Tag: fiction

The Crystal

localdreamerwithapen1 Comment

“Strikingly beautiful,” he mumbled, while setting the crystal back on the heavy wooden desk. “And you’re sure it’s magical?”

I have to chuckle, distractedly, still staring at the emerald-and-gold-shimmering rock, that might as well be a huge, beautiful piece of beach glass.

“Yes, it definitely is magical,” I say, still notably distracted.

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“Well… what does it do? Does it like… give you superpowers? Can it freeze time? Can you kill people with it??” he looks so excited, almost spilling his boiling hot coffee he is holding in his scarred hands all over the floor. The image of this huge, burly guy almost hyperventilating because of a little shiny crystal is straight up ridiculous, and I can’t help but laugh.

“It can tell lies from the truth,” I say, quietly, but he hears me. “It’s magical. I know it.”

He hardly looks hyper now, his face turns back to its suspicious nature that I adore so much, and I can tell that he doesn’t quite believe me.

“And how do you know that? I mean… what even… what?

“It had a note with it. In the box I found it in. And it said ‘I will illuminate any lie with the color of lies, lie to me twice and you will die.'”

“Okay. Now wait a second, you want me to believe you that this… chunk… a beautiful chunk, don’t get me wrong. But you’re saying it has magical powers?”

“Yes.”

“And that it can tell lies from the truth?”

“Yes.”

“And that it can kill people???”

“Yes.”

He stares at me for a second, and all his fascination has now left his face completely.

“What the hell Jamie? Are you okay? Did you fall on your head or something? I swear to God…”

“No, Mason, I swear, it works. Just look.”

I pick up the crystal from the desk and put it in my hands, holding it in front of me like a raw egg.

“Okay, I am going to tell it a truth now, and it will recognize it. Just watch.”

I clear my throat, and raise my left eyebrow, like I always do when I am serious about something.

“Crystal. Listen. I’m going to tell you a truth now. Trump is a horrible president.”

The crystal, making no sound, starts glowing brightly and warm, like you would imagine the truth to look like. Mason is staring at it, in disbelief I think, then turns to me, looking a little more fascinated again.

“Okay, now, this is pretty impressive. And good choice on the truth, I gotta agree with the crystal here. But that doesn’t prove anything. Maybe there are batteries in here. I mean, how would this even work? Tell a lie. Show me that it actually works.”

“Well I haven’t tried lying to it yet. I don’t wanna die, you know?”

“You are not gonna die, Jamie. First of all, this is a rock.”

“Crystal.”

“Whatever. What I mean is that it won’t kill you. Besides, you don’t have to lie to it twice, you’ll be fine. Come on.”

“Why don’t you do it then?”

“Okay fine.” He takes the crystal out of my hands, carefully, as if he actually knew how precious it.

“Okay, crystal.” He looks around, making sure no one is watching him. “A lie. A lie. What is a lie?”

“Just say ‘I love Jamie’ or something.”

He looks down to his feet, a little too nervously. “No. Uh, something else.”

“Come on just say it if you can’t think of anything else. ”

He looks at me, a little unsure, then sighs. “Okay. Whatever. Crystal, I love Jamie.”

The crystal lights up again, green and warm. I stare at it, not knowing what to think. I is green. It is warm. It is true? “You love me.” I say, still staring at the brightly glowing crystal. “You love me.”

“No, no I don’t. It doesn’t work. It’s broken. That’s it. It’s broken.” He looks nervous. Of course. He loves me, I had no idea. “You love me.” What do I do? I need to tell him. I need to tell him now. I grab the crystal out of his hands, holding it tight. He is just staring at me, probably just as overwhelmed as me.

“Crystal,” I say, with trembling voice, “Crystal, I don’t love Mason.”

The crystal begins to glow again, but differently than before. It is red, dark, and cold blue inside. It’s a lie. It works. It knows. I love him. I always have. I had no idea he loved me too.

“Jamie–”

Before he can say anything, I grab his head and kiss him, the crystal pressed against our chests.

Everything feels green and golden and warm. It feels like truth, it feels like love.

Fair Harborside (4)

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Read Fair Harborside (1), Fair Harborside (2), and Fair Harborside (3)

Frank abruptly walked headlong into a grimy wall. His mind wishing for the beautiful side of the city had tried to take a right turn, but he was on a rounded road. He tapped his pocket again, for comfort, to remind himself of his dreams, to remind himself what the city had promised him, what the city had baited him with. He pulled the postcard out of his pocket. It was lined and greasy, the creases were chipped, he could barely make out the beauty he had once found so heart achingly perfect. He was too late. His toes had hit the steps of a factory.

Amelia slowly stepped out of the elevator. The sounds of the crowds reached her first, then the bright flashes of cameras. Her new world was set to be bright. She was designed for the city. The city was designed for her. She stepped out the doors, the cameras followed her, she turned to the monoliths, she understood: Harborside knew the world and the world knew Harborside, within Harborside was the world. She turned to the sea, there laid the cradle of life, status, money; it flooded into her the meaning of value, the true meaning: money.

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As she walked the city doors opened to her. She was Amelia, the city was hers. She would never be lost to the crowd, the city would never bowl over her, time would not forget her, Frank was already fading.

She wandered the city all day, the crowd only grew around her, but as she strayed closer and closer to the borders of her postcard the crowds grew restless. Space seemed to shift. Where she walked she owned, the postcard was empty space with blank people, but where she walked new hope, new futures sprang up like daisies in her wake. But as she neared the last corner, the last wide boulevard, her daisies seemed to fight for sunlight. Her unique ownership was being pushed back by the ownership of the many, the workers no longer singular but one full moving entity, lost to the mindless grind of the crowd, the fingers became a hand.

She had reached the end of the immunization ring, the end of the filigree border on the postcard of Harborside and standing on the other side of the glass was Frank.

Before Amelia, who was the crux of the city, eyes of the future, was Frank, whose hands bled from his first shifts in the factories, who was beginning to smudge around the edges.

Before Frank, the disenchanted dreamer, a man of ideals and cities past, was Amelia, a small mechanical girl with holographic eyes and the entire modern world and future in her circuit board chest.

Fair Harborside (3)

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Read Fair Harborside (1) and Fair Harborside (2)

Amelia was city-made and city-grown. From where she lived the city was just a writhing mass, gridded like a chessboard, and full of monotony. Her circuits were overstimulated. She was surrounded by wires, cords, and progress. She was living modernity and on clear days she could almost feel like a part of the masses, she could almost feel like she interacted with them. Almost.

Frank wandered the city, cataloguing every face and type like a child seeing the world for the first time, walking a new language, but the people seemed to pass by him – no, look through him, like he didn’t matter. In truth, he began to think, do they really matter to me? But as he took another sharp corner, his mind clipped the edge of the building and then lodging was on his mind. He was in the right district given the signs hanging above doors and out from awnings, but he soon found he barely had enough money to stay the week out. How strange that what had had so much value previously in his life was so empty and useless in exchange here in Harborside.

Amelia was coming down from the clouds about to face the world for the first time, naive and one of the richest and rarest people in the city, but equally mysterious. Her mind had yet to grasp value; everything to her was bought and categorized away into an advanced filing system of uses. 

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The sky filtered into her windows, if she reached out, the clouds almost reached back, but who cared about clouds when she was going down to the ground.

From Amelia’s window far above Harborside its postcard appearance was breathtaking, heart-stopping from the aerial view, perfectly aligned like an OCD wet dream – but beyond the picture perfect Harborside was its dark truth, its fingers, its slums. Where the roads wended their way around makeshift homes, bodies being consumed by the cobbles of the city. The roads staggered like a drunk artist’s footsteps. The slums belied truth, the reality of the city for the majority. The true artists, the ultimate image of life, a slow burn out. The truth was, the city moved too quickly for anyone – even the top Moguls and Traders – to live contentedly, too fast for them to not eventually blend into the tapestry of time, of the city.

But while Amelia’s elevator sunk level by level, Frank’s feet were dragging him from job to job, ebbing closer and closer to that blight, the narrow streets, the moss, the dark sky, the forgotten, the true heart of the city. The cost of living had drained Frank, his week was up. Once a private person, he now broadcasted all he could, he needed all the help he could get. He dreamed of the past. When he was well off in the country, people tipped their hat to him, they knew his name, they cared. He dreamed of a city long past, just emerging from the harbor, crawling onto land like a new life form, full of opportunity and riches. His feet were carrying him further from the monoliths of global life. From the masses that thrived on standing out from the crowd, from the masses who had found what they sought, or at least the veneer of what they dreamed.

Fair Harborside (2)

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Read Part 1 here

Below Amelia and beyond the borders of her glass and marble version of the city, the eyes of the workers were cast in coal and ash. Those of the slums were fading out of being, becoming just blurs, wisps of subconscious, hollow. They were being emptied of dreams, emptied of light, emptied of value. They looked – with light-burned, cataracted eyes, weary and broken from too many hours in front of a forge – toward the city they had dreamed of, the one they believed in, the one they were now part of, the one now using them as a whetstone to hone itself upon. They looked upon a city alien and yet familiar; one that shared the same name, shared a people, but was separated by a wall of prosperity, an insurmountable barrier of capital value.

Rising above Frank was the very tangible feeling of success and dreams realized. Above him – wrapped in their own private worlds, curtained off from each other – lay the world of Traders and Merchants and Moguls. There was no lost space, everything was worked to perfection, commodified and able to be owned. People had become slaves to their Ikea nesting instinct, they simply filled the space given, even the ultimate consumers did not own their space. The streets were wide and clear, everything at a crisp ironed angle, a city of well pressed pants. Those who walked them did not know each other beyond image: a Trader by the scale lapel pin, an Artist by the garish socks, an Economist by the gloves, a Mogul by the hat. On the great rising monoliths movies and media played, any new information came from those gargantuan marble monoliths. The world beyond Harborside was found in those rising towers of media.

But in the slums – from the roofs of their squat and makeshift shanties – the workers could just glimpse the edges of media. Their world was full of cracked screens and secondhand news. People were cramped, the heartbeat of one encroached on the next. The global world had all but disappeared to them, where they had come from was being wrung from them as they became just another road stone in the city. The cultural identities they had brought with them, had created neighborhoods around, had found their first jobs with were bleeding away. They were becoming the masses of the city, overwhelmed by the need for money, the vast cost of living had ensnared them, had separated them and pinned them by the wings. 

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But the global world existed only in the harbor with the monoliths of media, with the bustle of trade, it was rich and thriving in the harbor. Money was not lacking, it seemed as if the less work one did the more money filled their coffers.

Frank was well off for a country boy, so when he docked in the sand of the fish market – the only place his little decrepit rented dinghy could -he was sure he could do anything he could possibly hope for. As he jumped from the boat he sunk to the knee into rotting, bloated, sun-blistered fish waste. His nose crinkled, What a welcome. He trudged upward into the city, tapping his breast pocket with a light rhythm. As he reached the paving stones his tapping ceased, he could not crane his head far enough, the city just kept going. The longer he stared the more his past months at sea ebbed away with the tide; his past was being drowned out by the sounds, the smells, and the people. The city was made of individuals from the ground, Frank was just another one of them, just another in a sea of people striving to flourish as themselves, he was just dressed a little more shabbily, a little more wide eyed, a little more idealistic, he was just a little bit poorer, he was just woefully unprepared. So he set out to wander the city, to find himself, or lose himself.

Fair Harborside (1)

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It was dingy as hell, not recognizable as the city everyone saw in the postcards: moss and algae crept down the walls; the side streets were lined with open sewers; the factories ran all hours of the day, belching out waste and haze. Soot streaked down the faces of the workers whose hands were cracked and brown with exposure. What little they had they called home, whether roof or coat, they took what they could. They struggled through narrow congested streets, seemingly stuck in the past — a bygone era, that had long since been passed by the rest of the city — an open sore without medicine.

On these congested streets lived all manner of discard: tech no longer current, factory waste, dreams of fame and fortune, the relics of the country people once left, heirlooms of cultures long swallowed. But as the streets turned oceanside they widened and lightened, the haze of smog dropping away the closer one moved to the harbor, the mecca of trade, the jewel of the city, the picture perfect postcard. Harborside was a world of glass and gold that rose high enough that those with bloodshot eyes and wasted dreams believed that maybe it reached heaven.

The city of Harborside was rich, modern, urban, cultured, and only surface deep. Every man, woman, and child that lived in the skyward reaching world was a dreamer, a planner, a story. Their streets were lined with rare plants and their roads paved with exotic shell. Every home was its own, sitting pretty at the height of progress. They would want for nothing and everything.

Such severance was there in the city of Harborside that it was as if a blight, a disease, had been stretching out from the landward outskirts of the city but had abruptly hit a vaccine three quarters of the way toward the harbor. It was as if an immunization had been injected into the sea and had spread to the seafront but had been content to protect the few.

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Life was bobbing at a sea-sickening rate as Frank finally found the city. He had taken every form of transport available to him: car, bus, train, plane, his own two aching feet, bicycle, and finally boat. As the city rose over the bow of the leaky, decades-old fishing boat, the tug behind his gut seemed to loosen. The folded postcard in his breast pocket was a molten brand of hope and childlike optimism on his heart.

Life had ground to an overly warm stagnate existence for Amelia. Trapped above the cloud level – in a glass box – Amelia had the entire world at her fingertips. She was at the height of modern technology, she was as mapped out as the best planned city. There was no one like her, there never had been another like her, nor would there ever be one like her. She was a road map. She was not her own. She was caught, ensnared. Made and unmade.

One careless step

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I’ve always been careful. All my life. I always lock my door. I never drive when I’m tired. I don’t leave the house  by myself when it’s dark out. It’s things like that, that show how paranoid I am. I’ve always been careful.

Until I wasn’t.

One. Single. Time. Who would’ve thought that I would end up like this. I will end like this. My life will end like this. Because of one careless step.

I look up to the sky, watching the pink of the sunset slowly fade into a purple-grey. Soon it will be black. And no one will find me.

I’m laying in a crevice, between the cold unforgiving rocks, where I fell about an hour ago. Underneath me are old leafs and dirt. But I can’t feel them. I really can’t feel anything, not even the crack in my spine I heard earlier.

Holy hell, this is it.

Suddenly I start panicking. I will never get out of here again. I will starve or get eaten by a mountain lion or freeze to death. I will die.

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I can’t get up. I can’t run away. I can’t even move my hands to wipe away the tears that are blurring  out the branches rocking above me. I try to scream for help, but my voice is drowned in fear. The more I try to make a sound, the more my hope gets swallowed by the silence around me that is only anticipating my end.

Maybe I can fall asleep. Maybe I wouldn’t have to be awake any longer, only to wait for that light tunnel and the blackout.

I close my eyes. But the dead silence is literally killing me. I try to sing to myself, a lullaby from when I was a kid. One that my mom would always sing to me. “Fall asleep, covered in roses. Tomorrow morn, if God wills, you’ll wake once again.” Seems like God doesn’t want me to wake up tomorrow, huh?

I keep singing it to myself, hours pass, and now all the song consists of are voice cracks choked on tears.

A piece of my hair fell in my face. I can’t even move my hands to get it off. I don’t really care. I feel my body getting tired now. My eyelids get heavier, until I just keep them closed.

I think I give up.

Is it even giving up, when there’s nothing else you can do? It doesn’t matter. I feel myself drifting off to sleep. I know that I probably won’t ever wake up again. I will never see the sun again. I will never see my family again. I will never live again. And all just because of one careless step.

 

The Party at the End of the Summer

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It was oppressively hot, but it was worse inside. The idea for the party had been born earlier that month, straight out of the heatwave, full of desperate loneliness and braised, salted wounds. He had thought that the heat had been bad when the party was thought up but it had gotten worse, the end of summer was supposed to bring promise of a cool refreshing fall, but instead the dog days were holding on.

Partygoers were wilting like flowers, falling and rising in dance on a phantom wind born and nursed by too-expensive-booze, and sweat dampened morals, the peace was tenuous. It was just too hot for a party, even the breeze was like licks of fire on his cheeks.

The rail of the balcony scorched his forearms, but it was better than dancing in the heat. He dropped his head back and looked for stars he would not find, but before the search even truly began the click of heels sounded behind him, the echoes of a last ditch S.O.S in consistent and aggressive morse code.

He did not look, she came up to the railing next to him. He still did not look at her, but in his peripheral he could see she was reasonably tall, dressed in unseasonal black, sleek. She inclined her head and stared out into the darkened hedge maze below them, all shadow. He could sense her grace rather than see it, there was something indescribably elegant in her presence, but she was incredibly still. She was pensive in a way that only people dressed in finery and malcontent can be.

She looked on as a couple stumbling their way through the doors below them, tipsy, glittering and very much in love made their way into the maze. Both were dressed in crisp autumn colors, one a in deep burgundy gown that splayed behind her like a trail of fire and the other in a warm burnt orange that fell like water.

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Two leaves dancing in the too warm night, lost to the world and unregistering of the weather outside of their perfect dichotomy.

She glanced sideways up at him through the leaden air, her sharp, slanted eyes caught him off guard, caught him staring at her with the sideways glance of someone interested but unwilling to admit it, but her interest was clear.

He slid his eyes lazily away and turned so his back was to the railing. She turned her head to see his profile, if he glanced at her out of the corner of his eye again he would see almost her whole face, a dangerous temptation. He hadn’t really seen her yet, the tendons in his neck lightly pulled him to look at her, but he resisted, he vowed not to look. He didn’t want to talk to anyone, especially not at this party.

She sighed, a light huff of hot air in the even warmer atmosphere around them, the air around them weighed heavy on him, even the light seemed dragged down. She leaned her narrow gloved hands on the bannister the stem of a champagne flute nestled in her long, lithe fingers.

She was made of long lines like an artist had just drawn out the essential curves in stark black strokes, she flowed like fine ink.

She swirled the champagne in her glass, light winked off it catching the light like a star on earth.

“This is the expensive stuff and what a glass to put it in.” Her voice was low and rolling over him, lulling him into a stupor, “The cost of the wine almost justifies the dressing up, but this glass, the glass definitely justifies the dressing up.”

A sudden shattering caused his trance to break, his vow forgotten his head snapped to look at her.

From her elegant and bewitching fingers the glass had fallen, no, he realized as he looked at her small smirk in profile, the fine crystal glass had been dropped, on purpose.

A galaxy now lay on the stones beneath them, the leaves in the maze had also turned suddenly at the clear cold noise cutting through the heat, but they were once again lost to themselves within moments.

He was now staring into her eyes, unable to look away, pinned like an insect to a scientist’s board, her dark brown eyes looked almost black under shadow and tapered lids.

He spoke one word, his voice rusty and thick with the overly warm air, “Why?”

She glanced down and turned on her heel, her sharp cheekbones and nose flashed in the light of the windowed doors she was headed toward, now that he had looked at her he could not look away. Those inky outlines were nothing on the amorphous night she was truly made of.

“So you would look at me,” she walked through the doors then, the promise of a cool fall night disappearing into the light of a too hot summer party.

Asking For It?

mariethearistocat1 Comment

TRIGGER WARNING: RAPE

Most people that know me can agree that I’m an outspoken feminist. They know that I stand up for women’s rights, try to be politically correct, the list goes on. They know that I love to write or that my favorite color is yellow. They know my face, the way I smile or laugh. To most people, I’m just an average teenage girl. Thank God that’s all I am. What most people don’t know is that this image could completely disappear, tarnished forever in a matter of minutes.

How?

Rape. Already I can sense one of two reactions: fear, a freezing shiver down a spine or bile pushing to the surface, or exasperation, a sigh because this post is going to be one of those posts.

When I think about sexual harassment, I think about the horrifying statistics. One in six girls will be raped in their lives. That means that out of the girls in my grade, at least three of us will get assaulted. One in 33 boys will be assaulted. That’s at least one boy in each grade. Yes, these are just statistics and all, but most of the times that’s all we think about.

Over the summer, I read Louise O’Neill’s Asking For It, a story of a girl named Emma who was gang raped by four boys. At first, Emma is portrayed as self-centered, egotistic, and promiscuous. She is mean to her friends, constantly degrading them.

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It frustrated me how rude she was, but as the story went on, the rudeness was actually unmasked as something else, self-degradation. Her entire life she was called pretty, fawned on by boys and envied by girls. She was constantly making sure to cover up, but simultaneously show off. Her mother would always tell her to put on a jacket or a longer pants, while her friends surrounded her with shorter and shorter skirts. She internalized something most girls have to.

Nowadays, the Internet is filled with selfies, pool pics, and photoshoots. Sleek hair and tanned, toned legs become a requirement before sending out an image on Instagram and Facebook. Emma’s world was filled with those kinds of pictures. She went to parties just to say she did, trying to keep up this delicate image of a girl who was respectable but still had fun.

However, that image was tattered when she was raped. She showed up to the party in a too-short dress, drank dozens of tequila shots, and tried a drug a boy gave her. Common ingredients in the recipe titled: She was asking for it.

It’s interesting to think that someone could be assaulted and instantly presume it was the victims fault. Even if she was wearing nothing, her body doesn’t become something to claim, to take advantage of. It’s sad that rape becomes so black and white, either the girl did something wrong or the boy made a “childish” mistake. No one ever gets into the nitty gritty. It’s always “She was asking for it” instead of “She was raped.”

Modern society has a fear around the word rape. People want to mask what that word means, mask the disgusting feelings around it. People hide behind anonymous names, jeering at victims, trying to make it less real. If she wanted to, then how can it be bad?

Louise O’Neill and many other have taken a stab at this ever-present issue, trying to raise awareness. I condemn these brave souls, as talking about rape is so taboo. Rape is an international issue, as this book addresses, and is not just some “feminist issue.” Rapists are let out of prison within weeks, while the victims are left with a lifetime of shame and painful memories.

Rape needs to become an outrage. Homicides are treated with heightened media attention, the deceased becoming a saint in the eyes of the public. Where is that same sadness for victims of rape? Yes, they didn’t die, but a part of them was lost when they were raped. Many are left chained to a life of stolen glances and hushed conversations.

It’s hard for people to talk about rape because they’re misinformed or it simply makes them uncomfortable. Personally, I agree. I would like nothing more than to talk about the weather report or to compliment my friend’s shirt, but sometimes I’m left fearing about out of my friends and me, who’s going to get hurt next? That’s why we need to talk about rape culture. We need to make rape not okay, make rapists see the wrong in their actions, as not to encourage repeated offenses. We need to make rape as scary as being killed, so that young girls and boys can go about their lives with one less thing to worry about.

That Night

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Steam clouds the windows. A flame wavers under the bulk of a teapot slowly growing discolored from the brewing tea.

Photo Credit: Davidson’s Tea

Jars of rice and pasta sit stoic behind the tea against the foggy window. The white tiles alight in a ring of orange and flickering yellow.

Cinnamon candles burn in another room, the smell wafting and drifting and dancing with the scent of a spiced green chai.

Rain patters lightly on a recently resealed roof. The faint sound of parents discussing upcoming weather reaches the small slanted kitchen.

A cold breeze blows under the door, bringing with it the smell of rain, fresh from clouds not seen for months.

Cold, stiff, paint-splattered hands rest near the candle, bathed in the warmth provided by the slow destruction of the candle.

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Faces lit from below glance out through the milky window at something unseen soaked with rain.

The Cupcakes (3)

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Not a single tear escapes my eyes as I sit back up and slowly gain footing. “Is that all you need for now Madame Clarisse?” I ask, the pain becoming a cold and unwavering part of my voice.

Madame Clarisse’s lips curl into a snarl, her eyes glowing with disgust at the fact that I have the strength left in me to stand up. At this point, Magnum Damarion’s resolve against killing the rabbit has completely fled, he has given into society’s cruelness.

Photo Credit: New Mark Hotels

I suppose it is easier that way, is it not Magnum? I think bitterly. I stand there, my heart beating faster as he gets closer. I know that if I move to defend myself nothing good will come of it, so I stand there and take it as he slowly moves toward me. I refuse to let myself shake, the only evidence of my pain and panic is my unsteady breathing.

Once he is within breathing distance, he stops and Madame Clarisse makes a repulsed noise in the back of her throat at the thought of someone of his status being this close to a servi. He looks back at her with ice in his eyes. One look from the mighty lion and the hyena is silenced, humiliated, unable to finish off one pitiful rabbit.

“Tell me, are you so daftly-idiotic as to mess up one small order?” He asks plaintively, as if this is not a kill shot.

Defiance rears its ugly head inside me. My mouth moves to say no and that I meant every gram of sugar I put in there, but my mind slams my lips shut and reworks them, “Yes, I am.”

He nods as if feigning understanding. His feet make little noise as he steps back, dragging his feet over the carpet, and as swift as a bullet he drives his steel-toed boot into my side exactly where Madame Clarisse’s heel push through my skin. I do not hear the impact but I sure as hell feel it. A cry escapes my lips as my head hits the side table, splitting the skin near my eyebrow. I hold my breath and let myself sag. I have failed myself more than once tonight, and I do not have the strength to face anymore failure.

I pull myself up and support myself on the side table slouched over, “Is there anything else you will be needing, Magnum, Madame?”

Clarisse takes a deep breathe, the hyena is too proud to let the lion have the final blow. Her fist zeros in on my nose, and with blinding pain her fist connects to the bridge of my nose, sending me careening out of control and into the side-table I was previously in alliance with.

I open my eyes a few seconds after the waves of nauseating pain pass. I can feel the blood on my mouth and dripping down my chin, creating rivers of deep red on my blouse. I look down at myself. This is what I would be in for, if I escape, if I make it to the next future, the next fate – one hell of a beating.

I crack my neck and swing my gaze between the Magnum and my Madame, “Is there anything else you will be needing? Madame, Magnum?”

I can see the vein in Madame Clarisse’s forehead pop out like a river in a smooth desert. I glance over at Magnum Damarion, he is looking mildly horrified at what he has helped do. His eyes linger on the blood stains dripping from my eyebrow and nose. Too late asshole. His eyes then stray to blossom of blood that is forming on my side as well.

Photo Credit: Free Images

This will go well tomorrow: Female Runaway Servi Found: Beaten Badly, To Be Executed. What a nice headline, yeah? But somehow I still cannot bring myself to stay here in this damned house.

“No I’m no longer in need your services.” I am surprised Madame Clarisse managed to grind even that out.

I bow my head a sign of respect, but in truth I can barely keep myself upright. I take a shallow breath as I prepare to attempt to walk. I slowly tell my legs to move, and as if by some sort of disconnect they start moving moments after I tell them to. I can feel the heel of my shoes catch in the threading of the carpet, and the other foot continues to shuffle forward, missing its ever-important counterpart. I can feel my mind slowly winding down to a complete standstill, like eyes that are slowly closing for longer than the last time. I hear, more than feel myself falling. The air creates a tunnel and everything sounds like static.

All of a sudden the sound stops. I let my knees buckle and I hear a thud as another pair of knees hit the ground with mine. The Magnum.