I could really use a wish right now...

Looking out the window, she didn't see much. Not that she expected to so late at night. Wiping at her face, Marie shook her head, wishing for all the world that she'd just kept her damn mouth shut. It didn't matter if it was eating at her before. Now it was consuming and she wanted to punch a wall, cry and go to sleep for days all at same time. Some might call that depression. For the blonde, it was a daily way of life. Her emotions were always so up and down. Most days, when she actually thought about it, it was frustrating and she wished she could change. And she had tried. It just never seemed like it was enough.

It didn't help that after the fight, she'd laid down to cry, to just let it all out. That was seven the night before. Now, nearly four am, she had a full night's sleep and nothing to do but stare out the window. The feeling of loneliness and the desire to pick up the phone, to try to make this better was overwhelming. But calling that early in the morning probably wouldn't help heal any wounds. Even she wasn't that stupid.

She reached for the radio, turning the nob and hoping for something to make it a little easier to be awake. Or, better yet, lull her back to sleep. The song had a decent beat and some piano and she lay her head back on the pillow as the woman sang about needing a wish and being willing to use just about anything to get it. Then there was some rapping but the woman's voice, her words were what Marie focused on.

The realization that it was her fault wasn't new. But in her trying to branch out, trying to find something that might make it a little easier to deal with all this, she didn't realize what she was doing to the people who had been there the whole time. In making friends, she's managed to alienate the one person who had her back, who had been with her through everything. Brilliant.

Making a note to download it, the music actually did it's job and Marie found herself humming softly as she drifted again, just hoping that she'd sleep until her alarm. She had a lot to do come morning.

Working on it

So as was pointed out to me by several people, I haven't blogged in forever. I've got about a million excuses but not one of them is really a good one so I won't even bother with them. I need to get back into this. My life has been a little chaotic but I'm working on getting it together. So give me time.

Today, there will be another post with the prompt "How To Make Friends and Alienate People" I'm going to do a series based on movie titles. We'll see how it goes.

And check my tweets for mini stories. Cause some of them are fun. :)

Precious Fragile Little Thing...

I have made my NaNoWriMo account. I'm excited and nervous. I really want to win this and accomplish something so we shall see. It's over here. Also, my website is updated with a new picture, new playlist and a link to my NaNo profile. :) (That's over here.)

The new journaling idea has been working out so far. It's actually helping with plotting, so I'm gonna be keeping that up. It's been fun. I try to take some time out of my lunch hour to do some writing and it's been successful. Also, I try to do something writing related when I get home too, so that I'm not all distracted by the internet. Trying to get ready for next month. I'm seriously doing this and I wanted to try this for a few years now. Last year was a half-hearted attempt. This year, I'm going to do this.

So for now, I'm going to write away from the computer and that temptress, the internet, while I'm waiting for dinner to be ready. Wish me luck!

New thoughts!

So, I'm going to be attempting a new writing exercise inspired by Amie. Her prompt last week to write a letter from your character. Well, since I've got more than my fair share of characters rolling around in my brain, my idea is to write a journal as the character. I had done this a long time ago as part of a role playing game I was playing online at the time. The character had lost her boyfriend and suddenly she was just lost and that wasn't like her. So she went on hiatus from the game and I write a private journal for her. It worked out really when and when she got back to the game, she was more like herself. Yes, there was heart break still, which was obvious since she'd lost her love, but she was the character in my head, not the one who had managed to come out of my fingers. So that's my new idea. We'll see how well it goes. :)

A random burst of inspiration

So I was sitting at my computer, admittedly goofing off and listening to music and something hit me, a little bit of my new novel. I know that I haven't shared anything of that here so here it is. A little for those of you who read this. It comes from last Monday's prompt from The Writer Chick.

Izzy sat at her desk, computer on in front of her and her headphones plugged in. Looks like her iTunes had it in for her, a sappy love song with a waltz beat to currently blasting in her ears, making her heart tighten. She still missed him and it had been a year. School was going to start in a couple of weeks and all she had on her mind was the boy she'd killed. Her fingers were poised over the keys but nothing was coming out. She couldn't get out a word, not even in her journal. It was killing her to keep this all inside.

Suddenly, from the world outside the earbuds, a hip hop beat. Frowning, she pulled one out of her ear and glanced at her closed bedroom door. That couldn't have been Helene. She didn't listen to that kind of stuff. Pausing her music, Isadora stood and moved to the door, tucking her hands in the pocket of her hoodie. The music was coming from the spare bedroom down the hall.

The door was cracked open and she could see someone swaying to the beat, leaning over the bed. Curious, she pushed the door open and the redhead whirled on her.

"Miranda."

"Hey, cousin!" The other siren smiled at her, the smile that meant trouble, plain and simple. This was not good. "Guess who's moving in!"

“She’s just staying with us for a little while. Her mother miscarried again. And I thought you liked your cousin.” Tessa looked at her youngest daughter, a slightly annoyed look on her face. “Besides, she’s soon to be marked, like you. It’s time you started to spend time with sirens your age, talked about getting ready to join the council. There is so much in your future, little one. It’s time you started to get ready for it instead of hiding in your room.”

“I go out, Mom.” She flopped down on the bed as her mother was getting ready to go out. “Lena and I went out two nights ago. I even picked up a sailor.” It wasn’t something she was proud of, but she knew her mother worried. Helene had all but forced her on the boy and she knew she had no choice. She couldn’t disappoint them.

“Is it really that bad that I don’t hang out with girls from the coven?”

Her mother looked at her in the mirror as she put in her earrings. “It reflects poorly on me, little one. I’m one of the prominent members of the coven’s council of elders and my own daughter wants nothing to do with other sirens. It is that bad.” Tessa smiled sympathetically and spritzed perfumes on her wrists and neck and moved to sit next to her daughter. “I’m sorry, sweetie. I’m going through a lot right now. I have to get pregnant, Randa’s here and my sister is having a hard time with this miscarriage. You know how bad I got last time. This is worse for her.”

She knew her aunt Aria had three in a row and her mother only had one. At least the birth before that had been a boy. That was excusable. Poor Aria. Sighing, Isadora pushed herself off the bed. “Alright. I’ll see if any of the girls want to go out with us tonight.”

Tessa smiled. “That’s my girl.” She stood and kissed her forehead before heading out of the bedroom and towards the stairs. “Make sure you watch out for each other. And try not to get blood on your dress, little one!”

The Darker the Secret, the Harder You Keep It - Part II

So here is the prompt.  Figured it was easier to show people on here than carry my computer around to everyone.  So here goes...

“The Darker the Secret, the Harder You Keep It”

It never made much sense to him why she had just left.  He'd seen her through thick and thin, having grown up with her.  They used to hide out in the park, waiting until the last possible moment to go home before getting into big trouble.  Their spot moved further away from the park when he got his driver's license, having found a good spot not far from the make-out spot all the seniors frequented.  The two of them were inseparable, always had been.  And he knew her to be one of the strongest people he knew, handling anything that came her way with a sense of grace that most teenagers could never display.  

Being that James had known her since they were two, he had a feeling there were certain things she didn't tell him.  It hadn't always been like that.  They used to go into in depth conversations about their significant others or stay up late and gossip about the people at school.  As they grew up, these conversations ended up being complaints about their families and their teachers and the guy who cut them off on their way to work.  To James, it seemed they were growing apart and he did his best to change that, but there was something about her that was different.  And that different part of her didn't want much to do with people of her past.  

He had tried for a short while after that to figure out what had changed in his best friend.  It couldn't have been school because they had kept up their friendship all through freshman year despite being three states apart.  It wasn't his parents' divorce, because she called him every night after she found out and let him break down when they saw each other at the beginning of the summer.  James never understood what could have happened to her to change her so completely.  

It took a few years for him to hear from her again.  She asked to meet him at their spot.  James arrived, holding two peach Snapples and a bag of pizza Combos, their usual snack.  It almost surprised him how much he remembered from those days, the gold old days he never thought he’d talk about like that.  She seemed surprised too.

“Hey,” she said, hands stuck in the back pockets of her jeans.   Her face seemed paler to him, like she hadn’t been sleeping.  Or spending much time outdoors.  

James hugged her and it was as awkward as he’d prayed it wouldn’t be.  They sat in his car and munched in silence.  He felt like the filled pretzels were getting lodged in his throat and after a few minutes of no talking, he finally cleared his throat.

“What happened to us?”

She didn’t answer, staring out at the trees around them.  He sighed and slouched a little in his seat.  Things had changed and he hated that, hated not knowing what was going on with her, with them.  Where was the girl he’d known all those years?

“I’m sorry.” Her voice was soft, quiet, as though she might break the moment, him, herself.  James didn’t know.  Reaching out, he touched her shoulder and she flinched.  

“Maybe this was a bad idea,” he said, looking out the window.  

They sat there for hours, minutes, days, who knows.  All James could feel was the tension in the air and the pain rolling off his childhood best friend in waves.  At one point, he heard her sniffle and he handed her a tissue from the small pack he kept in his cup holder, his head hitting the little yellow tree air freshener hanging from the rear view mirror.  

“Thanks.”  She blew her nose and wiped her eyes, turning to him.  “What I meant to say was that I’m sorry I never told you, that I couldn’t tell you.  I just had to...”  Her voice trailed off and her eyes looked back out to the woods.  “I had to deal with some things on my own.  My family, they were there for me, tried to help me, but if they couldn’t, I didn’t think you could either.”

Turning as best he could without the steering wheel jabbing into his side, James looked at her, looking into her eyes and wondered when they’d gotten so dull.  “Help you through what?” he asked softly, gently, approaching her the way he would approach a frightened child on the street.

“I made a mistake.  I trusted someone I shouldn’t have and I made a mistake.”  Her body seemed to deflate as she fell into his arms, crying against his shoulder.  This was the closest they’d been in years, but James held her like he used to, hand rubbing her back, smoothing over her hair as she wept.  He’d never liked seeing her like this, more so now because he didn’t know what was causing it.  

When her body stopped shaking, she rested against him for a few long moments and he didn’t know if she was gathering strength or just didn’t want to talk anymore.  Either way, he’d never been the kind to push her.  

Pulling back, she wiped at his eyes.  “I was dating that guy, remember when I told you about him?” Flipping back through memories, he tried to find the name of her boyfriend at the time, the last boyfriend he’d probably heard her talk about.  “Pat.”  James nodded.  “Well, we were dating for about a month and one night we went to this party.  He was planning on joining this fraternity.  I was just trying to be supportive, but you know how I felt about greek life.”  Her fingers made quotes in the air as she said the last two words.  He remembered she hated the sorority girls; they reminded her too much of the cheerleaders in high school.  

“I don’t know exactly how it happened, but we were upstairs in the hallway, just the two of us.  I didn’t mind that we were making out or that there would be a few people who randomly walked back and forth.  Pat was really sweet and I trusted him.  I thought there might be a chance that he was falling for me.  I knew I was just starting to fall for him.  Everything felt so perfect.

“Next thing I know, one of the older guys in the frat came up to us and asked to talk to Pat for a minute.  He kissed my cheek and told me he’d be right back.  I waited in the hallway, smoothing out my clothes a little and trying to look like I hadn’t just been going at it with my boyfriend in the hallway.”  She gave him the ghost of a smile and he thought he could see the girl he’d once known, despite the fact that he had a knot growing in his stomach at her words.

“I’m not sure how long he’d been gone, but at one point someone handed me something to drink.  I know I’m not supposed to just take random drinks from people, so I held on to it, not wanting to be rude, but knowing that leaving it on the floor after the person left probably wouldn’t be sure a bad thing.  Pat came back to me a few moments later and wrapped his arms around me.  I asked him what was up and he just said pledge business, told me it wasn’t a big deal.  

“That red cup was set on the floor next to me and we were back to the way we were before, making out, enjoying the fact that no one on that floor seemed to care very much.  It didn’t take long for him to get a little more forceful, which, I’ll admit, was kind of thrilling.”  

She looked up at his eyes, having told most of this story staring at the little monkey laying on his dashboard.  James felt like he was going to be sick, seeing how much this hurt her, how long she’d been holding on to what she was telling him.  

“But soon it wasn’t so much fun.  His hands started to hurt and he was grabbing at me and pushing my skirt up.  It wasn’t that I didn’t want to, but not there, not like that.  So I stopped kissing him and told him to stop.  Pat just tried to soothe me, but it wasn’t working and I stopped responding completely and told him to stop.  He didn’t like that.  ‘Come on, baby’ he’d said.  ‘Don’t you love me? It’ll be fun.’”  Her eyes went out to the woods again, causing her to miss James’ hand clenching, wanting to look up this Pat and give him a piece of his mind after giving him a piece of his fist.

“I... He get really forceful and I started to struggle.  I told him to stop, to get off me, to leave me alone, thinking that if I made enough noise someone would come help me.  When I looked up, there was no one around.  The place felt deserted, the music from the party downstairs sounding more and more distant.  I think I slapped him at one point, which he definitely didn’t like.  Finally, I did the one thing I could think of:  I shoved him off me.”

Her voice broke and a tear slid down her cheek.  He let his hand rest on her shoulder and her own reached up towards it.  “I think he must have tripped on something.  For the longest time I thought it was my cup.  But he stumbled a little and fell down the stairs.  I screamed and ran down to him, but he wasn’t moving.  The brothers came and looked at him, looked at me and someone called the cops.”  

It was a few minutes before she could speak again.  “His eyes were open and he was just looking at me like I’d betrayed him.  And I had.  I was the reason he fell down the stairs.  The rest of the night was a blur, but the next morning, I was sitting at the police station when they told me he’d died on the operating table.  He’d been paralyzed, but they were trying to relieve the pressure on his brain.  My parents came to get me and eventually, they ruled it an accident, that he was trying to take advantage of me and I was trying to defend myself.”

He couldn’t believe that she’d kept that from him, that she had gone through that all by herself and hadn’t come to him.  “I was so ashamed.  I mean, I killed someone.  It doesn’t matter what they say about it being an accident or self defense. I killed someone I cared about.  My parents, they sent me some place to help me cope, because they saw they couldn’t do it at home.  Every time I looked at them, I wondered if I was capable of hurting them too.”  

James wiped at the tears on her cheeks and she looked up at him and for the first time he saw her.  “James, I couldn’t tell you.  I didn’t want to see the way you’d look at me.  I didn’t want to hurt you too.  When I was away, I realized that by not talking to you, I was hurting you too.  And myself.  It killed me to not talk to you.”  She gave him that little half smile; that was his smile.

“I just didn’t know how to tell you.”

He pulled her close and held her tightly.  “I am so sorry.  I’m sorry for what happened, that you couldn’t tell me, that I wasn’t there for you through this.  It wasn’t your fault.”  James didn’t need to know anything else.  He knew it wasn’t her fault.  She never wanted something like this to happen.  “Kate, it wasn’t your fault.”

Her face was buried in his shoulder.  “I know that now.  I do.  Promise.”  They sat like that for a while, not moving, just holding each other.  The years that had passed meant nothing.  James closed his eyes and squeezed her tightly until he heard her giggle.

“What?” he asked, pulling back a little to look at her, watching her laugh.

“You always do that.  Squeeze when you think I need it and I end up not being able to breathe.”

He had to laugh at that.  In that moment, he knew they’d be okay, that she would be okay.  And that they could get their old times back.  They sat there as the sun started to set, laughing and listening to the radio, just like old times.

The Darker the Secret, the Harder You Keep It

Just finished a writing prompt given to me by a friend on her blog.  I told myself that I would write for an hour today and I wrote over 1500 words in forty minutes. I think that's a big accomplishment for someone who's got writer's block.  But in writing that little short story, I realized that I might not be ready to jump back into writing a novel.  I think I should work on some more prompts or possible some short stories of my own prompting to get back into the right groove.  It's not easy and I just want to get something out of my system some days.  

Back in January and then a month or so ago, I just wanted, well needed really, to get something out of my system.  So I turned off the tv and turned on my iTunes and wrote it out.  The first time it was this story about this man who loses the woman he loves when she gives birth to their child.  It was tragic, but something I'd never actually experiences.  And yet, as I was writing, I was crying for him, for the child he had but couldn't look at, for the future he'd lost.  It was heart breaking and even reading it now makes me cry. 

The second time, it was a young woman being approached by someone she'd been in a relationship with who wanted her back.  That one I knew personally.  It's hard to just cut someone out of your life, especially when you cared for them so deeply.  And then to see them again, to be reminded of how you felt, how much they had been a part of your life.  It isn't easy.  Being human and caring isn't easy.  We all have secrets, regrets, choices that we are forced to make that no one saw coming.  It's messy and it hurts but it's part of living.  Maybe that's something I have to remind myself of when looking into characters.

I might post the prompt later, depending on how I'm feeling.  And how much my friend enjoys it.