Splintered Mind (Shattered World Book 1), page 1
Splintered Mind
Shattered World
Book 1
W.R. Gingell
Cover by Moorbooks
Original character art by Kelsi (@scarvenartist)
Copyright © 2024 by W.R. Gingell
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This one is for Luca, because I figured that if I could get him down on the page, maybe he would stop bobbing around in my head like some sort of demented cockatoo
“I don’t want to be a secretary in a bathtub.”
— Viv
Contents
1. Dog Days
2. Don’t Panic
3. Inhale, Exhale
4. Baby Steps
5. Push/Pull
6. Dream Big
7. Look Within
8. Find Truth
9. Be Yourself
10. Eyes Open
11. Take Five
12. Make Mistakes
13. Just Breathe
Afterword
Chapter 1
Dog Days
Viv first saw the purple plaid trousers at the tram stop. They weren’t a loud, shouting plaid; they were a subtle, barely discernible thread of purple-grey making a shadow of plaid against the two-toned grey plaid of the cotton trousers. They looked expensive.
She saw them again as she was moving through Bourke Street; they were a brief glimmer of purple in the window she was passing as the wearer moved in the opposite direction, some way past her already. It was absolutely possible that this was a different wearer entirely, but Viv found herself slightly cheered by the sight of them, anyway; as though the splash of colour had made its way into her life again just to cheer her on. Today had not been a good day, and tomorrow probably wouldn’t be, either. She had been walking the streets with her resume for the last week, and the week before that had been spent doing the same thing online, until she couldn’t bear to be in the house for a moment longer.
The drawback of working for a small, family business for fifteen years was that it was small and family when it came to apologising for never having the extra money to give Viv a raise, and all business when it came to firing her at a week’s notice after she had a bad enough accident to ruin muscles and discs, while working overtime that wasn’t paid or official, but was expected.
Dropping off resumes wouldn’t do a lot of good, but it wouldn’t do any harm, and Viv was fairly sure that if she stayed in the house any longer she would go mad with either exasperation or pain, or perhaps both. She had already applied for every online job she could find; she had also managed to score a temporary job running a cash register. That particular job had done enough damage to her back in the meantime that she found herself waking every morning to the grip of a migraine that sometimes faded away as she began to move around in the mornings, but often lingered for the entirety of the day.
She had hoped that Dad would do the washing up at some stage this week, but so far it had stayed in the sink, and Viv was aware that she would have to do something about it if she was going to be able to make herself something to eat today. Dad did all his own cooking, and that was a relief, but he hadn’t yet worked out how to do the washing up in any other way than to remark loudly and often about his many physical pains and issues whenever Viv got too close to the kitchen, until she finally did it for him.
Viv had been saving to move out and buy her own place since Mum died three years ago, but since she’d lost her job, her savings had been slowly decreasing with each rent payment she put down on Dad’s apartment to make up for the shortfall of his pension. Now she was in the unpleasant place of not being certain that she would have enough to provide for the next month’s rent.
So Viv had left the house to get some peace from the high likelihood of having to comfort Dad on his quickly developing back issues while she was still fogged with pain from the migraine from her own back, and to breathe the fresh air and convince herself that another job was just around the corner. After the sciatica had stopped tweaking barbed-wire pain through her hips and down to her knees as everything loosened out, Viv was walking quite comfortably. She had seen the same purple pants twice, making her smile and giving her an odd sense that the day was about to get better in some ridiculous and undefined way, and she had also spent the last of her coin reserves in her purse on a chai latte that left the scent of spice and honey in her nose.
Tipping her head cautiously from side to side, Viv found that the migraine had retreated far enough to allow her a fairly normal range of motion. In celebration, she stopped with her chai latte in the northmost area of the Royal Botanic Gardens near Anderson Street to watch the early afternoon walkers on the other side of the fence closest to the road. Most of them were rich wives in smooth, expensive athleisure wear, fluffy dogs trotting alongside them, or after-school mums in their worn-in sneakers powerwalking along the paths to get in a bit of alone time before they had to pick up their offspring.
Viv watched them thoughtfully over the top of her chai latte, breathing in the spicy scent, and wondered if she would ever look like that one day. She didn’t think she could do the athleisure—she was too fond of the freedom of a nice, high-waisted pair of wide-legged trousers and a knitted or cinched vest to hide when she’d had a bit too much to eat—but she’d always wanted a dog, and kids. She thought she could be happy in worn-out sneakers if they were the price she had to pay for the privilege of having a small, odd, growing human or two to look after.
If her back wasn’t ruined to the point of not being able to pick up a small child, that was.
And speaking of small children, why was there a child capering along the path inside the garden by itself, with no powerwalking mother in sight? she wondered. In fact, there were no other people at all, oddly, except for a flash of purple plaid behind the child. For a moment Viv was distracted from the little boy. She found herself smiling, but she didn’t quite get time to look at the owner of the purple plaid trousers properly this time, either: the small boy fell over, just a few metres away from her, and sprawled on his stomach with the stunned expression of a child trying to decide whether or not to burst into tears.
Viv had already, instinctively, stood up; now she hesitated. The child was alone with no one to pick him up and comfort him if he really was injured. But he might simply choose to cry because she was paying attention to his fall, too, and his mother or father might not be far behind him. She would hate to be found by a parent, comforting their crying child as though she was the one who made him cry.
The boy made a couple of indeterminate sort of trial whimpers, and Viv very nearly sat down. Then she saw the unleashed dog tearing across the grass and toward the child, as if his momentary weakness had appealed to it on some instinctive level. Tail down, ears back, and snarling, it hurled itself at the child, and Viv was only aware of movement as she darted forwards, fur beneath her fingers as she shoved the dog away, and the movement of purple somewhere.
The dog, careening off course with the speed of its approach and the shove that Viv had given it, turned, snarling, and seemed as though it were about to leap at her this time. She felt the movement of the child behind her, and with the one hand that still clutched her resume behind her, futilely trying to protect him, she gestured rather helplessly with the other and said in a shaky sort of voice, “No!”
At the same time, the shifting of purple stopped beside her, and a thin hand stretched out while a commanding voice said, “Stop!”
The dog seemed to catch itself mid-leap, eyes bulging, and nearly fell backwards onto its haunches. It crouched there, quivering, its eyes fixed on Viv and the taut skin of its shoulders shivering.
It was almost, Viv thought, as though the man was holding off the dog—or as though the dog, dazzled by the trousers, couldn’t bring itself to attack. That thin hand stayed where it was, but the man didn’t speak again, and the child who had fallen scrambled to his feet and ran away. Very sensible, thought Viv, wondering if she would dare to move any time soon; she felt as frozen as the dog seemed.
She didn’t have to bring herself to do so: in a couple of bumbling moments, the owner of the dog rushed over, apologising again and again in breathless nonsense as he tried to clip the leash back on his dog. And then the park itself seemed to come alive again; Viv heard the sound of traffic and birds and conversation, and in the hearing realised that it had stopped earlier.
When the leash was back on the dog, Viv relaxed. That was apparently a mistake, because the dog, with renewed fury that snapped it out of whatever trance had caused it to stop on the order of the man beside Viv, surged against the lead and tried to bite the hand that had been there.
The hand was no longer there, although the purple plaid trousers were. The dog owner, sweating and still apologising, was left to drag his feral animal away with him, as it barked and snapped and snarled, under the observation of more than one set of disapproving eyes.
“Ye gods!” said Viv, on an exhale, to the purple trousered man. “What a savage!”
The man beside her didn’t say anything, but she heard him exhale, too. His breath sounded not quite even, and it made her feel an amused sense of kinship to realise that he must have been just as frightened as she was, despite hi
“Thanks,” she said, looking up at him properly for the first time. She barely came up to his shoulder, even after she straightened carefully, wincing as her shoulder twinged. She added, “I thought it was going to take my fingers off.”
The man looked at her quizzically through his round, rimless glasses, his brown eyes flecked with amber that was almost honey-toned against the tanned skin of his thin face. There was a very faint line between his perfectly manicured brows that hadn’t made it to his forehead; he looked as though he thought she was making fun of him, but wasn’t quite sure.
She said, “I’ve never seen a biter stop like that with just a word.”
“It wasn’t just a word,” the man said, and there it was again—that slightly quizzical look.
“What was it, then?” Viv asked. She was inclined to think it was sheer luck, but it seemed as though this purple-plaid man would prefer to present it as sheer talent.
“Oh, training, and that sort of thing,” he said. “Look, what are you doing?”
Viv, thrown off balance, said, “Right now?”
“Yes, right now.”
“I’m about to go home.”
“You could come with me instead.”
“Sorry, what?” She would have liked to have told him that she wasn’t in the habit of following strange men upon request, but she was too flabbergasted to do anything but stare at him.
The man seemed to consider that input and, almost robot-like, as though running several scenarios through his head before arriving at the correct one, at last explained, “I’m offering you a job.”
“Sorry?”
“You’re dropping off your resume, aren’t you?”
It wasn’t like she wasn’t holding a resume in her hand exactly at that moment. It wasn’t like he was being creepy by knowing that. But Viv couldn’t help feeling a burgeoning sense of unease that wasn’t dissimilar to uncanny valley—as though something, somewhere, was not quite right, and that not-quite-rightness was tweaking at her mind. As though there was a hidden camera somewhere, and it would turn out to be a prank.
Maybe it was something about how extremely well-groomed the man was. There was just such a perfect slope to his manicured hairline and such a crisp edge to the purple plaid trousers that he was inherently inhuman; even his glasses, round and reflective, seemed to suggest that he was more akin to machine than human.
“Yes; I’m looking for a job,” she said, and it occurred to her that she ought to explain it to him as though he really was a machine. “But I’m not going to just accept any job off the street, or follow anyone anywhere.”
“Good instinct,” he said, as though remembering. “Yes, that’s a good instinct to have. What do you need in order to accept a job?”
“I need to know who you are and what the job is,” she said. “And I need to look into your company.”
That seemed to please him. He felt in his front pockets and produced a card that he waved briskly at her in a small twitch of movement. “Here. I need an assistant who isn’t afraid to throw herself into her work like you just did. You might get bitten sometimes, but I’ll pay for all your medical expenses.”
That made Viv laugh involuntarily, and in doing so, she relaxed again. “That’s good to know for next time,” she said. “What sort of assistant?”
“I’m Jasper Renner,” he said, nodding down at the business card. She looked instinctively at it, and he added, “I own the Renner Tea House in Southbank. I need someone to do admin and communications for me; you’d be managing business relationships for me as a first point of contact. I’m not a people person. You’d be paid eighty thousand a year with paid overtime when necessary, and four weeks each year of paid time off.”
Viv took a moment to swallow the far-too-hasty acceptance that rose to her lips. This was too good to be true, and things that were too good to be true were usually dangerous, a scam, or both.
“Think about it,” he said. “And call me when you’ve made up your mind.”
He left her with his card and set out across the park again in exactly the same way he had been proceeding before, straight and tidy and measured, almost directly in the centre of the path. Viv collected the rest of her resumes from the bench seat she had been occupying, recovered the couple of tissues that had escaped her bag, and was relieved to see that no one had taken that bag while she was otherwise occupied.
Then she walked very slowly back toward Punt Street along Alexandra, finding that her legs felt very slightly shaky as she topped the slight incline and headed down toward the end of the street. She could see the curved white prow of Stratton Heights emerging from the hilly rise ahead, and was glad that Jasper Renner hadn’t known how close he was to her house.
By the time she climbed the stairs at the Alexandra Avenue entrance, Viv’s legs had recovered, and the green security door didn’t prove too difficult to unlock.
The washing up was still there when she got inside.
Viv slid the sliding door shut on the kitchen and dishes alike, and went and sat down in the tiny living room instead. Dad’s voice wafted out from the bedroom in a quavering sort of way, and said, “Is that you, Viv?”
“Just stopping in for a cuppa!” she called back. She would have to go back into the kitchen for a cuppa, but she would think about that later.
“I’ve been asleep, or I would have opened the door for you. It’s been a very bad day today.”
“Go back to sleep, then,” she said gently.
She didn’t have the energy to ask what was wrong today—it was probably much the same as what had been wrong yesterday. Dad was chronically ill—verifiably and provably ill—but Dad was also chronically hypochondriac. He had been used to being ill for so long, in fact, that he seemed to take it as a personal affront whenever Viv was sick or injured herself. It was dangerous to talk about being ill, or in pain, around him, because the next day, or the next hour, he would be confiding in Viv the exact symptoms that she had been suffering, and sadly concluding that he was in for a bad few days, or weeks, or months.
“No need to stay awake for me,” she added. “Get some rest—or play your new game. You’ve barely logged any hours on it yet.”
Then Viv stared at the diaphanous pink curtains that covered the French doors in the living area for far too long, got up heavily to open them and let some unfiltered light in, and stared at the Yarra River for a little while instead. When she managed to shake herself out of that mindless state, she made herself a cup of tea, resolutely ignoring the washing up, and went back into the living room with her computer.
She needed to do some pointed internet searching before she threw her lot in with a—most likely—scammer. She didn’t think she’d do very well in jail. So, cross-legged on the fat, low, armless chair nearest the bedroom, Viv typed and gazed at the screen of her laptop.
The company was legitimate, and the historic Renner Tea House did belong to it—or to the Renner family, or both. And the company website had a picture of Jasper Renner on it as the CEO, which meant that Jasper Renner himself was also legitimate. More fortunately still, the man she had met in the park was Jasper Renner. Something about the way he stared into the camera was off-putting, as though the picture itself could see her, but it was without a doubt the same man she had met.
Fighting back the urge to call the number on the card he had given her straight away, Viv dutifully searched the company’s employees and news reports for any sign of illegal endeavours or mistreatment, and instead came across a few articles on the Renner family itself. There was nothing very interesting there, but there was nothing concerning, either. Viv felt herself relax as she scrolled.
The Renner family was an old one, with a lot of money—when it came to South Yarra, though, that wasn’t really a surprise. They probably lived somewhere near here in one of the larger monstrosities with pillars everywhere and rough render that had been painted salmon pink to stand out against the greenery. Or perhaps they were in one of the very stately, almost marbled homes that settled deeper in the side streets, with a riot of autumn colours showing up against the pale stone from which they were made.
