Concept versus Story

I was kind of hoping that someone else would post between the last time I posted here, but apparently the forum isn't frequented very much by too many of its contributors...Oh well.
I am like Bobby once was (and still is?); I very much enjoy the concept of fantasy stories and I love to write them.  Why?
Because in fantasy, we can have MAGIC!  And demons!  And dragons!  My three favorite things!
And if we have magic, there are so many more ways to completely destroy people, and so many more reasons to do it!
But I absolutely loathe exclamation points, so I'll stop using them now.  I'm giving myself a headache.
I have been developing my idea on how it should work, and I came up with a little synopsis of a short story to help explain it.  I am parting with a little piece of myself now, since fantasy is, well...fantasy, so please be as soul-crushing as you can possibly be.  That's the only way to make it better.
Here we go:

There lived once a great sorceress in an unnamed land where to be fluent in the ways of magic was of little consequence to one's political and/or social reputation. This sorceress devoted her life to magic, and so she was renowned as the best, and people came to her for guidance and wisdom.
But what she forgot, what they all forgot to take into account was that magic isn't free. One's power cannot simply grow and expand for all eternity. There are limits.
We are all human. We are all weak and vulnerable, and we have no natural powers. We must manipulate our souls in order to perform this thing called 'magic,' and when we do this, we damage them. The soul can only withstand so much before it crumbles.
Yes, constant strain WILL make the soul stronger, but to a point. As previously stated, one's power cannot simply grow and expand for all eternity.
Our sorceress began at an early age, so her soul strained itself in an effort to expand itself faster to keep up with the rate of progression of her own talents, and so, by the time she reaches her twenties or so, it has done all the developing it can do, and she has reached her limit. When this happens, the soul is only there as a life force, maintaining spiritual functions. It is defenseless, and it is susceptible to corruption. A demon spirit notices this and devours it, and she is unable to do anything about it because she is so weak. The demon now has control over her every move, and it can call its own powers into being; it doesn't neer HER power, all it needs is a vessel, which it now has.
At first the people, trusting of her judgment and reputation, follow her possessed form without question. But the demon, who had no use for sentimental values, begins killing off people that had at one time been friends of hers. The people begin to suspect. When they finally come to the conclusion that she is possessed, they confront her, and the demon, having completely sealed itself into her body, is unable to escape. She is executed by having a metal rod run through her head and down her back, because the demon would have been able to heal any other physical injury. The body had to be permanently secured, then left to decay naturally, lest the demon find a way to escape. The rod cut off his ability to control her form and fixed her in an immobile position by passing through the brain and the ground. He is trapped, and his campaign to destroy the land is dismantled.

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So what do you think?  Good?  Terrible?  The worst thing you've ever read?  Should I expand on this and make it an actual short story or, more likely, a novel(la)?  Do tell, please.

Whatever Remains

Hey there, all you fellow Dead Fish Afternooners!  I too have a short story that I've been working on since the workshop, and I'd love any feedback you'd be willing to give me (especially the constructive kind!).  So if you have some time to kill, please read and critique!  Thanks in advance and hope you're all having a great summer!

On the afternoon when my mother was found dead in her bedroom with a bullet in her head, I retreated under my covers and read my copy of The Complete Sherlock Holmes until five o'clock the next morning.  By the light of my trusty Eveready flashlight, with my head tenting the sheets around Sherlock, Dr. Watson, and me, I took copious notes on every murder and attempted murder case: first, victim; second, culprit; third, method; fourth, motive; fifth, and most important for my purposes, how the case was solved.  I needed to educate myself in the science of deduction.  If Sherlock Holmes had taught me one thing so far, it was that the police could not be relied upon to solve a case properly.  If you wanted it done right, you called on Sherlock Holmes.  In the absence of Sherlock Holmes, a Sherlock-educated teenager had to be the next best thing.

            Unfortunately, upon reading my notes in the light of day, the irrelevance of the majority of the cases became quite clear.  My mother had not been set after with a poisonous snake.  She had not been trapped beneath a cellar floor while searching for hidden treasure.  She had not received any threats from any secret orders in the form of dried fruit remnants.  She had been shot in the head.  She had not even had any enemies, to the best of my knowledge, or any dark and clandestine ambitions.  She had gone off to work at the publishing firm every morning, Monday through Friday, without complaint, and come home every evening, Monday through Friday, with a sigh.  She had written birthdays in neat handwriting on the calendar and smiled for family portraits and baked gingerbread cookies on Christmas Eve, and I imagined that her life was content and unexciting.  Unlike those unfortunate Brits of Conan Doyle's invention, she did not have any detectable accent and she did not die an exotic death, thus leaving me unlike that consulting detective of Conan Doyle's invention, without any clues to go on.

            Luckily, I felt sure that my intense study session had taught me something of Sherlock Holmes' methods, and that therefore, if I could only get some data, I might be able to put my newly improved deductive powers to work.  However, my Sherlock marathon had also caused me to miss the window of opportunity for data-gathering; by the time I was prepared to begin my investigation, my mother's body had long been carted away to the morgue, and all evidence had long been sealed up in sterile plastic bags and removed.  Consequently, over the objections of my Sherlock Holmes purism, I was forced to rely upon the police's data, as given me in several phone calls to the local police station.

            "Hello, my name is Elise Patterson, and my mother Lorraine Patterson is in your morgue," I introduced myself each time I called, although I wasn't exactly sure if they even had a morgue or if my mother was in it if they did.  "I would like to know if you could give me some data on her case."

            Only the first time that I called did the secretary sound taken aback by my request and ask me to verify my identity.  After that, she would just say, "Hello, Elise," with a sad smile in her voice, and then she would put the police chief on the line if he wasn't too busy or out giving people speeding tickets.

            The police chief was strangely accommodating, considering how my investigation rather strongly implied how little I trusted that his skills were sufficient for the job.  In his eternally tired but sympathetic voice, he would answer all of my questions, and when I had exhausted my arsenal of questions for the day, he would wish me good luck in my endeavors and tell me to take care of myself.  He began including my father in his well wishes after one night when he unexpectedly asked to speak to my father and then proceeded to do so for approximately thirty minutes.  I had been reluctant to give my father the phone, as he was unaware of my investigation and most likely of the mentality that I should let the police do their own job.  However, I believe it is against the law to disobey a police officer, let alone the police chief, so if one asks to speak to your father, you hand over the phone straight away.  He didn't seem the type to arrest a fourteen-year-old for not putting her father on the phone, but I wasn't going to risk it.

            I lingered in the kitchen until the phone call was over, absently eating jelly beans from the candy dish and trying to predict my father's reaction.  I could see it going in any of several directions: angry, depressed, disappointed, or, if I was particularly unlucky, reproachful.  I did not foresee tired as an option.  But when he entered the room to replace the house phone on its charger, he looked like it was three o'clock in the morning and he had just awoken on the couch to discover that he hadn't yet gone to bed and he had to get up for work in three hours.

            "Elise..." he addressed me slowly, his tongue almost too exhausted to form the word.  I waited expectantly for him to go on, but he only repeated himself.  "Oh, Elise."  He sank down at the kitchen table still with its three chairs, even though only two of them were used now, and dug the heels of his hands into his eye sockets uncommunicatively.  I took this as my cue to leave.

            Still, my father had not expressly forbidden my investigation or, indeed, said anything about it at all, so I continued gathering data from the kindly police chief and recording it in neat bullet points in a new marble copybook devoted specifically for this purpose.  Sadly, however, the section titled "Brilliant Deductions" was not filling up quite as quickly as those titled "Reliable Data" and "Tentative Theories."  In the deductive field, I had determined only one point of interest: the fact that the murderer must have somehow gained entry to the house by tricking my mother into trusting him or her and letting him or her in, as, in my frequent and numerous expeditions about the perimeter of our house, I had found no signs of a forced entry.  So the murderer was someone my mother had trusted and led, for some unknown reason, into her bedroom.  Or perhaps, for some unknown reason, she had been forced into her bedroom.  Either way, it didn't really make any difference, because I realized that I had no idea whom my mother had trusted anyway.

            To make myself feel more capable, I filled an entire page of the "Brilliant Deductions" section with very obvious facts, such as, "The murderer knows how to fire a gun," and "The murderer had a firm enough grasp of the floor plan of our house that he or she was able to escape."  I tore the page out a day later.  It all seemed a bit petty.

            Once, for approximately three glorious minutes, I thought that I had had a breakthrough.  I hadn't considered the placement of the bullet before, but in a flash of insight, it occurred to me that if it were on the back of her head, that could indicate that my mother had trusted the murderer enough to turn her back on him or her.  Conversely, if it were on her forehead, she saw her fate approaching by the time her murder was inevitable.  With this revelation in mind, I called the police station for more data, breathless with anticipation.

            The bullet wound was on the right side of her head.  I had failed to entertain this possibility.

            I had been trying to keep the details of my investigation under wraps, but at dinner on the day of my three glorious minutes of enlightenment and subsequent eight hours of disappointment and frustration, my woes needed a voice.  Perhaps talking through the facts and theories of the case, hearing everything aloud, would jumpstart my deductive reasoning.  With my valued notebook beside my plate of penne pasta and meatballs, I flipped through the pages, discussing every detail, from my mother's apparently too trusting nature to the murderer's possible motive.  My father, sitting across from me at the square wooden table, carefully monitored his fork as it stabbed his pasta with increasing violence.

            "I just don't understand what it means that she was shot in the side of her head," I rambled, reaching to turn to my "Tentative Theories" page and nearly spilling my glass of iced tea.  "Did she trust the murderer halfway or what?  It just seems unnatural that someone would stand next to—"

            My father's fist hit the table, catapulting his fork several feet above the table.  It clattered onto my notebook, marring the page with spaghetti sauce blood.  "She killed herself, Elise!" he shouted.  "Her fingerprints were on the gun, the gunshot residue was on her fingers, and the bullet wound was on the right side of her head because that's where right-handed people shoot themselves."  He closed his eyes and took a deep breath that rattled unsteadily in his lungs.  His voice softened, tired.  "I told you that a thousand times, Elise.  I told you it was suicide."

A menagerie of bright orange tigers, yellow lions, and blue elephants grins stupidly at me from the verdant wallpaper jungle of the therapist's office as she informs me that I have been deluding myself, creating an alternate reality because the real one was too difficult to face.

            "It's a common response to trauma among children and teens," she tells me.  "You shouldn't feel ashamed."

            I don't.  What I do feel is desperately confused.  Nothing seemed unreal or deluded about the time after my mother's death when I lived through it the first time, and it still doesn't now, as I relive it day after day.  The therapist's theory makes me feel like some mentally unstable child who can't tell her daydreams from reality, but I know that those weeks before my bubble burst saw me more rational and clear-headed than ever.  How could I have been deluding myself?

            I've been so preoccupied with figuring out what's real that I haven't even had time to ask myself those questions always asked by those swamped in the wake of a suicide: why did she do it, could have I stopped her.  I haven't even had time to grieve.

            "Your father says that you knew that your mother killed herself," the therapist is saying in her practiced sympathetic tone.  "Did you?"

            Did I?  I lie awake at night, staring at the crack snaking out from my ceiling fan and rifling through my mental filing cabinet, searching for some memory of being told that it was suicide.  I only ever turn up that night at the dinner table.  Was there some file before that, some file whose contents I removed, shredded, and threw onto the fire?  I don't know.  My own life, and I don't know what happened.

            "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."  So says the revered Sherlock Holmes.  But when I eliminate the impossible, I always draw up two conflicting and equally improbably truths: either I am insane, or everyone else is lying.

I cannot afford to sleep at night.  I stay up and study The Complete Sherlock Holmes.  My powers of deduction must be razor-sharp to track down whoever killed my mother and began this conspiracy against me.

The Garden

* Hey writers! I’m posting my newest short story in the hopes that some writers still check in every so often. If you do read, please critique. Don’t be afraid to be especially harsh, as probably only very few will comment. (Beware the purple prose—please point it out if you spot any!) If anyone else has written anything, they should post as well. Hopefully we can get this blog back up and running J. *

Mara Williams wiped the sheen of sweat off her brow with the back of her right hand. She was careful not to smear on her flushed skin the dirt lodged in the crevices of her palm or embedded under her nails. She had been toiling beneath the sweltering afternoon sun for hours, an uneven burn her reward. Her skin was red and tender to the touch. It was but a minor discomfort.

All the flowers had faded during the summer night. Her prized amaranth peonies were twisted and hunched. Their graceful petals no longer curled and fluttered in the gentle breeze. Mortality had possessed their vibrancy; now they were wilted and browned, and they sagged as if already in decay. Her myrtles and orchids had shared the same regrettable fate. Mara mourned the circumstances that had turned her beloved garden into a graveyard.

She extracted the dead flowers with cautious efficiency and laid them to rest in the hand-woven basket nestled on her right. She was careful to dig only deep enough to secure a grip on the roots. It was an unnecessary precaution, one that had become an unbreakable habit since the previous weeks.

 Mara shifted her grip on the trowel as she removed the final patch of orchids. Her scraped knuckles were still stiff from their old wounds and the rough parallel slices on her left palm had yet to heal. The trowel remained a silent testament to her pain. No metal gleamed beneath the benevolent sun; flakes of dried blood dulled the tool’s original shine. Mara’s hand clenched the trowel handle at the sight.

Mulch and hardened dirt mingled in the naked flowerbed. Destitute of its intended occupant’s vitality, the barren garden was horribly exposed. Mara shivered in the heat and began to replant the flowers with renewed vigor.

The sun had made its torpid journey across the horizon by the time she stretched her stiff back. Clouds were painted with harsh, sharp brushstrokes of pink and orange. Cool wind chilled the sweat on her neck and chest. It felt heavenly against her fevered skin. She relished the escape from heat.

The spigot released its water jealously. Mara coiled the hose around her forearm like the rope of a noose and sprayed the garden with a gentle shower. Cold water was sucked from the surface by greedy roots. She watched the flowers drink with maternal affection.

Upon its creation Mara had not expected to enjoy the garden. It had merely been another demand, and chore a proper housewife did to satisfy her husband.

Not since her had friend introduced her to Reuben Williams four years ago had she met a more charismatic person. Breed in wealth since childhood and spoiled with abandon, Reuben had acquired the arrogant confidence of a powerful, rich man. His volatile personality at once intimidated and captivated his audience. He knew when to argue, plea, and cajole. Dynamic and inescapable, Mara had been drawn to him from the quick. Three short months of courtship passed before their engagement.

The gardens had been one of the first requirements of their marriage. Affluent real estate brokers had magnificent gardens tended by their wives, he argued. Therefore, as his wife, it was her duty to create for him a garden unrivaled by any in the county. She had assented without complaint and designed for him a lush expanse of garden surrounding the front entrance. That one she attended with mechanical indifference.

It was the flowerbed in the corner of the backyard she nurtured. In her husband’s ambitious eyes the smaller garden was of no consequence. His disdain was liberating. She nurtured the garden with zealous care, doting on her humble collection. Now she watched the revived garden with pride and a curious desperation.

Soon the flowers could drink no more and a puddle formed around the stem. Mara did not turn off the hose even when the flowers began to sag under the weight of the water and droplets fell from petals to the dirt like tears.

There came a soft cough from behind. Mara’s heart convulsed painfully. She whirled around, not releasing the hose in her haste. Two men stood a sensible distance away. The younger of the two had clear blue eyes still bright with ignorance and an innocent rounded face. Something in the structure of his cheeks, or perhaps the open curiosity and kindness in his expression, gave him an aura of honest warmth. His partner held no trace of such naivety. Deep lines creased the skin at the corners of his eyes and his harsh slash of lips had the propensity to curve down.

Both men hastily backed away from the spray before they could become too wet. The middle-aged man scowled and rubbed at the wet spot on his shoulder. His counterpart smiled apologetically, as if he were at fault for standing too close.

In a voice laden with a deep Southern accent, the younger man said, “Sorry, ma’am. Didn’t mean to startle you.”

Gradually Mara’s heart slowed its frenetic pace. She offered a weak smile and released her grip on the hose. The water stopped.

“My name is Detective Agnes and this is my partner, Detective Collins. Would you mind if we asked you a few questions?”

 She glanced at the waning sun. “It’s awfully late for that, isn’t it?”

“Yes’m, it is, but we both had to testify in court today, and this was the earliest we could come. Do you mind? This shouldn’t take too long.”

Detective Collins spared her no smile. His bushed eyebrows were drawn in determination and his fierce expression clearly said he would not be deterred.

“Of course not. Why don’t you make yourselves comfortable on the patio while I put away a few things?”

Detective Agnes shifted uncomfortably. “Would you like to go inside instead? Once the sun drops it’ll going to become pretty cold.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem, will it?” Mara said. “After all, this won’t take too long.”

Reluctantly the detectives took their seats around the heavy oak table beside the modest fountain. Mara quickly gathered her trowel, small rake, and knee mat. She turned the spigot off but left the hose uncoiled.

The wooden shed stood at the perimeter of the property mostly concealed by trimmed hedges. Only the door was visible, hand carved with an elegant pattern of swirls that mimicked the ceaseless flow of a river. The interior was far plainer, functional rather than decorated. It was outfitted with shelves to contain the tools and a long carpet rug to protect bare feet from the bite of chilled wood in the winter. A sliver of light caught on a shovel dangling from the wall. She shuddered and returned the tools to their shelves with a loud clatter.

The detectives were waiting impatiently for her return.

Detective Agnes asked, “Is everything alright? We heard a loud noise.”

“Oh, that was nothing. I just dropped the trowel in with the other tools and they clanged together.” Mara sat and rubbed her bruised knuckles. “Now, what questions do you have? I assume this is about Reuben.”

Detective Collins answered. His voice was brisk and sounded like gravel. “We were hoping you could tell us what happened.”

“Why? I’ve already told the other detectives, Scotts and Chung, what I know.”

“We’ve decided to give them our aid. Your husband was a well-liked man in this community and we know everyone is anxious to learn what happened to him. You, especially.” The younger detective said with a guiltless smile.

She scratched at the scab on her left palm. “Of course I do.” Her tone was defensive.

Detective Collins studied her with jaded eyes that saw too much. He put a voice recorder on the table. “Do you mind?” Mara shook her head and he pressed record. Then he and his partner procured a small notepad and pen.

“Why don’t you start from early that morning.”

She sighed but dutifully replied, “Reuben woke up at five thirty for his morning run. He returned home about forty, forty-five minutes later. I made him a cup of coffee while he checked his email and watched the morning news. He went to meet with a couple interested in the Snow Valley Manor at ten.”

“What time was the meeting?” Detective Collins asked.

“Eleven.”

“Snow Valley Manor. Isn’t that only a forty minute drive?”

“Reuben loathes tardiness,” she explained. “He always gives himself at least twenty minutes of extra time in case something unpredictable happens.” The detective nodded for her to continue. “He returned from the meeting a couple of hours later.”

“Do you remember the exact time?”

“Sometime around noon. Maybe twelve thirty. No later than that.”

There was a flurry of pens as the detectives wrote the time. “And then…” Detective Agnes prodded.

“He was disappointed. Agitated. Said the couple backed out.  He made some phone calls to other interested buyers. Called potential clients. Mostly work-type things. I minded my own business. Made lunch like usual, watched a few of my soaps. He left for game of golf with his business associate at four o’clock. That’s the last time I saw him”

“Can you tell me the business associate’s name?”

“Vincent Schreurs.”

More scratches of pen on pad. Then Detective Collins said, “You last saw him Tuesday afternoon, but you didn’t report him missing until Thursday morning. Why?”

The way he hurled the question made her sound guilty. She stiffened her spine and forced herself to meet his mercurial, jaded eyes. “Reuben didn’t have the best temper. Sometimes when he was angry or frustrated, he would go to the bar until the early hours of the morning and be too drunk to drive home. Then he would stay with a drinking buddy for the night or rent a room at a nearby hotel.

“I thought he had worked through afternoon. It’s not uncommon and he frequently has meetings during lunch, in which case he’ll buy something to eat. When he still didn’t return by dinner I was worried, but I thought he might have gone out to drink again. In the morning, when he still wasn’t home, I called his cell phone and got his voice mail. He never has his phone off, even when drinking. When I couldn’t reach him, I called around, asking if anyone had seen him, if they knew where he was, etcetera. No one had or did, so I reported him missing.”

They nodded and hastily scribbled some notes. She studied the sky. Day was nearing its end. The temperature had indeed dropped and Mara shuddered. What had once been delightful now was frigid and cutting. The sweat on her pink skin had sunken into her pores and left her smelling faintly of labor, earth, and heat. The red light indicating recording was in progress seemed harsh and gruesome to her eyes. She was seized with the sudden urge to run inside and scrap all the dirt from under her nails.

Detective Agnes glanced up from his notepad. “Do you know of anyone with a grudge against your husband? Anyone who might benefit from his disappearance?”

She shook her head regretfully. “No.”

“Did your husband drink often?” Detective Collins asked abruptly.

Mara stared at him and squeezed her left hand. “Pardon?”

“It’s not a trick question, Mrs. Williams. Did your husband drink often?”

“Not, uh, not terribly often. I mean, just when he was mad.”

“And your husband had quite the temper, didn’t he? Tell me, Mrs. Williams, did he every hurt you?” The detective scrutinized her expression as he delivered the question without any false sympathy.

“That’s ridiculous,” she protested weakly.

Detective Agnes flipped a page in his notes. “Is it, Mrs. Williams? March 16^th, 2010, 8:49 p.m., dispatch received a call for a domestic disturbance. When they arrived at the scene the wife met them at the door, convinced them it was all a big misunderstanding, and sent them on their merry way.” He caught her eyes with intensity incongruous with his naïve innocence. “The caller was you, Mrs. Williams."

She took a shallow breath. “As you can see from the transcript, Detective, the call was a mistake. Reuben said a few uncharitable things and I blew the argument out of proportion.”

“That’s the thing, Mrs. Williams. We would have dismissed the call as just that, if not for your medical records.” He paused a moment, as if hoping Mara would fill the silence. She remained mute. “March 17^th, 2010,” he continued, “you fell down and broke your collar bone. The day after the nine-one-one call.”

“Coincidence,” she mumbled through numb lips.

“Police don’t believe in coincidences. We looked through your medical records. August you lost control of your bicycle and got a severe concussion. Oddly enough, you managed to bruise not only your jaw, but both your eyes as well. Skip ahead a few months and you dislocated your shoulder falling off a ladder. The pattern continues for the next two years.” He sighed. “No one falls down that much, Mrs. Williams.”

“What can I say? I don’t have the best balance.”

“Did he abuse you, Mrs. Williams?” Detective Agnes persisted earnestly. “Did he attack you Tuesday and you struck him in self defense? No one would blame you if you had. There are laws in the court that protect battered women. You don’t have to be afraid. If you’re a victim, we can help.”

She squeezed her left hand hard enough to bruise. Felt the soreness of her muscles and the two parallel scabs on her palm. “I am not a victim,” she whispered vehemently.

“We’ve talked to your friends and family,” Detective Collins added. “They all say the same. That Reuben controlled you. Told you who you could and could not associate with. That he had, on more than one occasion, physically harmed you.”

Mara stared at him, chest rising and falling rapidly, and said nothing.

Detective Agnes said, “No one would blame you, Mrs. Williams. If you had a hand in his disappearance, that is.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She intoned without inflection.

“Don’t you?” the older detective, the one with the keen jaded eyes that saw too much, said. “You are the one to benefit most from his death. No more abusive husband, not to mention his life insurance payment and the entirety of his estates.”

The solemn accusation weighed heavily in the air. The wind had ceased its sweet caresses. Twilight had full reign of the sky, that eerie hour where day neither died nor night fully lived. The small oval fountain squirted water, but its descent was muffled and not nearly loud enough, and yet at the same time far too loud. All else was silent, such a familiar oppressive silence. Some days the consuming quiet was a roar that threatened to swallow her into madness. For years she had been confined to the expansive manor and its two mile long driveway, its nearest neighbor a thirty minute jog away. Loneliness often stole her mind and she was forced to project the affection she could never demonstrate on the flowers under her care.

“Mrs. Williams—” the young detective with the rounded face and southern drawl began.  

She stood. Her chair scraped loudly. The detectives did the same. Their assent was much more controlled, and their chairs did not make a sound.

“I would appreciate it if you would both leave.”

“May we look inside the house, ma’am?” Detective Agnes asked.

 “No. I have an appointment in an hour and I still have work to do in my garden. I trust you can escort yourselves out.”

“Of course. We apologize for taking up your time. Please let us know if you remember anything or ever want to talk.”

Mara promised to do just that and returned to her garden. Water had dripped from the nozzle of the hose onto the ground. She coiled the hose around her forearm and released a gentle spray on the flowers.

“Call us anytime, Mrs. Williams.” Detective Agnes said. He gestured to the garden with a tip of his head. “You might not want to water those flowers too much. Looks like you’ve got quite a stream going already.” With that the naïve detective nodded once more and left.

Mara studied the small streams of water winding through the mulch and dirt. She imaged the water had the faintest hue of pink, as if the flowers were dispelling an unholy taint. She shuddered, and continued to water her precious garden.

* Well, there you have it. Did you understand the plot? Was I too subtle? Too blunt? Did the characters make sense? Were they realistic? Did the dialogue flow? Again, please critique. Happy writing! *

The Classic Scene

* Young adult fiction. How…charming. For this prompt, I chose a fairly recent book. It’s the first five pages of Endure by Carrie Jones, the fourth, and last, in her series Need (which I would not recommend). Warning, major spoilers. Anyway, the scene I chose to do is classic. Let me boil it down to the essentials: see there’s this guy Nick, who is of course a werewolf, and his girlfriend, Zara, has become a pixie, which of course werewolves, and Nick in particular, despise. For this exercise I kept the setting and dialouge, but changed points of view. I've decided to explore what's in Nick's thick head. Feel free to critique until your fingers hurt. I'm tough; I can take it. Happy writing everyone! *

Nick dumped the noodles in the strainer. Water drained, hitting the sink like a sporadic rain. Each drip was a crack in the thick silence. The sharp sound reminded him of snapping bones. He ground his molars and set the strainer in the sink with exaggerated care. Even that miniscule movement was loud to his hypersensitive ears. Perks of being a werewolf. At the moment it was less than advantageous. Everything was too loud in this horrible quite. His breath was magnified to heavy pants and he could hear his heart thudding rapidly in his chest. Worse, he could hear her heart.

It was far too fast for a human.

Zara was perched on the dinning room chair not five feet away from him. Her back was ramrod straight and her hands were clenched tightly in her lap. She looked so deceptively fragile, as if one hard blow of unforgiving wind would shatter her. He remembered when he first saw her, ill-dressed and slipping in ice at the school’s parking lot. He remembered her bewildered, grateful smile when he had helped her get to the school’s entrance, the way her cheeks had flushed and her eyes had sparkled. She’d been so innocent with her peace signs and tattered jeans, determined to save the world one Amnesty International letter at a time.

Nick grieved for that girl. This—thing in front of him couldn’t be the girl he had loved. She was a pixie hiding her true face behind a glamour. He tried to picture her with her mask gone. Tried to image her skin a deep blue, her nails sharpened to claws, her mouth full of vicious teeth. She had once been terrified of becoming one of the very things they fought.

Now she was one, and he despised her for it.

He prepared a plate of pasta for himself. His knuckles clenched on the wooden spoon, and he forced his grip to loosen before it snapped. Werewolf strength. Another perk of changing into a wolf. As a pixie, Zara was now as strong, if not stronger, than him.

He needed to stop thinking.

“Do you want some more spaghetti?” he grated abruptly. He hadn’t intended to ask her and only did so to break the heavy silence. He knew she didn’t want more; she had hardly touched the food on her plate. She didn’t need to consume food like he did to keep her energy. Pixies, they had witnessed first hand, could steal the energy of others to quench their need. And now she was one of them.

Zara startled at his voice, flinching in her chair. He raked a hand through his hair, wet from the cold Maine snow, and wondered why the hell he had agreed to come over. Why did everyone think they would work it out? They knew his hatred of pixies, and yet they constantly forced him into contact with one. Who didn’t matter in comparison to what.

“I’m good for now, thanks,” she said with stiff politeness. He wished she’d snap or yell at him for his distance. Anything was better than this stunted half-conversation and crackling tension.

He grunted to acknowledge her words, delaying the inevitable conversation. She said nothing as he took his seat, but he could feel her eyes on him. He avoided concentrated on his dinner. The bright yellow of her plate could be seen from the corner of his eyes.

She flipped over her bamboo fork on the edge of her plate and said, “You know, you can hate me and still talk to me.”

Nick flicked her a glance.

“I mean, you hated Ian and you talked to him. I hated Megan and I talked to her,” she continued, referencing two of their past adversaries. Both had been pixies. “Evil pixies,” Zara would have corrected him, but Nick didn’t differentiate. What pixie wasn’t evil?

“Hate and rudeness don’t have to go hand in hand.”

Zara sounded so stiff. Her fork fell off her plate at the end of her sentence. It landed with a sharp clack. He studied her while she picked it up, searching for traces of the girl he’d once loved. Every aspect of her appearance was the same. If he couldn’t hear her too-rapid heart, if he couldn’t smell her sickly sweet scent cut with a jagged spice, if the beast inside didn’t recoil at the sight of her, then maybe he would be fooled. But he wasn’t, and he never would be.

“I don’t hate you, Zara.” Nick lied. He didn’t know why. Maybe some small part of him refused to let go of the affection he’d held for her as a human. He should have admitted his loathing. Instead he heard himself continue. “I hate this situation. I hate that when you first got here you were this normal, depressed, pacifist girl who cared about human rights and peace and now you’re this…Now you spend your nights hunting down evil.” Meaning other pixies. “Now you kill without blinking an eye and it’s just part of your routine. I hate what you’ve become.” I hate what you are.

With every word her face paled. She blinked wounded eyes at him, and he could tell she was struggling not to react. Her heart raced from the sudden rush of adrenaline he could smell on her. Her hand clenched on her fork. Nick wondered if she was battling the urge to stab him with it. He’d seen her do worse; he wouldn’t put it beneath her.

He stood abruptly. The metal of his fork scratched the ceramic of his plate as he scraped the rest of his uneaten pasta in the trash. “I’ll clean up,” he said. “You go get ready. It’s our night to patrol.”

Nick hoped they ran across some pixies. He ached to tear something apart with his claws. The sight of Zara—of this pixie not five feet from him—had his beast craving escape.

“We need more people to help us patrol,” Zara said, her tone edged with annoyance.

It was a familiar argument, one they’d had a dozen times in the last two days. Nick wanted to growl at her.

“It would just put them at risk. Humans can’t fight pixies.” She should know that. She used to be human.

But she didn’t give up. “We could make an army, train them. Devyn and I have been talking about it a lot.”

When had Devyn, his best friend and a fellow were, talked to Zara? Why couldn’t everyone else understand that she wasn’t Zara anymore? She was a damned pixie, not the peace-loving human she used to be. Nick swallowed and forced his muscles to relax. He was anxious giving a pixie his back, but he couldn’t bring himself to face her.

“You’d be sending them to slaughter.”

Zara was quiet as she watched him run his plate under hot water. He wondered what she was thinking. What did pixies think about other than killing? Her sickly sweet scent grew as she drew closer. His muscles wound tight enough to snap.

She put her plate on the counter. “It feels like you hate me,” she said.

He considered a thousand things to say, but finally grated, “Well, I don’t.”

 

There was a brief pause. A desperate hope had entered Zara’s eyes. He loathed the sight almost as much as her smell. He knew she would try to talk again later, and his stomach clenched with dread.

“Let’s go patrol,” she suggested.

He gave her a clipped nod and wondered why he had lied.

Tragic but Convenient

Hey, everybody!  Here is my not-so-great Hunger-Games-inspired attempt at this prompt.  I tried to make it so it would mostly make sense even if you haven't read the books, but, that being said, if you haven't read the books, it also gives some stuff away (nothing major though, I think) from Part I of the first book, so if you care about spoilers, just be forewarned.  Anyway, please feel free to critique if you are so inclined and I can't wait to see what you all post!

            My hands fold and unfold restlessly in my lap, my pulse throbbing in my fingertips.  For a moment, my head feels cold and numb, and I can't tell if I'm on the verge of passing out from anxiety, or if it's just the Capitol climate control.  I decide on the latter, tell myself that I am not panicking because this is not a big deal.  I just need to tell a near-stranger the details of my long-standing, unrequited love for a girl who may already be plotting my murder.  Compared with what awaits me at tomorrow's interview—and then, of course, in the Games after that—this should be nothing.

            Haymitch should be here by now, counseling me on the best methods to win over the crowd during my interview so that they will be more inclined to send me food if I find myself starving in the arena, or a weapon if they are deluded enough to think that I'm capable of using it.  He is late, unsurprisingly.  As I wait for him to decide whether trying to save my life is worth the effort, my eyes bounce around the sitting room on the twelfth floor of the Training Center, trying to find something even mildly comforting in the stark blue-white lighting and the perfectly polished lines of the sleek, neon-hued furniture.  Under the fluorescent lights, even my own hands have become eerily pale and unfamiliar, and the futon beneath me, with its lavender leather and strange golden sheen, exudes an air of irritation over my marring its beauty by sitting on it.  I find myself calculating idly how many dead people have sat here before me.  Seventy-three Games times two District 12 tributes, plus two extra from the second Quarter Quell, minus one Haymitch, leaves one hundred forty-seven.  I wonder how often they change the furniture.

            Only now does it occur to me that my anxieties may be misplaced.  In less than a week, most likely, I'll have made that number one hundred forty-eight, and I'm sitting here nearly faint over the prospect of discussing my feelings.  Then again, we all know my death is inevitable—unless I happen to be provided the opportunity to bake the other tributes to death—so it's probably best that I'm not dwelling on it anyway.

            A cough from the doorway behind me.  Haymitch has apparently determined that my life may have some worth.  "Well, then..." he says, easing onto the couch opposite me, leaning back casually.  "Not feeling the love for your District 12 buddy anymore, hmm?"

            It had occurred to me that my request for individual training for the interview might be interpreted this way, as an acknowledgement of Katniss as my enemy, so I had been prepared for this kind of reception, but the irony of Haymitch's wording snags unexpectedly in my brain and makes me falter anyway.  "Actually, I—I have a plan.  For both of us, I mean."

            Haymitch's eyes narrow almost imperceptibly as he waits for me to explain why, in that case, only one of us is here.  He gives off the impression of having just quietly decided that I may be insane.

            "I didn't think she would... agree with it."  To state things mildly.

            He laughs wryly, as if her disagreement was a given.  "Okay, well, try me.  What've you got?"

            My heart is in my fingertips again, and the harsh lighting makes Haymitch look harsher than usual, and unsympathetic.  Not the kind of person I'd normally turn to with my innermost secrets and emotions.  On the upside, I'll be dead within the week, and that at least has some liberating consequences.

            "I tell them I'm in love with her," I say.  "That I've had a crush on her for years, but she never noticed me, and now that she has..."  I trail off, staring at the pristine white floor and trying futilely to distance myself from the situation.  "You know.  All this.  It should drum up some sympathy for both of us."

            A smile has slipped onto Haymitch's face, and it makes me feel like a conspirator in a particularly crafty plot.  It is decidedly unsettling.  "It should?" he asks.  "It will!  You will be all everyone's talking about.  And with your interview last"—a brief laugh interrupts—"you'll knock the other tributes right out of all the tiny Capitol brains.  It's perfect.  You'll both have sponsors before you even clear the Cornucopia."

            His enthusiasm, verging on giddiness, puts a sickening feeling in the core of my stomach.  Of course I had known that my plan was perfect.  Of course I had known that he would be overjoyed with it.  But as he rambles about the best timing for my bombshell and the various types of small talk I should engage in before it, I can't help but feel that he is happy for my tragedy.  It will make his job much easier.

            "So, details," he says.  "Let's get your story straight."  As if I am making this up.

            I think of the things that I can't tell all of Panem.  I can't talk about that day in the rain, how she looked then, independent but desperately alone.  I can't talk about burning the bread so I could throw it out in her sight, give her something without raising my mother's suspicions, choosing our most expensive kind, with the golden raisins and walnuts, because it had the most energy to give a starving family.  I can't talk about all the years after that, watching from the kitchen when she would come to the door to sell my father an illegally hunted squirrel or an illegally gathered bunch of berries, looking like she had just conquered the world and was carrying it around in her game sack.

            "We're in the same class at school," I say finally.  "I always wanted to talk to her, get to know her better, but I never had the nerve."

            "Good," Haymitch nods thoughtfully.  "Simple and unglamorous, but relatable.  I like the approach."

            He moves on, discussing my supposed sense of humor and natural charm.  His matter-of-fact compliments would make me uncomfortable if I were paying any attention, but I'm still stuck in front of the kitchen stove back home, with two loaves of bread in my hands and a girl starving outside.  It was so easy then, protecting her.

            When the four hours of training for the interview are over, Haymitch leads the way to lunch, but pauses in the doorway of the dining room, a thought just now occurring to him.  He turns to face me and lowers his voice.  "Hey, umm... you're not actually in love with her, are you?"

            I can't say anything.

            He looks pale and weary in the fluorescent light.  "Damn."

Relevant

Sentimentality

Dead Fish Afternoon! I miss you all so much. It was so great to work with you over the past week, and I could not be more proud of you all. I hope that many of you will stay involved with the blog and with each other. My email address is mitchellr@susqu.edu and you are all welcome to email me any time you like, for any reason. If you all want to add your email address as comments to this post, we can get a good contact list together. Alright! Here we go, the first writing exercise in the post-camp era.

Since I'm feeling so sentimental, I thought we could take a look at sentimentality in fiction. Where better to look, then, than to young adult fiction. We all had plenty of laughs at the melodrama of Twilight last week, lines like this beauty, "It was nice to be alone, not to have to smile and look pleased; a relief to stare dejectedly out the window at the sheeting rain and let just a few tears escape." We can all laugh because we know, looking from the outside, we can see how sentimental these lines can be. But, sadly, these are mistakes we can make ourselves. We can all write lame lines, even characters. Your challenge this week is to take a character from young adult fiction, Twilight, Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, The Hunger Games,  anything from the genre, and write a scene (scene, scene, scene!) that reveals character and motivation in an earned and felt way, rather than cheaply or melodramatically. I think this should be a fun one. Be ambitious. Be imaginative. Be writers.

Oh, and one more thing, in the spirit of this exercise, I'm jumping head first into The Hunger Games today.

Bobby doesn't always...

Princeton Voice

Hey guys! I miss you all like crazy. Bobby, bring on the prompt! Can't wait to see what everyone posts.

If you want to see our site, the Princeton Voice, in its initial phases, please visit www.princetonvoice.com. As of now, it only has my work on it (which isn't very good, to be quite honest) but it should give you an idea of the basic skeleton. We're still working on a log-in page and the submit work column.

Please let me know if you would like to contribute work! If you have anything that's ready, send it to me in an email (anithaahmed@gmail.com) and I'll put it up right away. I'd like to have a solid base of work before I make it totally public.

Miss you guys tons and tons!
Love,
Anitha

Restless (The doesn't suck as much version)

Restless, we called it, when she got like this. Coming straight home from school and arriving a good fifteen minutes earlier than normal because she couldn’t help but walk faster, propelled by some itch inside her to move. She’d take two steps into the kitchen then out the other side and straight up to her bedroom. These were the nights we’d hear pacing and furniture moving across the halls, and her bedroom light would still be lit when one of us got up to pee at three-thirty in the morning. She’d take on projects behind that door, and every piece of her furniture would suddenly sit on opposite corners of the room by the time she made it to breakfast the next morning. By the next day they might be somewhere new again.

These were the nights we forgot the alternative was a near-dead daughter, drooping in melancholy at the dinner table and not moving from that table until she had to drag herself up the stairs to bed in the early evening.

“Manic depressive.” The doctors had told us as we sat on too cushy couch pillows and avoided his words by studying the inspirational messages in brushstroke on the walls, “She’s bipolar.”

The words seemed too harsh, much too crazy, for a girl who was not even old enough to drive a car. Bipolar. The words left a sour taste in his mouth that he wanted to spit onto the green carpet.

Well here she was again, scooting up the stairs almost as soon as we caught sight of her. Miles of to-do lists were draping down the hallway behind her, following her as she went and only growing longer. Her mother gave a sharp cry about dinner. She couldn’t fight her forward momentum, though, and continued up the stairs with some incomprehensible murmur that sounded something like “homework.” He wasn’t disappointed, nor even a bit surprised. Nothing scared her more than the prospect of a family dinner on nights like these. I didn’t blame her. I wouldn’t be able to stand my mother’s eyes following every movement of my fork. Then again, I didn’t blame Carol from staring either. That utensil moved much too quickly between her mouth, eagerly waiting its dinnertime portion, and her full plate. Not once did she let it linger long enough to pick anything up. Though we heard her stomach give a grumble of protest, she would get straight up from the table and shoot right back to her room. Her dresser grated against the tile floor.

I glanced toward my wife for a moment, and she rolled her eyes and turned back to her mashed potatoes. She’d tried to fight it enough already. Enforcing bedtimes on school nights did nothing more than force her to hide alone in the darkness during those early morning hours, in hope that no one could see. She hadn’t fooled us though, as I caught her soft trod against the ceiling of my study down below. The beat of her toes from above formed the perfect rhythm to finish grading papers to before the sun found us. Her footfalls grew heavier as the night went on, and I noticed the nights she pretended to sleep, finally leaving the furniture in its places, that beat was ten times as quick. Ten times as restless.

I  imagined her up there, the darkness stifling her much too productive mind. While bedtimes tried to blanket her in silence, her mind buzzed to the sounds of due dates and appointments she probably didn’t have.

She used the little light she had to count the tiles as she paced from off-white wall to off-white wall, the dresser banished to the far right corner so she had a straight path between the two. Twelve blocks there, twelve blocks back. He’d counted once too, just by the sound of her feet against the floor, and snuck up to her bedroom when she was still at school one day to check if he was right. He was. After a few hours though, somewhere between the time of night when his coffee went cold and when he finished the cup and went to get another, that rhythm would tire her. She’d begin the little games with herself and count tiles by threes, then fours. Four steps there, three back. Then switched. But even that could not hold the monsters back forever. He knew because last month, right after final exams had finished up, he was kept up much later than he intended reading a particularly boring term paper. It was then, as he was scribbling a thought about a thesis shift into the margins, he heard her muffled screams. They were not the loudest, she couldn’t risk her mother finding out she’d broken bedtime rules again, but they were loud enough to unsettle him and force his pen back down on the desk.

The night had already unnerved him, and the unexpected cry had knocked all clear and rational thought from his mind for a few moments. The sound was off-putting, to say the least.

As a professor, he spent most of his days looking for the logical answer, tangible representation of an absurd world in which they lived, but what was tangible about this? A young girl pacing alone in her bedroom as the clock hand past two o’clock and the sun was still hours from being seen. But this seemed like even more than that. His logical mind begged the question again and again, what could possess a girl just barely fifteen to scream out to no one but the walls? 

He could see it now, though. The tiny ants, lacing pathways across her skin as they scurried through her veins through her blood vessels, painted long streaks up and down her arms in a sickening black color. He could so perfectly picture the sickening ripple of their movement beneath the skin. She knew the monsters had been coming all day. He had seen it in her eyes, that raw and powerful fear gripping her tightly beneath those soft hazel irises. Maybe he realized now why. He could feel the tidal wave of ants sweeping and spreading through her suddenly as she closed that thin door on the rest of her household.

They raced out of her pores, an army of black ocean waves pouring out from within. Their legs hit the ground, spreading over the walls with the sound of needles, and drawing patterns of pinpricks in the wallpaper. Such a sound might be silent if given off by one, but it poked holes in the very film of her eardrums when played by such a mass. They all chanted together her mother’s and my favorite word, though each at a separate beat so the sound became constant. As soon as one trumpeter broke free from his place, another immediately filled its silence. Restless. Restless. Restless.

She wants nothing more than to let a scream crash through her bones, rip the bugs from her lungs and spray them out with the sound. That might break through their methodic chant, she thought, and break its hypnotic spell, the one which propelled her ever forward. She wanted nothing more than for them to leave her.

Soon the walls swelled outward, the room flooded by their tidal waves. She tried to continue her strides, though her pace was slowed. Trekking through the bodies which latched themselves to her feet was much harder than her usual quickstep over the smooth floor. As her feet fell one after the other to the ground, she heard them crunch beneath her shoes and the sound echoed through my study down below. One thousand bodies crushed in a single step. But plenty more soon filled their posts on the tiled battlefield.

The insects gushed out of her from every inch of skin exposed, and even some tunneled through sweatshirt sleeves out into the world. The moving puddle at her feet grew deeper. Soon she was afraid she’d be breathing them in with her air. Then they’d coat the hollow of her lungs with restless legs. Soon they would crawl on every side of her, inside and out, darting in and out of her eye sockets and under her toenails. Soon she’d be nothing more than a floating object in that sea of restless legs.

With her next breath there they were. She sucked them in, and the only way she knew she might take her next breath was if she screamed. And so she did. It forced its way out of her. A final wave crawled up her esophagus and she spit them out with a long shriek. She felt choked, yet never once did her body reach that way. Breathing insects felt natural, less demanding than air. In the next instant the tides shifted with a beautiful inhalation. Time slowed finally to a painful pace, much closer to that of the world around her. Though she felt every tiny creature which crept in and out of her innards, their march seemed calculated now. It flowed softly, the trickle of stream more than the gush of a waterfall.

When I heard that sound tonight, imagining her lungs filling with air, I couldn’t allow myself to sit there, perplexed, forming theories rather than solutions. I pushed the chair away, trudged up the stairs, and search my mind for the right words to say to her, or even the questions he could possibly ask.

My footsteps clacked down the cherry floors must have alerted her, as her own sounds stopped quite suddenly. He could feel the waters fall back, blackness shrinking around her. Maybe my own sounds broke through the needle sound. His hand gripped the doorknob and in the short seconds before the door swung inward, he felt the room clear. The ants receded and suddenly ceased to exist when finally it opened.

“A-are you okay?” He managed. He grew even more concerned when he caught sight of her crouched there in the middle of the floor with her knees clutched to her chest as if she was hiding away or futilely attempting to protect herself.

“Just fine.”

It was unnatural the way she shot up from her position on the ground and scooted towards her desk, feigning interest in the papers laying scattered there. As she did, he imagined a single ant lingering beneath her sweatshirt sleeve, just out of his sight.

 “Are you sure? You seem a bit…” He studied her for a moment, mulling over his next word, tasting it for just a moment, “restless.”

“Really. I’m alright.”

I took a deep breath, then struggled for a few moments as no words came to me. Finally, I nodded “Don’t wake your mother,” and left the room.

I retreated to the safety of my study; my body slouched forward in my desk chair. It wasn’t thirty seconds after I left that room that I felt her pacing vibrate the floor again. Leaning forward in my seat, I propped my elbows against the mahogany and ran my hands through my hair, as black as the army filling her room again.

I looked up at the ceiling and swore I could practically see where her foot landed on the other side. Then, the slightest movement in the corner closest to the sound caught my attention. A single line of ants, looking harmless, escaped from a crack in the ceiling. I immediately turned my gaze back to the term papers, trying to convince myself I hadn’t seen a thing.  I couldn’t help but mutter the word, “restless.”

Perfectly Normal

            The fire enveloped my hand, tender and loving like a mother embracing her newborn. It was warm--not hot--warm. I withdrew my hand from the flame, noticing the hungry way the tongues of fire lick at my hand as the wisps sweep the length of my hand, creeping from my palm to my fingertips. Lifting my hand, I examined the damage. A bit of flaking and a few patches of angry red blotches along the back. Why? Why can't I feel what they feel? A black glove reclaimed its place on my right hand, chafing against my burnt skin. Disappointed, I suffocated the controlled flame with the lid of a pot and slid it underneath my bed. I crawled on the bed and creaked open the window. Waving my arms like an inhospitable host, I dismissed the fumes of the fire that I had so painstakingly created.

            When I was thirteen years old, my family moved from Vietnam to Colorado. I couldn't speak English well, so I was teased. The teacher, who held no sympathy for, as she called them, "yellow" people, turned a blind eye. My classmates were delighted. They took pleasure in poking me with sharp sticks, pulling on my braid and stepping on my sandal-covered feet. I never cried. I never complained. But they became more daring, more vicious. Sometimes, my backpack would disappear, found days later in a trash can. Tacks constantly covered my seat. I always made sure to check before sitting, but one time I forgot. As soon as I sat down, they started howling, but it gradually faded to horrified whispers. They expected me to jump up and yelp with pain, but I just sat there, a crimson pool forming underneath my skirt. Someone screamed.

         I left that school soon afterwards, not because of the teasing and the pranks, but because of the whispers and the glances that would follow me, an endless shadow. I couldn't stand the way they looked at me, like I was a freak. I'm not a freak, just your average seventeen year old Vietnamese girl. I shop at the mall, listen to One Direction and gossip about cute boys. I'm normal. I wear a bow in my hair, a butterfly so pale blue that it could flutter away at any moment and be a part of the sky. I'm normal. But I know that's not true, I'm not like everybody else. No matter what I do, I'll never be like my peers. I won't feel what they feel: the soft, smooth skin of a baby's bottom, the coarse fibers of a familiar carpet, the warmth of another human being. I can't stand it, I can't stand being different. I need to feel what others feel. I need to be normal.

           I stand over the well, staring down its open maw, hungry to consume me. It's too dark to see the bottom. The darkness dares me to jump; it beckons me to abandon my fear and lunge down its seemingly endless throat, to fall for what must be hours and fill its stomach. But I don't.

Restless

 (I really cannot decide whether I absolutely loath this piece or not.)

Restless, they would call it when she got like this. She scoffed at the word. Restless didn’t begin to cover it. That simple word spoke of the things tangible, explainable, and real. It brought images of over excitable children fidgeting at the table while the grownups finished their Christmas dinner and their presents called from the next room. It was something more real than that, yet somehow less concrete.

Restless couldn’t account for the ants scurrying through her veins. Their tiny little feet, if one could even call them that, traced criss-crossed paths through every inch of her being, hurrying just below the skin. She could feel each of their legs move independently through her. Every one was an explosion of nerve endings, a sensation like nothing she’d felt before. If she didn’t get up and move with the beings, allow each step of theirs to take her two of her own, she felt they might consume her. Fill up her insides and spill out her ears in impatient ocean waves. So she let them take control. The room was only so big, though.

Her mind buzzed with due dates and to do lists stretching for miles. In her saner moments she might have realized she needed to do none of those things, but for now they flew past one by one, each becoming for a second the most important thing in the world, and the most stressful. She played games to calm it, counting the blocks on the tile floor as she passed them. Twelve blocks there, twelve back. And again. And again. Restless. But this couldn’t keep hold of her attention for too long. She began to take the steps in twos, then threes and fours. Four blocks there, three blocks back. There she went, white-washing wall to white-washed wall. She had needed to move the dresser against her closet door to give her a straight path between each wall, though the test of her strength quieted her demons for a few moments.

Her mother called from the downstairs kitchen. Dinner was ready. Sure she felt her stomach give a soft growl, but she couldn’t fathom for a moment the idea of sitting down at a table. They might catch her, whatever chased her across those floor tiles. And even worse, the idea that she might have to face her parents’ eyes glancing sideways at her subtle rocking back and forth in her chair while she lifted the fork over and over, never once letting it linger long enough to pick up any food, sickened her. Restless, they might call her. Just the thought of hearing the word again shaped her hunger into overwhelming nausea.

She let the ants carry her to the top step, where she shouted down something incomprehensible that vaguely sounded like “homework” and hastened her step back toward her bedroom. She shut the door just in time, as the first tidal waves rolled in. She had been expecting them, though never was she fully prepared. Bugs raced from her pores, darting out across the carpet until it was stained black. Restless each one repeated at a slightly different beat, so the word overtook her senses. Restless. Restless. Restless.  The walls swell outward as the waves beat against them. She wants nothing more than to let a scream crash through her bones, rip the bugs from her lungs and spray them out with the sound. She wanted nothing more for them to leave her.

As her feet fell one after the other to the ground, she heard them crunch beneath her shoes. One thousand bodies crushed in a single step. But plenty more soon filled their posts on the carpeted battlefield. Soon the walls began to crawl with them. So many she could soon hear the legs move one by one, needles poking holes in the wallpaper as they pass. The sound, silent by itself, overtook her ear drums and pricking those pinholes in the thin film of her eardrum. When one tiny pin lifted, another immediately took its place. Over and over. The sound restless.

She felt the room grow smaller, as they gushed in and spilled outward from her. Soon she’d be breathing them in with the air. Soon they would crawl on every side of her, inside and out, darting in and out of her eye sockets and under her toenails. Soon she’d be nothing more than a floating object in that sea of restless legs.

Finally, it forced its way out of her. A final wave crawled up her esophagus and she spit them out with a long shriek. She felt choked, yet never once did her body reach that way. Breathing insects felt natural, more beautiful than air. In an instant tides shifted with a beautiful inhalation. Time slowed finally to a painful pace, much closer to that of the world around her. Though she felt every tiny creature which crept in and out of her innards, their march seemed calculated, flowed softly, the trickle of stream more than the gust of a waterfall.

As the waters fell, the blackness shrinking around her, she caught sight of a shadow beneath her door. The harsh clack of her father’s footfalls on the wood floor broke through the needle sounds and the doorknob turned. In the short seconds before the door swung inward, she watched the ants recede and then cease to exist, no longer running restless through her.

“Are you okay?” Her father seemed concerned, catching sight of her crouched there on the tile, clutching her knees to her chest as if protecting herself, or hiding away.

“Just fine” It was unnatural the way she shot up from her position on the ground and scooted towards her desk, feigning interest in the papers laying scattered there. As she did, she felt a single ant making its way up her arm beneath her sweatshirt sleeves. “Really. I’m alright.”

“Are you sure? You seem a bit…” He studied her for a moment, mulling over his next word, “restless.”