Modern/Fantasy Story · 1:09am Mar 27th, 2018
So, as you guys might remember, I was planning on entering the writeoff competition. And... that didn’t happened. I made an account and wrote almost 3,000 words, but I just couldn’t finish. It was stressing me out too much, for some reason, and I couldn’t find the time with everything else going on. Not that it really matters to any of you, because it was never meant to be posted on this website anyway. But I thought I might at least share what I have in a blog post. Be warned, it has quite a few swears! (And if you know anything about me, I never, ever swear. But I thought it fit the character so...) And basically, the plot was: a girl is visited by another girl from the future, where they’ve managed to “discover” magic. Trust me, it would make more sense if it was finished)
The whole world is silent. No wind, no bird song, no car alarm blaring from the neighbor’s house. Everything is completely still, except for the waves of heat rolling off of the sidewalks. It’s one of those awful days that leaves me in a sweat-drenched stupor, staring out at nothing and contemplating my life. There’s this yawning emptiness at the pit of my stomach that whines of something unsatified, but I’m far too lazy to figure out what that is.
I roll over on my back, ignoring the branches digging into my side, and push back the strands of black hair curling at my temple. This way I can see up through the leaves to the sky; a cloudless, cornflower blue. I’m up pretty high, but it’s never, ever high enough. I shut my eyes. I want to float all the way up and up until I’m utterly surrounded and drowning in sky.
Usually, I can imagine myself there, imagine that I’m nothing at all. But today, the weight of the whole fucking world is bringing me down, and I’m just a girl in a tree. I swallow thickly, opening my eyes again to look at the upside-down version of my house. It doesn’t look any better this way, either, but at least it’s empty. Mom isn’t home, of course, which is fine by me. More time to myself.
I’m just about dozing off into a muddled half-sleep when I hear a rustling noise below me, almost unnoticeable. I stir, but my thoughts start to slip into a hazy consciousness before I can gather them up. Then, a voice. It’s soft and mumbling, but I’m wide awake now, teetering on the edge of a branch. I dig my fingernails into the bark, peering down around the papery leaves. We have neighbors, sure, but they’re hardly the kind of people to visit. I squint, leaning forward, and my breath catches in my throat. It’s someone I’ve definitely never seen before.
A girl is kneeling down by the bushes in my yard, a pink, shimmery dress pooling out around her into the grass. She looks almost like a fairy, sans wings, with her head piled tall with dark curls and her dress winking in the light. A small, white bunny sits still before her, offering its ears to be petted as she whispers to it. I can’t move for a moment, and I’m stuck staring, wordless, at this stranger. I have to remind myself that she can’t see me. The girl moves forward, tucking herself down so that’s she’s eye level with the bunny, who remains a statue. Her fingers brush the top of its head, it quivers, and the air around me is twisting and shifting, and I call, “Hey!”
Her head snaps up and her eyes lock with mine. For a second, she’s as unmoving as the rabbit. Then her mouth is falling open around a soundless word, and she bolts. “Hey!” I call out again, louder, scrabbling on the branch. I don’t know why, but I just can’t let this girl get away. I reach out, my heart thudding wildly. I can’t. And maybe that’s why I forget, suddenly, that I’m in a tree.
The ground comes rushing at me in a blink, and before I can even register the stomach-swooping giddiness that follows a free fall, my right arm cracks open with pain. I think I scream. Dirt crowds into my mouth and nose, and I jerk up, my upper lip wet and my tongue metallic. I take a deep breath, but I can’t really breathe, because all I can concetrate on is the fire licking up from my elbow. I swallow blood, blindly grappling at the dirt. My hands hits something warm and sharp. Shit, it’s broken.
“Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh!” I’ve given up on trying to pull myself up, but I raise my un-injured arm and grit my teeth at the sound of the voice. Someone’s warm fingers grasp my own, but instead of lifting me up, the hands trail to my shoulders and hold me still. I open my eyes, blinking through tears. I’ve broken pretty much all of my bones before; I’m fine. “Hey,” I hiss out, and then I realize it’s the same girl. Her eyes are wide and nearly black, jumping across my face over and over again in a panic. Whatever, it doesn’t matter.
“Call 9-1-1,” I mutter, swallowing back bile. Mom’s gonna kill me. “Please,” I add quickly, when she doesn’t reach move to reach for a phone. Her fingers tighten around my shirt and she leans closer. I have the ever-so-fleeting thought of punching her in the face when she whispers, “Okay, stay calm, it’ll be okay.”
What? I try to shove her off, because it’s very clearly not okay right now, but she only moves her hands over my broken arm. I freeze, my heart leaping to my throat. I don’t want to get into a fight with a half-mangled limb, no matter how easy this girl looks.
Her fingertips brush the top of the bruised skin, and she purses her lips over my strained inhale. “Okay,” she murmurs, “a shattered radius; no big deal.”
Before I can get a word in edgewise, the air around me changes ever so slightly again; just enough so that it feels wrong. I follow the girl’s gaze to my arm. Oh. The mottled, violet-hued flesh slowly vanishes, like a drawing being erased. I watch as the horrible bend straightens itself out, until I’m left staring at a normal, healed arm. I lift it up, bending my elbow. “Holy shit.” The pain is completely gone, not even a whisper of discomfort.
“Good as new.” I startle, pushing myself up. The girl smiles carefully at me, brushing back her hair from her dark face. “Does it feel okay?” she asks. Her voice is soft and strangely melodic. Her soulful eyes won’t leave my face, and I swallow hard.
“I... uh,” I start, my voice hardly above a whisper. My arm tingles. “Yes?” The girl chews on her lip, rocking back on her heels as she studies me.
“I just feel like this was all my fault, so...” She takes a deep breath and shakes her head. Then she straightens up. “I have to go,” she says quickly. She jumps up, her rose dress whirling in my face.
I’m on my feet just as she turns around, drunk with dizziness and the lingering scent of vanilla. I manage to grab her hand and pull her back. She whirls to me, her eyebrows rising high. She doesn’t look scared, or angry. More thoughtful. “You can’t just leave,” I say. My voice is too quiet. I clear my throat, not breaking eye-contact. “You can’t leave.”
The girl regards me with an expression I can’t decipher, and then her pink lips curl up into a slight smile. “Oh?” she replies, wiggling her fingers in my grasp. I know she has the ability to escape it. “Why not?”
I let go, but she doesn’t flee. Only crosses her arms over her chest and stares me down. “You need to explain what the hell just happened.” I need to know, because if I don’t, the yawning pit will be back, and I’ll start to wonder if this was all a heat-induced dream. I’ll drown. She doesn’t look properly intimated, but she sticks out her hand, her curls bouncing like springs.
“I’m Hope,” she says, smile growing wane when I don’t make a move to shake it. Her hand finally drops by her side, and she huffs out a soft breath. “And you?”
Alright, I do need this girl to stay, and I can tell by the slant to her eyes that she isn’t exactly pleased. “I’m Rin,” I say after a moment, digging my heel into the dirt. Hope nods slightly, as if to say ‘yes, of course’. Her fingers tug at the hem of her dress, and I notice her eying my own shorts, bloodied and dirtied. The open cuts on my skin start buzzing wildly, and I remember that I can taste blood melting on my tongue. “I’m just going to go clean up,” I begin, glancing to my house. I want to tell Hope to come with me, but when I turn, she’s already peering up at the darkened windows. She follows me as I start towards the back door.
“You have a nice home.” I snort at that, sliding open the glass doors. I know she means it—she smiling again—but I can’t help but resent that comment. Sure, objectively, it’s a nice house; large, spacious, and fancy in order to please my sybarite of a mother. But subjectively, with the impossibly cold and quiet rooms, I would rather be anywhere else.
The air inside my house is a great relief, though, and I pause to relish the sweet, cooling temperature. Hope is making a bunch of quiet humming noises under her breath, and as I lead her down the hallway to the bathroom, they turn into open sounds of astonishment. “Are you good?” I ask, wrinkling my nose up. Hope seems to barely manage a nod, before she’s back to studying the wallpaper like it’s a museum exhibit. Weird, but definitely not the weirdest thing she’s done, all things considered.
I push open the bathroom door at the end of the hall, pulling open the top cabinets and busying myself with getting first aid supplies. My heart beats throbs at my ears, and I’m having a hard time ignoring the burning gaze on my back. Hope leans against the doorframe, chewing on her lip. She looks entirely out of place here. She presses her thumbs together and steps into the bathroom. “I could, you know...” she trails off, her hands dancing furtively in front of her. “Help.”
I nearly drop everything when I understand what’s she trying to say. “No,” I bite out, my knuckles white on the antiseptic. Then I wince at Hope’s bewildered expression. “Just... no freaky magic anymore, okay?” Hope raises her eyebrow and her mouth twitches, but she says nothing else.
I turn to myself in the mirror, brushing back my hair from my forehead. Christ. I’ve never been a fan of these bright, harsh lights—eager to point out every pore and divot on school mornings—and now I can see that I look that absolute hell. A girl stares back at me from under mess of cropped inky hair, grimacing though blood-dried lips; face resembling a chimney sweep. A decent-sized cut runs along the bottom of my jaw like lightning, stinging bright. It wouldn’t even take Hope a second, somehow, to make all of this to go away.
“Here.” Hope comes up next to me, her eyes flickering up to the mirror for a second before she’s taking the bottle of antiseptic from my hands. I want to protest. (But I don’t.) She leads me to sit down on the toilet, dipping a cotton ball into the bottle and bringing it up to my chin. She presses it hard against the cut, and I hiss out a swear. I don’t need her to treat me like a child, but I’m still not moving away. She reaches over and rummages around in the basket until she comes up with a small, white tube; cream. She scans the words intently, flipping it over to read the ingredients. “Huh,” is all she says, as one might reply to a mediocre joke.
“What?” I ask, clenching my teeth though the acidic liquid. Hope shakes her head as she applies the cream with one finger.
“Oh, nothing,” she laughs. She goes back to the basket before I can ask what that’s even supposed to mean. Her shiny head dips down to my legs and she pulls out a long piece of gauze, humming again.
I lean back, keeping my tone level. “How did you do that?” I don’t to scare her off with any (much-deserved) yelling or cause her to scamper off like a rabbit. She’s twitchy.
Hope falters for a second in her wrapping of my ankle. “You mean with your arm?” she asks.
I bite back a scathingly sarcastic response, nodding though she can’t see me. “How?” I need more words, like “who are you?” “are you a kind of witch?” and “are you staying?”, but my mouth is stuck on only one, one that I don’t think will ever be fully satisfied.
Hope pats the bandage and finally looks up to me, her cheeks puckered with concern. “You won’t believe me,” she says, sticking her chin up. I dare you too, though.
I stare back at her evenly. Anything she says can’t possibly be more insane than what she already did to my arm. Hope seems to take my silence for a rebuttal. She clicks her tongue and settles herself against the wall. “Okay,” she begins, quiet, hesitant. “Define the word ‘magic.’
I blink. Hope watches me with her unwavering doe eyes, the golden sunlight flittering though the blinds dancing over her skin.
“Magic?” I repeat slowly. Just to make sure. She doesn’t says anything, so I swallow the word, testing it. “It’s... a thing for children. Y’know, stuff of fairytales and whatever. I can’t really define it, because it’s...” The word ‘fake’ has troubling forming.
Hope’s face is smushed between her palms, and her fingers spread out to cover her squirming laugh. “Fake,” I say, just to spite her, but she only curls up on herself and wheezes. “Okay, okay,” she manages, blowing a breath out between her lips. The bridge of her nose is flushed with mirth. Anything I say will only further prove how foolish I am.
“I’m sorry,” she says, “I expected that, but I just...” She toys with a strand of hair, biting over a smile. “Sorry,” she says again, and she does look sorry. Then she’s grinning like the Cheshire Cat. “But imagine this,” she grasps my hands, jumping up to her feet. “It would be pretty odd if you were talking to someone, and they were adamant that the earth was the center of the universe, right? That used to be the only thing people knew, back then. And of course, you would already expect them to think that—what else can they know—but it would be the littlest bit funny that someone tried to tell—“
“Whoa, whoa, wait,” I splutter, pulling my grip from her’s. “What are you even talking about? It sounds like you’re implying that you—that I’m—“ I cut myself off, because I’m not sure what’s I’m trying to say, and because she has started to laugh again, and she’s not hiding it.
“Yes!” she cries, bouncing on her heels. I stare at her, and try to will away the rising disbelief in my stomach that simmers like hysteria. “Yes, what?” I venture.
Hope huffs. “I’m saying that, yes, I am from the future.”
I think I stop breathing. Hope nods eagerly, waiting for a response—a response? What does she expect me to say? I open my mouth, and this is suddenly far too real and far too much, and wheeze out a rather eloquent, “What the fuck?”
Hope nose twitches slightly (in disdain, I can imagine). “Uh, yes,” she responds. “I know you’ll find all of this hard to believe, but—“ I stand up, so abruptly that black tinges my peripherals, and grab her by the wrist.
I tug her around the corner, and just about kick open my bedroom door. Hope is squawking behind me, but I ignore her in favor of jumping straight into my bed. I bury my face into the pillow.
“Rin?”
I groan, not bothering to left myself up. Then bed dips down beside me as Hope sits on the blankets. She makes a strange sound, the beginning of an arborted sentence.
This is too much. I wish I could say that I don’t believe her. That this is all some joke gone on for an uncomfortable amount of time. But I can tell that Hope is telling the truth, and that I didn’t hallucinate the past ten minutes.
“Rin?” she asks again, hesitant. I roll over, staring up at her; eyebrows drawn, mouth pinched. “If you want, I could just go back to the moment and—“
I nearly scream. “No, no, no! Don’t do that, please.” I’ve just, accidentally, opened up a door to something completely new and unreal, and I won’t have someone close it. “Don’t.”
Hope blinks, her palms up. “Alright, I won’t. It was just an option.”
I close my eyes. “Okay... I just...” I trail off and push down in the pillow. “What’s the other option?”
She lays down next to me, her body drawn close to herself. “I explain.”
Well, thank you to everyone who decided to read my garbage. Also, update: my grandfather did die a little while ago. I went to his service over the weekend. It was hard. But thank for all your kind words. I found out he was a pretty interesting guy. Apparently he was a Mason right up until he passed, and would attend meetings all the time? I just thought he sat in his house all day and stared at the wall. (To be fair, he did that a lot too). Oh, and according to my grandmother, who was tipped off by someone, he might have been a spy during his war time. Gosh, why did I have to learn all of this stuff after? Another interesting fact; he was a Trump supporter. (Perhaps a misguided one with a mustache) Every time I brought it up, my grandmother would just sigh. But I’ve learned that I can love people despite our digressions. I’m thinking of potentially writing a vent/sad fic, maybe. And also a Sunlight story, if anyone’s into that.
Okay, sorry I’m rambling about nonsense. Time to go and sleeeeeeeepp
That story was not garbage at all, Harmony! It was wonderful and spell binding! I hope you finish it someday.
Sleep well!
That story was interesting, at least. The prose was super weird, though, to the point I felt tempted to just skim stuff. Still, I’d like to see it finished.
Also, don’t fret over the swearing. It’s something everyone of this generation does.
4826420
What do you mean? Like, the wording was weird?
4826424
I can’t really explain it. The prose made sense, and I’m not saying it was badly written or anything. Maybe there were a couple times the logic threads made me tilt my head, but nothing bigger than that.
Ah, don’t pay attention to me. I’m just rambling, really.
4826606
No, but thank you for pointing out some oddness! I’m always open to constructive criticism, so I’ll keep that in mind.
4826686
Of course.
BTW, I've been meaning to ask you: Have you played Super Mario Galaxy? I know it seems like that question comes from nowhere, but it's somewhat related to what we're talking about.
4827113
No, I haven’t. I’m not huge on video games.
4827122
I'm oftentimes reminded of this whenever I read one of your stories, at least in regards to tone:
4827151
A little weird that my writing reminds you of that though, but I can see it
Aw, that was cute
4827157
It reminds me of your writing because it's cute. Keep writing cute stuff, Harmony!
4827164
Yay