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Post by Laura on Jun 5, 2012 1:15:50 GMT
Extract from something I'm writing at the moment. I have only the vaguest idea where it's heading - but that's the fun part. As you’ve probably gathered, my mother and I don’t have the most extravagant of lifestyles. In fact, we’re pretty much broke all the time. My dad’s not in the picture – he’s never really featured in my life, splitting from my mother some time before I can remember – so Mam works to support us both. She’s a manager at a local bar in town, which means mostly handling paperwork and staff on behalf of the owner, but she pulls pints occasionally too. Her income keeps us afloat – we’ve got no rent or mortgage, since our dilapidated cottage was passed on to us after my grandparents’ deaths – but only just. I didn’t get pocket money growing up, or expensive toys, or even new clothes; my mother favoured second-hand shops for refreshing our wardrobes.
I’m not recalling this in bitterness; all I needed to be happy as a child was paper and a pencil, which was pretty affordable for us. But, I do want to highlight that I was brought up without having much cash to spare. Mam hated that she couldn’t give me everything that other parents could provide their children with. At the same time, she recognised that while I understood our circumstances, it didn’t mean I had to go without any luxuries. I’d just have to fund them myself. As soon as I was old enough, we sat down and she cut a deal with me: if I got a part-time job, I was welcome to spend the money I earned on whatever I wanted – within reason. It was a tough thing to be told at fifteen, that if I wanted a newer mobile phone or a laptop or anything really, that I’d have to work for it myself – but it was a good lesson to learn. Now I’m pretty much independent of my mother, in terms of personal spending. Very rarely have I had to ask her for money.
Admittedly, she set me up with work; I was much too timid to go into a shop and ask if there was any part-time work going. I ended up working in one of those second-hand shops that Mam’s so fond of – a bookstore, by the name of The Love Library. It’s run by a friend of hers, Mrs. Kavanagh, who’s a round-faced, round-figured woman in her late forties. She’s very kind and a mother hen type, fussing about me as if I was one of her own (numerous) children. She’s also fanatical about books – old ones, new ones, classics, pulp fiction – you name it. She’s managed to convert me. I was always a reader, but up until three years ago it was exclusively a bedtime activity for me – something I did when it was too late and dark to draw, but too early to sleep. Once she’s gotten to know me – and gotten more talk out of me than just ‘hello’, ‘yes’, ‘I will,’ and ‘bye,’ – Mrs. K started to recommend things I should read, even letting me borrow books from the shop. I became fully acquainted with escapism through words, only really having glimpsed it before. My ‘art’ (as I joking referred to my drawing and painting) suffered, as reading became an everyday activity of mine.
I’ve stuck with The Love Library and Mrs. Kavanagh for nearly three years now. At the beginning I’d only work Saturdays; after a while I started handling the Sunday shift too, and during the Christmas, Easter and summer holidays I’d work a few hours during the week. This summer, I had a near-full time position, working four or five days of the week. I didn’t mind; it kept me occupied. As much as I hate school, I hate the holidays more, with the lack of structure, activity and social interaction. Yeah, I have Liz… but even getting to hang out more with her doesn’t make the long days pass any quicker. Plus, the money is always nice. I shelled out a good bit of cash around Christmas on a laptop and a cheap internet modem; I didn’t quite clear out my savings, but it did put a big dent in them. After three months, I had replenished my account of what I was tentatively earmarking as college funds; and I’m set to work weekends throughout the school year, to rack up a bit more money. It is an exam year for me – this I know, but it’s not like I’ll be there after school, or all the time at the weekend. I am aware though that I’m probably going to have to hand in my notice after Christmas, so as to focus properly for the Leaving Cert in June. I’m going to sad about that; yeah, it’s work, but I actually like being in the shop. The smell of old books – dry and musty, with slight variations depending on their age and the type of binding they have – is soothing and familiar to me. I am as at ease with that odour as I am with that of new pencils or oil paints. I’ll regret saying goodbye to it.
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Post by legrande on Jun 5, 2012 10:01:06 GMT
I'm a little disenchanted with writing at the moment, but I've been wading my way through some sort of 'zombie' inspired idea. It's fairly cliche and all, but it's something. The scent of fire had seeped in through the cracked window. The thick smell of smoke lingered in every crevice and taunted me whenever I moved. Outside, the city was still smouldering. Just two weeks earlier I’d have complained, maybe fetched an air freshener or something. Now I was just counting my blessings that Kat and I had found somewhere safe and sheltered where we could camp out...for now. Our little hideout had been a basement at some point, but the building above it had been burnt down, back in the early stages of the infection taking over. Now it was just a pile of debris. It was deceptive. If I hadn’t had the misfortune to fall down the steps while Kat and I were trying to find somewhere to crash, we’d probably have walked straight past.
From the corner, Kat omitted a long, painful groan. I ran a hand through my short, greasy hair and shot over to her side. Her skin was still ashen and clammy. As I grabbed hold of her hand, I noticed the grey black colour at the end of her fingers. The colour reached out in tendrils winding down from her fingernails to her knuckles. I didn’t feel as shocked as I thought I would. When I’d told Kat that her bite wasn’t deep and wouldn’t cause her to get the infection, I’d been lying. I hadn’t known that for sure. I had just hoped that the infection couldn’t be spread that easily. I knew she was going now. She was fading away; becoming one of them. I wanted to drop her hand there and then; to run away and never look back. However, I couldn’t tear myself away from her face. The grey may have taken control of her body, but her face was as pale and human as it had ever been. Her eyes were closed, her expression twisted into a grimace, but she was still there; my Kat. Instead of letting go, I stroked her hand, tracing the grey colour. It was disgusting, inhuman, but at the same time it was still Kat. Her eyes flickered open. “Nathan!” she gasped, her voice hoarse. “I’m here, Kat,” I said. “I’m here.” She let out an almost contented sigh. I stretched out my hand and felt her forehead. It was covered in a thin film of cold sweat. She peered up at me as I slid her sleeve back to check the wound on her shoulder. It didn’t look angry or inflamed, but there was a large concentration of grey skin around it. How could I have missed that before? “How is it?” Kat’s voice was weak. I paused for a moment, and gulped. “I’ll clean it out again. You’ll be okay.” I’m sure Kat could hear the lie in my voice, but my words seemed to reassure her anyway. Her breathing was raspy, so I quickly handed her our last bottle of water, the lid unscrewed. She drank it quickly, glugging like a drain. The fact that it was warm and stale didn’t deter her at all. As she drank, I dug out the old first aid kit we’d found and ripped open an old antiseptic wipe. Kat hissed inwardly as I wiped the bite clean. I wished I had a bandage suitable to cover up the wound instead of leaving it open, but I didn’t. I had to do my best, but I’d never been good where blood was involved. I was so squeamish that I couldn’t even stand the sight of my own—although I knew I had to get over that.
She closed her eyes again and patted the floor next to her. It was as charred as the rest of the room, and if I rolled over, there was a big chance of landing on a rusty nail or a brick. Two weeks ago, I’d have panicked about getting charcoal stains on my clothes, but I wasn’t that proud any more. I lay down next to Kat, and wrapped my arms round her waist. She snuggled back into me, shivering. I waited until her breath evened out and her eyes drifted back to being closed. We’d been hiding for five days already. We’d run out of food and water, but after what had happened the last time Kat and I were out in the open; I knew that I couldn’t leave her by herself or go out alone. I’d hoped that she’d be okay—stronger—before we ran out, and we could venture out together. It looked unlikely now. It was only a matter of time before the infection took her over completely. I closed my eyes, knowing I might as well get some sleep.
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Post by Samantha on Jul 13, 2012 5:36:43 GMT
Spent the last three and a half hours writing. It puts me in a really good mood, it does. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry that you didn't get in." He had yet to express his condolences, and this was the first that he'd said the words to me. I didn't think that I would need them, as I'd been steeling myself for the small envelope all along, but somehow it still hurt to be rejected. To read the letter—Thank you for your interest in...we're very sorry to inform you that...but we're confident that you'll find another institution which—was to see all of my failure written on paper. But it was worse than failure: it was my unworthiness, my punishment. And it hurt like a hole gaping in the middle of my chest.
He came over from the window and sat next to me on the couch. "Will?"
"What?"
"I told myself that I wouldn't tell you this—" He shook his head. "I told myself that it wasn't true, anyway—that I wasn't really feeling how I was feeling. But I did feel it, and...I-I'm sorry for feeling the way that I did, Will."
"I don't understand—"
He paused, looked at me, looked at the arm of the couch. "When you didn't get accepted."
"When I didn't...?"
He seemed to find something really fascinating about the arm of the couch suddenly; he talked to me out of the side of his mouth. "It was just this stupid feeling I had, you know? A quick feeling, an evil feeling. I don't feel that way anymore, of course. I'm sorry that you didn't get into Yale. I wish you did; I wish that we could go there together."
I shook my head slowly, still not understanding.
"But right when it happened, right when we opened those letters, I wasn't sorry. Right when it happened, I was so sickeningly happy. I don't even know where it came from! But for a very small moment, I was glad that you didn't..." He couldn't finish his sentence; his voice faded out in a desperate, airy end. --The Alldredge House, Chapter Eleven
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Post by Caitlin on Jul 14, 2012 6:27:39 GMT
I feel as though I never describe my characters (I don't), and that when I do it's terribly done. OH WELL. This was an attempt (a PATHETIC one -sigh-). The fire lit up her face, making it easier to see her through the dimness. I stared across from the fire pit at her, gazing at her eyes, nose, lips; she was simply beautiful. Eventually she looked up, having been cooking a marshmallow in the fire, and tilted her head to the side.
“What?” she questioned, placing a small smile on her face. I couldn’t reply, because for a moment I was stunned by the sound of her voice. Then I put myself back together before I made a fool of myself.
“Nothing,” I said, looking down into the flames once more, “Your marshmallows burning.”
“Oh, damn it!” she mumbled, bringing the flaming marshmallow to her face and blowing it out with a big puff. She giggled, pulling the black mess off of the stick, “do you like burnt marshmallow?”
I smiled, taking it from her. “Mmmm…” I joked, shoving it in my mouth. In the process of doing this, I got it all over my hands and face. I attempted to rub the sticky mess off of my hands on the log I was sitting on, but no luck.
“Look at what you’ve done,” she giggled, waggling her finger at me, “making a huge mess! Who do you think has to clean that log you’re sitting on?” She stood up, grabbing some of the paper towel beside her and circled the fire to sit beside me. Tearing off a strip of the paper, she dapped at the marshmallow on my face.
Frozen, I simply watched her face. Her blonde hair surrounded her heart-shaped face in waves, and her chocolate brown eyes had a slight orange glow from the firelight. She had bit her bottom lip slightly in concentration, determined to get the marshmallow off.
I reached up and took her hands in mine. Her eyes widened slightly, but she didn’t pull away. I tilted my head down to watch my fingers trace the lines on her palms; the piece of paper towel lay forgotten on the ground. Edited: to add another excerpt! So for some reason I've been wanting to write a zombie-type story, especially after watching The Walking Dead (oh my God that show is amazing). It sucks. I just wrote it now at 3 in the morning. Spoiler'd, because it's a lot. I tried to be descriptive with the people, but I -- once again -- fail at being descriptive. Also, it was originally third-person but I decided to go back and make it first-person so there may be some weird bits where I didn't realize. I had been driving towards Ottawa on the day the world went to hell. You would never have known it would end, what with the beautiful, bright sun shining down on the Earth, giving the wind a nice, warm breeze. It was a Saturday, and since the kids were off school I had decided it’d be great to go up to Ottawa for a shopping trip. Brockville didn’t have the best clothing stores, and Jason had wanted a new pair of shoes that had to be a certain brand. My husband, Jonathan, had stayed at home.
Eventually I had caught up with the morning rush-hour, though, and the car began to literally crawl on the highway. Jason gazed lazily out the window, headphones plugged in and blaring. Aiden and Jessica – twins – were sitting in the backseat talking about some study notes their “insane and evil” teacher was making them learn. I simply drummed her fingers on the wheel, getting more and more impatient by the second. My husband always complained about how she was too impatient for her own good.
“I just can’t believe she made us study all of that. I bet you half of it isn’t even going to be on the test. Whenever I was finished making my study notes I had six pages! Double sided!” Aiden crossed his arms and glared out the window angrily, as though Mrs. Davis was standing right outside it.
Aiden was a bright boy. He was smart, organized, and always had an answer to everything. He constantly wanted to learn, always hanging onto every word someone spoke. I could hardly believe he hadn’t skipped a grade, though his current teacher had dropped hints about how next year might be too easy for him. He looked a lot like his father, having the same dark brown hair and green eyes, and always sporting the same determined look.
“You’ve already finished your study notes? I just copied out the topics she said we should study. My hand was already burning just from doing that.” Jessica whimpered, twirling her right wrist around as she said this.
Jessica was a quiet, shy girl. She always looked up to Aiden, who was the oldest of the two. She struggled sometimes with Math and Science – which Aiden would happily help her with, he had gotten his patience from his father – but she breezed through English. She had blonde hair like me, and the same green eyes as Aiden; though it was rare you’d ever see them since she’d always be looking at the ground or hiding behind her long bangs.
“No one cares.” Jason simply stated, continuing to stare lazily out the window.
Jason got his looks from me. He had blonde hair, brown eyes with long lashes, with sharp features. He was constantly listening to music, and although it was clear he would be quite the looker at school he had never had a girlfriend. I think its because he never left the house, following in his father’s role of being a military “nerd” and constantly playing his gaming system at home.
“No need to be rude to your brother and sister, Jason,” I spoke up, trying to sit up higher in my seat to see over the cars – they had stopped moving completely now, “How would you like to be told that no one cares about what you were saying?”
“No one does care, though.” Jason said.
Sighing, I looked at my son. He looked right back at me, anger flashing in his eyes. He was in a mood this morning for some reason, though I couldn’t tell why. Muttering something too low for Jason to hear about teenage hormones, I looked at Aiden and Jessica in the rear-view mirror, “Ignore him, guys. What subject is that test on?”
Aiden started talking about the Math they were learning, while Jessica asked every once in a while what he was talking about and he would explain. I smiled to myself, always thinking the friendship Aiden and Jessica had was simply adorable. Ten minutes passed, and Jason muttered, “What the hell…”
I looked towards the road once again. Craning my neck to see over the car, I saw people running towards the vehicle. I looked over at the neighboring vehicle, though the people inside gave me the exact same questioning look. I rolled down my window as the first couple of people ran by.
“What’s going on?” I called out, though they simply glanced at me with frightened looks at kept running.
“Mommy, what’s happening?” Jessica whispered, fear displayed clearly across her face.
“I don’t know. Stay here. Jason, look after them.” I said urgently, opening the car door and stepping out. I started walking up the road, towards what everyone had been running from. After a few seconds I finally understood why they had been running.
A bunch of people were walking slowly down the road. They walked close beside each other, and it was hard to tell from the distance but I felt in my gut something was terribly wrong. I waited as they got a little closer and watched as one woman, still in a car, was instantly surround by the group of people. They banged on the car doors and windows, and the woman simply screamed. The sound of broken glass was soon heard, and I watched as they pulled her out through the side window and bit deep into her flesh. She screamed, spotting me and started screaming for my help. I turned and bolted.
“What’s going on Mom?” Jason asked questioningly, starting to get out of the car.
I tried to catch my breath, “Come on, and get out. We got to go, now! Jessica, Aiden, get out of the car!”
Soon they were running down the highway, the sounds of screaming getting closer and closer, followed with a bunch of terribly moaning sounds. I turned my head around to see what was going on, and watched as a bunch of the things jumped on someone who had clearly fallen.
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Post by Samantha on Oct 14, 2012 1:46:18 GMT
My mood has not improved. I thought that the morning in which I'd gone to the coffeehouse had just been a bad day for me, but I still don't feel any better. I haven't gone anywhere since that outing. The furthest away from my office that I've gone has been the restaurant downstairs, and when Anzhela gave me a bowl of Sadat's most comforting soup, I hadn't been able to eat it. I'm back to this: I'm back to not eating again. I'm scaring myself this time around.
I do not think that being alone has been good for me. I've had this desire to call somebody to talk, and I go to pick up the phone, but then I can't think of anything to say to whomever it is that I would call. Or worse, I think that I would have too much to say, and be unable able to stop myself. And I hear how ominous the dial tone sounds in my quiet office, and I hang up without having dialed a single digit.
I tried to write it down instead, thinking that I just needed to get it out in one format or another, but I got only as far as the first line before I tore up the piece of paper.
Now I sit at my desk. It's late in the afternoon, and the sun is sinking low in the sky at only four PM, but this isn't strange for the wintertime. I flick on the lamp at the corner of my desk and dig through the drawer by its light for my checkbook. I flip through the pages and come across the last entry. I stare at the number and then look up at my computer screen. Then back down. Then I reach for the telephone. I just want to talk to somebody. Please understand that I only want help. I'm scared.
But there is a noise at the door, which I've left open (I sometimes like listening to the sounds of the restaurant downstairs). I set the phone down and turn to find Ava standing there. She sees the page that is pulled up on my computer screen. She says, cautiously, "What are you doing?"
I close my checkbook and turn off the monitor. "Nothing," I say. I stand up and kiss her hello. I'm so glad you're here.
--The Alldredge House Chapter Eighteen
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Post by legrande on Oct 14, 2012 10:45:13 GMT
...tease!
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Post by Samantha on Oct 15, 2012 14:53:39 GMT
If that was directed toward me, then: ;D
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Post by LadyofShalott on Nov 6, 2012 1:34:33 GMT
Hm I haven't posted in this thread for a long time and I kind of miss it. ;D Well anyway this is an essay-like thing I wrote for my english comp class. We were given the sentence "She (or he) came into the restaurant and sat at my table" and we had to expand this sentence out into 2-3 pages. In other words, there is a lot of word splurge and an overcrowding of adjectives below. But I'm kind of surprisingly happy with what came out. You might notice that it starts to get hurried at the end. That's because I forgot my laptop at home and had to rush to rewrite it this morning *sigh* I hate Mondays. Hopefully I still get a good grade though. I first saw him that day through the wide, slightly tinted window. He was walking casually up the narrow street, dodging the familiar thin cracks in the sidewalk with ease and skill you only get from growing up around here. His hands were shoved loosely into the pockets of his blue jeans; his hair flopped a little back and forth with every step. His back was facing me as he walked, but I didn’t need his face to know instantly who it was. That stroll was so recognizable; I knew it in a millisecond, although I hadn’t seen him in this one-stoplight town in forever.
The noon sun beat down on the pavement, casting a radial glow on everything. It lit up his hair, creating burgundy streaks in the dark color that only appeared at times like this. His shoulders were bathed in the light and emitted a warm aura that surrounded his entire figure. If my heart didn’t leap with excitement the first time I saw him, it certainly did now as he headed for the door of the café. I watched intently as he strode up the shimmering walkway, until my view was cut off by the sun-bleached, stain-splotched red curtain that hung from every window in the tiny restaurant. But then the door opened in a slow whooshing method, the miniature golden bell that hung over it to alert employees of customers jingled a sweet little sound, and he stepped through the threshold and into the building.
My chest exploded with delight when he turned his head in my direction and I caught my first glimpse of his oh-so familiar facial features in four years. He had grown some in that amount of time; he was a little taller than I last remember him, maybe a little more built too. But even though there was that, he was just the same as I remembered him too; dark, thick locks of hair that wouldn’t stay out of his eyes; long lashes over light, cloudless, sea foam green eyes; thin, slightly crooked nose from that time he broke it in an eighth grade football game; somewhat narrow lips that always looked like they had a touch of a smile wherever he went. The clothes he was wearing were even more familiar to me though. He had on a much worn, heather gray t-shirt that read the faded word Chevrolet across the front. I distinctly remember giving him that shirt for his seventeenth birthday, and was ultimately astonished that he still kept it - and even still wore it - after all of this time. Under that, he had on dark navy blue jeans, only a tad bit too long, and pooled at his feet on top of a newer looking pair of black Nike’s. His appearance made me grin uncontrollably; it had just been so long since I had seen him that now I was feeling a little giddy.
A waitress in a pretty blue dress and tidy starch-white apron passed by the door carrying a plate full of unwashed glasses, some of them with a little left over Coca-Cola or Sun Drop sloshing back and forth in the bottom of them. She gave him a huge, toothy, smile and announced rather loudly, “Hey! Long time no see!”
A smile of his own lit up his features, and he said something back over his shoulder at the girl that I couldn’t make out. He then turned back around, a twinkle of happiness stuck in those clear green eyes of his. Reaching out, he ran a hand nonchalantly across the cheerful, sky blue wallpaper that lined the café. He let it drop back to his side when he passed a group of some of our old friends from high school, three tables away. They had been noisily chatting and hooting and snickering since I had arrived here. Normally I would have sat with them, but today I was craving some peace and quiet, something that did not ever come with that bunch, ever. They yelled greetings at him as he passed, things like “What’s up Harvard?” and “’Bout time you came back!” He stopped to slap a few high-fives and exchange a few words of his own with them. After a couple of minutes, they said their goodbyes and he moved on, down the aisle, closer to my table. A smile lit his face again, this time especially for me.
“Hey,” he said, his voice sounding like liquid gold. He pulled out the padded seat across from me and sat down.
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Post by Zoe on Jan 5, 2013 8:41:57 GMT
"Man, you sure know self-defense," he laughed softly and stood. "I could learn a thing or two from you. You'd probably be a better tackler than any of the chumps on our team."
I knew he was just saying it as a joke, but me being me, my cheeks flared up and I suddenly felt like melting through the floorboards. I turned around to face the supply closet and pulled out the ring full of keys Coach had given me. He told me it came with the job of being water girl. I twisted the key slowly, my heart pounding. He was standing like, right behind me.
As I pulled the key out, Gareth put a hand on my shoulder. "Uh... hey, why don't you just leave your stuff out? You're going to have to take it to the game, anyway." I froze up at the feeling of the male specimen touching me, but shrugged his hand off to keep my cool.
"Ah, I don't want anything to happen to this stuff. Besides, Coach would put my head up on his wall if he found out I left my supplies out."
"Bu-but..."
I opened the door and it almost seemed like time slowed.
First came the damp cloth items that fell all around me.
Next came the hard tin bucket that bumped into my head before clattering to the ground.
And I think the last was the worst.
Lastly, there was the sound of laughter.
I didn't want to turn around and see the amused faces of the players. I didn't want to feel the embarrassment that would surely come when I spun around with a loose jockstrap in my hair, and another hanging off my shoulder.
So I did the first thing that came to mind.
I walked away. -- The Water Girl, Chapter 3 Thought this thread could use some reviving. ;D
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Post by Samantha on Jan 23, 2013 22:06:26 GMT
I love this thread. Reading excerpts of people's stories is always so much fun! This was for the very first assignment for my creative writing fiction class, which I just turned in this morning: The first time he'd driven a car, he'd been fourteen years old. His grandfather had patted the bench seat of the red pick-up truck and remarked that there wasn't anything in the world that a long drive couldn't fix. Where did he go when he and the wife were fighting? Why, for a drive, of course.
They'd gone for his license on the day that he'd turned sixteen. He was almost thirty now.
It was early on a Saturday morning. As he was leaving the house, his grandmother asked him, "What are you doing?" She was watching television in the living room. The sofa faced away from the door, but she'd heard the squeak of his dress shoes and the jangle of the keys. Ears like a cat: that's what her husband had always said.
"Don't go," she urged. "Not now."
"I'll be back in time," he promised. He approached her from behind, leaning down and placing a kiss on the top of her head. "Don't worry about it, Grandma."
She said, "It's raining."
And he said, "I know."
"It's not lightning out, is it?"
"No, Grandma, it's not. It's just raining."
He used to, as a young boy, sit on the front steps of his grandparents' farmhouse and watch the rain. He liked to say that he got his love of driving from his grandfather, and that his grandfather had gotten his love of the rain from him. Once—perhaps but a few days after he'd first arrived at the farmhouse—he and his grandfather had been sitting together, watching the rain, when his grandfather had leaned over and said, "You miss your parents, Henry, don't you?"
When it had begun to thunder and lightning, they had gotten up and gone inside. You weren't supposed to be outside during a lightning storm, especially not in rural Iowa. Human lightning rod was the term that his grandmother had used. He always remembered that.
It was raining when he left the house at eight-thirty.
He got into his grandfather's truck, started the engine, and drove away from the house. The rain hit the windshield angrily, almost too fast for the wipers to clear it away. Between the house and the car, the jacket of his black suit had gotten soaked through: little teardrop-shaped stains on the stiff cloth.
He drove for a long time. There were no hills in rural Iowa, just miles and miles of flat farmland. He listened to the steady beating of the rain on the roof of the car, felt the rumble of the old truck through the steering wheel. It was comforting, like the sound of his grandfather's voice as he told a story about the days in which his sons were growing up on the farm.
On his way back to the house—where he would pick up his grandmother and together they would head over to the church—the truck unexpectedly died. It was an old truck, very temperamental, and predictably so: his grandfather always kept a set of tools beneath the seat. The two of them spent a lot of time patching this and fixing that.
But never in the rain, and certainly never in the lightning.
Human lightning rod, his grandmother's voice reminded him, and looking up at the sky, he dared not get out of the truck. The clock on the dashboard reminded him that the funeral service was at ten o'clock.
--Untitled
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Post by LadyofShalott on Jan 29, 2013 20:22:19 GMT
A little girl sat up in her sleeping bag. She stared intently out the mesh window of the small tent with wide eyes. The woods weren’t very dark thanks to the full, round moon in the sky, but she could make out the glowing aura around Them. They were here again; They must have followed her out of the city. A bolt of terror went through the child, making her draw her knees to her chest and rock gently back and forth.
Another girl, a little older than the other one, was sleeping next to her. She awoke at the sound of the sleeping bag rustling. Opening her eyes, she saw her little sister wide awake on the opposite side of the tent. Annoyed, she narrowed her eyes at her and whispered, “Chloe, go to sleep!”
Chloe turned her head toward her sister, her eyes wide with fright. “I can’t,” she squeaked, “I see ghosts.”
At that, the other girl sat up herself and regarded her sister for a moment, “What do you mean?” she asked hesitantly.
Chloe hugged her knees closer and pointed out the tiny window, “Ghosts,” she repeated in a smaller voice.
The older girl slipped out of her sleeping bag and crawled over to the window. She looked where her sister was pointing and saw what she had meant. Three figures were shuffling around the trees. They weren’t close enough for her to tell if they were male or female, but they looked enough like humans to be classified as so. There was something wrong with them though. They didn’t move right – they seemed to glide more than actually stomp through the brush. And there was a weird hazy glow around them that was just visible.
The older girl bit her lip as she looked at them. She wasn’t really afraid – not any more anyway. She had been when she first started seeing these figures. But Mommy and Daddy had told her she was imagining all of them, that she just had too big of an imagination, so she stopped being scared. Now they mesmerized her more than anything else, like the neighbor’s puppy that she saw in the backyard sometimes; fun to watch play with his rubber bone, but not able to touch. They were like pets of her very own, and only she could see them.
And then it hit her; her sister could see them too.
So they had to be real, right? - The prequel to something I've been playing around with for a while
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Post by Caitlin on Jan 30, 2013 4:37:09 GMT
I haven't written anything in a while, so after seeing this thread I decided it was time I did. I'm still in the whole zombie-theme, though. Ryan Montgomery was exhausted. He had spent the night late at the clinic, pouring over countless files of past and possible future experiments. The night had quickly turned into morning, and it was whenever his eyes began to blur over and the small font began to get even smaller when he eventually threw the files into his filing cabinet and called it a night. He had only gotten a few hours of sleep when he had to go straight back the next morning, a hurried goodbye to his wife and child as he ran out his front door. Now he was back, dragging his feet through the long, spotless hallways. The large, bright lights blinded him as he trudged past, and yawns kept trying to surface despite his many cups of coffee.
Before he went back to last night’s work, Ryan decided to go to the cafeteria to grab a quick bite. While he was headed there, however, a woman bumped into him. Her name was Darlene; she had been working at the disease centre for only a few weeks. Her cheeks were slightly flushed, and she was out of breath as she burst out the last words Ryan had ever wanted to hear: “Something’s gone wrong.”
The pair quickly walked through multiple highways and down many flights of stairs. All the while Darlene was rushing words out of her mouth as fast as she possibly could, Ryan nodding as he absorbed all of the information.
“Jennifer got too close to the patient. She was taking some of his blood whenever the patient managed to grab onto her and… well, he bit into her. Right into her arm. There was blood all over the place and she’s getting treated right this instant, but we don’t know what’s going to happen.”
“I have to talk to her. Try to keep the patient in control. We don’t know what repercussions this will bring, especially since he has never done something like this before.”
With a nod of her head, Darlene continued down the steps while Ryan turned at the next corridor. His footsteps echoed off the empty hallway walls, giving him an odd and eerie feeling. It was quiet, and not a single person was in sight. ‘If they aren’t in their offices, they’re probably just fussing over Jennifer or calming down the patient,’ he thought, which calmed down his nerves slightly.
He finally reached the hospital ward, bursting through the door and with a rushed greeting of one of the nurses, ran into where Jennifer was being held. She was lying on the bed crying, while one of the doctors was treating her arm.
“How bad is it?” Ryan inquired, looking at the bloody rags which littered the end table and floor around him.
“Not that bad. She may need some stitching—it’s deep—but otherwise, I think she’ll be fine. She’s getting a bit of a temperature, but she told me she has been feeling a little down on the weather lately, so it’s probably just a cold catching up to her.”
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Post by Cayla on Jan 31, 2013 0:35:35 GMT
I don't think I've ever submitted to this thread. *feels ashamed*. All of you are so talented. I usually post miscellaneous writings on wattpad.com and i haven't forever. I had this fan fic idea. I would appreciate you reading a first blurb and seeing if it's worth continuing/reading. It was probably 2 am and I was dragging what felt like a dead body into a pickup truck. I revved the engine and started down the road. I didn't know where I was going. I heard rustling around in the back, but I couldn't look back. It's like was was in a trance. I heard mumbles of screams and I pulled over. It looked like a sick broken down version of my house. I untied the subject who I had kidnapped and it kicked me.
I sat up in bed breathing hard. I was scared. Thank god it was only a dream. I got out of bed to get a glass of water and then looked down. I was wearing the same clothes I had on in the dream. I tensed. Then I remembered I went to a party last night, so I probably came home and fell asleep without changing. I relaxed a bit. Before I walked out of my room I tripped over a snoring bean bag chair. Wait. Bean bag chairs don't snore.
I was freaking out. I tried to calm myself, but I was panicking. "I'm so going to prison," I said to myself.
I look down to see who I could have kidnapped. It was none other than Billy Unger. I let out a fan girly scream! So did Billy when he awoke, but his scream didn't sound happy.
I kneeled down to where he was sitting and spoke to him in a low tone. " I am going to remove the ropes, but when I do you must promise not to run away and call the cops. " He nodded. Good enough for me. I started untying the ropes and when I did, he got up and ran away without saying a word.
I was so going to jail. When I looked down at my feet, I saw something glowing in the carpet. He had left his cell phone. So, thanks!
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Post by Samantha on Mar 1, 2013 3:55:22 GMT
I would appreciate you reading a first blurb and seeing if it's worth continuing/reading. Go for it, Cayla! Writing only improves through practice, like anything else. I think if you take the plot slowly, you could really develop your story and turn it into something great. Sometimes I like to drive without any real sense of urgency—without any real sense of direction, of what I'm leaving behind or where I'm headed to—and I like to go in the dark conceal of night, alone in my car, alone on the street. Sometimes I scare myself: I let my hand slip down the wheel, resting barely at the bottom, and I let my entire body be numbed by the vibrations of the stick shift that rumbles in my right hand. I zone out—for God knows how long—and when I return to myself, I find that, somehow, I have been driving along, turning in all of the right places, braking and speeding with an easy and terrifying absence.
Sometimes, not always, I drive like this. Tonight, to be on the safe side, I've opened all of the windows inside the car: the frigid air of the January night keeps me alert. It's been a long, long day in a series of long, long weeks. When I pass beneath a streetlamp, the light rolls up the hood of my car and over the windshield, and I glance at the dashboard. The first time I see an eleven. The car moves beneath another street lamp: this time, a forty-three.
11:43 PM.
--Untitled
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Post by Zoe on Apr 4, 2013 7:57:44 GMT
The clock strikes fifteen after twelve and my fingers begin to cramp.
"Are you serious right now, Jacob?" I turn my head as the sound of the door slamming resonates throughout my empty house. I'm not really sure why I turned my head. It’s not like it would've make a difference.
"Excuse me?" I ask, confused. I turn my head downward, where it belonged. My fingers hover over the keys of the instrument before me, unsure of where to press. I sigh. "Now look what you've done, Reid. I lost my place." Reid scoffs, or at least it sounds that way. I hear her shoes tap against the floor as she makes way toward me.
"Don’t you dare call me Reid, Jacob," she hisses this at me as she takes a seat on the bench. "Here, find the two black keys, like I taught you." I lightly touch the keys on the piano until I find the center C beside C sharp. I nod my thanks in her direction. She merely grunts, to which I raise my eyebrows. I had never in my life heard such an ugly sound come from a girl. But then again, I hadn't met many girls before.
I begin to play the piano softly, asking nonchalantly, "So, what should I not be serious about, Reid?" I feel her intense stare almost burning a hole straight through my head.
"Did I not just tell you to not to call me Reid?" she sighs, as if I were a small child who didn't know better or something. It made her seem like a motherly figure toward me. I almost gag at the thought. "Anyway. I heard something interesting at the hospital today. Want to take a stab at what it is?"
Even if I did take a stab at anything, I would miss, I think bitterly. I try to shake the thought away, but it still lingers in the back of my mind. Everyone, especially my mother, continues to tell me that it’s something I have to live with. I need to accept it.
I take a wild guess. "Francine finally got a new wig." She laughs, almost bitterly.
"Really, Jacob?" I feel her stand up, but continue playing. "If you really want to make it like that, then fine. But next time you get the chance to do something as big as playing live in front of five thousand people at city hall, please consider telling me." The front door slams shut, which tells me she’s gone. I continue playing, now pressing the keys harder and quicker as I go.
The clock strikes thirty after one and my fingers begin to numb. -- Rewrite of a story previously called The Blind Pianist, but now untitled, as I have just written it and haven't even edited it, so how should I know what to call it? and omg should I even mention that I love using anaphoras because I do
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