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Week 115- (March 12th-19th) stories--- Topic: Foreboding DONE
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M
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Mar 12, 2012 03:54AM
What a great topic! I’m going to try to write a story for this one.
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Oh cool! I just wrote a story for school that's supposed to inspire dread, foreboding, and fearful anticipation. Hopefully it does. Here it is. It's supposed to be Gothic so let me know if it is or not. This isn't typically my type of genre and I have to submit this. I certainly hope it turned out well.Title: The Dead
Words: 998
Adrenaline pounded through his veins. Rain fell from the sky in thick sheets, masking any sign of its approach. The black, night sky showed no signs of lightening. He knew the sun would bring no relief from the darkness though. It was more than just physical – seeming to have the ability to invade the very mind, seizing one’s whole being, yet still allowing you to live. Never having experienced the darkness before, he could only go off of what the unstable had muttered in their crazed fashions, gripping their heads as sheer terror crossed their faces. The lucky ones went catatonic – like statues.
A shuddered rippled through him as he thought of their accounts. There would no way he would allow himself to come within its grasp. The thought alone terrified his limbs, numb with cold, into action. He pushed off the building at his back and splashed down the alley.
The cold rain slid down his neck. He clawed at the moisture, paranoid that its true nature would morph into the silent, deadly ways of the darkness. His hand rubbed against his neck until it was raw, blood surfacing where his nails had scraped. The rain stung the wound, oddly bringing relief. The stinging sensation did not seem able to be the darkness in disguise.
Relief didn’t last long though – it never did. His calves burned with exertion but he kept pushing himself forward not paying attention to his surroundings like he should have. Slowly, the rain began to lessen until all that remained of its presence were the wet objects it left behind. His legs slowed to a stop as he registered the change in weather.
He pursed his chapped lips together. The rain might be gone but something else had changed too. Tried as he might to place it, it spent its time evading him – at least for the moment. He hesitantly pulled his body to the right until he completed a small circle, his eyes taking in his surroundings. Around him stood decrepit buildings, once rich with life but now empty and void of the laughter they might have once held. No, he corrected himself. These houses did not look like they had ever held a happy event or sound within their long lives. From the very beginning, their inhabitants had neglected them, allowing them to become filthy, soiled, like warehouses.
As he completed his circle, he turned sharply to the left, a flicker of movement registering in his peripheral vision. He forced he swallow as his eyes landed on the house directly in front of him. A sagging line stretched from it to the neighboring house on its right. Upon the line hung sodden clothes, a gust of wind dragged through the air, feeling oddly stale and stagnant.
He took a few involuntary steps forward until he stood at the base of the porch. His eyes ran across the clothes line then along the porch. They widened and a cry of terror swept through his body, pulling it away from the porch as his eyes understood the shapes on the porch floorboards. He ripped them away from the shapes (footsteps) to stare at the empty doorway. And suddenly, the village was no longer empty. Void of life? Yes. Empty? No; far from empty.
Emerging from the various shacks came creatures of utmost horror. Bandages, stained with all matter of substances, wrapped around their limbs in varying places, some had filthy, white cloths bound around their eyes, blood showing through them. Still more bandages covered their torsos while others seemed to have been refused this treatment and walked forward, blood still slowly staining their shirts.
With a sense of utter revulsion he recognized the creatures not as creatures but as the dead. His eyes flickered to the creature standing squarely before him, unexpectedly close. And as he morbidly searched the face, recognition rocked through him.
“David,” a voice called, “David, it’s all right. You’re safe.”
Paralyzed, his hands trembled as the creatures continued their advance. It was torturously slow. They stumbled forward, one of them dragging a broken leg as it limped forward with the others. It fell to the muddy ground and as it did so, he started forward, the creature’s face momentarily morphing into one he knew very well. But this was impossible. Then again, was it? She was dead, but weren’t these things the dead? He searched for the word Humanity had used for them. What was it? Thick with some foreign substance, his mind unwillingly supplied him with the name he sought: zombie.
Before he could restrain himself, he fell to his needs by the creature that had once been his beloved sister. He offered a hand. Mistake, the inner workings of his mind screamed at him. It was too late though. The creature’s eyes took in the hand like a hungry beast, faster than he would have thought possible. It grasped his arm in a bone-crushing grip and sunk its teeth into his hand’s soft flesh.
A scream tore itself from his lungs, strangely sending a jolt of pain through his body. This should not be. His throat he would understand, but his whole body? That wasn’t right. The pain in his hand increased just as understanding dawned through his eyes. The darkness, the last free recesses of his mind spat even as it was encircled within the darkness’s grasp. Eternal horror darkened his mind, filtering itself into every fiber of his being. And as this happened, the creatures fell upon him, one by one, their teeth sinking into his skin.
And he did the only thing he could: scream. The sound tore through the air and the words whispering that he was “safe” continued urgently. They told him not to scream. Strange flickers of a white room invaded his mind, but the terror of the moment dominated his being. The zombies did not relinquish their hold on him, and he did not expect them to. Ever.
Never trust your sister! That’s the moral of this story. It held my attention all the way through, Stephanie, and what a grisly ending. It will be hard to come up with something as riveting as this.
Now, how did something like this get stirred up?
Oh good! I'm glad you guys liked it! So do you guys think it can go under the catagory of Gothic?
I love you too, Al! :D Eventually this cold will go away...
AHAHAHAHAA! I hear you messaging me...
I think of gothic as having to do with castles on windswept sea cliffs, a brooding atmosphere, Byronic heroes, big-busted women in thin nightdresses and with 1970’s hairstyles running into the night on the cheap covers of dusty paperbacks.
Do you think it met my aim of inspire dread, ect.?
You’ll find out when your teacher hands it back with a grade on it.
I should probably explain that this isn’t a story but a scene from a rambling time-travel narrative I wrote years ago when I was in school and that’s in the folder of stories to be revised. I haven’t had a chance to write anything this week, but I wanted to submit something. The scene will make more sense if I give you the context.On November 11, 1988, the narrator, who is in graduate school, returns to his apartment after class and falls asleep only to find himself transported back in time to the fall of 1980, when he was a sophomore at Lyons College. At the end of that semester, beautiful and brilliant Marjory Mohr, who was in love with the narrator, had inexplicably dropped out of school. When he finds himself back in time, the narrator admits to Marjory that he loves her, and they make plans for a life together, but something happens that causes the narrator to return to the future, leaving Marjory trapped in the past. At the end of the weekend described below, Marjory has figured out what happened. She has lost her keys because she had given them to the narrator shortly before the time anomaly that returns him to the future.
-----------------------
Excerpt from “The Mansion in the Moorfields”
(About 3,900 words.)
. . .
On a Sunday evening in November of my sophomore year, in a landscape of spidery shadows, I had returned to school from a weekend at home. The winding highway, except that it had been blacktopped, had scarcely changed since the days when buckboards drawn by mules had rolled unhurriedly along in the dust among the farms. The broomsage had once more assumed shades of umber and burnt sienna. In a creek valley the road made a lazy loop around a hillock on which sagged a husk of a homestead. The knots and grain of its weathered board-and-batten siding stood out in relief in the rays of the declining sun, and the remains of its porch, under a brow of wooden shingles, looked lonely for the return of people and rocking chairs.
At Lyons I had tossed my duffel bag on the bed in my dormitory room. On the drawing board by the window was an unfinished rendering in acrylic, of Marjory as the personification of September, leaves in her hair, a large spool in one hand, the fingers of the other unwinding the thread.
Walking to the coffeehouse, I had found her and Fred sitting at the bar. As I came in, Marjory watched me with an expectation that seemed abruptly disappointed. “How was your weekend?” I greeted, and drew out a stool next to her.
On a pair of napkins she had written several lines of a poem in English, German, French, and Latin. She was fond of contrasting words and phrases that way. “They taste different in different languages,” she would say. I recognized a line from Villon, “Oh, where are the snows of yesteryear?” and knew that she and Fred had been discussing one of her favorite historic characters.
As if refusing to give up hope, she watched me attentively, but then became withdrawn.
“She lost her keys on Friday,” Fred related.
It was not like Marjory to misplace anything, and she kept especially close guard over her keys. “Any idea where?” I inquired. “What an inconvenience!”
She gave me a hard look, then sighed. “I thought I might have left them in here, but Yolanda and I looked everywhere.”
“She had to call maintenance to let her into her dorm room,” Fred supplied.
I knew that she treasured the key ring, with its strange ornament in the shape of a Viking rune. I tried to cheer her up, talked of the weekend, of yard raking and of burning the big pile of pinestraw in the side lot of my parents’ yard. I suggested enthusiastically that we might find Patti and Jeff and play a round of frisbee golf.
Marjory seemed distant, evincing a disinterest in our usual diversions. I could tell that something had changed.
Fred reported that Friday night’s film had broken three times. It had been The Prime of Miss Jean Brody, and the distribution company had sent a worn out print.
A few minutes later, with a stunned air of dejection, Marjory left the room. Concerned, Fred followed her out.
I caught up with Fred and Marjory in the garden beyond the verandah. They were standing in front of the fountain, a deep basin into which a lion’s head spouted a stream of water. “Fred, I don’t always feel like playing frisbee golf,” she was saying. The brick paving was in disrepair, its herringbone pattern mossy and heaved. At the sound of my steps, Fred had turned toward me in bewilderment. How could someone not want to play frisbee golf? Marjory, it was plain, had fallen prey to some unclassified madness.
It was dinner time and students were wending their way along the cow trails to the Commons on top of the hill. We had speculated why many of the sidewalks had been laid in places where students did not usually walk. Someone had proposed that their placement indicated the location of routes forgotten after old buildings had been torn down. Having observed students as they traversed the creek valley between classes, we had concluded that there are people who are born to wander, and who would rather follow a winding and muddy track than a clean pavement poured in a straight line.
The enrollment was small enough for everyone to be accommodated by one dining room, but the food tendered by the cafeteria held the distinction of being the least appreciated thing on campus. Food poisoning was a grudgingly accepted aspect of life at Lyons, but in April its incidence had reached pestilential proportions and the students had successfully struck for a new food service. The cafeteria served as the locus for socializing, and the dinner ritual was as integral to our existence as the town meeting had been for the the New England colonists.
Leigh Ann Ashton waved at us from the steps of the girls’ dormitory, and Jeff Durbin called out on his way past the garden. Fred departed to eat.
“I feel like going for a walk,” Marjory said after Fred had left the garden. The rim of the sun had not yet settled on the horizon as we wandered off campus into the Moorfields, a neighborhood of aged mansions, stretching westward.
In its initial years, Lyons had enjoyed the privacy of sparsely developed countryside. Its first substantial building, Judson Hall, had housed students, classes, and, in the basement, a laboratory. Along one side of the wooded tract which would be developed as the college, a dirt road had wound away south from the port in a string of farming communities.
In the early part of the century, the city had grown around the maturing campus. Now the Old Masefield Road was a busy street. In the Moorfields, where it forked, stood a lovely, abandoned house with a green tile roof. A gargantuan hedge gone wild immured a sea of tall grass in which the house seemed sunken.
The sidewalk was overhung by high branches of the hedge, and it occurred to me that pedestrians in the hot noonday must find the shade a relief. Following the walk to the rear of the property, we came to a pillared entrance. It had been forced, its once-majestic wrought-iron gates pushed askew, tangled now with the woodbine of many seasons. The weed-grown drive ended at a carriage house rendered in the same brick and tile as the mansion. Beside it leaned the biggest apple tree I had ever seen. Thick limbs drooped on the roof and around the walls as if it were trying to shield a longtime companion from the predations of a dreaded future.
These voiceless inhabitants of the tristful scene extended us a soundless welcome, drawing us in irresistably. The sight and rude clamor of the streets were extinguished by the jungle-like foliage. In an island of hypnotic stillness, the drive circled through a tall porte-cochere to our left. Marjory reached for my hand as we cautiously skirted the house. The brown grass, in the orange glow of the sun, was warm. By an empty pool in the shape of a scallop, the fragments of a toppled fountain lay like the spine of a great animal, its delicate tiers encrusted now with black moss.
(Continued.)
(Excerpt from “The Mansion in the Moorfields,” continued.)From a few feet ahead of us came a distinct rustling of the grass. My mind filled with images of sharp canines and of the long needles used for cases of hydrophobia. I heard Marjory stifle a scream. Turning to run, I collided with her where she stood as if frozen in place behind me. She threw her arms around me and held on tightly as, spurred by instinct, I tried to continue in the direction of the gate, away from the sound in the grass. Seconds later a calico cat emerged and darted across the front walk.
We laughed breathlessly in nervous relief, and I attempted to appear nonchalant. She remarked that the yard was probably a haven for mice. Then she looked at me impishly. “You big baby!” With a toss of her head she swung her hair out of her face.
Years later, in an introspective letter, she would confess that for her, too, the air had seemed charged with something like electricity. She looked into my eyes as if appealing an unfair sentence, then took my hands in hers and wrapped my arms around her waist. I did not think of her as a wistful person, and her actions struck me as out of character, as if, for me alone, she were disrobing herself of the indifference in which she was ordinarily cloaked. Though I could not have identified it as such at the time, an unrevealed distress I had sensed in her earlier in the coffeehouse was becoming more apparent.
“Are you going to kiss me,” she said, “or are you going to stand there like a war monument?” On tiptoe, she touched her nose against mine. She had smiled sadly. It is odd to remember now how uncertain I was of myself at nineteen. Marjory, by comparison, had always possessed the commanding ease and self-confidence of persons much older than we. I noticed, however, that those qualities had developed even further in her, conspicuously, as if overnight.
In the November light of those moments, I became aware of an intimacy between us grown so powerful that it now defined our lives. With the disjointed conclusion of the weekend, it was as if we had become fused into one mind, the towering hedge and the tall grass presiding. Through the lengthy absences that would soon separate us, we retained a virtually palpable sense of each other’s presence, a phenomenon I had found natural from the first, if occasionally disconcerting.
Attached to the side of the mansion, like a large patio, was an elaborate arbor of fluted columns supporting a dome of wisteria, its remaining leaves ragged. Making our way through thick vines into its eerie seclusion, we gained entry to the house by stepping carefully over beveled glass that had been smashed out of a set of French doors. The waning illumination from front windows facing east lit a large, square room. There was not a crack visible in the plaster of the walls or the lofty ceiling, and I knew that the foundations of the house were intact. Across the room, we stopped in a panoramic doorway and from its deep reveals drew out the pocket doors, which slid easily on recessed rails from their hiding places in the walls.
“Why would a dwelling of this grandeur go unoccupied for years?” I mused aloud, with a frustration I have felt often in my life.
“Oh, I suspect they will tear it down before long,” Marjory’s voice was framed by the dusky air, “and put an unsightly, upscale apartment complex here.” She made one of her subtle expressions of distaste.
I recoiled at the thought that this fascinating preserve of picturesque quietude might be erased by a parking lot and sheet rocked cages for the captives of urban living. “But where would the silence find to live?”
Meditatively, her footfalls hollow on the board floor, she crossed the entry hall, which was paneled in black walnut. At the rear of the hall were the remains of what had been a magisterial, winding staircase. “Other places like this, while there are still some standing.” She ran her fingers along the deep moulding. “Mesmerizing, isn’t it? This is what is left of the silence that had lain for hundreds of thousands of years here before industrialized society arrived and defiled it.” Rapping on the wood, she remarked that it seemed solid and thick. Her gaze traversed the carved beams of the coffered ceiling. I then found myself looking into her all-perceiving eyes. As though possessed of its own presence, her voice appeared in the stillness. “Is this the kind of house you would like to have?”
I could reply only with wordless helplessness, a wish that I could magically move the house and its fantastic setting to a place where it would not be destroyed. Any site in the countryside, away from the juggernaut of city expansion, would do. Along the old highway to Masefield, narrow farm roads snaked across rolling hills.
Situated on a rise overlooking the dry broom sage, with its sweeping roof and tall, light-thirsty windows, this Italianate gem would be a baronial manor. I could envision late September afternoons of apples ready to be picked beside the carriage house.
The front door stood ajar, its rim lock awry, the jamb splintered, probably by the application of a crowbar. It opened ponderously as Marjory tugged at the porcelain knob. Then she walked out onto the stoop. The semicircular entablature was supported by delicate columns like those of the flanking arbors, weathered, their paint peeling. “How unusual!”
I followed her across the threshold. Standing in the recessed entry, on the outside, we looked up into a tremendous seashell cast in fine mortar to resemble marble.
There were, I know now, a number of houses such as this in the city, in neighborhoods that had been home to the men who had owned the banks and the primary businesses of the port. This sumptuous avenue in the Moorfields had been a parade of palatial residences built during the trend for revival of authentic detail that had once dominated architecture. With the vicissitudes of almost three quarters of a century, many of the mansions had become offices, others had been demolished to make way for great glass boxes and their parking lots, but some were still meticulously maintained as private homes. What ill luck had befallen this house that graced the divergence of the road?
We retreated into the gloom of the foyer, closing the door behind us, and climbed the ravaged staircase. Here and there the broken stump of a baluster remained as evidence of the violence with which the railing had been taken.
She told me that on Friday night she had made the decision not to go to medical school.
Taking a step up, I stopped, dumbfounded. She ascended the few treads remaining. I looked up at her.
She had called her father, who had not taken the declaration courteously. “I had known what the response would be.” Her lips formed a pained half-smile. “He told me what an ungrateful daughter I was for the investment of time and money he had made on my behalf.”
A deep-seated resentment stirred within me, of parents whose motive for having children is to glorify themselves. My anger left me at a loss for a reply.
She raised her eyebrows. Now that she had become free of a future for which she had no relish, she was unsure whether she really wanted to finish school.
“What will you do?” I inquired weakly, selfishly. She had been my mage. What interest could my remaining sojourn at Lyons hold if she were gone?
“Be a writer.”
I climbed the remaining steps, and we stood in a bright hallway that ran the width of the house and that was lit by windows on either end.
“I watched my brother go through medical school and a residency,” she sighed. “I already know what that life has in store for me and that I will hate it.” Her gaze wandering reflectively back down the stairs, she said it as if she were remembering it.
“There is no doubt that you would make a great writer,” I admitted.
A disabused expression revealed her beautiful teeth. “I might have been an obedient child and married a profession for appearances, if Dr. Stahl had not reminded me what I was put on this earth to do.” She stepped toward me tentatively. “And if something else hadn’t happened.”
(Continued.)
(Excerpt from “The Mansion in the Moorfields,” continued.)There was an openness about her that I found threatening, her arms at her side, her palms toward me, as if in the expectation that I would embrace her. I took a step backward.
Her face paled with despair, as if cold water had been thrown on her. She looked at me with an abject, bewildered, searching intensity.
I could only stare back blankly.
She openly appraised me with her eyes, which had grown red, and I felt as if her hands were invisibly touching me all over. “You don’t remember Friday.”
“Friday?”
She shuddered, and I wondered if she were having a nervous breakdown. The image came to my mind of a train that had run out of track and was derailing in a pile-up. Few students, I knew, could have held up under the academic load that was routine for her. Her mouth quivered, “I don’t want to be here without you.”
“But I’m here. I don’t understand.” I shrank away.
She looked behind her with desperation into the deep gloom of the foyer, and for a moment I was afraid that she wanted to throw herself down the staircase. After a labored exhalation, she stammered, “Why is this happening?” She put her head in her hands. “Why did I have to come here, where Mom went to school?” The hall filled up with her voice, contorted, unlovely, and screaming. “Oh, God! Why is this happening to me?” She turned so I could not see her face.
I didn’t know what to do for her, and she knew that. Therein lay the nucleus of her vexation, though I cannot say how I was aware of it. Summoning all of my courage, I put my hand on her shoulder, which was shaking, but she pulled away, not wanting to be touched.
The narrow, scarred planks of the oak floor reached away in both directions to a pair of doorways that faced each other across the corridor, and I retreated down the hall.
“I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “This is not what I intended.” She dried her face with her sleeve.
Unspeaking, we began an exploration of the upper rooms. They proved to be plain, but the two facing the confluence of streets were spacious. On the bare floor of the chamber occupying the southeast corner was a rotting mattress and an accumulation of trash. Some vagrant had made its filthy nest here like a giant rat. To the south, its image distorted by the wavy, dust-caked panes, a Tudor mansion rose behind dark shrubbery, its portal guarded by tall, cone-shaped hedges. The architect had taken such pains with the detail that the residence appeared to be a genuine half-timbered relic of medieval England.
As we peered in the rooms and looked from the rear of the house down into the shadows of the gaunt porte-cochere, I was burdened by the confusing revelation that Marjory had become a mature woman, that she had begun to expect something of me that I was not prepared to give, something requiring independence and self-reliance, the capacity to make a commitment. I wanted to get close to her but was terrified and unable to admit it to myself. For her that was no longer enough. When I tried to ask her what was wrong, she declined to explain.
As we descended the stairs, which were as sturdy as if made of stone, the air was becoming chill with the onset of twilight. I was hungry and remarked that if we loitered much longer the Commons would be closed when we got back. Reaching the bottom tread, I waited for her. A square hole marked the place where the newel had been anchored. Where the stairs turned, she had sat down on the landing and put her head in her hands. Staring out through the windows of the entry at the ruined yard, she seemed marooned on an island far away in time.
What had happened to Marjory that weekend while I was gone, I had never found out. At first I had attributed her growing distraction and disinterest to the browbeating she had taken from her father, and I was sure it had been vicious. Her roommate Stephanie, a buxom brunette, had confided to me that she had been in their room during the conversation, when livid, her hand shaking as she held the phone, Marjory had finally informed her father “how the cow ate the cabbage.” Yet from the beginning there was the unsettling feeling that I had played a part in bringing on the lonely disappointment with which she was visibly stricken.
She had departed in a December afternoon after I loaded her suitcases and typewriter into the trunk of her faded-gray Corvette. She had put her arms around my neck, and when I was evasive she had said, “It’s no use. I’m going to kiss you whether you want me to or not.” After a long kiss of a kind that I had never had, she had kissed me repeatedly, with what seemed a heartbroken thirst. My cheek was wet with her tears, which I could taste.
“I don’t understand why you’re leaving,” I had stammered again, a leaden sensation growing in my chest.
As she had opened the door and slid in behind the wheel, she remarked to herself absently, “November 11, 1988. A little after three.” Wondering what she could possibly expect to occur at so distant a time, I watched her car move away down the curving avenue of live oaks. There was a red glow of the round tail lights; then they had gone dark again as she took her foot off the brake, drove through the gate, and turned onto Lyons Boulevard.
Shortly before I graduated, I was approached by Andrea Draum, who had become engaged to an insurance executive. A large diamond sparkled prismatically on her ring finger. She asked if I still possessed the rendering I had done as an illustration for Marjory’s poem “September.” I said yes, and she offered to buy it.
She followed me back to my dormitory room, where I searched through a stack of drafting paper and Bristol board. I asked her why Marjory had left.
After a deliberating silence, Andrea had answered grudgingly, “She was desperately in love with someone she couldn’t have.”
Stunned, pondering who it might have been, I handed her the painting, shaking my head that I would not accept payment for it. As downstairs I opened the lobby door for her on the way out, she had turned to me, in her eyes a futility, an unappeased hunger, that recalled for me a melancholy line sung in the scratched frames alongside torn-out sprocket holes at the end of a reel: “It’s the wrong game, with the wrong chips.”
“I found what she told me hard to believe at first,” Andrea said, but had shaken her head, unwilling to elaborate. “Someday you’ll understand.” She squeezed my hand. “Wait for her.” With the dejection of one who had no prospect but to spend the rest of her life waiting, she had walked away into the noonday, following the sidewalk through the oak shade.
Thank you, Alex! This is the most difficult story I ever tried to write, probably because of all the autobiographical elements.I’ve been having trouble this morning getting Goodreads to come up. I’m not sure what’s going on.
Good! I’m glad you feel better. Write something eerie.
I don’t think of your stories as eerie. You write action stories that are shocking and at times terrifying. Eerie stories are all about atmosphere. Your stories remind me of a novel I read years ago by Patricia Cornwell, From Potter’s Field. When I think of an eerie story, I think of something like Carmilla or “The Shuttered Room.”
Now, wait a minute! Somebody’s always reading something into my remarks that I didn’t intend. I thought From Potter’s Field was exceptionally well written. I’m going to keep my mouth shut now.
This is why our record of plundering merchant ships and coastal towns is a joke among pirates all over the Caribbean. We spend our time standing on the deck and arguing about whether so-and-so meant this or that, while the crews of Spanish galleons are snickering instead of shaking in their boots.
Lol, M. Nice. I am planning on reading your story I just don't feel like it at the moment. *sigh* moving next week. Not looking forward to a week without my stuff.
My best friend, Haley, moved there in second grade. It's a really nice state! Good luck moving!!!
I'm excited for civilization. And the book stores......*sign*
Alright, I (finally) managed to write some small contribution. Here it is:Darker Hours
(685 words)
Lily growled and stormed through the street, her boots churning up muddy puddles. She shook her black hair indignantly, spraying rain from her curls. She paused, and turned. Kayla was still under the overhang, shivering. “Well?” Lily called behind her. Kayla paused. “Come on, then!” Lily waved Kayla over before turning and sloshing off again.
Lily heard a lighter, more rapid sloshing behind her as she ran to catch up. She didn’t even bother turning around or waiting. Kayla appeared beside her. “Can’t we wait for the bus?” she asked.
“No money, ‘member?” Lily grunted. “That rat Jake took it all.”
“Well, technically speaking, it WAS his.”
Lily turned on her. “Shut up, Kayla! Just shut u-” Lightning lit the sky, illuminating Kayla’s worried features for a moment, and then thunder shook the two to the bone, rattling them. Lily bit her lip. “Come on, hurry!” she exclaimed, dashing down the streets. A whimpering Kayla followed her.
Turning a corner, Lily sprinted faster. Kayla was close behind. “Where are we going?” she yelled over the rain.
“You’ll see,” Lily replied.
Finally, they stopped before a dark, twisted house. Its roof couldn’t even technically be called a roof, and paint was peeling off the walls. “There!” Lily pointed to it. “He lives in there.”
Kayla blinked, obviously shocked. “Will?”
“Yes, Will. Are you deaf, Kayla?”
“But that doesn’t make any sense,” Kayla muttered, squirming a little. Lily understood what she meant. Will owned some of the most expensive clothing in their class, and his family always donated large sums of money to the school each year. “Why would he live here? Maybe he lives in one of these other houses.”
“Well, none of them are exactly gorgeous, now, are they?” It was true. Each house looked as if a hurricane had just swept through the streets, though none were in as bad a shape as this one. “It has his address here. Look. 1253 Cherry Way. Right?”
“Right...” Kayla looked skeptical. “I dunno, Lily.”
“You got any better ideas, Kay’?” Lily asked. Kayla blinked at her. “Never mind. Just get inside.”
The door was already ajar. Lily tried to knock, but the door swung open at her touch. “Odd,” Lily gulped nervously.
“Maybe he’s out?”
“Then the door would be locked. Just get inside.” Kayla obliged, and Lily closed the door behind them firmly. “Will?” Lily called. Nothing.
“C-can’t we call someone else?” Kayla stammered. “M-maybe Ralph. Or Amanda. Anyone else.”
“Nonsense, Will’s been in the gang for years.” I checked another room. Also empty. “Check the bathrooms and bedrooms,” I told Kayla nervously. For five minutes, we swept the house. Nobody was home.
“This is creepy,” Kayla murmured. Lily didn’t contradict her this time. “Let’s go, Lily.”
Lily nodded. “Okay.” A groaning noise came from down the hallway. Both girls turned towards the sound. “Will?” Lily called hopefully.
“Omigosh,” Kayla panted, hyperventillating. “Please, Lily, let’s go!”
Lily crept towards the sound. “The closet,” she whispered, sliding the latch on the door.
Thunk! A body slid onto the floor. Kayla screamed, and Lily looked away before she could throw up. Then Kayla began to sob as she approached.
Lily knelt to inspect the body. “It’s Will,” she gasped. Same dark hair. Same freckles. Same... she opened an eyelid, and screamed herself. “Kayla, his eyes are all white!”
“What?!”
“You heard me. Just whites. No pupils, no irises.” They heard boots from down the corridor. “Kayla,” Lily shouted. “Get out of here!”
“What about you and Will?”
“I can’t leave him. He’s half-dead, and defenseless.” Lily shivered.
“But-”
“Go!” She shoved her away, and Kayla turned and ran. Lily shivered again before trying to lift Will. It wasn’t fast enough. “C’mon Will, move your butt!” Lily growled, trying to hoist him up higher.
There was a sound behind her. Lily froze. She heard a sheenk!, like metal, but colder. Crueler.
A small whimper escaped her as she began to turn, to look at the intruder. But she never got the chance before she felt, for the last time, the cold knife entering her heart.
Kyra, short and straight to the point. Nicely paced and well told.Stephanie, great gothic fun.
M, your story was completely engaging. Have you read anything by Ondaatje Michael? Something about your descriptions and pacing reminded me of Ondaatje, one of my favourite writers of English. I would especially recommend Anil's Ghost, or Divisadero or The Cat's Table.
I literally LoL-ed when I read How could someone not want to play frisbee golf? What a great line!
Thanks, Guy! I think Fred became an electrical engineer. He had a neoprene ring called a Skyro that would fly much farther than a Frisbee. He might have had a great advantage except that it rarely went in the direction he intended.
LOL!!! But I agree, your story was brilliantly told.
M, your story if very well written. Good job! I love the line, "Are you going to kiss me,” she said, “or are you going to stand there like a war monument?" It made me smile.
Nice job, Kyra! I really enjoyed your story.
Thank you, Stephanie!Kyra, I wish your story had been longer. Sometimes the writing is wonderfully graphic. I like the way, for instance, lightning interrupts the dialogue in this passage: “Lily turned on her. ‘Shut up, Kayla! Just shut u--’ Lightning lit the sky, illuminating Kayla’s worried features for a moment . . .”
Thanks, guys!!! I liked M's as well. It's very descriptive, and you can practically see what's going on. lol, I love that line as well!!!
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Books mentioned in this topic
Anil's Ghost (other topics)The Cat's Table (other topics)
Divisadero (other topics)
