E F Holt - Soldier Sailor Lover Slave

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously.

Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2022 by E.F. Holt

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review. For more information, address:

First paperback edition March 2022

ISBN 978-0-473-61554-3

Soldier Sailor Lover Slave employs British spellings,

alternate spellings, and ancient place names.

A Glossary of Terms is found in the back matter.

Table of Contents

Chapter

One

G hostly figures with black sockets for eyes and dressed in warbonnets and buffalo-skin robes; priests in full-length Catholic regalia with rings of hair on tonsured heads; others slaves, both men and women, their dark and thin frames bent over in shadowy fields; still others men in animal skins, dishevelled and sodden, battling wild seas in long-wooden boats. Initially, they appeared as if they were actors in an old grainy, black and white picture show, before emerging clear and vivid symbolically, when Kate was drawn into a world as real as the one in which she lived.

She had no idea that what she had seen behind her closed lids would be a breach into the past, her past. When she had fallen through the quicksand of time she had encountered cultures where societies were ruled by their religious beliefs that had no regard for basic human rights. She had no idea that the harrowing events she had seen and been a part of were somehow connected to her present-day situation.

As she emerges from her convoluted and murky depths, withdrawing from the psychic network of her subliminal self that had subconsciously connected with others, Kate is convinced the events she experienced were real and authentic. In her hypnopompic state, she discerns that there is no real barrier to separate the system of reality from which she has just returned and the earthly environment in which she lives, and understands it is only her focus of attention that closes her off from it.

She wakes with a pounding headache, feeling as though a giant wave has crashed down on her, largely forgetting the scenarios, and silently cursing the unfamiliar outside noises a racket from a construction site. Auckland councillors are determined to make New Zealands biggest city a world-class one with never-ending projects of large-scale proportions at eye-watering expenditure. Moments after she is awake she realises she is at her friend Juliannes rented inner-city apartment that she shares with her crown prosecutor boyfriend. An apartment seven storeys up; its nighttime vista is a sweeping expanse of glittering diamonds.

Though Kate remembers fragments of her slumbering adventures; they involved memories of her long-ago companions many years have passed since she has thought about them and is convinced that the dream was something else; not merely a dream from a drug or liquor-induced-comatose-stupor because it had so much living weight to it.

She swipes at her blonde hair which is stuck to her face. Her mascaraed lashes are clumped together. Last nights makeup, which deepened the colour of her hazel-green eyes and enhanced her childlike features has smeared and obscures her prettiness.

Kate folds back the knitted blanket and sits up on the hard-sided couch. Juliannes love of high-end furniture synonymous with designer craftmanship affords little comfort. She rubs her neck which she had slept on at an awkward angle. She gratefully accepts the coffee her bestie holds out to her and threads her forefinger and middle finger through the handle as she cups the mug in both hands. What happened last night? I feel like shite.

Well, we went to the hens party and it got a little messy.

Kate stiffens. How messy? She aims her worried gaze at her friend who is the exact opposite of her in complexion and hair shade. Juliannes long, dark-brown tresses frame her royal-blue eyes and perfectly formed, un-Botoxed lips.

Julianne sits on the edge of a barrel-shaped grey ottoman and regards Kate with a slight, close-lipped smile. Kate-shotting-tequila-off-the-strippers-abs-messy, she says with a lilt at the end. Then you passed out and Laurel helped me Uber you here so I could keep an eye on you and be your doting mummy for the night.

Kates jaw falls slack; her lips slightly parted. No, wait. I wasnt that drunk.

Julianne raises an eyebrow.

Well, I was, but there was something else, Im sure of it.

Do you think someone spiked your drink?

Yeah. No. I dont know. Maybe. Kate sips her coffee with her shuttered eyes focused on something invisible on the floor. It was as if my senses came alive and everything was much brighter the colours and the chatter.

Did you knowingly take anything?

Like a party pill? No. You know I dont do drugs. She crosses her legs with annoyance. But it felt as though I was more than just drunk.

Julianne puts a glass of water in front of Kate. Here, you better hydrate yourself then. Do you feel like eating anything?

Kate ignores her question. I saw stuff.

Now Im intrigued. Keep talking.

Inside the taxi, Kate continues, realising it was then that she first experienced her strange new perception. It was like a door had opened in my brain. The back of the seat, the fabric. It was alive. So peculiar.

Okay. Julianne says with rising intonation.

I saw the weave of the thread, the particles, moving around at high speed, like a charge of electricity. It was as though I could see the atoms and molecules of the thread. Then the back of the drivers head. His hair. The minute particles and cells in the strands vibrating at a fantastic speed, like some cosmological web of activity. I could see the basic-cellular structure of each strand. When I stared at his hair, I could see billions of dancing molecules. And thats not all. Kate looks at her friend with a fixed gaze. I understood that they had a consciousness.

Julianne leans in towards her. The drivers hair had a consciousness?

Yes. And it was as if I became one of those strands. I appreciated its consciousness. Kate looks at Julianne with question marks in her eyes; her posture is hunched. Am I making any sense?

Juliannes deep-blue eyes are full of compassion. She gives a delicate grimace and mouths a no . Im sorry, Hun, but it does sound like someone spiked your drink. Who were we with who would do that to you?

Kate presses the warm empty mug to her lips. Laurel does have some crazy friends.

Such as the girl with the neck tatt? Or the quiet one who sat in the corner all night with a sour expression. I saw her watching you. Julianne suddenly straightens her back; her mouth dangles open. Do you think the stripper was her boyfriend and didnt like seeing you licking his chest?

Kate stares at her friend for a moment before scrunching up her face and shuddering. Wow, I did that?

Fraid so.

Well, Im not going to hold it against her if she did. I actually enjoyed the experience. I should be thanking her. Find out what it was she slipped into my drink so I can do it again.

I thought you didnt do drugs.

I dont. But it might be the trigger I need to open up my mind.

Julianne raises her brows again.

Kate shakes her head. On second thoughts its a bad idea.

Julianne smiles and gives Kate a sideways glance. Okay, well, fancy some breakie? she asks as she stands up.

Just toast and honey, thanks. Manuka if you have it. And another coffee. Ill get it. And thanks for looking after me, Mummy.