Writing Challenge Take Two: Day Three

This little endeavour of mine in getting my writing back on form before university is obviously just going to be a personal one as much as anything. I fully don't expect anybody to read this, it's purely, at this point, for my own benefit.

With that said (to future Lewis, most likely), I'll continue.

Again, a first sentence stick, writing for as long as a piece of string.

First Sentence: 'There I was, just standing there, when what I wanted to do was forbidden.'

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There I was, just standing there, when what I wanted to do was forbidden. The Elders had decreed it so. Entry to the section of the library beyond the stained glass window (depicting horrors such that it was painful to look at. There was a lot of red glass.) was the most forbidden of all forbidden things in the Monastery.

I hadn't exactly made the best reputation for myself since I'd been there. I was just a visitor. The monks themselves were forbidden from speaking, so weren't much entertainment really. Therefore, I had to make my own entertainment. I'd put books back in the wrong sections in full view of monks, just to see what they might do. It was really quite amusing to see them attempt to convey their feelings on the matter to me without speaking. There had been some very aggressive pointing towards the alphabetised section markers on the end of each row of bookcases. Pointing which I pretended to pay attention to.

But thus far, my adventures had been harmless. Just some fun to keep myself from boredom until my father finished his business with the High Monks. Harmless, that is, until now.

I stood before the grotesque stained glass window, trying to avoid looking at it. The colours shining through it told of a powerful light source behind it. The vibrants hues played on the wall behind me, and, as I noticed when I looked down, on me as well.

I took one last, slow look around, to ensure that there were no monks around. Usually, there would be at least one stationed here to guard the section. But with a little trickery from myself, I'd ensured that the guard on duty for this shift had his guard duty swapped with another monk. A certain Monk Gibbonis. A name I'd made up on the fly. Slipping the duty-change form into the High Monks daily pile of batch-signed paperwork had been a doddle.

So here I was, about to step foot in where, I'd been told, nobody had walked in decades.

I took a deep breath. Then a step. I was beyond the window now. My feet pressed years of dust below them further into the carpet, leaving grey footprints. It was about four seconds before I heard the blare of an alarm. Apart from that, the usual silence, followed by the wordless patter of, by the sounds of it, several dozen mute monks. And so I ran, taking nothing from the experience but the dust on my shoes.

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A short one today, I'm afraid, but the story wasn't really going anywhere. Laters.

Writing Challenge Take Two: Day Two

Wow, I'm off to a great start already... Missed Day Two. In my defence I did have good reasons. (A.k.a. Reasons involving a girl) So I'm not too bothered. Not like I'm currently catering to a huge fan-base.

To compensate for this, for some reason I'm up at what to me is basically the crack of dawn (about 6:45) in the morning. Because I'm awake at this ungodly hour, I'll do some writing now (Day Two) and write some more this evening (Day Three). 

To start things off simple for my sleep deprived brain, I'm gonna use a First Sentence stick for about 15 minutes, and attempt to somehow create a makeshift IV drip out of my coffee.

First Sentence: 'Your mother lied to you. That's the truth.'

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'Your Mother lied to you. That's the truth,' says the man.

I have no idea where I am. One second, we'd been sat round the dining room table, eating Christmas dinner... 'We' meaning my family and I, that is. But one second, that, and now... I have no clue what.

'Your Mother. Your Father. Your Teachers. Everyone.'

'What are you talking about?' I groggily manage to say. I feel sleepy, like I've just woken up. I realise that I can't actually tell how long I've been conscious. I can't see the man. I can only tell he is a man because of his voice. But then, it could just be a very manly woman. See, that's the other thing, I can't tell where I am because I'm blind. Not actually, legally blind, but right this second, I'm unable to see. I must have a blindfold on, or a bag over my head, or something, but I can't feel anything there. I would be panicking if I wasn't so sleepy.

'Charlotte, this might come as quite a shock...'

'What?! You're not telling me anything. Who are you?' I ask, my heart beginning to beat faster. He takes a deep breath of air, holds it for a second as if trying to form the words he would use the breath for, then gives up and lets it out in a long sigh. Another, quicker, intake.

'My name is Dawn. I'm... I guess you would call me a Hunter.'

'A hunter? What does that even mean?'

'I stop bad things. I'm keeping you safe.'

'Safe?! Right now you're the bad thing!' That's it. Panic sets it. My heart is racing, and my breathing... I can't actually feel my breathing. I try desperately to feel anything around my mouth... My throat... But there's just a kind of numbness.

'Trust me. It might seem that way, but right now, there's something much worse happening to you. I need you to help me stop it.'

'What?! What are you talking about? Tell me what's going on!' I feel as though I'm laying on my back. Or am I sitting? The numbness in my face continues to a lesser extent throughout my body.

'Everybody you think you know was lying to you, Charlotte, because the world you were living in... Wasn't real.'

I laugh. For some reason, I find this hilarious. My throat convulses in laughter and catches on something. Something is in my throat. I go to speak, the words don't come out of my mouth but somehow form anyway. I realise that this is how I've been speaking before now, with my mind.

'What the FUCK?' I yell with my brain.

'Good,' comes his voice, 'you're becoming aware of its presence. You're beginning to reject it.'

'It's time,' says another voice. A woman's this time. 'Her vitals are good. If you're going to do it, Dawn, it's now. Now or never!'

'Very well... Now listen, Charlotte... I'm not going to lie, this is going to hurt. I wouldn't do this if I didn't know you could handle it. See, you're one of us. A Hunter, like me, like Kyana. Now try to hold still as much as you can. Here we go!'

Before I can respond I feel movement. Something peeling off my face. Then a strong grip around my head. Multiple strong arms pulling the thing closer to my face again. And all the while an overwhelming pain. Not a sharp pain, like something on the surface, but an excruciating headache. More than a migraine. It feels as though there's a power drill attempting to escape from my frontal lobe the only way it knows how...

'It's fighting, Dawn!' comes the woman's voice.

'So is she!'

I feel the thing pulling away. It pulling back. It goes back and forth like this for a while, the pain continuing the whole time. 

Then it it pulls back further. I feel something cool and metal slide between my face and the thing, and I realise that the numbness is disappearing. I feel whatever was in my throat slide out. I take a gasp of air. It feels like the deepest breath I've ever taken. Then, just as my lungs are about to fill, a scream.

The scream isn't me. It isn't Dawn. Or Kyana. It isn't even human. It doesn't sound like any animal I've ever heard. It sounds almost metallic. But it is, unmistakably, a scream. My breath is cut short by spurts of cold liquid entering my mouth. It has the coppery taste of blood, but with the copperiness dialed up several notches. I gag on it, choking it back up immediately.

I feel the last of the thing peel away from my face. The arms around my head go slack, limp, falling down my neck to my shoulder where they slide off. My eyes finally open, the world blurry at first. I'm on some kind of chair, reclined. I'm strapped to it, my arms and legs immobile.

I look around, two blurry shapes moving around me, inspecting me. And behind them... something, writhing on the floor.

'She's going to be okay...' Dawn's voice reassures nobody in particular. Then the same voice, but different. In my head this time, like before. 'Charlotte, you're going to be okay.'

---

I guess writing in the morning works wonders for me! Something to bear in mind for University this year!

Thanks for reading, more later.

Webcomic: Paper-Bag-Man #3

Two updates in one day? On this blog? I know, right, next stop apocalypse.

But yeah... I had this third strip from the webcomic I'd been working on sitting around on my laptop, un-posted, so though it was time to stick it online.

Possibly more to come?

Writing Challenge Take Two: Day 1

So last year I attempted what I called my 'Inspiration Writing Challenge' using the 'The Writer's Toolbox'. This attempt was ill-fated and what was intended to last for a whole month, I only managed to keep up for a week... Oh, me.

This time, I'm going to try this whole thing again, except with the (hopefully) more realistic and achievable goal of a fortnight of writing.

In roughly a months time, I'm going to be starting my Master's degree at the University of Lincoln, in Creative Writing... and the writing I've done since I finished my Professional Writing degree at University Centre Grimsby? Zilch. So I'm hoping that this will spur my brain back onto the writing path, by forcing myself to write regularly.

The fact that I just used to word 'forcing' is probably a bad sign. This is something that I'm supposed to be good at and enjoy... so why would I be forcing myself to do it, and not wanting to do it anyway?

Ah well, on with the challenge. Going to use a 'First Sentence Stick' today, followed by a Non Sequitur stick to take the story in a new direction. I'll write for ten minutes each stick.

First Sentence: 'There she was, Amy Gerstein, over by the pool, kissing my Father'

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There she was, Amy Gerstein, over by the pool, kissing my father. She was his latest in a very recent, long line of girlfriends. To be honest I'd been getting bored of the new women rapidly entering and exiting mine and his lives. I'd even attempted to have a word with him about it. I'd sat him down, made him a cuppa, put the football on a low volume in the background, and he'd dodged and weaved around the subject like one of the footballers he so avidly followed while they kicked a ball around on a bit of grass for way-too-much money a match.

So I gave up, for now, if he wanted to pursue this... self-destructive path, then so be it, I'd let him. The fact that he hadn't listened to his own son was just testament to how desperate he'd gotten. I mean, he'd given me these kinds of lessons as I was growing up, I was just attempting to return the favour. But no, he set up dates with multiple women on multiple dating sites. Almost every night he was out, flirting as if his life depended on it with whoever took his fancy. 'Playing the field' he called it. 'Hedging his bets' is what I called it.

Occasionally, one of these women would actually make an impression on him. Amy was one of these women. They'd been seeing each other for three weeks now. Too soon, in my opinion, to get attached. And yet there they were, by the poolside, making out with each other in full view of the other holidaymakers.

Oh, yeah, probably should have mentioned that too. She was on holiday with us. What -was- going to be a father-son lad's weekend turned into me third-wheeling their premature honeymoon. So there I was, sitting, reading a book on a sunbed as the clouds covered the usually bright foreign sky, a metaphor for my current mood. Try as I might, I couldn't avoid looking at them, with their gross public displays of affection. If there weren't so many people around, I'm pretty sure they would have just stripped each other naked then and there.

See, the problem was, not that she was just another one of his string of girlfriends, but that she was actually attractive. She was closer to my age than to his. Somebody my age wouldn't have looked out of place dating her. She even looked young for her age. But Dad, with his grey hair and brown cargo swimming trunks, looked more like her Grandad than her lover.

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Non Sequitur: 'Tom lost 25 bucks at the races'

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It got worse the next day. The island we were staying on had a heck of a gambling scene. It was part of the reason that me and my Dad had come here. I wasn't much of a gambler myself, but he was. If it wasn't football, it was whatever other sport had a season playing at the time. He never really bet big though, which was why I had never brought it up as a potential problem to discuss with him.

But Amy, something about her brought out the worst of his gambling side.

We'd caught a bus to the other side of the island, taking somewhere close to two hours to get us there. The only racetrack in the small country was here. It was run-down, and used for many kinds of races. Horses... Greyhounds... A poster peeling off a sun-drenched wall even advertised some kind of mini-Olympics to coincide with London 2012.

But today, it was horses. They looked uncomfortable in the starting gates, probably overheating in their thick looking patterned garb. Short men in matching colours and helmets sat atop them, looking equally uncomfortable. Dad clenched his betting slips in one hand, growing agitated in his seat as the race was about to begin. Amy smiled brightly as she saw this, grasping his arm with her hands and looking back and forth between him and the racetrack. Again, I sat, uninterested, with my book.

In a matter of seconds, the race had begun, and was over. Or what seemed like seconds. I hadn't exactly been paying attention. In fact, my first indication that the race was over was the exasperated sigh from my Dad. His horse had lost.

I tried to console him. What's a tenner? Amy had gone. I assumed to the toilet or something. But it soon became apparent that it wasn't just the money that was bothering him. He seemed shocked, more than disappointed. Barely speaking. It was then that I noticed the scratches on the other side of his face. Amy hadn't gone to the toilet. She'd encouraged him to make the bet. A big bet. Using some of her money. And when her horse lost, she'd blamed Dad. Shouting at him. I hadn't heard it over the screams of the crowd. That was it. Another one gone.

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Wow, so reading that back, I'm very out of practice. Guess forcing myself to get back into writing is a necessity at this point. More tomorrow!