymore.”
“Why do you feel that way? I love you. What else do I have to do to show you that?” asked Santino. “I stopped talking to all my other friends. I dropped all my girls for you!”
“When I met you, you were the cocky, arrogant All-City champ with a wild streak. Every time I think about it, I get scared that you’re going to go back to your old ways and forget all about me.”
Santino dropped his chin to his chest. “I’m tired of this little game we’re playing. You are too perfect. You want everything your way, exactly how you say it, when, where, and how. I can’t do this anymore. There isn’t any incentive at all. Everything doesn’t revolve around Kurma’s wants and needs!”
Kurma stood still, with a shocked expression on her face. “That’s all you care about,” she argued back at him.
“You only care about yourself,” he said while staring her down. “It seems like we’re saying the same things.”
“Just in a different way.”
They both stood against a wall, pressed back by their peers.
“This isn’t going to work for me,” said Kurma, hoping to psych him out.
Santino was hurt that she wasn’t even trying to fight for their relationship. “You know, when I met you, you had no friends, no life. You were a nobody. Remember that. You can go right back to that life, for all I care.” f
Tears fell silently from Kurma’s eyes as she watched Santino walk away. He was so tall she could still see him as he left the school. She knew he was right. When she’d met him in the eleventh grade she was friendless, clueless about boys, and socially awkward, and had a bad case of OCD. Kurma had hated that life, and Santino knew that. Now, she wasn’t really afraid of losing him, but of him going back to who he used to be. While she had been eating lunches in back of the school, away from people, he had been in the cafeteria entertaining an audience of admirers and friends with his latest escapades. She would see him every day in gym, always so athletic, gorgeous, and gifted. There was no way the old Kurma could have kept a guy like that, so she knew the new Kurma would have to give in and let him take her virginity. She could only hope she would do well enough to impress Santino. Otherwise he might drop her back down the social ladder where she began. That was her fear: of being irrelevant again. Holding out on Santino was her trump card. Without it she was too exposed.
“Kurma. Hey, Kurma,” a voice rang out. “Hey, girl.”
She looked out into the crowd and saw Eliza; her only friend in middle school—who had dropped her as soon as the two girls had become freshmen in high school, and Eliza had become popular. Ever since Santino had made it official with Kurma the previous year, though, Eliza had miraculously forgotten those three years of absence.
“Was that Santino I just saw walking away?” Eliza asked.
Kurma ignored her question. “Let me ask you something. You’re a virgin, right?”
Eliza looked embarrassed but tried to cover it up. “Of course I’m not a virgin. Anthony and I do it all the time.”
Kurma could read right through her old frenemy’s lies. Anthony, who Kurma suspected was gay, had graduated early and was upstate at school. Either Eliza had an imaginary live in boyfriend with the same name, or she was lying. So she wasn’t any help.
Kurma realized she would have to fake it until she made it, and act as if she already knew what she was doing. She would need to call Santino immediately to get him back.
“I’m guessing you and Santino are going to take it all the way tonight,” Eliza said. “Finally. You know the schools sluts have been pressed for your man ever since you showed your sweet little face on the social scene.”
“Whatever. I’m not worried about anyone taking him,” Kurma said.
“Well, little lady, you’d better show up and show out.” Eliza giggled loudly. “I want all the details over the weekend.”
Kurma planted a phony kis
s on her cheek and made her exit. She planned on calling Santino as soon as she got home. How she would get the house to herself, she had no idea.