Unfinished (Working Title: Scarlet Leaves)

Here, I start at the very end; not what you would expect for the beginning of a story. As it is now, I lay on the cold, marble floor in a pool of blood. Fed by a gushing waterfall of crimson coming out of my thigh, being pumped out by the beat of my thumping heart, I was surprised that I had that much blood in my veins, the level of the pool rising to lap at my fingers.

Hopefully, whoever picks this mess of a story up masters the lesson I failed to learn. I would not want this account of my adventures to have been recorded in vain. That would have robbed my life of its purpose. Everything I had ever worked for and sacrificed would be worthless. So my experiences; my mistakes, triumphs, and sadly, my death – would hopefully be for the betterment of the reader.

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Scarlet leaves crunched beneath the soles of heavy black boots. Fiery copper eyes cast furtive glances behind, restless in their searching. The lithe body flew through the forest, running from an unseen enemy. Blonde hair whipped around in the wind, obscuring the runner’s view. Breath curled out of the mouth and into the brisk morning air. Hands went to the hilt of a sword every few minutes, always ready for attack.

Marie knew that what she was doing was wrong, but it was the only way. That’s how she consoled herself at night when the guilt became too much. When the weight of all she’d done came down on her, the thought of what her actions would culminate in kept her going, pulling her through the rough times and keeping her swimming in an unrelenting current.

Breaking through to a clear meadow, she took a moment to gulp some water from the skin hanging from her shoulder. It was in these few seconds that she was able to relax and focus on things other than escaping and running. Her shoulders, where they had before been furiously moving up and down, began to slow. Her breaths came easier and she started to feel at peace.

Marie’s eyes looked around the meadow, and seeing no danger, she continued to drink the water in her skin. Her thirst quenched, she replaced the skin to her side and then bent down to inspect her shoes. The lacings still tight and the soles still attached, she stood up and took off again.

The path she took led her through a bubbling mountain stream and a cold, dripping and inky mountain tunnel carved long ago by ancient peoples. Upon exiting the rocky passage, Marie welcomed the sight of the little stone hut not 100 yards off. She had finally reached her destination, or at least it seemed as if she had.

In her loping gate to reach the little shack, a series of events began to unfold. Her confidence increased, and why should it not when safety was so close? With her confidence increase, her defenses slackened until she was as doe in the forest. Her gait increased and she was so close to the building when something bowled into her and knocked her flat, taking the air right out of her.

As she struggled to get up, her vision blurring, Marie felt a weight on her shoulder that was preventing her from standing up straight. She looked up and saw a face, screamed and began thrashing wildly trying to free herself.

“Get off me Damian, its me, not some intruder. Get off!” she exclaimed as she pushed his foot off her shoulder and stood up.

“Sorry Em, I thought you were one of them. We can’t take too many chances out here. Come on inside and I’ll fix you a drink,” he put her under his arm and helped her limp to the structure. Once inside, he set Marie down in a chair and began rummaging in the cupboards for two cups and then filled them with water from a pitcher on the counter.

“So, did you get it?” he asked eagerly, sipping at his water while she drowned hers in two seconds.

“Oh, I got it,” she said with a grin, grabbing her pack and releasing the treasure trove onto the table.

---

Damian's eyes glazed over with boredom as he perused the trinkets on the table. He sighed as he contemplated how to break the news to his newest recruit, who although was very eager and happy to help the cause, really wasn't putting a dent into what was really needed.

His fingers restlessly drummed the carved wooden table, trying to gather the courage to speak the words that needed to be said to his protege.
"Marie...This has been... I think...," he trailed off, the right words never coming to mind. He put off the task until a time when better words entered his mind, "Have you been enjoying your time with us so far?"

Untitled- For Now

Brown hair was swept off the face as soon as it fell. Green eyes blinked furiously as she tried to adjust from the absence of light to sudden immersion in it. Tora’s hand fumbled with the light switch, slightly clubbing it to death in an attempt to turn it off. She should have known that it was going to happen again, this broken circuit had been acting up for days.

Giving up on turning off the light, she turned to face her bed. What use was it during the day, she thought, but to dangle in her face that she could not sleep till night had fallen? Couldn’t the bed just disappear for the time she was awake? Tora kicked it for good measure and began to get ready for school.

Tora never dressed in anything but black. For one, it was the only color that looked good on her. Secondly, it allowed her to blend in with the crowd, giving her an anonymity that she had worked hard to obtain. She hurriedly finished dressing, grabbed her bag, a piece of toast, her homework assignment from the printer and rushed out the door.

She opened the door to her car, banging it against the fence and throwing her backpack and assignment in. She slammed it in the same fashion, a ringing sound in her ears for the next few seconds. Tora rushed around the front of the car, hurriedly opening the driver’s side door and jumped herself in. Jamming the key in the ignition, she turned it and the car roared to life, allowing her to peel out of the driveway.

She entered the freeway onramp, jamming to the Lion King soundtrack. The freeway was a little busy at this hour, but nothing to complain about. Tora passed two exits and took the third, a red stoplight preventing her from turning left onto the street wherewith her school sat. Finally, after what seemed like ages of waiting, it turned green and the wheels of the car squealed as they turned in her intended direction.

She checked up on her complexion in the visor mirror before shoving it back in its place. Looking over her shoulder, she changed lanes and consequently turned right into the school parking lot. Gazing over the parking lot, she became frustrated with the apparent lack of sufficient parking for her school. Grumbling, she pulled into the furthest spot from the entrance and exited her vehicle, schoolbag on her shoulder and wiping the toast crumbs from her mouth.

Tora passed dozens of her classmates as she dashed through the parking lot, her tennis shoes slapping the pavement in a constant rhythm. The wind through her hair, the rush of adrenaline; this is what she lived for, breathed for. It was her joy and solace in times of hardship. She quickly reached the doors to the school and breezed through them as a leaf does in the wind.

She was suddenly assaulted by the crowd of students blocking the hallway. Tora wondered what was causing such a hold up. Weaving her way in and out of students, she tried to find the center, the bottleneck, so to speak.

Tora found Connor about 10 feet in the door. As usually his pants were halfway down his legs, which caused most people to be very rude to him. But she had known Connor since they were in middle school, and he wasn’t a gansta character at all. It was just his lame attempt at looking cool and fitting in because he didn’t want anyone finding out about his 3.9 GPA.

“What’s going on Connor?”

“I’m going to have you find out for yourself, but I warn you, it isn’t that pretty.”

Her heart began to pound, vision blacking out around the edges. If he wouldn’t tell her, then it must be pretty bad.

She had to forcefully shove some students out of the way, but she tried to be as polite as possible in completing her quest. Finally, she was able to break through to the front, in what had seemed like forever and a day.

The sight which her eyes beheld shocked and bewildered her. The auditorium’s doors hung off their hinges, pressed to the brick wall by the crowd of students. She continued inside, seeing the plush, velvety chairs holed and gutted, the fluffing everywhere. She was terrified to glance at the stage, to see her worst nightmares come true.

When she couldn’t take the suspense anymore, her eyes looked upward and immediately swung back down. No, it couldn’t be possible. It shouldn’t be possible. Her beloved black hardwood stage was all scratched and dinged, bloodied and browned. No longer did its prestige impress all who looked upon it. No more did it seem an impressive work of art, a standing place for the next greats in the acting profession.

It seemed so lonely, all by itself up there, full of graffiti and marred beyond reason. The stage lights hung dejectedly, their lights shining on no new rising star. The curtains torn, rings pulled off the hook, hanging limply on the rod, unable to close or open, to end or begin a wonderful show. All it had been was now a memory, its current state a black mark on it’s history.

Her mincing steps up to the stage were hindered by the crowd that was jammed in the aisles. She eventually decided to jump over the seats, frustrated with her lack of progress to the front. She successfully hurdled over the first seat, but had a little trouble with the second row when she tripped and fell flat on her face.

Tora recovered relatively quickly from the fall, jumping over seats again within a few seconds. It seemed to take forever to reach the stage when there were only ten rows of seats. Why couldn’t time just go faster?

Reaching the front, she climbed up onto the stage, and looked at the damage closely. It wasn’t as bad as what she had seen from the back, but it was still bad. The scratches were deep and long, and the graffiti was horrendous. Now she had to find the drama teacher and see what would happen with the stage and how long it would take to fix, if there was any fixing to be done in the first place.

Her craning neck and straining eyes could find no tell-tale balding head or thin-wire framed glasses. She could not see his usually outlandish suit anywhere. Usually, that was the only thing you could see in a ten mile radius, but with the crowd of people being as thick as it was, she assumed that was the reason behind being unable to locate him. Tora turned around defeated, her visage showing visible distress. Where was her teacher, Mr. Ratcliffe, when she needed him.

As she began to walk back to the exit, tears streaming down her face, she bumped into someone. To be exact, she bumped into a very bony arm, which jabbed her sharply in her side. She didn’t feel the pain because she was already numb on the inside from the damage to the auditorium.

She quickly whispered an apology and tried to move around the person, but they kept matching her, step for step. Within a few seconds, they had curled their fingers around her upper arm.

She might have been able to get away if the person wasn’t so strong. Curious to see who her captor was, she looked up. The tears stopped for just a moment and she began hugging him.

The world as she knew it may have been temporarily stopped, but now she had her boyfriend at least. She breathed in his wonderful Old Spice smell and pulled back. “How’d you know I’d be here?”

“Where else would you be?” he replied with a smile, “besides, I thought you would need me. This place looks really bad, so you’re probably in a worse state. I know how much you love it,” he finished, kissing her forehead.

She gave him a little smile. “You know me so well, probably better than myself,” she ended with a grin. She pulled back from him, and slipped her hand in his. They began to walk back toward the doors, her outlook getting brighter and brighter, but still haunted by the destruction of the auditorium.

At the door, she finally found Mr. Ratcliffe. Before she could open her mouth though, he started talking.

“Yes, it’s bad. No, it’s not permanent. And yes, the school does have the funds to fix it,” a small smile on his face.

Inside of herself, Tora began to jump for joy. The theater department would live on. Shows would continue, and she could continue to design sets and fix lighting. Now the world was spinning right, now was when she could relax.

Middle of Nowhere

I’ve got to get started somehow, find a way to introduce something totally strange and foreign to me. I need to find where this all began, how it all ended up this way. This doesn’t make sense, this place I am at. It seems as if I was thrown here at random, with no thought or planning.

I need to introduce you to who I am. Who I have become, apparently. It doesn’t make sense that the person I should be most aware of, have the most knowledge of is foreign to even me. It seems that somewhere along the way, I lost my senses. I’ve got to get back to who I am, to the girl underneath this mask of indifference.

I didn’t want to be the girl who sat in the corner. I wanted to be center-stage, in-your-face and all-over-the-world famous actress, singer, and Jill-of-all-Trades. So how the hell did I end up here, in the middle of nowhere?

Multiple Personalities

When one life becomes a billion, when one choice spawns millions of others, when what you do today has no effect on tomorrow unless you choose to have yesterday remain today, what are the possibilities?

To live each day anew. To drink from the brimming cup of innocence each new dawn. To fall endlessly into the abyss of never ending tomorrows.

Could you live in such a world? Would you be able to endure not having a past and a terribly uncertain future? What would you do if there were no consequences?

Tada, A New Blog

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