Angel Born - D. R. Rosier
Chapter One
The heat of the kitchen and the steam expanding from the professional dishwasher was rather unpleasant. It was a job though, and it put some cash in my pocket. I was just nineteen on the day that changed everything that I ever knew or believed to true. It was mid-May in Chicago, my first year of college was just about to be behind me.
I didn’t even have a major yet.
My name is Samuel Crossman, and the story I’m about to share on these pages is fantastical, and I know I wouldn’t have believed a word of it before it happened to me. Supernatural beings, a whole other world underneath the one that for the last nineteen years I’d believed to be reality. In truth, it’s all a lie, the world is so much different than you believe. I was an average man on that day, at least in my estimate. Six foot two, a hundred ninety pounds, in decent athletic shape like any number of college freshman. I’ve short medium brown hair and golden-brown eyes, lightly tanned skin, and my chiseled face wouldn’t have won any beauty awards.
I had some skills, but nothing that would flag as abnormal among humans. I’d always been good at sports growing up, and I’d had a natural knack with martial arts, but that wouldn’t get me all that far in life on its own. It helped getting into college at the university with sports scholarship, but I’d still needed that job to make ends meet. My apartment was a tiny one-bedroom, kitchen and living room combo piece of crap about two miles off campus.
My life had never been easy. I’d been adopted when I was a baby, so never knew my real parents. I’d only found that out after my second set died in robbery gone wrong when I was ten years old. After that I bounced from place to place, and I worked hard for everything I had. I’m not complaining, life could be good, very good, even with the hardships, it’s just what it was.
After I clocked out that night, Gina waved at me from her office as I was walking toward the front to leave. Gina was good people, a total hard ass but fair. She didn’t play favorites, and she rewarded hard work. She was also the owner of Gina’s Bistro which was a fairly new upscale restaurant right near the loop off of Wabash. The evidence of her youthful beauty was still present even at her age in her late forties or early fifties. I wasn’t really sure on that exactly, since it wasn’t like we’d ever shared life stories. She had dark hair, brown eyes, naturally and richly smooth tanned skin, and a generous mouth. Her nose was a little too big, but only enough to give her sharp Italian beauty some character.
“Yeah, boss?” I asked somewhat respectfully as I stuck my head in her office.
She asked, “Did you clock out yet? We’re missing a shift tonight and Sal mentioned the trash piling up.”
I nodded slowly, “I did, but I can run it out before I split, unless you need me to stay the night and I’ll clock back in?”
She shook her head, “Just the trash.”
That made sense to me. She wouldn’t want to pay me overtime for whoever’d skipped out, but it’d been worth a shot. Extra money helped here and there, and in that moment anyway, I was planning to get a second job for the summer until school restarted. I did have a small social life, but that wouldn’t pay my bills, so it was what it was.
I said, “Not a problem.”
She smiled, “I’ll add ten minutes to your card, and thanks, Sam.”
I tipped an imaginary hat, and moved back to the kitchen, then back into the stockroom and cleaning area. It turned out pile was somewhat of an understatement. Mountain might have been more accurate. Both of the rolling plastic bins were filled to overflowing, and there was still a little more stacked in the damned corner. I got the idea it hadn’t been taken out all day.
The slightly rancid scent made my nose crinkle with disgust as I wheeled the bin over to the back door. I pushed it open with my ass against the push bar as I pulled the bin out walking backwards. The alley was dark, dank, and even more stinky, with decomposing food, and god knew what else wafted in my nose. I wouldn’t have been surprised if I’d