Post by GANGSTA!cat, on Apr 28, 2009 13:52:21 GMT -5
TITLE: `` empty chairs at empty tables [because that wasn't ripped off a les mis song or anything. 
]
GENRE: Drama, although as I add to it, it'll probably also fit Horror too (;
CRITIQUE: Yes please!
STATUS: Work in Progress at present; it's part of my on-going English assignment, and hopefully it's not too bad... it does get a bit bloody later though, so I might have to change the rating as I add to it.
SUMMARY: Just part of my creative writing English assignment; we had to write a dramatic piece, a sci-fi piece and a fantasy piece, and SO FAR this is my favourite of them.
OTHER: Enjoy! [hopefully it doesn't make you want to switch off your compooooter]
]GENRE: Drama, although as I add to it, it'll probably also fit Horror too (;
CRITIQUE: Yes please!
STATUS: Work in Progress at present; it's part of my on-going English assignment, and hopefully it's not too bad... it does get a bit bloody later though, so I might have to change the rating as I add to it.
SUMMARY: Just part of my creative writing English assignment; we had to write a dramatic piece, a sci-fi piece and a fantasy piece, and SO FAR this is my favourite of them.
OTHER: Enjoy! [hopefully it doesn't make you want to switch off your compooooter
]Dozing off during German was my latest hobby; I sure as hell wasn’t going to need to know the dative and accusative cases in any language. Hell, I didn’t even know them in English! However, for reasons I didn’t quite understand, I was always the first person in the classroom. Most likely because I had nothing better to do. Despite my current status of being stranded in the vast emptiness of purgatory, it wasn’t exactly what you’d call time-consuming. Before, I’d wanted time. I’d never had enough of it. Ironically, now I’d gotten my wish. However, purgatory allowed me time to dream, something I’d never had the liberty of in my idyllic lifestyle in what I perceived to be heaven. I blinked, flicking my attention to the large clock on the wall closest to me. I didn’t like the clock. It reminded me of time, and time was the sadist that had condemned me to where my sanity lay in ruins. How poetic. I imagined a Mr. Time, and he looked somewhat like my father, constantly wearing a preppy business suit and a half-fake smile, and in his hands was a dirty rag of half-priced cloth. As he ripped it up, I winced. The rag was me, and although I kept having this dream - nightmare would have been a more accurate word – it still never failed to wound me mentally, which of course entitled Mr. Time to make another tear in the rag. As I opened my screwed up eyes, I realised that I wasn’t alone anymore. The previously empty classroom had filled, and I sucked in my breath. Nothing was going to go wrong today. I would make sure of it.
The omnipresent empty seat next to me never bothered me, yet as Miss Foster called out the register, I was suddenly aware of its presence. I exhaled slowly as I heard my name being called out into the open air. I flinched. I wasn’t used to people addressing me anymore, my teachers being the only people in the entire school that dared to use my name. I answered hurriedly, my voice its usual hoarse tone from lack of use. My voice had been happy and melodic a time ago. Now, it sounded like Death. My eyes cast an unwilling fleeting gaze around the room, and I could see familiar faces, intertwined with Mr. Time’s. Wherever I went, he was there also. Irritating stalker. However, there was one face that I had to endure every day that was absent. Their absence stood out like a sore thumb, and my electric blue almond-shaped eyes widened further than their usual panicked ‘rabbit-between-headlights’ expression. I wasn’t afraid of the person whose face was absent. No, no, it was so much more than that. I was terrified of them.
I was being my usual new and improved self; paranoid. Everything made me jump, and when I jumped, it hurt, a painful reminder of Mr. Time and his evil, evil dark eyes and equally dark sneer. My breath was shuddering now, and my palms were sweaty, and as the last name on the register was interrupted by what seemed like a peace-shattering door slam, my fears were confirmed. Going into psychological cardiac arrest, my heart was freefalling and ricocheting against its cruel confinement in my body. It wanted to escape, leaving me to die. Then again, dying would be less painful than this. Death was easy. Purgatory was harder. As the person I was so afraid of walked into the classroom and gazed around the room, the horrific truth of why I was so aware of the empty chair was because of the fact that there were no other empty chairs in the classroom. From the cold calculating looks on the person’s face, it didn’t take them much longer to figure this fact out either. Then the inevitable happened.
He began to walk in the direction of the empty chair. My empty chair.
Oh God.
It took exceptional self control to not heave on the desk there and then. He couldn’t sit here. Not now. I’d taken so many precautions, put up so many barriers to prevent him from even looking at me. And now, thanks to one little error, he was sitting next to me. This wasn’t good. As the nausea washed over me, I closed my eyes, muttering to myself. Don’t lose it. Don’t let him see what you’re really feeling. My conscience wasn’t as good as it used to be. Although my head was being my usual rational self, my heart was overdrive, pumping nerves round and round and round my body like a god-forsaken carousel of horror. Too late to do anything. Too late to run. He’d sat in the chair. And now my fate was sealed.
I couldn’t bring myself to look at him; to do that would simply spark a riot in me and to be quite honest, I was done shouting. Especially in public. Clasping my hands tightly around the fountain pen that had somehow found its way between my palms, I tried to concentrate on the literally foreign words that were being scrawled onto the vast whiteboard by my teacher and her indiscernible handwriting. Typically, this disaster would only happen in German, the only lesson where I didn’t comprehend a word of the piffle my teacher was spouting and I was left alone with my thoughts. Any other day, that would have been bliss. Today, it was the equivalent of being burnt alive.
How long had I been in here, enduring his presence? A minute, an hour? Having him sit so close to me made me feel more frightened than ever. I still couldn’t bear to look at him, and so I looked straight down at my German book, biting down hard on my lip. Something amusing must have happened, for there was a sudden flurry of childish laughter floating through the classroom. I tried my hardest not to let the tears drop from my eyes by clamping my eyelids tightly together. How I longed to laugh like that. The flurry of laughter pealed through my ears, boring a deafening sound into my ears. Feeling ill again, I prepared to run to the bathroom. However, a familiar voice stopped me cold.
“Hey. How are you?”
It was his voice.
It was the voice I had been so afraid to hear, for fear of what it would do to me if I ever had him address me again. Shut. Up. Now. I willed him to be quiet, knowing that him opening his mouth would spark the fire that I had been oxidising for the past year. It was igniting slowly, and was burning my weakened barriers. I wanted to open myself up to him, show him how I’d been reduced to a torn dirty rag, trapped in equilibrium by the claustrophobic hands of Mr. Time. For the first time in a while, I saw dark red issuing through my world of white. It scared me. This was what I’d been hiding beneath the surface as my body was irrevocably shattered... and it was going to lash out at him one way or another.
Everything was black. I was standing on an empty stage, alone and frightened as the spotlight passed over my body. It wasn’t the warm, welcoming spotlights of the theatre though; it resembled the spotlights that were used to round up escaped prisoners. As I tried to get my bearings, the spotlight grinded to a halt above my head, its colour changing a deep passionate red, and I looked up into the face of the beam. It was dazzling me, calming me down as I realised that I was safe here. No-one was around to see me, and that was all I could ask for. I smiled, for what seemed like the first time in years, and my eyes glistened, sparkling with the sudden peace. Even Mr. Time’s ugly head was absent from the stage. There was just me, and although solitude was something that I loathed ever since it had been inflicted onto me by his hands, it felt like a beautiful awakening today. How strange!
However, it didn’t take long to figure out that something was going wrong. The spotlight began to move again, and I gasped, instantly shocked. I looked around frantically, trying to catch another glimpse of the spotlight, but to no avail. I stumbled, disorientated, and scowled as a trickle of blood ran from where I’d fallen on my arm. I detested blood. It smelt vile, and looked even worse. Which was why the things I’d had to endure hurt as much as they did. Rubbing my arm mercilessly, I returned to the task at hand. I was going to find the spotlight again. I had to. I craved the ease it brought – I was already addicted, like a smoker without their forty-a-day. Standing up on my uneven and shaking matchstick legs, I saw the spotlight and the solace it brought over in the corner of the room. Smiling, I made my way over to it; however, as I walked over to the red spotlight, my face contorted into a tainted expression of fury. Someone else was standing in my spotlight. And not just anyone. Him.
