I am offering, “Veritas”, as a free Ebook on my website! My good friend, Fantasy Artist, Ericka Baque read the piece and contributed the powerful cover art for this short, GLBT story whose tagline should read: “Punk lesbian saves the world.”   Click photo below to download. Scroll down to read on.

Veritas - Free Ebook by Jaime A. Heidel

Read below to find out more and read an excerpt. If you like it, blog it, Facebook it, My Space it, print it and share it with your friends!!

 Is there something that haunts you? Some word or deed that can never be undone that now sits in the periphery of your mind?

Meet V. She understands exactly how you feel. At first glance, it might be easy to write her off as just another rebellious teenager but V is different, special.

Though she’s spent most of her short life using her anger as both weapon and shield from humanity, she is coming to discover that she is the link to its survival. Take an intimate journey into the broken heart of an angry young woman who is about to discover redemption in its purest form.

 

Excerpt

 

I was lead into a dark room where two other people waited. One was a woman, introduced to me as Dr. Andrea Bowman. The other was Melvin, heavy and silent as a paperweight in a corner. As soon as Dr. Bowman began to speak, I knew that Marcus’s presence beside me was not that of advocate, but of guard. If I’d tried to run, I’d have been restrained.

I kept my features impassive, swallowing my mounting panic as she explained.

 A decade prior, they’d begun a clinical trial to test the effect certain drugs had on memory and concentration. They’d been testing a series of subjects when one of them, a woman in her twenties, had begun to exhibit what they called, “super hearing.” Realizing the potential of their find, they’d retained their subject for continued experimentation and closed the study off to the public. However, within weeks the drug seemed to have little to no effect on their so-called “super girl” and she’d been discharged.

Spending the next ten years refining the drug, they began testing a new batch of people, myself included and I, like the other girl, had developed “super hearing”. They wanted to keep me. I was offered five hundred thousand dollars and given a contract to sign.

Dr. Bowman’s grin was demonic. “You do realize you’ll have to continue to be homeless until the experiment is over, correct?”

I had a pen poised over the contract when Marcus spoke up. “The other girl showed some signs of being able to read minds. Have you been able to do that?”

 Say nothing.

The voice had come in a whisper that seemed to have been blown into the back of my head. I’d frowned, my gaze flitting over to the pudgy technician whose name was then unknown to me. His eyes up until that point had been glassy and unfocused, his jaw had been slack.

 When I looked up, he was glaring at me, a fierce, all-knowing intensity in his eyes.