In an effort to wrap this first chapter up so that we can focus on Explorers of the Unknown, I've combined the last two parts of the chapter below.  Enjoy!

Her crimson lips parted slightly as if she intended to say something, but no words found their way out. I decided to help her out. I offered her yet another million-dollar smile.

"My name is Peter," I said. "I'm a writer."

For the surface-dwellers, this detail about myself is just a small element in the game of getting a girl into bed (or wherever I decide to fuck her). For my companion, however, it was a revelation that practically burst with promise. A kind of understanding flashed across her eyes as if she had finally located that thing which had caught her attention a moment earlier.

"What, like in a diary?" she said, slipping effortlessly into her antagonizer shoes she seemed so comfortable in.

I chuckled. "Something like that."

The truth was that it was nothing like that. I'm not a journalist nor am I published in any sort of legitimate, money-earning sort of way. As such, my writing nets me absolutely no sort of financial rewards. My actual job--the source of my livelihood, if you will--is horribly boring and not at all interesting. Nor does it have anything to do with writing. Which, effectively, makes it a horrible line for picking up women.

"So you're some kind of unpublished, wannabe novelist with an ego the size of the Grand Canyon?" The question was more of a statement.

I blinked at her, surprised at her lucky guess. To date, I had written twelve novels, all unpublished.

"You probably have a stack of rejection letters a foot high."

I did. I also had an unsettling chill creep down my spine.

"You probably even save and catalogue them in some kind of pathetic attempt at self-motivation."

I breathed a quiet sigh of relief. She was wrong about that one. Well, half wrong, anyway. I had saved the rejection letters but had recently burned them as part of my transition back the dark lair.

My companion tilted her head, looking at me curiously. "Or did you finally get rid of them? Did you eventually realize just how meaningless it all was?"

Her words struck a dissonant chord in me and I had no response as the ride came to an end. Our car came to a stop and my dark companion got up to leave. My mind raced to make sense of this peculiar turn of events. It had been going so well--I had thought I was moments away from getting her phone number or even leaving the carnival with her for some late-afternoon fucking ... but then she spun things around so deftly that I hadn't even noticed it until it was over. On the other hand, maybe I was just reading too far into an otherwise mundane encounter. Surely, this woman was only making educated guesses and didn't really have a secret knowledge about my life.

She glanced over her shoulder as she stepped down from the car. Her eyes sparkled for a moment before falling under a shadow and turning completely black. The corner of her mouth tilted upward as if she was perfectly aware of the conflict that had arisen inside me and was proud of her achievement. Her final words to me made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.

"Say hi to Angel for me. Be sure to give her a good scratching behind the ears."