Weaver of Shadows
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Posts posted by Weaver of Shadows
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15 minutes ago, Edema Rue said:
ELAN YOU FISH
YOU SCUDDING TUNA
I WAS DOING SO GOOD
Hi Eddie!
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5 hours ago, The Clarinetist said:
@Weaver of Lies, I want to read book four. You understand.
Indeed. I’ll get it to you when I get back.
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7 hours ago, Edema Rue said:
My violin teacher’s son has it, he’s one of my favorite people in the world…
Every time he comes in he says “hi beautiful” to me and it makes me almost cry, and he always wants to show off his outfits.
That’s so awesome of him!
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3 hours ago, Edema Rue said:
YAAAYY YOU’RE WRITING AGAIN!! Sorry it took so long I’ve been at work all day.
I liked it!! Hmm…as far as advice for writing characters with Down syndrome…probably just similar to how you’d write a little kid?
Oh read The Peculiar Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, it’s about a kid with autism if I’m remembering right but it’s really good and might help.
I’ll read that! I also have a friend with Down syndrome, so I’m pulling some mannerisms from that. Thank you!
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I swear I’ve actually been writing quite a bit. I think this is the longest chapter so far. I have a character with Down syndrome, so if any of you have advice or suggestions, please let me know. Here you go:
Chapter 8
Spoiler“Oh, stop with the dramatics, Nathan,” came a feminine voice from behind the middle-aged man. A girl stepped forward, standing next to him. Phoebe squealed with delight, stumbling forward exhausted and embracing the other girl.
“It’s so good to see you again!” the girl said excitedly, pulling away and studying Phoebe. “Are you ok? What happened? Are you hurt?”
“We’re all fine,” Phoebe huffed back. “But there’s a lot we need to talk about. Galahad’s demons are real. One almost got us today.”
The other girl gasped, then hugged Phoebe again. “Well the important thing is that you’re ok right now. Here, come sit down,” she said, pulling Phoebe down to the floor next to her. “All of you, sit. You look exhausted.”
Levi slid down to the ground. He considered lying down completely, but decided against it. He didn’t know if he could trust anyone here other than Anson. Though if anything went wrong, he doubted he’d have the energy to do anything about it. He glanced over at the girl, and realized something. “You two are sisters, aren’t you?”
“Twins in fact,” Phoebe replied.
“That’s…cool,” Levi said with a yawn. He slid down the wall more, to the point where he was barely sitting at all. His eyes drooped and he forced them open, trying to avoid drifting off in the middle of the conversation. Anyway, the older man, Nathan, they had called him, said he had things to explain.
“Here, let me take you to your rooms, you all need to get some sleep,” Phoebe's sister said. She stood and helped Phoebe up, then walked over to Levi and Anson. “We can talk about everything later, but you look like you’re about to fall asleep anyway,” she said to Levi. Slowly, Levi stood. “I’m not,” he said tiredly.
She laughed, then turned to Anson, nudging him with her foot. “Well he’s fallen asleep, so at least he needs rest. Are you really going to pass up that opportunity yourself?”
Levi laughed too, then shook his head. He helped Anson to his feet and they began walking down the long corridor. After a short time, Phoebe’s sister motioned to a door set into the stone on their right. “This is your room,” she said to the boys. “Go in and get some rest. Whenever you wake up, go talk to Lazarus and he’ll get you some food.
“Lazarus?” Anson asked.
“The man that opened the door,” Phoebe explained.
“A man will get us the food?” Levi said, confused. Most men would rather go without than make their own meal.
“Yes, a man. And his cooking is some of the best I’ve ever tasted, so you’re lucky to have him.”
Levi shrugged, pulling the door open. Inside was a small room with two mattresses and a couple of other items of furniture. Levi stumbled over to one of the mattresses and plopped down. He kicked his shoes off, then laid back, stretching. His eyes shut lazily, and he quickly drifted off to sleep.
⤞⤝⤞⤝
“Levi, you awake?” Anson asked from right above him. Levi blinked his eyes open, his vision blurred from sleep.
“I am now,” he said groggily, sitting up. He winced as he felt how sore his muscles were, everything hurt. “What do you need?”
“Oh, I was just wondering if you were ready to go explore this place! What did they call it, the Corridor? Anyway, it seems awesome!” Anson said excitedly.
As Levi’s vision focused, he noticed that everything seemed pink. Why was that? “Yeah, whatever. Give me a few minutes to wake up a little,” Levi said back, groaning and standing up. Couldn’t Anson have let him sleep a little longer? At least he wasn’t quite as tired as he had been before. Anson seemed to be back to his usual energetic self, as if they hadn’t run for miles after only a few hours of sleep the night before. He began pulling his shoes on.
“Come on, hurry up!” Anson said, playfully punching Levi’s arm. “What’s taking you so long? I want to get some of that food Phoebe’s sister was talking about!”
Levi’s stomach grumbled at the mention of food. They’d both dealt with hunger before though, they could afford to wait a few minutes, and something was nagging at him. “We need to be careful with everything around here,” Levi said seriously. “We don’t actually know anyone here, anything could go wrong.”
“Oh really, you think that? Well I trust Phoebe, and she trusts them. Don’t you remember how she saved our lives twice in the last few days?”
“I’m just saying we should be careful. We haven’t even known Phoebe for too long.”
“Yeah, but she saved our lives. Twice. Come on, let’s go!” he said urgently.
Levi stood up straight again. “Fine, let's go. Hopefully whatever that guy’s name is…”
“Lazarus.”
“Yeah, him. Hopefully he makes as good food as Phoebe was making it seem”“I hope so too! But we have high standards, after all, we’ve been eating a lot of the Duke’s food these last few years, our mouths have exquisite taste,” Anson said with a laugh.
“Indeed. And the other food we’ve eaten, the stuff from the garbage, has only refined our taste even more,” he said, mocking the accent of a high noble. “But really, I can’t believe it’s a man cooking. Shouldn’t Phoebe or her sister do that?” he asked, dropping the accent.
“I really don’t care, food is food. Anyway, they’re rebels, they can have whoever they want do the cooking.”
“It’s still strange though.”
Anson nodded his head, then jumped energetically. “OK, you’re ready, let’s go now!”
Levi shrugged, then started walking to the door. Anson sped in front of him, pulling it open. The hallway outside was too lit by pink light. Levi stepped up to a patch of the wall that seemed to be glowing. “What is this stuff?” he asked, lifting his fingers to where they nearly brushed it.
“That’s some kind of fungus that grows here,” said Phoebe’s sister, walking towards them from further down the hallway. “It makes it so we don’t need torches or lanterns, very useful for a safehouse hidden underground.”
“Huh, interesting,” Anson said. The girl walked over to Levi and scraped her finger across the glowing fungus. She lifted it, showing that it too was now covered in bright pink.
“Useful,” Levi commented. “I didn’t catch your name before, what is it?”
“I’m Adelia,” she said, wiping the fungus onto the wall and getting most of it off. “You’re Levi, right?” She turned to Anson. “And you must be Anson. Phoebe’s told me a lot about you.”
“Yep, that’s us,” Anson said confidently. His stomach growled loudly.
“Right, let’s get you some food,” Adelia said, stepping away from them and down the hallway. “Follow me.”
As they walked, Levi studied the walls more closely. The fungus was glowing brightly enough to light up the entire corridor, but not so bright as to hurt his eyes. The color was irritating, however. A scent drifted towards them, one of frying meat and some kind of bread baking. He unconsciously sped up, anxious to get to the food. He opened the door to see not one, but two sights he’d never expected. One, of a man pulling a loaf of bread from an oven. The meat frying in a pan on the fire was, if not ordinary, at least acceptable. But never before had Levi imagined he would see one baking. That was a woman’s job!
And the second surprise was the girl standing next to the man, carrying a second loaf of bread. She was short and face wasn’t shaped quite normally, it seemed flattened slightly. She smiled at him, and he recognized the smile. Or at least, the kind of smile it was. He’d seen a couple of kids like her before, children whose minds didn’t seem to function properly.
The man, Lazarus, set down his loaf. “Hello, I expect you’re hungry,” he said, motioning for them to sit at a large, circular table.
“I am,” the girl said, setting down her loaf of bread next to Lazarus’s and sitting at one of seven seats. Adelia quickly sat next to her, reaching out her hand towards the other girl, who took it. Levi sat a few seats away from both of them, and Anson slid in beside him.
“We haven’t been properly introduced yet,” Lazarus said, his attention split between the people he was talking to and the meat he was frying. “I’m Lazarus, and this is my sister, Naomi. What are your names?”
“I’m Levi, this is Anson,” Levi responded.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you both. The food should be done in a couple of minutes, and while we wait, why don’t you tell me a little bit about yourselves. Why are you here?”
“We’re here to kill Galahad,” Anson said without hesitation, his voice fierce. “I don’t care how we do it, but we’re going to see him dead.”
Lazarus frowned at that. “And why is it you want him dead so badly?”
“He killed our parents,” Levi said quietly. “He deserves to die. Why are you here?”
“Oh, I intend to see Galahad dethroned and dead as well, replaced by a good ruler who might be able to fix some of the things he’s broken in this country. Do you know how bad everything has gotten? Crime has increased, poverty is more common, and he’s even introduced slavery in the outer farms. It needs to stop. Ah, and here you have me rambling again, I apologize. It’s a bad habit of mine.”
He took the frying pan off the fire, bringing it to the table. He then brought both loaves of bread, along with a large knife to slice it with. “I wish we had some butter to go with the bread, and maybe some jam, but it’ll have to do,” he said. “It’s been too long since I’ve made something truly spectacular, I haven’t had access to the ingredients I need. Maybe I can once we get out of this stupid Corridor,” he said with a touch of sadness.
“Oh, come on, it’ll taste wonderful as always,” Adelia said with a smile, slicing a piece of the bread and handing it to Naomi, then cutting one for herself. Levi speared a chunk of meat with a skewer Lazarus brought over and raised it to his lips. He hesitated, unsure of if he could trust the food. Then Adelia skewered a piece, smiling as she ate it. “What would we do without your cooking here?” she asked Lazarus.
“Starve, I suppose,” he replied jovially.
Levi ate his own chunk of meat, some kind of pork it appeared, and nearly choked as the flavor hit him. It was spicier than he expected, but had to be one of the most flavorful things he’d ever eaten. And this was what Lazarus could do without proper ingredients? If that was the case, then he must have been the best chef in the entire world, even if he was a man. Levi tried the bread, and nearly gasped as memories assaulted him. Eating homemade bread with Anson so long ago, before Galahad had ruined everything.
Lazarus frowned. “Is there something wrong with the bread?” he asked, concerned.
“No, it’s wonderful,” Levi said, putting his slice down. Lazarus’s frown deepened, but he said no more.The meal continued in relative silence until Levi had eaten his fill and then some more. The meat was delicious, though he had avoided the bread, something Lazarus seemed to have noticed. He hadn’t said anything about it again though.
“So are you all ready to meet Nathan? Well, meet him again, you saw him earlier,” Adelia asked Levi and Anson.
“Sure, I’m up for whatever,” Anson said, leaning back in his seat and stretching. Adelia stood and the two boys followed suit. “Come on, this way, back towards the entrance,” she said, starting off down the hallway. Levi shot Anson a nervous glance as they followed her. What were they going to be doing? Avery had said they needed to have things explained to them, what all did that involve?
Anson smiled reassuringly back at Levi, but Levi well enough to see the confusion and worry behind the smile. They didn’t say anything to each other as they walked though.
“Here we are,” Adelia said. “I’ll let you two talk to him, I’m going to go help Lazarus and Naomi clean up.”
She left, and the two boys looked at each other again, their uncertainty evident on their faces. With a deep breath, Levi rapped twice on the door.
“Come in,” came an aged voice from within. It didn’t sound like Nathan had before, why was that? Levi pushed open the door to find Nathan sitting across from Phoebe, They were both seated on the floor, and the room was devoid of furniture beside a small desk and a mattress
“Ah, it’s you two,” he said, his voice sounding like it had earlier. The door must have messed with it somehow. “Phoebe has been explaining what happened these last few days, it seems you’ve had quite the experience. How are you holding up?”
Phoebe had been in here the whole time while they had been eating? She must be ravenous, unless she had eaten before the boys had woken up. “I’m doing alright, though that demon really messed with me,” Anson said. Levi nodded in agreement.
“The sleep we got here helped though, I know I at least am feeling much better,” Levi added.
“Good,” Nathan said. “Now, I said that I would explain things earlier. As Phoebe has told you, we are a group dedicated to removing Galahad. We are in league with the revolution, and have a plan in motion for where, when, and how to strike. All we need is more support. And, of course, you two. You both are key to our plans, your unique bond and hatred for Galahad makes us certain you won’t betray us, and your Shaping powers make you great allies. And…” he paused for a moment, seeming to consider his words. “There is something more. You know of the two elements of Shaping, physical…”
“Physical and mental, yeah, we know them,” Anson said.
“Exactly. What you don’t know is that there is a third element, largely unimportant to most Shapers, but it is what led us to you two. The third element, is that of time.”
Levi was stunned. Time? As in time travel, going back into the past, or forward to the future?“The element of time only has one use that we have found so far. Using an extraordinary amount of manna, the Shaper can glimse the future.”
A thousand different questions exploded through Levi’s mind. How much did this “glimse” include? How far forward could you see? Was it completely accurate? He decided to ask the most pressing question first.
“Can Galahad do this?”
Nathan paused, rubbing his temple. “Not that we are aware of, though it’s possible. Only a select few have access to this element, and even fewer know that it exists.”
“How do we know if we’re one of the people that can use it? Seeing the future seems awsome!” Anson said excitedly.
“There is no way for me to tell whether or not you can access the elemnt of time at the moment, as I said before it takes a significant amount of Manna, more than either of you have. Now, please hold your questions for later, there are plans I need to finish. We’re so close…” he trailed off, his eyes glazing over momentarily. “If you must, Phoebe, Adelia, and Lazarus should all be able to answer your questions. I bid you farewell.”
He motioned towards the door, and the boys exited excitedly. There was so much they needed to learn. Nathan shut the door, and Levi nearly jumped with excitement.“We need to go find one of the others, Nathan barely explained anything!” Anson said energetically. “I wonder where Phoebe’s at?”
“She’s probably eating, I bet Lazarus and Adelia will be there too, they can tell us everything!” Levi answered. He started walking quickly down the corridor, then broke into a jog. He’d nearly forgotten how sore and tired he was in the moment, but now it all came back. He clutched his leg, feeling the muscles cramp. “Maybe we should just walk.”
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I’m headed to FSY as well, though sadly not the same one as Eddie. It should be fun, it was last time, and hopefully it’ll help me get my love back on track.
Also, morning frisbee is the absolute best way to prepare for a lot of things, somewhat long drives and church camps are no exception.
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58 minutes ago, Edema Rue said:
Okay!! @Wierdo @Weaver of Lies @Wittles, I finished it!!
None of this has been edited yet, but I really like where it's going and I'm excited to polish it and turn it into something amazing. Hope you guys enjoy!!
Ripping At Our Seams:
He wasn’t sure when he started watching her. He wasn’t sure what he’d been before he started watching her. He lived in a single, glistening moment, and she was its center.
He saw her first in a snowstorm, he thought. Yes. It was cold, faintly windy, and tiny flakes of snow flurried about without seeming to touch the bright carpet of leaves. She stood poised on her toes, her tiny black boots crunching on the leaves. She was frozen in a moment of delighted laughter. He floated gently around her, and her laughter continued as a shape appeared behind her. Then another. Then a third.
Three familiars, brothers, twined between her legs. Black, white, and orange formed a twisted spiral around her, and she looked enticingly otherworldly. Then she tripped. One of the cats made a noise, almost a laugh. She laughed with it, lying on her back and pulling one close. Eventually she stood up. She pulled off her boots and ran barefoot across the freezing grass, laughing with a joy too wild and powerful to be kept inside. In that moment, he thought she must be the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. She grinned up at the falling snow, and the moment faded to black.
Another replaced it. It was different, but he couldn’t say just how, except that he knew it was a moment created over hundreds of hours. She sat, knees pulled up tightly to her chest, a book filling her tiny arms. The title blurred, and the cover seemed to change colors. The girl seemed to change as well, her outfit shifting and her hair changing lengths. She laughed as she read, or perhaps she was crying. He couldn’t quite tell. Maybe it was both.
From down the hall, there were footsteps. “Luci,” a voice called warningly. He flinched at it almost at the same time she did. She scrambled to turn off her lights and ducked under the covers. From the hallway, there was laughter, then the footsteps faded. But after a few minutes, she started to tremble. She tossed and turned for a few desperate minutes, then gave in and pulled out a flashlight, picking her book back up. That calmed her. It was the dead of night when she finally shut her book. This time, she slipped into sleep easily, calmly. He watched her sleep for a few minutes before all faded to black once more.
“I’m Luci,” a voice suddenly said in his ear. He jumped, turning, but she wasn’t speaking to him. She was on a playground, squatting next to a girl who was tugging at the grass. “What’s your name?”
The new girl looked up at Luci. “My mom said not to play with you.” Then she turned away. Luci was frozen only for a moment, and then she left, bravely walking onward until she found a place alone. She sat right down in the grass and began to cry.
Darkness.
She snipped flower petals into a thin glass vase, mixing them with sand and pebbles and the occasional snail shell. Her potion completed, she smiled and brought it inside to her mother, leaving her three cats to call to her from outside the door.
Darkness.
Luci pulled bricks out of the garden path and built herself a shop. Not a big one, but just enough that she could put different things in each of her little boxes. This one was filled with tiny rocks, that one with rose buds. One held a chicken egg, carefully positioned in a nest of grass. Another held a pile of leaves and pine needles. And one held her greatest treasure; a garden snake she’d caught and boxed in. She surveyed her merchandise, then hurried off to find customers in the form of her parents and siblings. When she returned, the snake was gone.
Darkness.
Luci had climbed out her window and onto her roof. She carried a book under her arm. She carefully pulled herself over the peak and back down, into a little alcove where she was sheltered on all sides. She opened her book, winked to the stars, and began to read poetry to the full moon.
Darkness.
Luci was crying.
Darkness.
Luci was laughing.
Darkness.
Luci sang. He couldn’t move for the beauty of her high, clear voice. She climbed trees and let her voice break free where none but the birds could hear her, and even they stopped chirping for jealousy. He watched her work through her repertoire, singing every song she knew again and again until she made up her own.
Darkness.
She dressed up as a snail for Halloween. It made him laugh.
Darkness.
He watched her grow older. As she grew, he was aware that he was getting older too. It was a strange feeling, as if his mind was slowly becoming more and more aware. Painfully aware. Aware enough to understand when her mother swerved desperately as snow cascaded off the mountains and onto the road. Aware enough to know that it would do no good. Aware enough to watch every person on the road struggle to escape their cars, to make it to the surface before the avalanche stole their last breaths.
Darkness.
Luci sat through the funeral in a new wheeled chair. She stared at the three caskets that sat open, displayed like wares before patrons who thought to buy them with their tears. She let her father push her away from the family they’d once had, and she began to cry, raw and ugly and loud enough that the people who didn’t seem to notice became terrible liars. Her father knelt next to her, his arm in a sling. He wrapped the other one around her.
“I don’t want to be alive,” Luci whispered. “I don’t want to be alive anymore.”
“Don’t say that,” her father said firmly. “Don’t.”
She sniffed, shaking. “I-it’s so much harder to be alive without them. I want to go home, Dad.”
Darkness.
Luci didn’t sing any longer.
Darkness.
Luci’s laughter wasn’t wild. She kept what little of it there was trapped inside her, as if by hiding it where no one could find it it would be hers forever.
Darkness.
Her father pulled a warm chocolate cake from the oven. Luci sat in her chair and watched him frost it, then helped him stick the candles in, one at a time. 19 candles. The number of years old her sister should have been. Her father’s hand shook. Luci started to cry. But, slowly, they tried to smile. Shyly, at first. It was dangerous to feel joy. But, slowly, they ate their cake, and laughed and told stories each thought the other had forgotten.
Darkness.
It was snowing. He watched the snowstorm out the same window she did. A tall man was talking at the front of the room, gesturing to symbols and words that Luci didn’t care about. She cared about the snow, and he floated towards it, entranced by the flakes that fell so slowly, so silently.
The door to the room slammed open, and a young man stood there. A young man the watching spirit knew. His eyes were wild and his face was sweaty. His arm was shaking, pointing a gun towards the teacher Luci had ignored so easily. One child screamed, and then another, and then there was a chorus of them, all mixing in a terrible cacophony of sound. Luci didn’t scream. The children stood and ran. Luci couldn’t run, and her chair was so slow…
Darkness.
<><><><>
She wasn’t sure when she started watching him. She wasn’t sure what she’d been before she started watching him. She lived in a single, glistening moment, and he was at its center.
She saw him first in a huge room. It was stacked with boxes, and he was standing in its center, looking around unsurely. There was a glittering chandelier hanging from the ceiling, and a staircase curved up to an elegant balcony. That was a good word for it, she decided. Elegant. He was frozen in a moment of shock, and she floated closer curiously. He’d just begun to tremble when a tall woman with perfectly curled hair appeared in the large doorway.
“Aaron,” she called, “go find your room. It’s up the stairs, third door on the left.”
The boy walked numbly up the stairs, hesitating when he reached the top. The carpet looked too nice for his muddy shoes. He glanced back, then kept walking. The room was empty, but she gasped anyway. It was huge.
He meandered towards the window. It was snowing outside. He shivered and reached for curtains that weren’t there. Then he, and everything else, faded to darkness.
She blinked, confused, and when she opened her eyes the world was bright again. He was in the same room, but now it had a bed, curtains, a dresser, a bookshelf. All were delicately crafted, and looked as if they cost more money than this boy had ever seen in his life…Aaron was hacking at the bedframe with a tiny pocketknife. She frowned.
The woman from before opened the door without knocking. She saw the boy and her expression darkened. “Aaron,” she said warningly. He looked up and glared at her. “Give it to me.” Slowly, he handed her the small knife he’d been using. As soon as it touched her hand, she snatched it away and tucked it into a pocket. “Who gave it to you?”
Aaron looked at the floor. “Siel,” he muttered.
The woman cursed. “I told you to stay away from her.”
Aaron looked back up at her, meeting her eyes with a glare. “It’s not my fault! Dad told her to watch me.”
The woman cursed again. “I will speak to him.” She crouched until she was the same level as the boy. “But you listen here,” she said. “You obey me, not that idiot of a man.”
“Why should I?” Aaron snapped.
Her eyes widened. “What did you say to me?”
He trembled, but stuck his chin out defiantly. “Why should I? You’re not even my mom.”
“Your mother is dead,” the woman hissed. “And even if she were alive, your father knows better than to marry someone like that.”
“He should have known better than to marry someone like you,” Aaron muttered quietly. Not quietly enough. The woman hit him so quickly that the watching spirit didn’t see it, only saw Aaron recoil and hold his hand up to his face. He started to cry.
“Stay in here,” the woman said coldly, “until I return for you.”
Then it was dark.
Now Aaron was sitting on a stiff gray couch. She floated closer, wondering if she could speak to him, when she heard a door shut behind her. A man with thick brown hair and a beard stepped in. He had the boy’s eyes.
Aaron looked shocked. “Dad!” He said, leaping to his feet.
“Sit down, son,” the man said. He wasn’t smiling. Slowly, Aaron did. “You have a responsibility, Aaron. To me. To our business. To your mother.”
“She’s not—”
“You are to respect her!” The boy’s father shouted. “Do you understand?”
“But she says such mean things about you,” Aaron whispered. His father’s face softened.
“Do you know why I married her?” Aaron shook his head. “Well, it isn’t because she loves me. And it isn’t because I love her. I don’t love her, not like I did your mother. But marrying her keeps our family safe.”
Aaron frowned. “Safe from who?”
“From her family.”
Darkness.
Aaron was always surrounded by people. Teachers, family, his father’s colleagues, nurses. But no friends. He sat at a table, struggling to shuffle a deck of cards.
“This is stupid,” he muttered. “Why do I have to do this?”
An older boy, perhaps 17, laughed. “Your father’s very important. Do you know how it’ll look if his own son can’t even cheat properly? Try again.”
Darkness.
Aaron was in an alley, struggling against someone in a dark hoodie.
Darkness.
He was sitting next to a beautiful girl, his cheeks faintly red. The spirit snickered as they struggled to converse.
Darkness.
Aaron was at an auction. He sat next to his father and stepmother.
“They’re here,” his father muttered. “Checkmate.”
Aaron’s eyes snapped to the entrance, where several people were entering…including the beautiful girl. He stood up.
His stepmother laughed lightly. “Sit down, Aaron. You don’t need to pretend for her anymore. They’re done for.”
“You can’t–”
“We can,” His father said sharply, “and we will. Now sit. You’re making a scene.”
Aaron gave him a cold glance and walked across the room. “Audrey,” he murmured to the girl. “Come with me.” She looked at her parents, then winked and followed him out into a small side hallway.
“What?” She asked, sounding annoyed. “Aaron, I know it was fake. You don’t have to apologize or anything, that’s just the way our world is.”
Aaron grimaced. “I’m not here to apologize, though I’d like to do that too. Listen, Audrey.” He licked his lips. “You need to leave. My dad’s going to get rid of your whole family. I don’t know how but he’s going to do it tonight.”
She blinked, understanding. “You’re trying to get rid of us,” she said. “You want us out of the auction and out of the underworld.”
Aaron looked at her, shocked. “No, wha–no!”
“Why would you tell me?” Audrey shot back. “If this was real, then why would you tell your enemy? And don’t say because we were together. That was fake, and we both knew it.”
“Well maybe it wasn’t,” Aaron shouted. “Maybe it was more than that to me.”
Audrey blinked. For the first time, she looked caught off guard. Then she shook her head, disgusted. “Oh, you’re good,” she mumbled. “Very good. Nice move.”
Aaron hit her then. The spirit who watched flinched back. He looked faintly familiar in that moment, his face all twisted with rage he couldn’t contain. Audrey gasped, then turned and walked firmly back into the auction, chin held high. “Fine!” Aaron called after her. “I hope you die with the rest of them.”
He turned and ran outside, climbing into his car. He gasped for breath, then carefully pulled out his phone. 911. Three digits the spirit had seen him warned never to call.
“There’s an auction,” he said into the phone. “Tons of illegal activity.” He carefully filled them in on the address, the details, anything else they wanted to know. Then he hung up and started to drive. He drove for a long time, through the city and fields.
Then, abruptly, there was darkness.
He was in a parking lot. A parking lot she recognized well. He muttered several words that made the spirit wince.
“Why not,” he finally said, laughing darkly. “Why not. They’re all gone, they’ll kill me if they find me. Might as well go out with a bang, right? Might as well finally make someone hurt the way they deserve to…”
He pulled something from under his seat. A slim black handgun. Then a second, which he tucked into a bag. And a third.
Grinning, he walked into the school.
He opened the first door he saw. A scream answered him, and then another, and then there was a chorus of them, all mixing in a terrible cacophony of sound. One girl didn’t scream. The children started to run, to panic, to hide. The girl who did not scream struggled to turn her wheelchair.
A shot rang out.
Another.
Another.
Aaron had killed before. He’d seen blood smeared in dirty alleys and busy casinos. But this country school knew nothing of death. These spoiled children knew nothing of his world, and with his envy their blood trickled slowly across the clean white tiles.
He stormed through the classrooms, leaving a sticky trail of red behind him.
Should he be feeling bad?
Should he be feeling numb?
Certainly he shouldn’t be feeling this good.
This…
Alive.
Another shot.
Another life.
It was over so much faster than he expected.
All at once, he had one bullet left. He opened a new door. Children were huddled in a corner behind a pile of mismatched desks.
He grinned at them.
Placed the gun to his head.
Darkness.
<><><><>
She was in front of him. She floated on silky, feathered wings, her mangled legs suddenly whole and new.
“You’re Aaron,” she said.
“You’re Luci.”
A beat.
“You killed me.”
Another beat.
“I know.”
“Do you know what it did to him?” She didn’t look angry. She didn’t raise her voice, didn’t condemn him, didn’t even condescend. She just sounded heartbroken. An image floated through Aaron’s mind. Luci’s father, weeping alone beside a fresh grave that matched three older ones. “I didn’t need me to live,” she said. “But he needed me to.”
Aaron swallowed. He looked down towards the ground that wasn’t there. “I didn’t know,” he whispered.
“You…didn’t know?”
“I made a mistake,” he amended.
“A mistake.”
“What do you want me to say?” Aaron snapped. “I killed you, and the rest of them too, and now I’ll pay for it forever. Do you want me to apologize? Do you want me to grovel and beg you to punish me?” He sneered at her, as if daring her to get angry.
“I don’t want anything from you,” the angel said.
“Stop it!” The scream tore from his hoarse throat, louder than he’d expected.
“Stop what?” Luci blinked at him, eyes strangely kind. He hated her for it. “Aaron,” she said quietly, “do you care that we died?”
“Of course I care,” he snapped.
“Why?”
“Because–because you were all just kids. Because you had so much potential. Because–because I couldn’t see you as people, before. Because all of a sudden you have a story and a life and now it’s over and I did it.”
“Do you feel that guilt for the rest of them?”
“I–” He looked away, unable to answer.
“Do you feel it?” Luci’s voice was passionate but not angry. “Do you feel it for Anna, who was going to go on a cruise the next week? Do you feel it for Sam, who had a soccer game that night? Do you feel it for Sophie, who had 4 older brothers who would have done anything to protect her? We all had stories, Aaron! Do you feel it for the rest of them?”
“Stop!” Aaron shouted, squeezing his eyes shut. Faces greeted him. “Stop it,” he whispered.
“Our stories will never be finished,” Luci said. “Because of what you’ve done, we’ve gone from people to numbers. A statistic is all we can ever be.”
There was a long moment of quiet. “I can’t apologize,” Aaron realized. “I can’t make them matter.” Luci blinked at him silently. Somehow, she still didn’t condemn him. “I can’t help but see it as a gift,” he continued, horrified. “That world is a terrible place. Now they’re free.” He shook his head, suddenly overwhelmed with disgust and hatred. “I deserve so much worse than death.”
“You do,” Luci agreed. “The others wanted to punish you so terribly. I told them no.”
Aaron looked at her. “Why?”
“I’m not sure yet,” she murmured.
He hesitated. “Do you hate me?”
“Yes.”
“Then why?”
She took a moment to think, and Aaron felt himself shaking. A tiny voice in his mind whispered, I want to go home. Idiot, he told it. We don’t have a home. We don’t deserve one. “It’s because you’re a person,” Luci finally said. “Because I see you, and I can’t let them not see you. I can’t let them forget that you’re human. That you have a story.”
“Sounds…pretentious,” Aaron mumbled.
“It does,” Luci murmured. “It isn’t, though.”
There was silence for a long moment. It was unnaturally peaceful. It itched at Aaron. Quiet was such a rarity. It was a dangerous novelty; quiet meant that the only sounds were his thoughts, and thoughts were the worst weapon of all. He never really had time to think. Now he wondered if that had been intentional. There was always a job to focus on, so why would he bother wondering if it was right? Now he did, and it hurt. Had he ever done a truly good thing in his entire life, even one? Had he ever wanted to? The world was better without him in it, and with that thought the peace grew stronger.
“So what happens now?” He asked.
“Now you have a choice to make.”
Aaron blinked. “What do you mean?”
“Well…” Luci hesitated. “We made a choice. A dangerous one. A difficult one.” She met his eyes, and she smiled. It felt like a gentle rainfall after days of heat. It felt like loving wind and swaying trees. It felt like home and it felt like Luci. It felt like what he’d always wanted and never had. It made him want to rip himself to pieces in an attempt to find something that was worthy to even imagine it. “We forgive you.”
“What?!”
“We forgive you,” Luci repeated, and for the first time in years Aaron felt his eyes begin to sting and his throat begin to tighten. “You don’t deserve it. But this is the way that we choose to live, and it leaves you with your own choice.”
“I—” Aaron’s throat closed up tighter. His mind seemed completely blank. Were there any words to be said? A tear spilled over and down his cheek. He didn’t move. He was terrified that if he did he’d curl into a ball so tight he’d never come out. Another tear fell.
“Do you believe you can do good?” How gentle Luci was. How kind. How filled with grace. I killed her.
“I don’t know,” Aaron whispered.
“Do you want to?”
He met her eyes, then closed his own. Did he? Her smile floated back to him. “Yes.”
“We’re sending you back,” Luci said. “You’re going to live, and you’re going to live well.”
Aaron swallowed. Nodded. “What do I need to choose, then?
Luci cocked her head. “You choose what you’ll do with your life. You don’t need to tell me, but you need to choose now how you’ll live.”
Aaron nodded again, hating his trembling lip. “Why are you doing this?”
“It’s like I said,” Luci murmured. “You’re a person. And me, I’m a dreamer. I look at you and I see dreams that haven’t had a chance to form.” She smiled a smile that was sadder than weeping. “We weren't the only potential that died that day.”
“You really believe that.” Aaron wasn’t sure if it was a question or the awe he couldn’t quite express, but Luci nodded.
“I believe in what you can be, once we rip out your seams.”
“My…”
“Your seams. The places where you are held together. It’ll hurt. It’ll hurt terribly, because you need to be ripped apart stitch by stitch. You’ll fall apart and lose everything you thought made you who you are. And then, if it’s possible, you’ll grow. And I believe that you’ll grow into something incredible.”
“Right,” Aaron whispered, overwhelmed.
“Right,” Luci repeated. Her eyes were bright and determined as her tone became businesslike. “Here’s how this works. Your gun misfired, leaving you with severe head injuries, but survivable. You’re only 15, which makes it a possibility that they’ll let you live. A very, very slim one, but it’s there, and that’s all we need. We can’t affect the world too strongly, but we can tilt it just right. You’ll never be free, but you’ll be alive, and they’ll want to turn you. They already want to spin you into a tragic fairytale, so your job is to change. You will never be the hero. But you don’t have to be the villain.”
<><><><>
The beginning was the hardest.
It took time to recover. He was consistently being guarded, and the nurses always watched him with something between terror and loathing. He didn’t have his phone, but even if he did he knew what he’d find. They let him watch the news, after all.
The underworld’s oldest and most dangerous criminals caught in the most successful raid anyone could remember. Stolen riches thought long gone were found and returned to their owners. And all this on the eve of the day that the son of one of these very criminals committed an unprecedented school shooting. 8 dead. 19 injured.
He trembled every time he saw it. When he couldn't stand to see his face and the faces of those he loved plastered around the news anymore, he turned it off. But just sitting was worse. Children danced through his mind. When he slept, he dreamt of Luci. Sometimes she was an angel. Sometimes she was a bloody corpse. Occasionally she encouraged him. Often she condemned him.
He started to wonder what was real. Had he imagined his talk with her? Who was he to think that she’d really give him another chance?
But they let him live.
Unforgivable, the judges said.
Theirs are not the voices that matter, the angel shot back.
Darkness.
Power is intoxicating, and admiration is addicting. In a strange and terrible twist, Aaron abruptly had both.
It was a new kind of difficulty. They put him in with dozens of other teenagers who knew exactly who he was. They tried to rope him into the hierarchy, to force him to lead them. After he got in a few fights, they left him alone. But they respected him. If he mentioned in passing a fondness for cards, he’d wake up the next morning with a faintly worn deck in his shoe. If a new kid came in who didn’t understand the unwritten rules, Aaron never had to explain them. Within a week, the newcomer always seemed to fall into line.
Intoxicating. Addicting.
Aaron wanted it.
He wanted it so badly it hurt, and the only thing keeping it out of reach was a promise he was no longer sure he’d made.
And then there were the adults. They treated him like a wild animal they were desperate to control. Some were afraid. Most were simply angry.
“You shouldn’t be alive,” one of the guards muttered. I know. “They should have killed you.” I know. “You will never amount to anything.” I know.
You don’t have to be the villain.
I already am.
Darkness.
They took him to see his father, once. Aaron saw him through a thick glass pane. His father yelled and raved and told him he should have just died.
Aaron couldn’t answer him. He couldn’t say a single word.
Darkness.
He was in line for food. Chin down. Eyes up. It was important that he didn’t seem rebellious. But he couldn’t ignore them, either. They were always watching him, and so he watched back. It was survival…he saw her for a split second, out of the corner of his eye, and whirled. He sprinted over and spun Audrey around…to see that it wasn’t her. The girl facing him looked terrified.
He turned away, walking numbly down the hall. Too many people were watching. His room was peacefully deserted, so he walked to the back and sat on his bunk.
You don’t have to be the villain…
But it was so much easier. It was what they expected. It was what they wanted. Surely nothing he did now would really matter.
We weren't the only potential that died that day…
“Fine,” he growled at the floor. “Fine.”
Darkness.
Aaron started writing.
And writing.
And writing.
It was with a nervous heart that he brought his notebook to his skeptical caretaker. She flipped through it. At first her face was as flat and cold as usual. Then her brows creased. Then her eyes widened. “What is this?”
“It’s…” Aaron shrugged uncomfortably. “It’s something I can do.”
She nodded slowly. “You’re—you’re trying to--?”
He nodded. Chin down. Eyes up. That’s how you survive. Slowly, he lifted his head. “I am. And I’m going to keep trying.” I’m not just surviving. I can’t.
She pursed her lips. “Do you have any idea how hard this is going to be?”
Aaron nodded again.
“But you still want to try?”
“I guess I do,” Aaron muttered. Something flashed in his eyes. Anger, or maybe determination. “You don’t have to help me. But I’ll find a way to do it anyway, and I don’t think you want to see how.”
“Is that a threat?” To her credit, she sounded neither afraid nor angry.
Aaron winced, remembering he was walking on eggshells. “No,” he said, eyes on the floor. “It’s a promise. Let me change, and I swear I won’t disappoint you.” Or you, Luci.
I’m trying.
Darkness.
It took longer than he wanted. It took meetings and conversations. It took a carefully composed mask that he couldn’t let down. Not in his room, not in the showers. All it would take was one second of anger and he’d lose any progress he’d started to make. So he only screamed in his dreams. He threw his anger into a messy notebook, then tore the pages to shreds. He could never let them see.
But it worked. Painfully slowly, it worked. After nearly three months, they gave him a guitar, and he started to play. He changed his thoughts to notes and hesitantly coaxed them into melodies.
It was ugly.
It was miserable.
Several pages were ripped apart that first week.
And yet, he learned.
You don’t have to be the villain.
Darkness.
They started to hate him. The other kids. He got into more fights. It worried him, what the adults would think, so he didn’t fight back. He hated himself for it, and so did they.
“This,” the warden said, “is quite the turn of events.” Aaron didn’t say anything. Chin down. Eyes up. Never let your guard down. Survive. “When you got here,” he continued, “they worshiped you. Now I think they’d kill you if given the chance. Why?”
Aaron shrugged.
“Not good enough,” the man warned.
Aaron let out a breath, feeling cracks spread across his mask. “I’ll tell you why,” he spat. “It’s because I’m becoming something they can never be.”
“And what is that?”
“Someone who’s strong enough to say no.”
Darkness.
Luci watched him.
He was sitting nervously on the edge of his bed, tapping his foot to the rhythm of a song only he could hear. He didn’t see it, but the others in the room were glancing at him. A few with anger and hatred, yes, but most seemed purely envious.
His eyes were open, it was dangerous to close them, but his mind was far away. The fingers of his right hand twitched, as if plucking at strings.
Ms. Jensen, his caretaker, stepped into the room, heels clicking. The others stiffened. He didn’t move.
“Aaron,” she said sharply.
He blinked, and his mind was back. He stood up and followed her.
Darkness.
Aaron was raised on economics and eloquence.
Luci was raised on moonlight and magic.
And for the first time, Aaron began to understand it.
He saw the magic.
He saw it in the faces of everyone who surrounded him.
He saw it in perfectly formed letters, and ink on paper.
But more than that, he heard it.
He heard it in the cadence of voices, in the notes of alarm bells, in the words that fit together as if they’d been made for each other. He heard it in the falling rain he’d never see, and in scattered laughter that was far too rare.
So he wrote about it.
Then he played about it.
Then he sang about it.
And that was magic too.
Darkness.
His caretaker seemed almost to get younger as time passed. She was warmer. It was like she’d remembered how to care. Against his better judgment, Aaron found himself leaning on her. Working with her. Asking questions instead of arguing.
“Aaron,” she said quietly.
“Yeah?”
“We need to talk.” He followed her into her office. She looked nervous. That was odd.
“What’s up?” He asked.
She hesitated for a long moment. “You’ve been here almost two years.” Aaron nodded. “You’re 17.” He nodded again, feeling a sinking sense of dread. “You know that…well. Your being here at all is a miracle. But you can’t stay once you turn 18.” Aaron looked away. It had been on his mind far too often, recently. “Since no one knows your birthday, they’ll take you on the third anniversary of the day you got in here.”
“Is there anything we can do?” Aaron blurted.
She looked up. She met his eyes. She let out a breath. “No.”
Aaron felt as if he’d been hit in the gut. He struggled to breathe. “I—I won’t be able to play there,” he whispered.
“No,” his caretaker said. “It’ll—it’ll be a lot worse.” Her eyes seemed faintly misty. She really had changed. “You don’t belong there.”
Aaron spent a long moment quiet, brow furrowed. He wouldn’t be able to continue the way he had been. These years had been a gift, but they were far too short. He would spend the rest of his life in whichever prison they left him in to rot.
You choose what you’ll do with your life.
He’d made that choice. He wasn’t going to stop now. It was just a matter of how he continued.
“I’d better get to work, then,” he said. “Is there anything else?” She blinked at him quizzically, and he shrugged. “Ms. Jensen, I knew I couldn’t stay here forever when I started this. I guess it was just a matter of time. We have one year. Did you think I was going to spend it wasting around and dreading what I can’t change? Nah.”
He smiled at her. It felt good to smile. He’d have to do it more often. “I’ll do as much as I can this year. I’ll have to learn to write sheet music. I can still write in there, yeah?” At her nod, Aaron continued. “Then I’ll keep writing songs. Maybe a book or something, I don’t know; I’ll have years. I’ll send them to you. You don’t—you don’t have to do anything with it, unless you want to. I can’t ask you to keep spending so much effort on me. You’ve already done so much, and—”
“Aaron,” Ms. Jensen said.
Aaron stopped. “Yeah.”
“You’re a really good kid.” That hit harder than he expected it to. How long had it been since anyone had said that? Guilt burned through him.
“I killed eight people,” he muttered to the ground.
“I didn’t say you were a perfect kid,” she said. “And I didn’t say you should walk free. But you’re a really, really good kid. Of course I’ll keep helping you.”
“Right.” Aaron’s throat tightened. “Thank you.”
She smiled. “One mistake doesn’t define you. No matter what they tell you in there. You’re more than the worst thing you’ve ever done.”
Darkness.
Chin down.
Eyes up.
Darkness.
We weren’t the only potential that died that day.
Darkness.
You don’t have to be the villain.
I’m not.
Darkness.
Not all angels are in Heaven.
Not all angels have wings.
‘Cause you,
You’re right here,
On this earth beside me,
And you’re an angel just the same.
Not all magic is in wands,
Not all magic is a spell.
‘Cause you,
You’re laughing,
On this earth beside me,
And that’s magic just the same.
Oh,
It’s magic just the same.
Your quiet smile,
Your glowing eyes.
Not all angels are kind,
Not all magic is lies.
‘Cause you,
You ripped out my seams,
And you,
You let me grow,
And you’re an angel,
Just the same.
Aaron smiled, sliding the page into an envelope.
Darkness.
And here's just part 4 if you don't want to read the whole thing lol, I know it's way longer than most stuff I post here.
The beginning was the hardest.
It took time to recover. He was consistently being guarded, and the nurses always watched him with something between terror and loathing. He didn’t have his phone, but even if he did he knew what he’d find. They let him watch the news, after all.
The underworld’s oldest and most dangerous criminals caught in the most successful raid anyone could remember. Stolen riches thought long gone were found and returned to their owners. And all this on the eve of the day that the son of one of these very criminals committed an unprecedented school shooting. 8 dead. 19 injured.
He trembled every time he saw it. When he couldn't stand to see his face and the faces of those he loved plastered around the news anymore, he turned it off. But just sitting was worse. Children danced through his mind. When he slept, he dreamt of Luci. Sometimes she was an angel. Sometimes she was a bloody corpse. Occasionally she encouraged him. Often she condemned him.
He started to wonder what was real. Had he imagined his talk with her? Who was he to think that she’d really give him another chance?
But they let him live.
Unforgivable, the judges said.
Theirs are not the voices that matter, the angel shot back.
Darkness.
Power is intoxicating, and admiration is addicting. In a strange and terrible twist, Aaron abruptly had both.
It was a new kind of difficulty. They put him in with dozens of other teenagers who knew exactly who he was. They tried to rope him into the hierarchy, to force him to lead them. After he got in a few fights, they left him alone. But they respected him. If he mentioned in passing a fondness for cards, he’d wake up the next morning with a faintly worn deck in his shoe. If a new kid came in who didn’t understand the unwritten rules, Aaron never had to explain them. Within a week, the newcomer always seemed to fall into line.
Intoxicating. Addicting.
Aaron wanted it.
He wanted it so badly it hurt, and the only thing keeping it out of reach was a promise he was no longer sure he’d made.
And then there were the adults. They treated him like a wild animal they were desperate to control. Some were afraid. Most were simply angry.
“You shouldn’t be alive,” one of the guards muttered. I know. “They should have killed you.” I know. “You will never amount to anything.” I know.
You don’t have to be the villain.
I already am.
Darkness.
They took him to see his father, once. Aaron saw him through a thick glass pane. His father yelled and raved and told him he should have just died.
Aaron couldn’t answer him. He couldn’t say a single word.
Darkness.
He was in line for food. Chin down. Eyes up. It was important that he didn’t seem rebellious. But he couldn’t ignore them, either. They were always watching him, and so he watched back. It was survival…he saw her for a split second, out of the corner of his eye, and whirled. He sprinted over and spun Audrey around…to see that it wasn’t her. The girl facing him looked terrified.
He turned away, walking numbly down the hall. Too many people were watching. His room was peacefully deserted, so he walked to the back and sat on his bunk.
You don’t have to be the villain…
But it was so much easier. It was what they expected. It was what they wanted. Surely nothing he did now would really matter.
We weren't the only potential that died that day…
“Fine,” he growled at the floor. “Fine.”
Darkness.
Aaron started writing.
And writing.
And writing.
It was with a nervous heart that he brought his notebook to his skeptical caretaker. She flipped through it. At first her face was as flat and cold as usual. Then her brows creased. Then her eyes widened. “What is this?”
“It’s…” Aaron shrugged uncomfortably. “It’s something I can do.”
She nodded slowly. “You’re—you’re trying to change?”
He nodded. Chin down. Eyes up. That’s how you survive. Slowly, he lifted his head. “I am. And I’m going to keep trying.” I’m not just surviving. I can’t.
She pursed her lips. “Do you have any idea how hard this is going to be?”
Aaron nodded again.
“But you still want to try?”
“I guess I do,” Aaron muttered. Something flashed in his eyes. Anger, or maybe determination. “You don’t have to help me. But I’ll find a way to do it anyway, and I don’t think you want to see how.”
“Is that a threat?” To her credit, she sounded neither afraid nor angry.
Aaron winced, remembering he was walking on eggshells. “No,” he said, eyes on the floor. “It’s a promise. Let me change, and I swear I won’t disappoint you.” Or you, Luci. I’m trying.
Darkness.
It took longer than he wanted. It took meetings and conversations. It took a carefully composed mask that he couldn’t let down. Not in his room, not in the showers. All it would take was one second of anger and he’d lose any progress he’d started to make. So he only screamed in his dreams. He threw his anger into a messy notebook, then tore the pages to shreds. He could never let them see.
But it worked. Painfully slowly, it worked. After nearly three months, they gave him a guitar, and he started to play. He changed his thoughts to notes and hesitantly coaxed them into melodies.
It was ugly.
It was miserable.
Several pages were ripped apart that first week.
And yet, he learned.
You don’t have to be the villain.
Darkness.
They started to hate him. The other kids. He got into more fights. It worried him, what the adults would think, so he didn’t fight back. He hated himself for it, and so did they.
“This,” the warden said, “is quite the turn of events.” Aaron didn’t say anything. Chin down. Eyes up. Never let your guard down. Survive. “When you got here,” he continued, “they worshiped you. Now I think they’d kill you if given the chance. Why?”
Aaron shrugged.
“Not good enough,” the man warned.
Aaron let out a breath, feeling cracks spread across his mask. “I’ll tell you why,” he spat. “It’s because I’m becoming something they can never be.”
“And what is that?”
“Someone who’s strong enough to say no.”
Darkness.
Luci watched him.
He was sitting nervously on the edge of his bed, tapping his foot to the rhythm of a song only he could hear. He didn’t see it, but the others in the room were glancing at him. A few with anger and hatred, yes, but most seemed purely envious.
His eyes were open, it was dangerous to close them, but his mind was far away. The fingers of his right hand twitched, as if plucking at strings.
Ms. Jensen, his caretaker, stepped into the room, heels clicking. The others stiffened. He didn’t move.
“Aaron,” she said sharply.
He blinked, and his mind was back. He stood up and followed her.
Darkness.
Aaron was raised on economics and eloquence.
Luci was raised on moonlight and magic.
And for the first time, Aaron began to understand it.
He saw the magic.
He saw it in the faces of everyone who surrounded him.
He saw it in perfectly formed letters, and ink on paper.
But more than that, he heard it.
He heard it in the cadence of voices, in the notes of alarm bells, in the words that fit together as if they’d been made for each other. He heard it in the falling rain he’d never see, and in scattered laughter that was far too rare.
So he wrote about it.
Then he played about it.
Then he sang about it.
And that was magic too.
Darkness.
His caretaker seemed almost to get younger as time passed. She was warmer. It was like she’d remembered how to care. Against his better judgment, Aaron found himself leaning on her. Working with her. Asking questions instead of arguing.
“Aaron,” she said quietly.
“Yeah?”
“We need to talk.” He followed her into her office. She looked nervous. That was odd.
“What’s up?” He asked.
She hesitated for a long moment. “You’ve been here almost two years.” Aaron nodded. “You’re 17.” He nodded again, feeling a sinking sense of dread. “You know that…well. Your being here at all is a miracle. But all miracles aside, you can’t stay once you turn 18.” Aaron looked away. It had been on his mind far too often, recently. “Since no one knows your birthday, they’ll take you on the third anniversary of the day you got in here.”
“Is there anything we can do?” Aaron blurted.
She looked up. She met his eyes. She let out a breath. “No.”
Aaron felt as if he’d been hit in the gut. He struggled to breathe. “I—I won’t be able to play there,” he whispered.
“No,” his caretaker said. “It’ll—it’ll be a lot worse.” Her eyes seemed faintly misty. She really had changed. “You don’t belong there.”
Aaron spent a long moment quiet, brow furrowed. He wouldn’t be able to continue the way he had been. These years had been a gift, but they were far too short. He would spend the rest of his life in whichever prison they left him in to rot.
You choose what you’ll do with your life.
He’d made that choice. He wasn’t going to stop now. It was just a matter of how he continued.
“I’d better get to work, then,” he said. “Is there anything else?” She blinked at him quizzically, and he shrugged. “Ms. Jensen, I knew I couldn’t stay here forever when I started this. I guess it was just a matter of time. We have one year. Did you think I was going to spend it wasting around and dreading what I can’t change? Nah.”
He smiled at her. It felt good to smile. He’d have to do it more often. “I’ll do as much as I can this year. I’ll have to learn to write sheet music. I can still write in there, yeah?” At her nod, Aaron continued. “Then I’ll keep writing songs. Maybe a book or something, I don’t know; I’ll have years. I’ll send them to you. You don’t—you don’t have to do anything with it, unless you want to. I can’t ask you to keep spending so much effort on me. You’ve already done so much, and—”
“Aaron,” Ms. Jensen said.
Aaron stopped. “Yeah.”
“You’re a really good kid.” That hit harder than he expected it to. How long had it been since anyone had said that? Guilt burned through him.
“I killed eight people,” he muttered to the ground.
“I didn’t say you were a perfect kid,” she said. “And I didn’t say you should walk free. But you’re a really, really good kid. Of course I’ll keep helping you.”
“Right.” Aaron’s throat tightened. “Thank you.”
She smiled. “One mistake doesn’t define you. No matter what they tell you in there. You’re more than the worst thing you’ve ever done.”
Darkness.
Chin down.
Eyes up.
Darkness.
We weren’t the only potential that died that day.
Darkness.
You don’t have to be the villain.
I’m not.
Darkness.
Not all angels are in Heaven.
Not all angels have wings.
‘Cause you,
You’re right here,
On this earth beside me,
And you’re an angel just the same.
Not all magic is in wands,
Not all magic is a spell.
‘Cause you,
You’re laughing,
On this earth beside me,
And that’s magic just the same.
Oh,
It’s magic just the same.
Your quiet smile,
Your glowing eyes.
Not all angels are kind,
Not all magic is lies.
‘Cause you,
You ripped out my seams,
And you,
You let me grow,
And you’re an angel,
Just the same.
Aaron smiled, sliding the page into an envelope.
Darkness.
Incredible!
1 -
6 minutes ago, Edema Rue said:
A knife?
Exp’s home address?
Umm…
A few million dollars?
A dog?
To be a bestselling author?
I need a lot of things actually
1. Ok, you’ll finds left you one inside your house (definitely not one of your knives that you already had, why would you think that?)
2. I can’t help you there
3-4. I do not have the ability to gift those
5. I think you can be! You got this, and I’ll happily keep reading what you write!
2 -
1 minute ago, Edema Rue said:
THAT WAS NOT TO GET ARRESTED
NO MURDER IS TOO HARD
I JUST HAVE TO DO IT WITHOUT GETTING CAUGHT
That was…
Tearable.
*winces*
Alright, then I’m here to help! What do you need?
0 -
6 minutes ago, Edema Rue said:
Murdering people who eat snails.
Painfully.
And slowly.
And without feeling bad.
Remember the New Year’s resolution…
0 -
25 minutes ago, Anguished_One said:
Hi! I just lost thanks to @Cataclysm
so while I'm here!
@Part Of The Narrative, @SmilingPanda19, @Weaver of Lies, @WhyEverNot_8, @Kajsa, @The Wandering Wizard, @shortcake, @Through The Living Glass, @Shardwatcher01, @Pineap-spider, @Mat, @The Halcyon Girl, @Immortal Platypus, @Lotus Blossom, @The Aspiring Archivist, @The Bookwyrm, @Block, @Wierdo, @Silver Phantom, @Thaidakar the Ghostblood, @Ancient Elantrian, @Edema Rue, @Little j, @Canada Lover, @Ati16, @The Sibling, @Aeoryi, @InfiniteInsanity, @Faerie Braids, @LightRinger, @Spark of Hope, @Medium, @Crowstavern, @Dead, @Mistrunner, @Creml1ng, @Mini Eddie, @Cinnamon, @TheRavenHasLanded, @Lunamor, @Scars of Hathsin, @RoyalBeeMage, @danex, @Ravenclawjedi42, @Ookla the Forgotten, @Doomslug Doomslug Doomslug, @Cash67, @Just a Silvereye, @S. Stormy.
YOU'RE WELCOME!!
Thank you!
1 -
5 minutes ago, Edema Rue said:
I wanted to practice writing with a different tone, so I did, in the form of a really weird letter. Anyway, thought y'all might enjoy it
I ain’t afraid of the dark.
I never have been.
Probably never will be.
Death is the same way. I mean, everyone always says that must be a lie. Y’know, that anyone can talk big, but folks can’t really embrace death. But not me. It sounds kinda stupid, sayin’ it like that. But I’m really not. Cause, see, I know what’s waiting on the other side. I know exactly who’ll be waiting for me. And I trust Him, y’know? I guess that sounds even more stupid to you lot. But it’s true, even if no one else ever believes it. I’m not afraid of death. In fact, I’ve always sort of looked forward to it. Got suicidal when I was younger, you know, because I figured if there was so much better than here (and I know that it is) then what was I doing stayin’ around here for? Man, it really do sound crazy on paper, don’t it?
And I ain’t afraid of the dark. That’s another one they always say has got to be a lie. People need light, and all that. Well, I’m not one of them scientists; all I know is what I feel. And the dark, it don’t make me feel scared. It’s peaceful. It’s safe. I like the dark, same as I like death.
Nah, what scares me is what happens before. Death is the same way. See, I know that if I died, I’d be home free. Nice an’ easy. But what if I didn’t? What if I messed up and had to go on livin’, for years, maybe, and people’d always be watchin’, see? Or if I got hurt real bad, and then I couldn’t really live or die. That’s what scares me. To be stuck between. Cause some people, they finds themselves homes here. And some people, they’re homes are just on the other side of death. It’s jus’ a door, see? An’ as far as I see it, I could find a home either place. It don’t matter much to me. But gettin’ stuck…yeah. That matters. That matters a whole lot.
But the dark is different. That sounds pretty obvious, I guess, but it’s true. I ain’t scared of the dark, and I ain’t scared of death. I’m scared of what happens before death, sure. And I’m scared of what happens in the dark. Before sleepin’. My mama used to tell me that I was a real creative soul, an’ I believe her.
Cause that’s the thing about the dark.
It’s peaceful, sure.
But it’s blank.
An’ blank, to my head, is a canvas.
Now I ain’t some painter. I can’t draw much more than a stick figure, an’ you see here that I ain’t much of a writer neither. Not too good with words, see. So I never actually used no canvas, and I don’t do that whole “blank page” thing. I can’t make no art, not for someone else. But in my head…man, you should see all them things I can make. And the darkness, that’s when they get made. Cause it’s a canvas.
They told you I ain’t been sleepin’ much, an’ that’s true. Probably the truest thing they’ve told you about me. But they ain’t told you why, or if so they lied, an’ I guess that’s what I’m tryin’ to fix here. That’s why I’m writin’ a whole letter an’ everything, see. They probably told you that I’m scared of the dark, since I almost always keep my light on. I really don’t sleep all that often. So I had to tell you that that ain’t it. I like the dark, I like it a whole lot. But the longer I think about it, the more I think I am scared. It’s jus’ not the dark that gets to me. I like sleepin’ too. But I don’t really try all that much, an’ I think it’s cause I am scared. I’m scared of me. It’s crazy, man. I’m scared of what I become in the dark.
The lights all turn off, an’ my mind starts thinkin’, an’ all at once there it is. The canvas. My head starts makin’ all them things up, an’ then I can’t stop it; I’m just along for the ride. An’ some of those things, they really do scare me. It’s like my head just wants to make people hurt. That ain’t me, I know it, but my head sure do like to picture it. So I stopped sleeping. I stopped even tryin’ to. I guess I must’ve been thinkin’ that if I stayed up ‘til I jus’ couldn’t anymore, I’d fall asleep no problem. I wouldn’t have to worry about that whole before part. Only it’s hard to think when you ain’t sleepin’. It really is.
An’ the next thing I know, I started havin’ these dreams! It’s crazy, man. Here I am, gettin’ myself as tired as I possibly can, an’ I ain’t even gettin’ a good night’s rest from it! I’m up all night with these dreams. They probably ain’t told you about them, since they don’t know about them, but they’s been happenin’. Near every night.
They ain’t bad dreams. But they get inside you an’ make you start thinkin’. An’ feelin’. Oh yeah, lot’s of feelin’. Mostly I think it’s been my family, an’ old friends. People I haven’t seen in years. Years, man. That’s a long time to go without your family. I always thought I hated them. Hated all of ‘em, an’ everything about ‘em. That’s how family is, right? You’re all so busy hatin’ each other that you don’t see how much you love ‘em.
I wish I could tell ‘em that in my dreams. It might feel good, you know, to tell them after so long. They deserved better than me, they really did. I ain’t what they wanted. I ain’t what they needed. But they was exactly what I needed, even though I didn’t see it then.
So anyway, I been dreamin’ about them. I been dreamin’ about them a LOT. Any time I sleep. An’ in all these dreams, we’s always fightin’. Every single time, man! Sometimes we just yellin’, but sometimes we got actual weapons and it’s like we all wanna kill each other. An’ sometimes I just watch my brothers tearin’ at each other with just their hands. Crazy, man. It’s crazy.
Man, I’m talkin’ a lot. I didn’t mean to do that. You’re so important an’ all, you’ve probably got all them other things to be doin’, hundreds of ‘em. You probably didn’ even read this. But I hope you will. That’s why I’m writin’ it. ‘Cause I think you might actually read it. You seem like a nice fella, on account of you bein’ willin’ to help me an’ all. Sorry ‘bout talkin’ so much. Anyway, they turnin’ out the lights now. You don’t gotta respond to me, ye really don’t. But I sure hope you’ll be able to help. I miss sleepin’. An’ I’m startin’ to think that this jus’ ain’t normal. Maybe it’s part of the…you know. The other thing they told you ‘bout me. I hope it ain’t.
Guess I'll you, then.
S-318
OoOoOooOoooOooOoooOOOOoOo!
I like it! It’s great!
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14 minutes ago, strmblsd said:
I feel dead..alone I feel like I'm just nothing empty idk it hasn't happened this bad for months... I feel separated from my friends like they are their own whole group...I feel broken
*hugs*
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Very well written indeed!
0 -
1 hour ago, Edema Rue said:
Ok so funny story...
Here's part 3. You'll get part 4 soon, I promise, life is just horrifically crazy right now so we're taking baby steps.
Ripping At Our Seams (3):
She was in front of him. She floated on silky, feathered wings, her mangled legs suddenly whole and new.
“You’re Aaron,” she whispered.
“You’re Luci.”
A beat.
“You killed me.”
Another beat.
“I know.”
“Do you know what it did to him?” She didn’t look angry. She didn’t raise her voice, didn’t condemn him, didn’t even condescend. She just sounded heartbroken. An image floated through Aaron’s mind. Luci’s father, weeping alone beside a fresh grave that matched three older ones. “I didn’t need me to live,” she said. “But he needed me to.”
Aaron swallowed. He looked down towards the ground that wasn’t there. “I didn’t know,” he whispered.
“You…didn’t know?”
“I made a mistake,” he amended.
“A mistake.”
“What do you want me to say?” Aaron snapped. “I killed you, and the rest of them too, and now I’ll pay for it forever. Do you want me to apologize? Do you want me to grovel and beg you to punish me?” He sneered at her, as if daring her to get angry.
“I don’t want anything from you,” the angel said.
“Stop it!” The scream tore from his hoarse throat, louder than he’d expected.
“Stop what?” Luci blinked at him, eyes strangely kind. He hated her for it. “Aaron,” she said quietly, “do you care that we died?”
“Of course I care,” he snapped.
“Why?”
“Because–because you were all just kids. Because you had so much potential. Because I couldn’t see you as people, before. Because all of a sudden you have a story and a life and now it’s over and I did it.”
“Do you feel that guilt for the rest of them?”
“I–” He looked away, unable to answer.
“Do you feel it?” Luci’s voice was passionate but not angry. “Do you feel it for Anna, who was going to go on a cruise the next week? Do you feel it for Sam, who had a soccer game that night? Do you feel it for Sophie, who had 4 older brothers who would have done anything to protect her? We all had stories, Aaron! So do you feel it for the rest of them?”
“Stop!” Aaron shouted, squeezing his eyes shut. Faces greeted him. “Stop it,” he whispered.
“Our stories will never be finished,” Luci said. “Because of what you’ve done, we’ve gone from people to numbers. A statistic is all we can ever be.”
There was a long moment of quiet. “I can’t apologize,” Aaron realized. “I can’t make them matter.” Luci blinked at him silently. Somehow, she still wasn't angry. “I can’t help but see it as a gift,” he continued, horrified. “That world is a terrible place. Now they’re free.” He shook his head, suddenly overwhelmed with disgust and hatred. “I deserve so much worse than death.”
“You do,” Luci agreed. “The others wanted to punish you so terribly. I told them no.”
Aaron looked at her. “Why?”
“I’m not sure yet,” she murmured.
He hesitated. “Do you hate me?”
“Yes.”
“Then why?”
She took a moment to think, and Aaron felt himself shaking. A tiny voice in his mind whispered, I want to go home. Idiot, he told it. We don’t have a home. We don’t deserve one. “It’s because you’re a person,” Luci finally said. “Because I see you, and I can’t let them not see you. I can’t let them forget that you’re human, even though you did it to us.”
“Sounds…pretentious,” Aaron mumbled.
“It does,” Luci murmured. “It isn’t, though.”
There was silence for a long moment. It was unnaturally peaceful. It itched at Aaron. Quiet was such a rarity. It was a dangerous novelty; quiet meant that the only sounds were his thoughts, and thoughts were the worst weapon of all. He never really had time to think. Now he wondered if that had been intentional. There was always a job to focus on, so why would he bother wondering if it was right? Now he did, and it hurt. Had he ever done a truly good thing in his entire life, even one? Had he ever wanted to? The world was better without him in it, and with that thought the peace grew stronger.
“So what happens now?” He asked.
“Now you have a choice to make.”
Aaron blinked. “What do you mean?”
“Well…” Luci hesitated. “We made a choice. A dangerous one. A difficult one.” She met his eyes, and she smiled. It felt like a gentle rainfall after days of heat. It felt like loving wind and swaying trees. It felt like home and it felt like Luci. It felt like what he’d always wanted and never had. It made him want to rip himself to pieces in an attempt to find something that was worthy to see it. “We forgive you.”
“What?!”
“We forgive you,” Luci repeated, and for the first time in years Aaron felt his eyes begin to sting and his throat begin to tighten. “You don’t deserve it. But this is the way that we choose to live, and it leaves you with a choice.”
“I—” Aaron’s throat closed up tighter. His mind seemed completely blank. Were there any words to be said? A tear spilled over and down his cheek. He didn’t move. He was terrified that if he did he’d curl into a ball so tight he’d never come out. Another tear fell.
“Do you believe you can do good?” How gentle Luci was. How kind. How…how filled with grace. I killed her.
“I don’t know,” Aaron whispered.
“Do you want to?”
He met her eyes, then closed his own. Did he? Her smile floated back to him. “Yes.”
“We’re sending you back,” Luci said. “You’re going to live, and you’re going to live well.”
Aaron swallowed. Nodded. “What do I need to choose, then?
Luci cocked her head. “You choose what you’ll do with your life. You don’t need to tell me, but you need to choose now how you’ll live.”
Aaron nodded again, hating his trembling lip. “Why are you doing this?”
“It’s like I said,” Luci murmured. “You’re a person. And me, I’m a dreamer. I look at you and I see dreams that haven’t had a chance to form.” She smiled a smile that was sadder than weeping. “We weren't the only potential that died that day.”
“You really believe that.” Aaron wasn’t sure if it was a question or the awe he couldn’t quite express, but Luci nodded.
“I believe in what you can be, once we rip out your seams.”
“My…”
“Your seams. The places where the pieces of you are held together. It’ll hurt. It’ll hurt terribly, because you need to be ripped apart stitch by stitch. You’ll fall to bits and lose everything you thought made you who you are. And then, if it’s possible, you’ll come back together. And I believe that you’ll grow into something incredible.”
“Right,” Aaron whispered, overwhelmed.
“Right,” Luci repeated. Her eyes were bright and determined as her tone became businesslike. “Here’s how this works. Your gun misfired, leaving you with severe head injuries, but survivable. You’re only 15, which makes it a possibility that they’ll let you live. A very, very slim one, but it’s there, and that’s all we need. We can’t affect the world too strongly, but we can tilt it just right. You’ll never be free, but you’ll be alive, and they’ll want to turn you. They already want to spin you into a tragic fairytale, so your job is to change. You will never be the hero. But you don’t have to be the villain.”
Ooh, I love it! I’m so excited for the next part! It’s so good!
1 -
Just now, Edema Rue said:
Ahh I love it!! Super excited to see what comes next!
Thank you!
0 -
6 hours ago, Just a Silvereye said:
YAAAAY YOU'RE BACK!
This was a really cool read, and I can't wait for the rest!
Btw, I still remembered most of your story even though I haven't read anything from it in months.
Thank you! I’m glad you still remember!
1 -
It's been... a long time. Much too long. But I'm proud to say I've gotten back to work, and that irrational, wonderful, overpowering motivation to write is coming back sometimes. Here you go:
Chapter 7
Spoiler“Frosts!” Phoebe said, breathing heavily. “I’d heard rumors, but I didn’t think those things were real! I thought that maybe they were just part of a hazing ritual or something.” They had stopped a short distance away from the town, far enough away that no one should be able to see them.
“You didn’t think what were real?” Anson asked, out of breath.
“The demons. Or maybe just a demon. I don’t know if there are more like it, but it matches the few things I’d heard about Gallahad’s demons. Incorporeal, not quite human and…draining something out of the people it encounters.” She shuddered.
“It felt like…like I had been using Manna,” Levi stated quietly. Anson nodded, and Phoebe’s eyes shone with a similar understanding.
“That’s exactly what it felt like,” she said. “Which would explain why the maid that said she’d encountered one couldn’t explain what it really felt like.”
“Didn’t you say you thought it was hazing?” Levi asked accusingly, a few of his old suspicions rising again. Could she have led the demon to them?
“Yes, I thought that she was bribed by them or something!” Phoebe threw up her hands in frustration. “Would you have believed that? Or if you hadn’t encountered that… that thing, would you have believed it existed?” Her voice was a higher pitch than normal, she seemed more shaken than he had realized.
Levi thought about that for a while. Would he have believed it? No, he wouldn’t. Even if Anson had told him… he probably would have assumed it was a joke. “Sorry,” he said quietly.
Strangely, Anson was glaring at him though. What was he upset about? Had the demon done something to him? Levi looked back at Phoebe and noticed that there was a tear running down her face. She sniffled a little bit, and wiped the tear from her face. “It’s not your fault. That demon was just…unnerving. I feel like it’s still watching us.”
Anson put an arm around her shoulders, and Levi realized that she was shaking. She must have been much more affected by the demon than he had thought. He felt guilt bubble within his stomach. How could he have been so stupid, accusing her like that over nothing? She must be really good at faking strength, he hadn’t noticed that anything was off about her until now. Or maybe he was just bad at noticing how people were feeling. That seemed more likely.
Though now that she mentioned it, he thought he might be able to feel it too, the prickling feeling on his neck, the way his thoughts seemed to slow like they had earlier…
“Run!” he yelled, realizing what those feelings meant. Frosts, would they be too late? He saw the demon glide around a corner, moving quickly towards them. He ran in the opposite direction, not slowing down to see if Anson and Phoebe were with him. Hopefully they were, but he couldn’t help them against the demon. He had no idea what its weaknesses were, if it had any.
He sprinted across the base of a small hill, rounding it. He came up against a wooden fence, probably for keeping some kind of animal. He didn’t slow down, but then jumped, cresting the fence with a burst of Manna. Landing with a maladroit stumble, he quickly regained his speed. He heard heavy footsteps from behind him, then Anson appeared at the edge of his vision, Phoebe following quickly. Levi would have sighed in relief if it weren’t for how hard it was to breathe at the moment. He forced himself to slow down to a more manageable pace.
“Don’t…stop,” he gasped out. He was tempted to use his Manna, but he didn’t know if he would need it later. What if the demon was going to keep following them? Was it still following them? He glanced back and saw a dark shape crest the wall, not quite flying, more…gliding. It didn’t hit the ground, instead floating about a half foot above it. Levi slowed, mesmerized by its movement, until Phoebe tugged on his arm, nearly sending him sprawling. He forced his eyes away from the demon and back in front of him as he began to run again. His muscles protested, his own mind seemed to be screaming for him to stop, despite the danger. But he couldn’t stop. He eventually fell into a rhythm, and his mind turned to the demon. It hadn’t caught them yet. He risked a glance back and saw it gliding towards them still. They were moving just fast enough for it to not be getting any closer, but if they slowed down at all it would start gaining ground on them.
Eventually, wordlessly, Phoebe took the lead, directing them towards…something. Or Levi hoped she was directing them somewhere. For all he knew, they were running in some completely random direction with no destination in mind.
Right as the sun began rising over the horizon, Anson seemed to grow energetic, speeding ahead. Levi couldn’t understand where he got the energy until he realized Anson must have used Manna. Levi engaged his own, enjoying the sensation of it relieving his muscles. That relief didn’t last long though. After a relatively short time of running, the temperature had noticeably increased and Levi was sweating heavily. His body was already exhausted from the day before, and now he was pushing it past its limits again. Anson and Phoebe didn’t seem to be faring well either, but they all seemed to understand. They had two options: run through the pain and exhaustion or give up and be… eaten? Captured by Galahad? Something along those lines. Whatever it was, Levi didn’t want to experience it. As he ran, he occasionally glanced behind him. The demon was always just in sight, but not getting any closer to them
Can’t stop. Can’t slow down. Can’t stop. Can’t slow down. Can’t… He repeated the mantra in his mind, everything else seeming to fade into a blur of trees, hills, and the omnipresent, almost overpowering pain.
“Can’t…run…forever…” Anson gasped out. He was clutching his side, his eyes filled with the same pain that Levi felt. The idea of falling to that demon was seeming better and better by the minute. Despite what had felt like hours, the sun had barely risen above the horizon. Levi estimated that only about thirty minutes had passed since it had risen fully, and they had most likely been running for a little over an hour. His breathing was ragged, and his legs felt numb.
“Almost…there…” Phoebe huffed back, seeming to be faring only slightly better than the two boys. Despite what he had just calculated, it felt like they had been running for an eternity. And it just kept getting hotter, the sun slowly inching its way up the sky.
A few minutes later, Phoebe pointed ahead to a hill slightly larger than the rest. Levi didn’t understand what she meant until a section of it seemed to collapse inward, revealing a strongly built man standing in a small tunnel. He beckoned to them as Phoebe stumbled, her legs giving out. Anson stopped for a second, lifting her onto his shoulder and continuing to run, though he was now much slower. Levi slowed to keep pace with him, looking over his shoulder to see where the demon was at. It was cresting the hill behind them, much closer than it had been at any other time.
“Run…Manna…use it all,” he managed, then, following his own advice, he activated his Manna, taking off with a burst of speed. He reached the base of the hill and looked back again. Anson was a little ways behind him, and the demon was gaining ground on them both.
Hesitating for just a second, he turned and dashed back, quickly passing Anson and approaching the demon. With a roar and a gush of Manna, he generated a gust of wind, blasting it forward at the demon. It didn’t seem fazed, still hovering just above the ground and moving towards them. As he looked at it, he noticed its form seemed to be shifting just slightly, almost as if it were running. Running through the air. It didn’t make any sense, but it seemed right somehow.
He tore his gaze away from the demon and back up the hill as he began to feel its mind-numbing aura. It seemed to slow in the corner of his eye, and he saw Phoebe slump on Anson’s shoulder, looking utterly exhausted in every way possible. She seemed to barely be keeping her eyes open. Levi sprinted past them, reaching the gaping hole in the hill. He looked back and saw the demon right on Anson’s heels. It didn’t quite reach him though, seeming to slow down momentarily again, just enough for him to enter the tunnel. The large man who had been waiting for them slammed the door closed with a grunt, then turned to look at them. Bright pink light lit the tunnel, the walls themselves glowing.
“It’s good to see you again, Phoebe,” he said warmly, though his eyes shone with barely controlled fear. “I’m glad you all made it safely. What was that thing?” he said quickly, forcing a smile at her. Anson frowned with annoyance, though Levi couldn’t fathom why. The man had probably just saved their lives! He seemed to be around twenty years old, maybe just a little younger.
“Demon,” she said quietly, her voice overflowing with exhaustion. Levi understood that, he could barely keep himself from slumping to the floor, and with how she had used her Manna she was probably feeling worse. She must have used a lot of Manna to hold that demon back, she didn’t look like she had any more to spare.
“Where..are we?” Anson asked, leaning up against the wall for support.
An older man, beard streaked with grey, stepped into the light. “Welcome to the Corridor. Let me explain some things.”
Let me know what you think, and to any of you that read this, thank you so much, you can't imagine how much I appreciate it.
2 -
36 minutes ago, Edema Rue said:
Ripping At Our Seams (2):
She wasn’t sure when she started watching him. She wasn’t sure what she’d been before she started watching him. She lived in a single, glistening moment, and he was at its center.
She saw him first in a huge room. It was stacked with boxes, and he was standing in its center, looking around unsurely. There was a glittering chandelier hanging from the ceiling, and a staircase curved up to an elegant balcony. That was a good word for it, she decided. Elegant. He was frozen in a moment of shock, and she floated closer curiously. He’d just begun to tremble when a tall woman with perfectly curled hair appeared in the large doorway.
“Aaron,” she called, “go find your room. It’s up the stairs, third door on the left.”
The boy walked numbly up the stairs, hesitating when he reached the top. The carpet looked too nice to walk on. He glanced back, then kept walking. The room was empty, but she gasped anyway. It was far too nice for a little boy.
He meandered towards the window. It was snowing outside. He shivered and reached for curtains that weren’t there. Then he, and everything else, faded to darkness.
She blinked, confused, and when she opened her eyes the world was bright again. He was in the same room, but now it had a bed, curtains, a dresser, a bookshelf. All were delicately crafted, and looked as if they cost more money than this boy had ever seen in his life…Aaron was hacking at the bedframe with a tiny pocketknife. She frowned.
The woman from before opened the door without knocking. She saw the boy and her expression darkened. “Aaron,” she said warningly. He looked up and glared at her. “Give it to me.” Slowly, he handed it to her. As soon as it touched her hand, she snatched it away and tucked it into a pocket. “Who gave it to you?”
Aaron looked at the floor. “Siel,” he muttered.
The woman cursed. “I told you to stay away from her.”
Aaron looked back up at her, meeting her eyes with a glare. “It’s not my fault! Dad told her to watch me.”
The woman cursed again. “I will speak to him.” She crouched until she was the same level as the boy. “But you listen here,” she said. “You obey me, not that idiot of a man.”
“Why should I?” Aaron snapped.
Her eyes widened. “What did you say to me?”
He trembled, but stuck his chin out defiantly. “Why should I? You’re not even my mom.”
“Your mother is dead,” the woman hissed. “And even if she were alive, your father knows better than to marry someone like that.”
“He should have known better than to marry someone like you,” Aaron muttered quietly. Not quietly enough. The woman hit him so quickly that the watching spirit didn’t see it, only saw Aaron recoil and hold his hand up to his face. He started to cry.
“Stay in here,” the woman said coldly, “until I return for you.”
Then it was dark.
Now Aaron was sitting on a stiff gray couch. She floated closer, wondering if she could speak to him, when she heard a door shut behind her. A man with thick brown hair and a long beard stepped in. He had the boy’s eyes.
Aaron looked shocked. “Dad!” He said, leaping to his feet.
“Sit down, son,” the man said. He wasn’t smiling. Slowly, Aaron did. “You have a responsibility, Aaron. To me. To our business. To your mother.”
“She’s not—”
“You are to respect her!” The boy’s father shouted. “Do you understand?”
“But she says such mean things about you,” Aaron whispered. His father’s face softened.
“Do you know why I married her?” Aaron shook his head. “Well, it isn’t because she loves me. And it isn’t because I love her. I don’t love her, not like I did your mother. But marrying her keeps our family safe.”
Aaron frowned. “Safe from who?”
“From her family.”
Darkness.
Aaron was always surrounded by people. Teachers, family, his father’s colleagues, nurses. But no friends. Never friends. Today he sat at a table, struggling to shuffle a deck of cards.
“This is stupid,” he muttered. “Why do I have to do this?”
An older boy, perhaps 17, laughed. “Your father’s very important. Do you know how it’ll look if his oldest son can’t even cheat properly? Try again.”
Darkness.
Aaron was in an alley, struggling against someone in a dark hoodie.
Darkness.
He was sitting next to a beautiful girl, his cheeks faintly red. The spirit snickered as they struggled to converse.
Darkness.
Aaron was at an auction. He sat next to his father and stepmother.
“They’re here,” his father muttered. “Checkmate.”
Aaron’s eyes snapped to the entrance, where several people were entering…including the beautiful girl. He stood up.
His stepmother laughed lightly. “Sit down, Aaron. You don’t need to pretend for her anymore. They’re done for.”
“You can’t–”
“We can,” His father said sharply, “and we will. Now sit. You’re making a scene.”
Aaron gave him a cold glance and walked across the room. “Audrey,” he murmured to the girl. “Come with me.” She looked at her parents, then winked and followed him out into a small side hallway.
“What?” She asked, sounding annoyed. “Aaron, I know it was fake. You don’t have to apologize or anything, that’s just the way our world is.”
Aaron grimaced. “I’m not here to apologize, though I’d like to do that too. Listen, Audrey.” He licked his lips. “You need to leave. My dad’s going to get rid of your whole family. I don’t know how but he’s going to do it tonight.”
She blinked, understanding. “You’re trying to get rid of us,” she said. “You want us out of the auction and out of the underworld.”
Aaron looked at her, shocked. “No, wha–no!”
“Why would you tell me?” Audrey shot back. “If this was real, then why would you tell your enemy? And don’t say because we were together. That was fake, and we both knew it.”
“Well maybe it wasn’t,” Aaron said, louder than he meant to. “Maybe it was more than that to me.”
Audrey blinked. For the first time, she looked caught off guard. Then she shook her head, disgusted. “Oh, you’re good,” she mumbled. “Very good. Nice move.”
Aaron hit her then. The spirit who watched flinched back. He looked faintly familiar in that moment, his face all twisted with rage he couldn’t contain. Audrey gasped, then turned and walked firmly back into the auction, chin held high. “Fine!” Aaron called after her. “I hope you die with the rest of them.”
He turned and ran outside, climbing into his car. He gasped for breath, then carefully pulled out his phone. 911. Three digits the spirit had seen him warned never to call.
“There’s an auction,” he said into the phone. “Tons of illegal activity.” He carefully filled them in on the address, the details, anything else they wanted to know. Then he hung up and started to drive. He drove for a long time, through the city and fields.
Then, abruptly, there was darkness.
He was in a parking lot. A parking lot she recognized. He muttered several words that made the spirit wince.
“Why not,” he finally said, laughing darkly. “Why not. They’re all gone, they’ll kill me if they find me. Might as well go out with a bang, right? Might as well finally make someone hurt the way they deserve to…”
He pulled something from under his seat. A slim black handgun. Then a second, which he tucked into a bag. And a third.
Grinning, he walked into the school.
He opened the first door he saw. A scream answered him, and then another, and then there was a chorus of them, all mixing in a terrible cacophony of sound. One girl didn’t scream. The children started to run, to panic, to hide. The girl who did not scream struggled to turn her bulky wheelchair.
A shot rang out.
Another.
Another.
Aaron had killed before. He’d seen blood smeared on stone in dirty alleys. He'd killed people he'd called friends. But this country school knew nothing of death. These spoiled children knew nothing of his world, and with his envy their blood trickled slowly across the clean white tiles.
He stormed through the classrooms, leaving a sticky trail of red behind him.
Should he be feeling guilt?
Should he be feeling numb?
Certainly he shouldn’t be feeling this good.
This…
Alive.
Another shot.
Another life.
It was over so much faster than he expected.
All at once, he had one bullet left. He opened a new door. Children were huddled in a corner behind a pile of mismatched desks.
He grinned at them.
Placed the gun to his head.
Darkness.
…
…
…
…
…
GIVE ME MORE
SpoilerPlease
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Alright, I know it’s been a while. A long while. But I’ve finally started writing my novel again, and I’ll have another chapter out fairly soon for anyone that cares.
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36 minutes ago, Cash67 said:
Not exactly new music, but here is the graduation gift I received!
Watch out parody songs, I have a whole SIX strings to work with now!
Awesome, I’m excited to hear them, Mr. Bard sir.
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10 hours ago, Edema Rue said:
Okay I didn’t finish the scene I wanted to tonight, but that’s because I got a really good idea so it’ll be a lot longer than I originally planned.
But the first little bit has a good stopping place, so here’s the beginning! I’m super excited about this, I hope you guys enjoy it too. Once it’s all finished I’ll DEFINITELY be wanting feedback, though.
Ripping At Our Seams (1)
He wasn’t sure when he started watching her. He wasn’t sure what he’d been before he started watching her. He lived in a single, glistening moment, and she was its center.
He saw her first in a snowstorm, he thought. Yes. It was cold, faintly windy, and tiny flakes of snow flurried about without seeming to touch the bright carpet of leaves. She stood poised on her toes, her tiny black boots crunching on the cool ground. She was frozen in a moment of delighted laughter. He floated gently around her, and her laughter continued as a shape appeared behind her. Then another. Then a third.
Three familiars, brothers, twined between her legs. Black, white, and orange formed a twisted spiral around her, and she looked enticingly otherworldly. Then she tripped. One of the cats made a noise, almost a laugh. She laughed with it, lying on her back and pulling one close. Eventually she stood up. She pulled off her boots and ran barefoot across the freezing grass, laughing with a joy too wild and powerful to be kept inside her tiny body. In that moment, he thought she must be the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. She grinned up at the falling snow, and the moment faded to black.
Another replaced it. It was different, but he couldn’t say just how, except that he knew it was a moment created over hundreds of hours. She sat, knees pulled up tightly to her chest, a book filling her tiny arms. The title blurred, and the cover seemed to change colors. The girl seemed to change as well, her outfit shifting and her hair changing lengths. She laughed as she read, or perhaps she was crying. He couldn’t quite tell. Maybe it was both.
From down the hall, there were footsteps. “Luci,” a voice called warningly. He flinched at it almost at the same time she did. She scrambled to turn off her lights and ducked under the covers. From the hallway, there was laughter, then the footsteps faded. But after a few minutes, she started to tremble. She tossed and turned for a few desperate minutes, then gave in and pulled out a flashlight, picking her book back up. That calmed her. It was the dead of night when she finally shut her book. This time, she slipped into sleep easily, calmly. He watched her sleep for a few minutes before all faded to black once more.
“I’m Luci,” a voice suddenly said in his ear. He jumped, turning, but she wasn’t speaking to him. She was on a playground, squatting next to a girl who was tugging at the grass. “What’s your name?”
The new girl looked up at Luci. “My mom said not to play with you.” Then she turned away. Luci was frozen only for a moment, and then she left, bravely walking onward until she found a place alone. She sat right down in the grass and began to cry.
Darkness.
She snipped flower petals into a thin glass vase, mixing them with sand and pebbles and the occasional snail shell. Her potion completed, she smiled and brought it inside to her mother, leaving three cats to call to her from outside the door.
Darkness.
Luci pulled bricks out of the garden path and built herself a shop. Not a big one, but just enough that she could put different things in each of her little boxes. This one was filled with tiny rocks, that one with rose buds. One held a chicken egg, carefully positioned in a nest of grass. Another held a pile of leaves and pine needles. And one held her greatest treasure; a large snake she’d caught and boxed in. She surveyed her merchandise, then hurried off to find customers in the form of her parents and siblings. When she returned, the snake was gone.
Darkness.
Luci had climbed out her window and onto her roof. She carried a book under her arm. She carefully pulled herself over the peak and back down, into a little alcove where she was sheltered on all sides. She opened her book, winked to the stars, and began to read dangerous poems to the full moon.
Darkness.
Luci was crying.
Darkness.
Luci was laughing.
Darkness.
Luci sang. He couldn’t move for the beauty of her high, clear voice. She climbed trees and let her voice break free where none but the birds could hear her, and even they stopped chirping for jealousy. He watched her work through her repertoire, singing every song she knew again and again until she made up her own.
Darkness.
She dressed up as a snail for Halloween. It made him laugh.
Darkness.
He watched her grow older. As she grew, he was aware that he was getting older too. It was a strange feeling, as if his mind was slowly becoming more and more aware. Painfully aware. Aware enough to understand what was happening when her mother swerved desperately as snow cascaded off the mountains and onto the road. Aware enough to know that it would do no good. Aware enough to watch every person on the road struggle to escape their cars, to make it to the surface before the avalanche stole their last breaths.
Darkness.
Luci passed through the funeral in a new wheeled chair. She stared at the three caskets that sat open, displayed like wares before patrons who thought to buy them with their tears. She let her father push her away from the family they’d once had, and she began to cry, raw and ugly and loud enough that the people who didn’t seem to notice became terrible liars. Her father knelt next to her, his arm in a sling. He wrapped the other one around her.
“I don’t want to be alive,” Luci whispered. “I don’t want to be alive anymore.”
“Don’t say that,” her father said firmly. “Don’t.”
She sniffed, shaking. “I-it’s so much harder to be alive without them. I want to go home, Dad. I want to go home and I want them to be there waiting and I want everything to be okay.”
Darkness.
Luci didn’t sing any longer.
Darkness.
Luci stopped laughing. She kept what little of it there was trapped inside her, as if by hiding it where no one could find it it would be hers forever.
Darkness.
Her father pulled a warm chocolate cake from the oven. Luci sat in her chair and watched him frost it, then helped him stick the candles in, one at a time. 19 candles. The number of years old her sister should have been. Her father’s hand shook. Luci started to cry. But, slowly, they tried to smile. Shyly, at first. It was dangerous to feel joy. But, slowly, they ate their cake, and laughed and told stories each thought the other had forgotten.
Darkness.
It was snowing. He watched the snowstorm out the same window she did. A tall man was talking at the front of the room, gesturing to symbols and words that Luci didn’t care about. She cared about the snow, and he floated towards it, entranced by the flakes that fell so slowly, so silently.
The door to the room slammed open, and a young man stood there. A young man the watching spirit knew far too well. His eyes were wild and his face was sweaty. His arm was shaking, pointing a gun towards the teacher Luci had ignored so easily. One child screamed, and then another, and then there was a chorus of them, all screaming in a terrible cacophony of sound. Luci didn’t scream. The children stood and ran. Luci couldn’t run, and her chair was so slow…
Darkness.
Super excited for you guys to see the rest of this…let me know what you think, and let me know if there are places that you feel are weak (I don’t need to know how to change them, just the places you think need it) thanks!!
Wow, that was incredible!
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Good game everyone! It was fun!
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20 hours ago, Edema Rue said:
I’m feeling you—they even released another thousand but I missed it and now they’re all gone.
*screams in pain and suffering*
I missed it too!
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The Game and its losers.
in Forum Games & Random Stuff
Posted
Well…I’m preparing myself for another year of a very hard class after not doing as well as I wanted this year so…
pretty great!