Seriously, I remember writing this, but I don’t know why it’s so bloody.

I walked through the silent forest, flashes of memory hitting me like shards of broken glass from an explosion. Each one cut into me as it flew past, reminding me of the events of those few, terrible moments just a few days ago. I looked to the huge oak, and on its roots her blood flowed, soft and red, spreading and soaking into the bark and the dark ground. Her pale face rested on a bed of decayed leaves. Even the smell came back to me, the sick metallic odor of the blood and the rich earthy smell of leaves. The sounds rang through my ears: light footfalls through the fallen leaves, someone running, the laughing, the screaming, “What have you done? What have you done?”

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Wrote this last year in my Creative Writing class. It was a quick write, so it’s not the best thing ever, but whatever! The prompt was to start our stories with ” I was dressed in a completely inappropriate shade of pink”. So this is what I came up with:

Aunt Marley dressed me in a completely inappropriate shade of pink for the funeral. She had thought it would be cute, make me seem different.

Everything she did always had to make me seem different. I don’t thank her for the pink dress that made me stand out even more than I should have on that day, contrasting so greatly with all that black.

            She was the kind of woman who tried to go against the Flow of Society that, according to her, was so dull and harmful to the individual. Since my parents were gone, she had been put in charge of everything about my life. She decided where I went to school, what I ate, when I slept.

And when I turned seven, she happened upon my collection of stuffed animals.
            “What are these?”she asked, so innocently threatening.
            “My animals, Aunt Marley,” I told her and began to name each of the five.
            Interrupting me, she said sweetly, “Do ordinary seven-year-olds play with stuffed animals, dearest?”
            I looked away from her pursed lips and down to where her long, white fingers were clamped around the neck of Whitney, my white horse. “Yes,” I whispered feeling my face burn with the coldness of sick anticipation.
            The fingers tightened around Whitney’s soft, plush neck. “And are you an ordinary girl, dear one?”
            “No,” I croaked with a lump forming in my throat.
            The fingers twisted abruptly, and Whitney’s seams snapped. Stuffing floated serenely down out of his disconnected head. “Remember that, honey. You are not ordinary, you are better.”
            She picked up the rest of them, the only friends I had in the world, and walked out of my room. Downstairs I heard the swing of the garbage can lid as my friends fell on top of the scrambled eggs we had eaten that morning.
            At the school Aunt Marley had chosen for me we had uniforms. Apparently, this made it easier for my aunt to make me stand out even more.

She sucked up to the principal and got him to do little favours for her, ones as simple as: “Let my niece wear her necklaces, they comfort the poor girl now that her parents are gone” or “Can she wear hear hair down? It’s much better that way.”
            No one bothered me. And who would? Who would want to befriend that stuck up girl who gets everything she wants? Aunt Marley didn’t seem to mind. Friends are for normal people, anyway. Not even when I came home crying did she do much for me.

Some of the other girls had kicked me out of their game, not by force, but by cold stares and turned backs. So when Aunt Marley came to pick me up in her shining black car, and asked me how my day had gone, I burst into tears.
            I knew she would not comfort me, but I cried anyway. It surprised me when she pulled over onto a side street, parked the car, and turned to look at me sitting in the back seat. Through my tear-blurred eyes, I could not read her expression. “What is it?” she asked.
            I could not read the tone of her voice, so I took a chance. “Why can’t I wear the normal uniform? Why do I have to be so different?” I asked shakily.
            I had taken a leap of faith on Aunt Marley’s compassion for her only niece, and it seemed that instead of landing safely with my aunt’s sympathy, I would fall with her obsessions. A sharp blow struck my face as she backhanded me. My head whipped to the side and stayed there, mouth open, gasping for breath over ragged sobs. “Do you want to end up like your parents?” she threatened in a loud and sharp voice.  “Just another obituary, another statistic? Well, do you?”
            I shook my head, more to get her to lower her voice than anything. “You don’t need to make friends of those girls who are all the same. They have no originality, no sense of self. They would rather fit in than stand up and out.”
            Out of the corner of my eye I could see her staring at my averted face. Her gaze pierced me for one moment longer before her head whipped back around. I kept my own head turned away and stared out the window for the rest of the drive home, seeing nothing.
            Unfortunately for Aunt Marley, I decided something that day as I stared with blank eyes out the car window. Seven, stubborn as an ox, and determined to do what I wanted, I decided to never again follow Aunt Marley’s orders. Unfortunately for Aunt Marley, I decided to stop. Unfortunately for Aunt Marley, the funeral in which she decided what I would wear came too quickly. Although she chose my outfit, it was the last decision she would ever make for me, because I was dead.

The first, like the sky, like a mirror, runs swiftly, softly through the trees.  She tugs at small sticks, twigs and invites them along for the journey. Her inhabitants flash when the sun hits them, momentarily blinding, but gone quicker than the flash itself. At her beginning she is snow, showers, small springs that shoot their tiny fingers through minute fissures in the hard ground. Clear and fresh they join her in her gliding voyage, winding ever closer to a destination unknown.

The second travels hastily with impatience and desperation, charging forth, stumbling. Her beginning is storm and lightning and flood. She grabs whatever she can find along her rushing sides, greedily sucking debris from her banks. Tearing and ripping, she grumbles down the mountain like frightened prey losing control of its footing and falling, falling, rushing too fast. No life grants her its presence as all is lost within her torrent. Dust and mud from the top of the mountain are swept into her, changing clear to murky, blue to brown.

The first, as it sails, and the second, as it falls, flow closer and closer as two converging lines on the palm of the earth.

Closer and closer, and, at the junction of the two, the first is lost in the second. Crystal turns to murk and gloom, the sky darkens, the mirror is shattered.  The swiftness increases with the added fuel. Now a maelstrom of rocks, branches, dirt and grime hurtles down the mountain with incredible speed. It isn’t the first, nor is it the second, it is devourer of all things. It reaps destruction, chaos, and most everything runs from its terrible power.

There is one that does not run, does not hide, does not cower in fear. He rests, watching the storm that comes to greet him. It comes noisily, but he does not heed its threats of destruction. He broods and washes in and out, in and out. The tempest shrieks while he keeps watch, staying where he has always stayed, big and constant. Time is of little importance to him as he waits. He has seen time waltz by for thousands of years, he has witnessed life struggle to keep burning even when all the air seems to have gone.

The force coming down the mountain reaches the one that will not move. Its browns and blacks and greys clash into his deep blues and greens that extend for miles and miles.  The whole of the storm plunges with the great noise of a bloody war into his depths, is swallowed fully, absorbed into the hugeness of him. His banks swell by an inch with the new substance, and continue gliding in and out, in and out.

My first post!!: This is part of a dream i had…there will be more to follow.

From the blackness of sleep, sounds seep in. People are talking in low, hushed tones. The conversations around me are muted, not even loud enough to hear individual words. The rasping of their voices is covered by the sound of a train, clacking loudly. My eyes are still closed, and I simply listen and feel.  I feel the continuous shaking of the train-car, hear the rattling of seats and suitcases with every jolt of the tracks.

                I open my eyes. Across from me is the black leather of a train seat, no one occupying it. I glance around the car. Only one person sits to my right. Man or woman, I cannot tell, for they wear a black cloak which covers all features, and the hood is pulled up over the face so that a shadow enshrouds it.  Down the train I can see more black, leather seats, more black cloaked people who are the copies of the one next to me. The train is not full: in my car only a dozen cloaked figures fill the chairs around me.  The whispering goes on, but I cannot tell where it is coming from. It seems to seep in from the outside of the train. The cloaked figures, including the one to the right of me, sit with rigid backs, their heads facing forward, they are not the ones talking.  I do not know if they are even human, or alive.

                My head rests on the window of the train. I look to the window, to see if something may explain the whispering, but it is pitch black outside. The blackness draws me in, and it takes a great effort for me to rip my eyes away. As I stare out into the nothingness, my stomach begins to feel queasy, and the darkness tells me to throw something of value out the window of the train. I take one last second to gaze into the dark, then turn my gaze inward, down at my shaking hands. I’m feeling fine again, and the whispering goes on, if a little louder than before.

                I’ve got to get some air. Slowly, I straighten my back. My cheek peels from the window pane, and I know there is a red mark there. No one is looking at me, but they might as well be, for I am the only one moving in the train.  I’ve got to get some air. I shuffle my feet together, ready to stand up, and glance around once more, but none of the cloaked figures make any sort of movement.

I stand…

                The whispering stops. I walk into the aisle, wondering if I will be able to see any faces now. I don’t. The spaces under the hoods are dark, not as dark as outside, but enough so that no features show. As I make my way down the aisle between the seats, the cloaked figures do nothing. A deadly silence has filled the car. I cannot hear even the clacking of the train, and I feel a desperate need to get outside. The air feels as if it is pushing in on me, I don’t belong in the train car anymore.

                As I pass the last cloaked figure closest to the door, his arm suddenly makes a grab for mine.  Trembling and cold, his fingers wrap around my wrist, and I stop to look at him.  His head is turned to me, and I can see a sort of dark face, or is that just what I think I am seeing? Whatever he is, I can tell he is scared, terrified, and so are all the others.

                Something must be done.

                The fingers give my wrist a small squeeze, and his arm falls back into place. His head turns to face forward once more, the clicking of the train resumes, and all is as it was when I awoke. Except for the whispering, which is still absent.

                The silver door to outside shines with a bright outline in my eyes. It is as if it is calling out to me, and I grasp the cold, metal handle.  Thankfully, the end of the train is just outside of this door. We are the last car of how long of a train, I do not know. The door slides soundlessly open, and immediately cold wind lashes my face. I step out onto the small balcony, not looking back.  My hair whips into my face, but I ignore it.

                The silver door slides shut behind me, and the light from the inside of the train diminishes to a small square from the window in the door.  It doesn’t do much to help light up the little balcony.

                I can feel the cold wind lash at me, and I know that outside the bubble of the train, it is much, much colder than this. I look around, grasping the bars on the balcony for stability. In front of me the miles of track we have already traveled slip away. I dare not look into the pitch black on my left. It is the pitch black I could not look away from when inside the train. It makes me sick. To my right is also dark, but the dark of a winter night with no moon. I can just make out dead, grass fields covered in frost. The fields extend for miles and miles off into the cold night.

                Suddenly, I know about the train. Not the specifics, but enough to scare me. I know that, to my left, where the sickening darkness lurks, is a bad place, evil. Behind the bullet of a train is misery, in front lies sanctuary. The black train and its sad passengers need to make it to sanctuary before dawn if we are to be safe. The alternative is to fall into the nothingness, the evil.

                Knowing this, I begin to turn back inside to join the ranks of the scared and miserable. Again information enters my mind, and I know there is a black cloak waiting for me inside the train. A black cloak that will take away all feeling while we are rushed to safety.

                But then, a flash like a memory hits my mind. I am seeing from the perspective of a man who is walking out in the grass fields. His many layers of clothing are dark, and some of them are ripped and shredded, some parts tied on with bits of string. He walks as if he has passed the point at which he can stop. He has been walking for a long, long time, many weeks. He has a goal, a person to save, a person not on the train. He is tracking something through the tall, dead and frozen grass.

                The flash into his mind disappears. I want to know more. Who is he? But nothing comes, only a sense of duty. I must find him, help him. He needs me, and I need him. I cannot simply sit on the train while he completes his mission on his own.

                And just as I have these last few thoughts, I am down, off the train, standing in the fields. It takes me a moment to adjust to the change. My mind adapts first, already taking in my dull surroundings. My body reacts second, and I lose all of what was in my stomach. When I am finished, I realize something else. I am now dressed in warm furs. It is deathly cold outside, but the furs keep me as warm as I could wish.  I stretch my gloved fingers down, and pull my fur cap further forward onto my cold forehead.

                In front of me the grass is bent down where the man has walked. I take a breath and follow his tracks through the field.