The Chase

It has been three days since the incident, and I have never been more grateful for my training.  The skills I learned are the only things that kept me alive out here. It’s not easy to survive three days on your own in the jungle, but when you are a trained Marine you have a fighting chance. 

I am heading north along the river.  Its’ waters are crystal clear and a more vibrant blue than the sky.  I can hear the rivers movement as it crashes into rocks and where the fish jump in and out of its cold water.  The jungle around me is buzzing with life.  I can hear a moth’s wing beat as it passes in front of me and there are tree frogs singing in the distance. 

I move slow, what else can be expected of someone who has trudged in the jungle for three days.  I look haggard and sweaty, not healthy at all, but I am alive and that is what matters most. My uniform is torn and dirty, I can see the patches of mud where I tripped the other day during the storm.  When I am not thinking about food, all I can think of is what happened to our camp.

We were here on a humanitarian assignment, some locals were stealing needed food from a village and we were bringing new supplies and adding extra security for the town.  It was a quiet night, before the chaos happened.

 We had been here for two weeks and nothing had happened so the Commander decided to thin out the night guard a little bit so more of the men could get some needed sleep.  We had been on the new rotation for two days and the criminals we were trying to protect the town from noticed and took action.  They snuck into our camp and started a fight with the men on guard duty.  They had slipped past some of the men and were on a rampage in the middle of the camp too.  Tents were burning, people were screaming, and there was ruby red blood everywhere.

I shudder as I think about it.  It was horrible, and in the midst of it all I got separated from my platoon.  We were chasing some of the criminals who were trying to escape and we got ambushed.  That’s how I ended up alone out here.  I don’t even know if anyone else survived.  The pain I am in because of it is almost too horrible to bear.  

It is late afternoon now and I have sat down for a break.  The tree root underneath me is hard and rough but better than the ant infested dirt that is churning beneath my feet.  I relax as I eat a mango I found on a tree earlier, and then I notice it.  There is no sound.  The jungle as gone completely silent.  There hasn’t been silence since the moment I set foot in the jungle, and that can only mean one thing, I’m in danger. 

Without making any sudden movements I look around me.  It must be a big predator or the air would not be as still as it is now.  Now that I am paying attention, I can hear low growling.  A cat of some kind then.  I slowly stand up from my root and take another careful look around.  That is when I see it, and again I am grateful that my training taught me how to see past camouflage. My eyes seem to fix on the creature until I can see myself reflected in its’ eyes.  The cat’s fur is silky and smooth and the brightest orange I have ever seen.  It is so bright that I wonder how it could even hide in the midst of all this green.  The tiger is fixed on me and I can see its’ tail swish past a small cluster of grass behind it.   He is going to pounce on me at any moment, so I do the only thing I can think of, I run.

I take of at unnatural speed and I can hear the tiger’s growling following behind me.  He is dashing through the trees with grace and all I can do is try to not trip on the protruding roots.  If is stop, he will catch up to me, I have to try and evade him somehow.  I start to maneuver in a haphazard way, trying to shake the creature off my tail, and I never stop running. 

I find a low point in the river next to me and I cross over it.  The cold water seeps into my skin, feeling like it is freezing my toes in the process.  I run past so many different things.  The ferns bend as I pass and I can see little insects fleeing from my path.  They fly in my eyes and obscure my vision.  I can feel my strength start to wane and I feel as if I am barely moving anymore.  I try to run faster, but all that does is hurt my progress even more.   My legs feel like lead and I can barely hold my head up anymore due to the exhaustion.  Finally, I collapse on the ground ready for my final moments, but nothing happens. 

I turn onto my back and look around me.  The tiger is nowhere in sight and I can’t hear any more of its’ deep growling.  The dirt underneath my hands is hot and gritty.  My eyes dash about, looking for any sign of my pursuer and find nothing.

I sigh in relief, I lost it.  I am safe again.   Then I hear a branch above me break. I look directly up and see the huge creature before me.  Now that he is not hiding in brush I can see his muscled body.  He is as big around as a tree trunk and it is obvious that he is built for chases like the one I had just given him.  The tiger licks his translucent whiskers and I can see the light shine off of them.  He crouches lower on the branch, and all I can do is watch in terror, transfixed by the terrible beauty of the creature. 

I inhale.  He leaps. 

Something Blue

Charlotte had never been one to pace before. If she ever showed signs of a nervous tick, it came in the form of bouncing in place or twirling her long, golden hair around her finger. But today was different, and Charlotte found herself pacing in circles in the small room where she was getting ready, tripping over her long, lacey train at least four times.

“I found some aspirin downstairs, Lottie” whispered a voice from the doorway. Charlotte whipped her head around to see Piper timidly stepping into the room, her most dedicated and loyal assistant through this entire process. When nobody else was around to taste cakes or debate hair styles, Piper made herself available.

“Piper, I’m so glad you’re here for me!” Charlotte felt her voice shake and her eyes start to water. No, she couldn’t cry. Her cousin spent over an hour on her make up that morning; she couldn’t let anything happen to ruin it. Ruined make up could lead to a ruined day… though it is far from the only thing.

Piper almost wanted to step back out the door as soon as she stuck her head through- the scene that played out before her was shocking. Calm, composed, and refined Charlotte was running to and fro like a madwoman; stumbling like a drunk, shaking with silent cries, and staring out the window all the while. Though they had been best friends since childhood, Piper couldn’t guess what was going on in her mind.

Charlotte choked down the aspirin with the rest of her coffee from breakfast and said wearily “Please tell me you have more good news.”

“Your parents are here, keeping the rest of the guests in line.”

Charlotte sighed and mumbled something that could have been “Oh good!” as easily as “Oh, God!”.

“The caterer also called, and they will be here to set up in another thirty minutes. The girls are all flirting with the boys by the altar, dolled up and ready to go. Everything will be in place right on time, I promise!”

Charlotte resumed her pacing, anxious despite everything going according to plan. The biggest problem was, she finally decided, it wasn’t going according to her plan. This wasn’t what she wanted at all. She never pictured her big day to be in the backyard of her inlaws’ mansion. She never wanted fanfare or poofy dresses or pinchy shoes; she wanted a moonlit ceremony on the beach with a small company of the people dearest to her. But she should have known she would have to give up those dreams the day she agreed to marry a senator’s son.

“Piper, I need to pee.”

“That’s a personal problem, Lottie.”

“Not on my wedding day! I can’t even reach the bottom of this dress, let alone hoist it up!”

After thinking a moment, Piper said “You have to promise not to make it weird.”

Charlotte was grateful for her best friend’s sense of humor to bring her back to her senses and to pull her out of the fog of stress. “Sorry, no promise.” She grabbed Piper’s hand and pulled her to the door.

 

“Where are you going?” Piper screamed, trying to pull her back down the hallway. “There’s a bathroom right down here!”

“People will see me… and want to talk to me! Too risky, we have to find a deserted bathroom. Liam says they have twenty five; we should be able to find at least one.”

With that, they were both tiptoeing away from the entrance where everyone was congregating, sneaking deeper and deeper into a house too big to be allowed. Piper was never the one to lead the way into their marauding, but today she had no choice. Walking behind Charlotte was impossible with her train. She turned a corner and saw three tall men blocking the hallway ahead. Thinking they were some of the ‘help’, she simply turned back toward Lottie giggling.

“Did you see that?” One of the men called.

“What?” Another answered.

“Nobody’s there, you’re just paranoid. Come on.”

Footsteps grew fainter as the help left. Charlotte and Piper counted to thirty to move again, and when they braved the turn again, the men were gone.

Three doors on the left from that corner, there was, at last, a bathroom. After successfully finding a way for Charlotte to 'go' while preserving her dress, the two washed up and snuck back into the hallway, turning away from where they had come to keep exploring.

“This looks familiar… I think Liam’s room is somewhere down this way.”

“When did you become so acquainted with his bedroom?”

Charlotte giggled, but Piper quickly muffled it as she heard viscous whisperings ahead and fear clutched her heart. Most people described her as a worrywart, but she was rarely wrong about her feelings of danger.

Charlotte stopped laughing, but also ripped Piper’s hand away from her mouth. What?  she mouthed, having learned not to mock Piper’s fear.

Run.

Before Charlotte registered the message, Piper was already pulling her into a hidden doorway. The three men they had seen were marching back down the hallway, but with a bundle being dragged behind them. Holding their breath in the tiny closet they had found behind the door, Charlotte and Piper tried not to think of who the men might be or why they all seemed to be clutching something inside their jacket pockets.

The men came closer and closer, whispering about a plan, about a ransom, about violent acts that made the few tiny hairs on Charlotte’s neck that weren’t plastered into her updo stand on end. The voices grew fainter, and they thought they were in the clear.

Until Charlotte let out a sneeze at exactly the wrong moment.

Urgent footsteps came nearer as the girls gripped at the shelves behind them, praying some sort of trapdoor had been set up.

“Alpha said he cleared this hallway! I told you someone was there! Someone saw us!”

The shrill voice shook the girls to the core and they slipped downward until they were huddling in the corner, clutching each other tight.

The door opened, and for a moment their hiding spot worked; a man glanced at eye level around the three small walls before finally looking down and smirking.

“The bride.”

He pulled her up forcibly, then Piper as well. He glanced at them both, sizing them up, before finally speaking.

“I suppose I owe you an introduction, miss. See, the man of this house has wronged me. I simply came to clear a debt and take back something of mine.”

“You’re a thief!” Charlotte was just as surprised as anyone to hear herself speak against the man.

“This is no business of yours, girl!” 

“Whatever is my husband’s business is my own.”

“You’re not married… yet.”

“I’ll still defend his family and their honor.” She stood proudly in her ball gown, looking braver than she felt. The man faced her haughtily, then drew back his fist and punched her, making her fall to the ground.

Piper screamed and scrambled to help Charlotte. The man whispered “So you shall.” Then he turned and walked away, leaving the girls crying and shocked. Charlotte’s eye started to bruise under the make-up and her nose was throbbing. There goes all hope of getting a pretty wedding picture, she bitterly thought. She stood suddenly and started walking toward the room the men had left, wondering aloud what they had taken. The room was cluttered like the rest of the house, and Charlotte realized she would never be able to pinpoint something missing from the house.

Shocked and angry, she allowed Piper to lead her back to her room. Piper said something about going to find some ice and more aspirin, and then she left. Charlotte looked out the window and finally let herself cry, no longer caring if her mascara ran down her cheeks or even onto her dress.

Everything ruined.

Everything wrong.

Piper returned with all the bridesmaids and her cousin who had done the make-up, and slowly they helped her pull back together. By the time they had to line up, only a small greenish blue sliver was visible under her eye, and she was almost able to smile and look like she wasn’t faking it. 

She thought of Liam waiting for her in his pale grey suit, and she genuinely beamed for the first time in weeks. After all the plans gone wrong, after enduring everything she hated about weddings, at least at the end of it all, she would be married. She would finally be with Liam.

Maybe everything wasn’t so bad after all.

But then a whisper started to ring all around the rows of guests, all the way up the aisle and into the house where groomsmen and bridesmaids were lined up, and where Charlotte stood holding her father’s arm. Whispers grew to mumbles, which turned to speaking outright until finally someone shouted it, the question on everyone’s minds as the ceremony further and further delayed.

“Where’s the groom?!”

Round Up: Week Fifteen

Last week’s prompt:

We all have ideas for novels.  This week create something from the realm of your novel.  This could be a chapter of the book, a character sketch, a short story outside of the stories plot, maybe just a random character in the world that has nothing to do with the story doing stupid things, anything.

Readers, please note that this will be rough draft writing and will probably be nothing like any published works we may or may not have in the future.  

Amanda

A few months ago, on a windy day after classes were done at my University, I stepped onto a train to ride home and ended up spending the entire time writing a story bursting into my head about a girl who meets a boy on a train on a windy day, much like that one, and like happens in every boy meets girl story, he mistakes her for a terrorist spy and hands her important documents detailing the group’s next move.

The story I wrote this week shows a different story- the man is from the so called ‘terrorist’ group and is finding a target; a scapegoat. Wow, I never thought I’d get a chance to use that word- thanks tenth grade English! Someone so kind yet quiet that they would fall for the trap of a boy handing them important documents who would surely take them to the police and accept the blame involved so the group could go on with their actual plan while the authorities were distracted.

Stay tuned for the rest of that gripping story, if I can ever get myself to write it all down.

MY VOTE: Korrin

Korrin

My story is the first chapter of a book idea I had in Jr. High that I recently decided to re-write now that I actually know how to write well.  It is a very rough draft and looking at it I know that I will need to add more to it, namely character description.  I also need to figure out how to skip boring things that don’t really matter.

The chapter is meant to be a simple introduction to the character of Kara Williams and a few others and to set the stage for the story.  By going through this chapter, you would have no idea that the book is really about werewolves and a civil war, so maybe some foreshadowing is in order, or perhaps a preface.   

As I was rereading what I had written I realized that I am in fact pretty funny, at least in my own mind. I am glad that my humor is in my writing because books can be really boring if they are too serious all the time.

MY VOTE: Amanda

Kylie

I keep my novel ideas close to my heart, so suffice it to say that this story is sort of like if you mixed X-Men with Edge of Tomorrow.

This scene is pivotal in my novel because it’s the first time that the girl opens up to her partner. It’s the moment where things start to work and where they start to fall apart. It’s a moment of understanding, for better or for worse.

MY VOTE: Amanda

Next week’s prompt:

Write a story that will build up drama and suspense, but does not give the reader a conclusion to the story.

Lunch Break

“I ran away.”

                He looked up from whatever he was eating in the can—he couldn’t tell exactly what it was, but it looked like it had passed its expiration date far longer than he cared to know—and frowned at her from his seat on the barstool at the opposite end of the island. She wasn’t looking at him, despite her sudden declaration. Instead, she was stirring the contents of her can, looking as though she hadn’t said anything at all.

“What?” he finally managed to blurt out through his confusion. She raised her eyebrows slightly, but didn’t look towards him.

“Every time we’re alone together like this, you start asking questions about me, so this time I answered the question you always ask first: namely, how I got here.” She stabbed a piece of fruit from the can and bit it in half. “And the answer is that I ran away.”

After a moment, he felt his usual grin spread over his face. Here she was, offering him a carrot for the first time, a carrot he had been reaching for since he had met her. A carrot he was beginning to think didn’t exist. “And what did a pretty girl like you have to run away from?”

“I wasn’t running from anything.” Her head snapped up as her grip on her fork tightened. He kept his smug smile, knowing that he had pushed a barrier but not caring. She had opened the locked door, and he knew that there was a reason. If she opened up to him, the one who routinely and intentionally pushed her boundaries, then it was because she needed it. Sure enough, her head swung back to her can and her fork resumed its circling. “I was raised on a farm,” she continued as if nothing had happened. “That’s probably something a city boy like you wouldn’t understand. Raised in seclusion like that, every word your parents say to you is the gospel truth. Values and morals are deeper and stronger because who’s there to contradict you? I loved my home and I would have stayed if the border disputes hadn’t reached us.”

“You were involved in the disputes.” It wasn’t so much a question as it was a statement. He felt the confusion and hurt form lines on his face, streaks of disbelief and horror. The border disputes were infamous for death. It was a cruel death and an even crueler life for the survivors. And here was a survivor, battle-worn and just as bloodthirsty as one would expect.

She shrugged, her eyes still not on him. “It wasn’t much, at least not when I was there, but there were a few incidents. And I decided that I couldn’t stick around to watch it escalate. So I left home and joined the Republic.”

Something surged through him then, the dominant emotion being rage. “You walked from one barrel to the next,” he said bitterly. She looked at him then, rage creeping into her eyes just as they were entering his.

“People were dying. All around me, people that I had known my whole life were being killed because they were alive. There’s no justice in that.” The cans sat forgotten in their hands as their eyes locked. It felt like a battle of wills in that moment, as though sheer force could have changed the outcome of the girl’s steps all those years ago, steps that took her away from home and into the unknown. He knew this was the moment to resist everything he wanted to say—the moment to congratulate her and remark on how well she had done. But the words left his lips faster than he could stop them.

“That doesn’t mean that you have to provide it.”

She snorted and dropped her can on the table, some of the juice splashing out, as she shouldered the rifle she had left on the chrome island. “Someone has to.” And she left, calling out the name of their superior and leaving him in the kitchen alone with his can and his fork.