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    Grand Theft Life
    Grand Theft Life
    Grand Theft Life
    Ebook92 pages1 hour

    Grand Theft Life

    By KatYa Mills

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Katya Mills introduces us to a world of people who are different from us, in ways you cannot see. Ame, the main character, is one of them. She is raised an adopted daughter of loving parents. She fears nothing. She never has. She hears voices in her head. When she comes of age, she is absconded by a man she only knows as 'Freddy' and taken to a dark city (based on contemporary Oakland, California) to live among her kind. Her people feed off of the fear that regular human beings feel. She is also connected telepathically to others of her kind. Ame makes friends and enemies, and has many strange encounters and experiences before she realises who she is and what she can do. This is a different kind of fantasy book. It's short and fast-paced, written in the author's singular poetic style, in the head of the main character. A gripping tale told by someone who felt so different from those she grew up around that she concluded she belonged to a different species altogether: one that looks human, and that lives among humans, but - in fact - is not. They come out at night and prey on humans whose diverse fears make them easy targets. They also prey on one another, when those inner voices scream...

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKatYa Mills
    Release dateJun 12, 2015
    ISBN9781311309266
    Grand Theft Life
    Author

    KatYa Mills

    I love to write books. Literary fiction. Urban fantasy. Contemporary fantasy. 'Low' fantasy. My work is often character-driven. My lead characters are often antihero and antiheroines. 'me-against-the-world' mentality. underdogs. My environments are often cityscapes. dystopian. subculture. counter-culture. punk. My style is sometimes lyrical or poetic. Streaming. Dialogue is often spare. People usually love or hate my work, with little in between.

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    Reviews for Grand Theft Life

    4.5/5

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    • 5/5
      This book blew me away! It was an amazing book. Every page brought me in, needless to say a lot of all nighters were taken to finish this book. If you like holly blacks New fairy series ( Valiant was my favorite)You will definitely like this book as much as I did.
    • 4/5
      This book is incredible. The writing style is like nothing I have ever read. It is extremely intellectual and creative.

      Her name is Ame; she's fast, adopted, weird, loved by her parents and a delinquent. Ame knows she's unusual. Afterall, she has voices in her head that talk to her. Not like a conscience; her head voices are real. One day Ame is suddenly abducted from her home to the underworld. Through this, she enters present day Oakland, California. She joins a diverse group of folks with extraordinary capabilities. While Ame is certainly fearful, she enjoys the mysterious and wonderful experienced. Where, she once felt like an outcast, she is now feels embraced by her new friends. She soon forms a bond with Freddy, the one who kidnapped her to bring her home. Here is where she meets a tall, abrasive girl and finds a sister in Bless. They befriend a young punk with a skateboard and a serious love of ice cream sandwiches. Her new friends and associations nurture her and she feels a co dependency for once in her life. Together they roam the streets, encountering humans and spirits. "The alchemy is in her blood."

    Book preview

    Grand Theft Life - KatYa Mills

    Book One

    Grand Theft Life

    -I-

    Here dark nights thickened, in the shadow of the hill. Terrifying screams were heard to echo along the ridge. Something sinister crept up the spine. So we could and we would sense our friend crawling, sometimes jumping up into the nerves. Paralyzing our prey like widow venom! Black and thick as oil in their lifeblood.

    Some legendary creature would finish them off, those now frozen in its heavy sap, after we had our way with them. Perhaps to suck slowly upon the blood. Perhaps a Hidebehind with yellow eyes the size of autumn leaves, waiting behind a single tree.

    We would not need to contend with any of them, for we drew off disparate sources. They helped us toward our sustenance, and we helped them towards theirs. They could terrify and invigorate the human bones. We could fill ourselves full of it: the sap, the vital terror. And leave what was left of any human, from the carcass on down to the soul, for any and all the other creatures of the night to tear apart and consume.

    We held our supremacy, whether we cared to or not, in a culture which kept a great and endless storehouse of the element. The remarkable yet common brand of love gone south or sideways, which took seed and flooded the human body sometimes with a quickness! Or slow-roasted the subconscious, softening the brain for to compromise the heart, as it slid and backslid through the fluid circuitry of artery and vein.

    The most unwelcome of emotions: from the smallest consternation to the headiest dismay! From a tickle of trepidation, to an cold electric panic! From mere apprehension to the deepest unease. Yes! Fear was the disease which every human contracted, and which we then subtracted from the marrow. And, as luck would have it, in our time, fear was in fashion.

    -II-

    I grew up in a large sweep of pine forest, known far and wide as The Green Mountains. I lived a usual kinda life of a kid; outdoors exploring, knees banged up, kicking up dust with the others. Only I was not like them. Sure, I looked a pretty plain-jane American girl. Freckled in the sun. Hair the color of dishwater. And I was fast, real fast. Preternaturally fast! And a tomboy for sure. There was always a question in anyone’s mind upon meeting me.

    There was not much else to notice. I kept to myself a little. Climbed trees alot. Drove my parents crazy ‘cause they never knew where to find me. Yet they were too kind to punish me. I was given such nice people for parents. Some say you choose where you are born. I guess I chose well. I tried to show my gratitude by being a good kid. I did my chores. Said my prayers. Read a lot of culturally-sanctioned literature; from Charles Dickens to Jane Austen to Hemingway. Ate like food was going out of style. Carved salt and pepper corn on the cob with my buck teeth, like a woodchuck carves wood. I played and slept hard.

    Then they came for me. I was still very young. They came from inside me. They told me all sorts of stories at first, none of which I could believe. I thought these voices were the gods talking to me, but god does not talk that way. Oh, the things they told me! They made me promise not to tell anyone or my own mother. This could be hard, because I found myself talking out loud to them, and my parents got worried. I would shout out in distress in the middle of the day, No! No! Don’t burn them! They are still alive! or They know too much, what other choice do we have?

    They insisted I see a therapist at a local clinic. The therapist insisted I see a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist pushed some anti-psychotics into my bloodstream. The voices told me not to worry, they would not abandon me. And they did not. All of the pharmaceuticals and all of the king’s men, could not put Humpty Dumpty back together again. They only had the ill effect of further isolating an already solitary young girl. The medications did help me keep the voices mostly inside my head, so you can thank Pfizer for that. Nobody and my parents needed to hear my reactions to the violent inner world which had taken root and now owned real estate in my head.

    I spent time by myself, safe up in the harboring pines where the winds and the voices would whisper my name… Ame… Ame… Ame. Again and again. They spoke of a different kinda world, a world full of strange people and strange ways. Nothing a mountain kid ever imagined could exist. Electric neon light so bright, there was no night. Homeless people wandering the streets. Pushing shopping carts full of cans. Parks and predators. Guns. Cell phones. Cars everywhere. Movement. Energy. Stillness. Blocks without any trees, just pavement. Kids running and running away. Violence. Some day I would see this strange place and meet my people, they said. Who were my people? I recoiled at the thought. But I easily shrugged it off. I did not believe in fortune tellers. Not since the night at the county fair, a charlatan separated me from my allowance. Kissing my ass about how I was some special or chosen one. I wanted specifics!

    Good luck winning an argument with voices in your head. I had to listen, yes, but they seemed to know a thing or two. And unlike therapists, they were not getting paid. What did I know? Nothing. Dirt. Trees. Corn. Air. Solitude. Which was fine by me. I did not want to leave the Green Mountains. I loved the smell of pine, the taste of maple sugar. The sound of the test of the annual pile of stacked wood for water, against my stepfather’s hammer and pick. The feel of heat from a young fire in the hearth. The sight of flames licking up the stone and into the flue. The sound of the cold, dry air trapped in the chimney, running for the sky. The crickets and tree frogs, fireflies and dragonflies. I loved sprinting out across the fields and down into the pine groves there, my feet softened by the needles. And swaying gently in the cradle of a pine tree, a hundred feet in the air.

    The year was two thousand and three. I was ten years old and the fastest of my friends. The boys just scratched their little heads. They chalked it up to my long legs. But some things you can’t outrun. My father died the day I was born. My mother gave me up. I know not why. I was adopted and raised an only child by a kind and loving couple in the woods. They would have to homeschool me, because by elementary school I was already playing hooky. The schools did not know what to do with me and my empty seat. They tried but could not deter me from wandering away and roaming the countryside. Which I did at all hours of day and night. They called the police sometimes when I went missing. The police were very nice at first. After repeated offenses, they tried scaring me straight. They put handcuffs on me and locked me in the back of the car. But I just lay down on my side and fell asleep. The other girls kept asking why I ran away. Some of the boys were inspired to run away, too. The guidance counselors were concerned. One of them almost lost his job for tying my shoelaces together. I never understood how there were so many rules to follow, or why I should follow them. They couldn’t have stopped me had they duct-taped me to my desk.

    Meanwhile the voices were calling

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