Writing Camp Submissions?
Jan 10, 2013 21:29:19 GMT -5
Post by Rosetta on Jan 10, 2013 21:29:19 GMT -5
Kay<3 thank you! I'll definitely pay attention to those things and work on my above stuff.
Okay, I legit JUST wrote this and I'm posting it unedited because I want to go showerlol Rosetta be real everything you post is uneditedI will edit it later, but first I want context. The ending. I followed a prompt here and it was nice. But, I feel like I dropped the ending and some bits are a bit rushed. But, here you go, please help:My awakening was anything but sound. Actually, it was sound itself. The drowning, flailing and pushing towards the surface, the white light that seems only too good and finally, the thin surface and like ice, I break through it with a gasp into a room. It’s dark. It’s not morning. It’s not my room. My breath is short and quick from the swim as my mind flits back towards the dream I just escaped from, the one that fades away with each beat of my racing heart into deep shadows and sweaty anxiety. Something bad it was, but in the wake of this unfamiliar place, yet, I know it, I feel it, I just suppress it down into the hollow pit in my stomach and survey the scene.
Dark shadows around me, rising up high, to the gray ceiling that buzzes before my drowsy eyes. Square shadows. Boxes, boxes, my mind informs me wearily and the air is musty, like I’m pressing my nose to an old, dusty sweater and when I open my mouth to taste it, I instantly double over coughing onto the most familiar thing, the thing that I slept upon. It’s a bed, a white plain thing, with bars on each side for hands to grip, a pillow for the head to be thrown back on and a little remote to be pressed and adjusted. White sheets stained with sweat and blood are slumped all around me. Surprisingly, my skin doesn’t crawl, perhaps too weary to even move. It’s a familiar place and I’m at ease. It is only when I catch sight of it does my heart give a jolt.
I rise from the bed and press my bare feet to the cold, gray floor to walk towards it, slowly as if I’m still asleep. Sleep-walking. Past boxes labeled with words that make little sense to me at the time, but they’re all the sense in the world because they’re everyone’s. Birthdays. Easter. Kindergarten. Halloween. They whisper to me, but this particular object tugs harder and I lay my hands to its prickly green, piney surface. Fingers crawling across ornaments, porcelain, so smooth, bells that jingle, music to my ears, icicles that aren’t real, warm from the fire burning in the hearth. Somehow, my hands reach the top as gingerbread fills my nose and I’m nearly blinded by the white star shining before me.
Suddenly, I’m thrown onto the soft, green carpet and my bare legs are covered only by thin wrapping paper, my hands tossing that star in between them, slipping between my fingers, back around my wrist and into my palm. It’s so beautiful, but it doesn’t dazzle then. Instead, my heart sinks. There’s the crackle and pop of fire behind me and it’s not the one burning in the fireplace and my hands tighten around the star. White knuckles, clenched teeth, buzzing ears that can’t block the shouting. Stars in the shape of frilly dresses, hair accessories, shiny black shoes, porcelain dolls with blue eyes, but they’re all cold. No warm hands, no warm lips. Ice. The star’s points dig deep into my hand.
And then, I’m sixteen and the staircase curves as I walk and I nearly stumble with no arm to hold. The cake is white like I asked and there are flowers to match my flowery dress. Friends and family clap the girl before them into motherhood and I hear their claps, opposite sides of the room since the papers were filed and my stomach is squirming and with each movement towards the cake to cut, I’m sixteen, it’s my Sweet Sixteen and I’m sixteen, the knife I’m supposed to use digs deeper and deeper into me. He had liked my dress, but she hated it, but loved the tiara while he groaned. The cake is bitter. I can taste it from here. Paid for with cold money. It’s white and three tiered with those flowers, those silly flowers.
I walk like a corpse, trying to avoid it, but I reach my destination anyway. My feet hurt. These heels are killing me. He said they would, but she said I’d be fine. My halter top is holding up though which differs from what she said, with a shake of her head and he says I’m just fine, leave her alone, she’s just fine.
Just fine.
Standing before the cake, the knife in my hand now, burning me, I feel my tongue recoil deep within my mouth. I don’t want it bitter. I want it warm. I want both of their arms and not their cries. Mine. Mine. Mine. But, Mother, Father, do you want me or do you want the cake that you can claim is all yours? You lost, you loser, you lost, I won. The cake is all mine.
But, it’s bitter.
And suddenly, the knife jerks forward. I’m possessed. I stab downward, tearing the white in two and the inside is red just like I asked. I stab and stab and bleed and bleed. The guests cry out as the cake runs red and I grab chunks of it, throwing them on the ground. Rather than embarrassment, I feel myself rise up and up, a balloon and I’m laughing as I grab a piece and the youngest cousins run up laughing and smear each other’s faces and then my parents are closer than they have been in years, one grabbing the knife from my hand, the other laughing high and false. It’s a game. A joke. We planned it. I planned it. And the words burn me and I paint their mouths red in cake with sharp fingers. You want a piece of me? Here is your part of me. Vampires. You suck the blood from me.
I land back down to that gray floor. Back before the Christmas tree. Clean and naked, no cake to be found on my body. But, it’s needles are dropping to the ground as I run my quivering hands up it again. The glass ornaments dig into my fingers, forcing drip drops of red blood, and the bells don’t ring anymore. And the star is off, cracked and dark. My insides are crumbling as I stand away from this tree. Around the boxes that are me. A botched Christmas full of empty gifts. No love to be found. Only pride. I am a title. I am money. I am proof. Easter is full of chocolate and an invitation to the neighborhood kids for the extravagant egg hunt on our sprawling lawn. My birthdays are blank kisses, a heavy crown, a gift bigger than his, bigger than hers, oh, dear, don’t you like mine better? Don’t you like me better?
Don’t you love me, Mother, Father, don’t you love me the most?
Don’t you?
No. No. No. The word echoes louder than bells, loud, so loud, but I don’t cover my ears against it. It rises from deep within the sleeping room, buried down beneath all the boxes, but it’s there and it’s something I needed to hear for so long. I quivering from the sound. I’m standing in Hell and a higher force is calling down to me, putting a spear in my hand. This is mission. Rise up from this place. Rise up. Fly.
The boxes are empty. Cold puffs of air. No love found here. But, they’re flammable. They burn easily enough when I set my matches to them. The fire is warm around me. If you can’t give me your warmth, I’ll create my own. I go up in flames, but it’s the same feeling as when I smashed the cake. A balloon. Floating. Flying. You don’t deserve any part of me. If you can’t give me you, the real you, you can never have me. I am fire. I am burning. I am black ash. I am choking, suffocating smoke.
I am free.