| nothing personal |
[01 Nov 2007|09:35pm] |
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| Cause&Effect |
I don't want non-friends reading the novel. You can read the prologue below--if you like, friend this journal to see more.
And if you like what you see here, check out my regular journal as well, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) abigail_nicole. |
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| read on |
+comment and friend to be friended
+other WriMos and observers welcome
+observe basic grammar, please, offer constructive criticism.
+comment if you like it! I'm writing this for me, yes, but I love feedback as well! |
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| Day One - 1714 |
[01 Nov 2005|10:19pm] |
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music |
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They were stiting on the rooftop watching the stars. Maria’s holding a chipped cup of coffee and Jose was shivering in his denim jacket.
“Watch it,” Maria said, nodding up at the sky. Her voice crackled in the stillness of the night.
Obediently, Jose looked upward into the sky, where the stars shone like they were a million miles away. “Find me a shooting star,” Maria said. “I want a shooting star.”
“I’ll pull one out of my ass, shall I?” Jose said, and Maria glared at him.
“Out there, somewhere,” she said, and held out a hand, closing one eye and pretending to cover up a star with her fingertip. Her fingernail traced a path through the dark sky. “Right there. That’s it.”
“That’s what?” Jose asked, looking at Maria’s finger. “Your finger?”
“Look past the finger,” she said, laughing. “Look at the stars. Out there, past the ocean…is the edge of the world.”
“Did you know they used to tell us the world was round?” Jose said, amused. “That was a long time ago, though.” He leaned back on his elbows, staring up into the blackness. “A long time ago.”
Maria shrugged, letting her shoulders sag. She huddled around her cup of coffee, crosslegged on the cold concrete roof. “They used to tell us a lot of stupid things,” she said. “That the universe is heliocentric. That gods don’t really exist. That time is real.”
“Let’s not get too philosophical,” Jose injected wryly. “You’re drinking coffee, not vodka.”
“You’re such a moron,” Maria said, and punched him in the arm. He raised an eyebrow at her, but she just punched him again before retreating to her coffee. “You really are.”
There was a silence as Maria took a long drink of her coffee. Jose closed his eyes, and opened them again as Maria poked him with her knee. “Hey.”
“What?” he asked, sitting up. “I don’t want to get all philosophical tonight.”
“Well, maybe I do,” Maria said. “Did you ever wonder? What’s off the edge?”
“Not this again,” Jose groaned. “Maria, you haven’t even been to the edge since you were three.”
“Shut up. What’s on the other side?”
“What do you mean, what’s on the other side?”
Maria shrugged. “It’s not that hard. Do you just keep falling until you die? Do you fall into Hell? Do you hit the ocean and drown? Or is it just a really big cliff no one’s ever come back from?”
“You know what, jump off someday and send me a letter telling me about it,” Jose said. “People have jumped off before, you know.”
“But they never came back,” Maria said, turning her head past Jose to stare off the edge of the roof. “They never came back.” There was a silence, then a crunch of her shoes on the concrete as she stood up. “You know what?” she asked, looking back down at Jose.
“Do I have to get up?” he asked, but she ignored him.
“I’m going to be the first person to come back,” she said. “I’m going to jump off and come back. For you. Moron that you are. And I’m going to prove to you that there is something on the other side.”
“Maria,” Jose said, standing up, “you are batshit insane. Do not jump off the edge of the world. Come to get waffles with me and finish your coffee.”
“Fuck the coffee,” Maria said, and then just like that she hurled the entire coffee cup off the roof. They watched it fly through the air, the brown liquid falling out, and the shine of the cracked white cup as it fell.
“Feel better?” Jose asked after a moment, and Maria stuffed her hands into the pocket of her jacket.
“No,” she said, then tilted her head back. “Yes. Maybe.”
“That’s…pretty decisive,” Jose commented mildly.
“Yes, it is,” Maria said, grinning. “Just like me. You know. Caught between a rock and a cup of coffee.”
“That must be wet,” Jose commented.
“You don’t ever have bad days, do you?” Maria asked, turning to face him. “You don’t ever have days when you feel stupid and useless and you just want to do something, anything, to keep from screaming?”
“There are pills you can take for that, you know,” he began, but Maria rolled her eyes and punched him in the arm.
“Shut up,” she said. “It’s cold. Go back to the car.”
“It’s cold!?” Jose protested. “What?! You’re the one who has my jacket, and you say it’s cold?!”
“Yes. It’s cold. If you’re so cold you just shouldn’t have given it to me. Don’t blame me for your lack of foresight. You knew I’d steal your coat.”
“Go back to the car,” Jose said, shaking his head and turning away from her. “No. Your complete lack of common sense offends me. Go back to the car. You just lost your speaking privileges.”
“Jose, I love you,” Maria said, laughing. “When I jump off the edge of the world, I will write a letter to you.”
We all have stories that no one understands but us.
Maria came her with a black eye and a pen clutched tightly in her left hand. We’ve told her you can’t send letters back to the outside but she sits at the table by the fire and writes them anyway. There’s nowhere to send them to. There’s no one to send them to.
Anthony with the red hair is convinced that we are all dead. I don’t think I believe him.
It’s been a long time since I’ve felt this alive.
There used to be a great vast sense of emptiness. I think that’s where all the stories come from. Drusilla sits in front of the fire and uses crayons to draw pictures of the galaxies she says are inside her head. There are things here no one understands.
I think sometimes that it’s just a hotel we can check out of anytime we like. When you get pulled off the safety net, you go to the front lobby and are told to register. Saturday mans the front register. Nobody’s ever asked him but there’s a general consensus that he is flamboyantly gay. He has bright yellow hair and green eyes and dresses in tight crisp collared shirts with light green stripes that match his pants. He’s the least touchy-feely guy I’ve ever met, and has to be the prissiest. The forms are simple. Name, number. “What number?” I asked him when I registered, holding the ballpoint pen awkwardly, like I’d forgotten to write.
“Pick a number,” he said, in that strange voice he has. “Just pick a number. If it’s not taken, and we have to check,” he clicked something on his screen, “then you can have it!”
I wrote down 138. Just for kicks. Just for kicks. It wasn’t taken so Saturday filed me in. Besides name and number there’s a lot of mostly usless stuff. Favorite color, favorite food. Day or night. Freefall or parachute. They’re like a psychological test but there’s no clear result. You don’t know what they’re testing you for. When you get done registering Saturday hits his button and prints you a tiny yellow slip of paper with three numbers—your room number. And the next day you have to report for class.
I don’t know what we’re doing. Athena gave us all a speech in the auditorium resplendent with red velvet curtains and black carpet, navy blue ceilings hung with Christmas lights. “You don’t know why you’re here and neither do we,” she told us. “But you’re here. And it’s going to go on. This isn’t the end. This isn’t even the beginning. This is where you have to realize everything you’ve learned.”
“This is the hardest lesson you will ever have to learn, and in many ways it will be the easiest thing you will ever do. You will stay here until you are ready, and then you will jump off the edge again.”
At lunch, Drusilla throws ketchup packets at the walls and makes them explode all over the white plaster, giggling like a maniac the entire time. I don’t know how many people are here. Michael asks me for a fork, and when I give it to him makes a joke about the six people you meet in heaven.
“Is it the same six for everyone?” I ask, and he just laughs.
“With the criteria the way it is, only six people will ever get to Heaven,” he said, and walked away.
There’s a rumor going round that Jesus walks the halls at night, answering questions of anyone who can remember what they want to ask him. “That’s cheap,” I said, when I heard it. “Takes all the fun out of life.”
“You’re assuming a lot,” Maria said, smiling wryly. “You’re assuming an awful lot.”
I started to ask her what she meant but she interrupted me. “There’s another rumor, too,” she said, speaking fast. “La Llorona? Heard of her? She’s supposed to walk the hallways after dark. That’s how this place goes. On one side there’s everything and on the other side you’ve got everything else.” She grinned, mirthless and toothy. “Step off the edge. They’re all mad here. Batshit insane. Jump off the edge again? I can’t. I have to write letters to home.” She paused, then said it again: “I have to write letters to home.”
I tried. Every time I put pen to paper I feel like the world tilts sideways. It’s just one of the ways of this place.
Michael throws newspapers in the fire. A lot of them are in Russian, and I stare at them without reading. “Don’t look so hard, your eyes will fall out,” he says, and for just a minute I get a picture of the carpet covered with eyeballs, rolling around and glistening in the firelight. It’s enough to make me laugh.
Anthony stands in the hallways while everyone’s getting ready for bed, preaching until his face is red that we’re all dead, that this is Purgatory where we wait to stand trial for our sins. I brush past him holding a toothbrush, and staring into the bathroom mirror I realize that I don’t know what I’m doing here.
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| written and deleted |
[20 Jun 2005|08:45pm] |
I don't know what I want to write.
=====
hey
everything is falling apart here, Zanne. I keep thinking things are going to get better and they never do
sometimes I wonder if its me or if life is just like this
I keep waking up at three a.m. because I feel like I’m drowning and I have to sit up in bed, gasping for air
I can never go back to sleep after I wake up like that.
it’s so lonely in the middle of the night when you’re sitting in the armchair curled up in your sheet watching nothing on TV and you can’t stop shaking I don’t know how to control it Zanne
I wish you were here. nothing I do makes any difference anymore.
I keep thinking about the bridge on third street where we used to take pictures. it’s never sunny anymore. sometimes I think it’s just high enough that if I jumped I could fall away from all the problems here. that’s crazy thinking, I don’t want to kill myself. I’m scared of myself most of all
how do I fix this, zanne
I’m sorry I’m pouring all this out on you but I think you’re the only one who cares anymore
I just wish all this would be over.
sorry.
love Anastasia
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Mania is sitting in the bathroom putting on my lipstick, shade three-oh-six Blood On Fire. Mania is obsessed with fire. Her hair is blood-red in the mirror, the same shade as my lipstick, and she grins into the mirror, glancing at me.
“Should I burn it?” she asks me, mockingly.
“Burn what,” I respond flatly.
“This gas station,” Mania says, before pursing her lips and closing the lipstick. “You’d be doing them a favor, really.”
“Why do you want to destroy everything?” I ask.
“Why do you want to destroy yourself?” she asks, and I can’t say anything. Mania just smiles to herself and drops my lipstick back in her purse, black and tiny. Mania loves dressing up—loves dressing me up, for nothing. She looks like a hooker now, black miniskirt and high heels, a denim jacket she got from Sean. “You can’t put this off forever, sweetie,” she says, turning around to face me, leaning back on the chipped sink. “All this stuff you’re carrying inside of you is going to explode and you are going to die.”
I don’t say anything. She regards me coolly, then pushes the door open and walks out.
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| Novel #2 - Untitled |
[23 Jan 2005|03:45pm] |
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mood |
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So. I once again take to the page to bring you this second novel attempt, as of yet untitled. This is the very rough form of it, and since it's public, I'll cut it for you.
This is sci-fi, rather futuristic, but it's a flood-story. If Noah lived during the technoage of cloners and mad scientists, this would be the story of the people that were drowned out.
( it never stopped raining. No one remembers what happened. )</font></o:p></span>
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| #NaNoWriMo Unofficial Cheers |
[24 Nov 2004|08:25pm] |
By the Unofficial Cheerleaders, Abigail-Nicole and Colonia
In Descending Order:
< JSBulldog89|31500 > I'm the official #nanowrimo male cheerleader
< JSBulldog89|31500 > Oh no! No more cheers! She'll be back tomorrow, so have no fears!
* Abigail-Nicole shrugs and does a teenager cheer. "Teens, teens, we write best! Teens, Teens, we stomp the rest! We've got raging hormones on our side! Our characters will eventually die!"
< Abigail-Nicole > The New Slogan: #NaNoWriMo - Where Happy Hour is Every Hour.
< Abigail-Nicole > all teenagers get free drinks during happy hour. Thank you :)
* Abigail-Nicole does the procrastination cheer: "Can't write anymore? That's okay! There's six days still! Lots left to say!"
* Abigail-Nicole cheers: "Don't let them get you down! It's NaNoWriMo! You are the queen; you have the crown!"
* Abigail-Nicole waves a pom. "50K is just in sight! All you have to do is write!"
< Abigail-Nicole > play that funky music, white boy.
* Abigail-Nicole does a flip and then extends her arm, other hand on hip in a classic cheering position. "NaNoWriMo - are we dumb? NaNoWriMo - write till your fingers are numb! TYPE LIKE MAD! Yeah
* Abigail-Nicole waves pom poms and does a backflip: "Thirty minutes, write like mad! Thirty Minutes isn't bad!"
< Colonia > "Half hour, half hour, we can do it! Type some words and get right to it!"
* Abigail-Nicole waves poms in a circle: "Hockey! Hockey! They always fight! Hockey! Hockey! Their pants are tight!"
< Colonia > "Abby-Nicole reached 50k! That must have really made her day!"
< Colonia > GIVE ME AN A!
< AprilHurst > WOO!
< Colonia > GIVE ME A B!
< Colonia > GIVE ME ANOTHER B!
< Colonia > GIVE ME A Y!
< Colonia > GIVE ME A NICOLE!
< Gimpy > What does that spell?
< Gimpy > Baby!
* AprilHurst cheers
< Colonia > ABBY-NICOLE!
* Abigail-Nicole yells into her labeled NaNoWriMo Megaphone: "THIRTY MINUTE WORD WAR ON THE HOUR!"
* Abigail-Nicole does the cheer of achievement: "Some people say that we're insane! But we're not anywhere near Maine! Keffy did 13K in a day, "We're not yet alone!" we can say. "
< Colonia > "Newbies rock, we're oh-so-nifty! We may be new, but we can reach 50!"
* Abigail-Nicole waves her poms: "Pyros, pyros, used to burn stuff! Now we write more than enough!"
* Abigail-Nicole does the first year cheer: "We've not done NaNo, we're still new! But we know we can hit 50K too!"
< Colonia > "Fire, fire, you're our man! If you can't burn it, nothing can!"
* Abigail-Nicole does the pyro cheer: "Fire, fire, it's good for the plot! Fire, fire, who needs...plot?"
* Abigail-Nicole waves poms: "Word Wars, Word Wars, they're our game! Word wars, word wars, they can....er....maim?" (keep us sane!)
* Abigail-Nicole waves poms: "Write and smile and type real fast! To the end of November, it won't last!"
* Abigail-Nicole cheers: "Keep on writing, don't give up! Keep on writing till you...er, throw up!" She waves her light blue and white poms.
* Abigail-Nicole does The Dance of the Unofficial NaNo Cheerleader Who's Getting a New Computer, Ordered Today By Her Loving Mummy (not a cheer, but hey XD)
* Abigail-Nicole waves pom poms: "Get those ladybugs! Suck 'em in a vacuum! Yeah! Get those ladybugs!"
* Abigail-Nicole cheers for everyone: "WriMos, WriMos, write like mad, WriMos, WriMos, don't be sad! 50K is not that bad!"
* Abigail-Nicole does another backflip. "Rben, Rben, writes like mad! Rben, Rben..." she freezes... "writes on paper? writes bad? erm..."
* Abigail-Nicole does a backflip. "WriMo, WriMo, write that word! 50K is not that hard!"
* Abigail-Nicole dons a cheerleader uniform and cheers on all the Word Warriors....
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| Day One Part One | Words: 1,346 |
[01 Nov 2004|12:43pm] |
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mood |
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Her costume was, ironically, Ophelia.
It was for the Halloween party, it was at Jordan’s house because he was big into partying. She brought her boyfriend, and he dressed up as either a horrible monster or himself, we never could decide, and now even she says it’s the same thing. I think his costume was that he slicked his hair back and put on a leather jacket. And even though she hates him now, she adored him then. She was a moron.
And she was a moron, one of those literary-type people who dress up as Ophelia with the silk gown and flowers for Halloween and make fun of me for being a pirate. Good old pirates, they always made up their mind. You know where you stand with pirates. Plunder, loot, kill, rape, burn, all that fun crap. But not her, she was the type who didn’t know dream from reality, always staring at nothing and crying over nothing and laughing over something big. Sarcasm and shot glasses of Pepsi and soppy movies were what she loved, drinking pink lemonade virgin margaritas with Suz and throwing pop cans at the preps with me. She had no common sense, she’d light a bomb or pull the pin on a grenade just to see what it’d do, how big of an explosion it could make. How big of an explosion she could make.
So I was there with her and she was sitting by her boyfriend. He’s a jerk and she completely adores him. I tried to tell her that he’s a moron and a jerk but she got all uppity and French and tell me to fuck off and it’s her life and he loves her and gives me the I’m A Big Girl, I Can Make My Own Choices So Stop Interfering In My Life speech, half-mixed in with the Nobody Understands Him, He’s So Sweet Deep Down, He Really Loves Me speech. At the same time, he’s not letting her see her friends on weekends. I got mad and I started yelling at her, and then she started yelling at me, because she’s an ignorant moron who doesn’t know what she’s talking about.
But later on she danced with me, one of those slow-dancing songs, romantic like she loves. I told her I loved her before he ever knew her name and that I would always be there for her, and she started crying into my shoulder, at the same time trying to hide from him so he wouldn’t see her cry. "He doesn’t want to see me cry," she sobbed, and I wanted to smash his face in right then and there.
You think she’d have learned, after Suz and all that drama last Christmas, after she went through all the crap therapy and came out full of goodness and light and that’s wrong anyway; we just wanted her back, the old her. Before him. Before the razors, and the matches, and the infernos, and before she dyed her hair black.
She used to be okay, before sophomore year ended and she met him over the summer. She was easygoing, laid back, fun, pretty cool. Not a preppy type, we all hated the preps back then and she did too, me and her used to throw pop cans at them when they drove by in their Chevrolets. And to tell you the truth, I thought we sort of had something going. Sure, I liked her, she was one of my friends, and she’s pretty and nice and…you know, I liked her. She was pretty. Green brown eyes and her pale skin, she had cold skin and I gave her my jacket and she laid her head on my shoulder, early May and I thought everything was perfect. I knew she was the most perfect girl in the world and I thought she liked me.
So then came Flordia, then came summer. The end of everything I thought about us. She drove down to Miami for a month to stay with her aunt, and met him. And wasn’t it coincidental, he’s in college not fifteen minutes from here! We all smelled a rat when she wrote us about it. And then later on, that’s all they were about. Not even him, just the way she felt about him. "He’s so adorable, and he kissed me today and we went skating and sat on the beach under the stars, I love him and he loves me. We’re going to get married and have a white house on the beach," sad, typically romantic idealistic stuff she loved in cheap movies but was so cynical of. Before him, anyway. Before him she was a lot more anchored in the real world.
Nobody knows what really happened down there, she won’t talk about it and says it’s none of our business, still. Because now she hates to talk about him at all, she says his name is worse than any cuss word and she won’t tell us anything. So we’re not sure if its something serious or if it was just sickly romantic, because she came back with stars in her eyes and Abercrombie shirts.
Because he liked them.
She used to be okay before him.
I thought we were okay together. We would hang out with Suz and Jordan and Mitchell and everything would be cool, we were close back then. Suz and her were best friends. And then she came back with him, and she started hanging out with him instead of us, saying less and less when we were together, showing up less and less and then finally just stopping at all, like she thought fading out gradually would make us forget her more than if she left altogether. Suz worried about her so much, she used to talk to me all the time because she thought we had something going on. Suz thinks he was abusing her mentally back then, if not physically. We had no clue; she wouldn’t talk to us in those days. We were worried about her because we were her friends, and she acted like we didn’t mean anything to her anymore.
She was the closest to Suz, and it was Suz who first saw the razor marks on her wrist and made her get help, made her to go the counseling. She was mad for weeks, and her boyfriend was furious—Suz called the police on him after he called her twice threatening her with bodily harm if she didn’t leave his girlfriend alone—"She’s got a good thing with me, she’s fine, you’re making it out to be huge when it’s nothing. You’re jealous because she’s got me instead of you, so get out of her life and don’t ever come near her again or I will rip your arms out of their sockets and stick them up your ass, you bitch". And even after Suz tried to tell her, she wouldn’t give him up. She kept telling Suz that she was in counseling and that she would know how to handle him, she was getting fixed by that damn psychologist. And that was a problem, too, because when she came out she wasn’t herself anymore. She dyed her hair caramel colored and wore bright colors all the time and started to talk to the preps and started to talk to us again, too. Not about him, though, she was still on ice cubes when she talked about him. So we talked, and Suz asked her very quietly about him, but she wouldn’t say anything. So a month or two, and he came into the picture again and she disappeared, again.
Until the Halloween party, and all that drama and shit he did to her. She danced with me once and he tried to kill her because he said she was "being unfaithful" to him. They had a very quiet, very angry fight right outside the girls bathroom and then he dragged her to his car.
Nobody heard from them until his house burned down the next day.
Disconnected. I have no idea where I'm going with this.
Total: 1,346
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