Spoke too soon

Here’s Joely Sue Burkhart’s Father’s Day post, based on characters in her book Beautiful Death.

If you’re going to ask Isabella Thanatos about her father, you’d better have a head start on the Odyssey train. Her father, you see, experimented on her throughout her childhood, and when the pandemic broke out, he left her, her sister, and her mother to survive the chaos. Her mother contracted the virus and suffered for days before she finally died.

Isabella could have forgiven the painful experimentation, because he did save her life. He kept her alive against all hope. However, she’ll never forgive him for leaving and allowing her mother to die.

There is someone Isabella cares about, who has watched over her for years and loved her like a daughter. Her best friend, Icarus, is the father she wished she had. His own daughter would have been about Isabella’s age if she’d survived the pandemic. After Isabella’s mother died, she and her sister took to the streets. They fought off starving humans and crazed contaminants alike. When she lost her sister, Isabella had nothing left. Everyone she’d ever cared about had either died or abandoned her.

That’s when she found Icarus. He took her home with him. He shared what little food he’d hidden in his house. He knew the violence that Isabella was capable of — in fact, he admired her for that toughness. Isabella wasn’t going to die like his own daughter. She was too strong to die, stronger than he was. Isabella was strong enough to do what he could not, and he never forgot how Isabella helped him. Luck might have brought them to cross paths, but it’s love that keeps them together. Even when Isabella begins turning into a monster herself, Icarus never turns his back on her. He never abandons her. For that alone, she’d do for him what she’d never do for her father.

She’d kill for Icarus.

Joely Sue Burkhart ~*~ http://www.joelysueburkhart.com