Total pages in book: 48
Estimated words: 45901 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 230(@200wpm)___ 184(@250wpm)___ 153(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 45901 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 230(@200wpm)___ 184(@250wpm)___ 153(@300wpm)
It was at that moment I knew that I was trapped. My boss, Irving Price, was never going to let me go. He liked having someone to shout at and abuse. Someone who was too afraid to fight back.
I hadn’t even told the HR Director all of the things he called me. The worst was when he talked about my weight and called me “fat” or “chubby.” I think those words hurt me most of all because they were true.
I mean, I knew I wasn’t stupid—I’d graduated top of my class and I had a 4.0 GPA, which isn’t easy in Pharmacy School. Have you ever taken Organic Chemistry? It’s not exactly a walk in the park—but I aced it.
So I could mostly shrug off his hateful remarks about my IQ. But when it came to my weight, well…that was a number where I was most vulnerable. And I was sure that Mr. Price knew it.
So I was stuck—which was exactly what I was thinking as I sniffed back tears and gathered the torn and trampled documents around my evil boss’s desk. Stuck with no way out for at least the next four years!
The worst thing was, the abuse I got from my boss reminded me a lot of the way my uncle and aunt had treated me growing up. My mom died of breast cancer when I was ten and my dad had left before that, when I was only eight. So rather than letting me go into the foster care system, my mom’s brother and his wife adopted me.
Sometimes I think it would have been better in foster care. I could never do anything good enough—could never please them. Even my excellent grades didn’t make them happy—nothing did. It also didn’t help that both of them were skinny and I’ve been chubby all my life. I was just a big disappointment—a burden they had to bear and nothing I could do would ever make them love me or even like me.
That was how I felt with Mr. Price—like I could never make him happy, no matter how hard I tried.
“So why do I keep trying?” I muttered to myself as I gathered the papers. Hot tears splashed on the stack in my hands and I realized I was crying—which would only make my sadistic boss angrier if he came back and saw me “bawling.”
Rising to my feet, I shoved the stack of papers to one side of the desk. I needed some time alone—five minutes to get myself together, I thought. I couldn’t have a breakdown right here in my boss’s office—who knew when he might come back?
I rushed down the hallway, heading for the ladies room. I noticed that the door looked slightly different—were the edges of it glowing? But my eyes were too blurry with tears to make out the details and I just wanted to be alone. I was nearly running as I pushed blindly at the door, which swung open…
And dumped me out in the middle of Hidden Hollow.
1
HARMONY
Hidden Hollow is a magical town located somewhere in the woods of New England. I don’t know its exact geographical location—nobody does, I don’t think—but if I had to guess, I’d say it must be somewhere in the foothills of The Berkshires mountain range.
It’s a beautiful place where the weather is almost always perfect because nine months out of the year it’s Autumn at the peak of Leaf Season. It also has a magical bubble around it which keeps anyone who doesn’t have magic of their own—or isn’t magical in some way—out.
Of course, I didn’t know any of that. I just knew I was desperate to get away from the office and from Mr. Price and his cruel comments and arbitrary rules that reminded me so much of my abusive past. So I missed all the details like the gorgeous Fall foliage and the quaint shops lining Main Street.
My eyes were blurry with tears as I came running through the doorway which had magically appeared in place of the ladies room door back home. So blurred, in fact, that I ran right into someone as soon as I came through.
That someone was Tark and it was like running into a brick wall. I mean that literally—I bonked my head on his chest plate (he was dressed in traditional Orc armor for a festival that day)—and fell on my ass right in front of him.
“Ouch!” I cried, my hand flying to my head, which was already throbbing. Had I run into a wall? But there had never been a wall right inside the ladies room before!
“Fuck! I’m so sorry—are you all right?” an inhumanly deep voice rumbled.
An enormous figure was suddenly looming over me. An enormous green figure with glowing golden eyes and wild black hair that spilled around his broad shoulders. He had fangs, too—(I later learned these were tusks)—and he was absolutely huge.