Author's Note (2-19-2013):
I'm posting this piece because it won first place in HarperCollins and Inkpop's
Weekly Writer's Challenge #9, which was to write a story inspired by the
painting Dark City. My novel that this is an excerpt from has
been discontinued after much soul-searching, however, because its content goes
against my spiritual beliefs and the tenets of my faith.
Author's Note (5-9-2010):
Okay, this is for the image
Dark City. I'm pretty sure I fulfilled all the requirements.
I used the word obsolete not once, not
twice, not even thrice, but four times, and in 2 different ways. This work was
also not post-apocalyptic. It's set in the real world, in real time. I worked
the title of the picture into the text of the story ("this dark and
decadent city") and had a yellow messenger bag.
The hard part was incorporating the dark
hopelessness in the image into the entry. I think I managed that. And because
of the lightening of the sky compared to the city, I felt it implied a bit of
hope, which I also tried to show. These emotions were shown through Kate's
feelings. But if you look at the picture, there are monsters vaguely outlined
and hinted at in the clouds, and so I tried to show that with the fact that
Kate's personal hope lay hints of danger (since her hope and joy is about
seeing a psychopathic whacko). I also alluded to the actual visual image of the
city with the red lights in the windows as well.
Although I think the entry word limit should
be longer, I can write within it. The entry itself is 1,158 words.
I wrote this on Sunday, May 9. It's
actually an excerpt from an adult novel I'm writing called Pretty Maids
All in a Row.
If Sila decides to make it okay, I'm
going to do a second piece about the Baobab Witch image. Well, I'll do one
anyway and then see if she makes it okay.
Hope you enjoyed my descent into
nutso-ness. Ta-ta!
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Blood.
All around her,
within, without, about, around, over and under and through. It thrummed in her
veins, pulsed in her wrists and at her temples, smeared across her lips and her
eyelids. It was as if she were drowning in it. As the hot shower spray beat her
skin, she felt the singing of crimson under her flesh.
Kate Madison
opened her eyes to the stark, white walls of the shower. Stringy, black hair
clinging to her head, plastered wetly to her face, she sat hunched in the ivory
cubicle, wondering if she had the courage to accept the invitation.
"Don't you
want to see him?" Maggie asked.
The ADA glanced
over at the woman she knew for a fact wasn't actually there. The ice blue eyes
bit her like snake fangs. The pale mouth curved up into a grin as the brunette
woman flinched. That was the problem with Maggie. She wasn't just a
hallucination—she was Kate's other self. The young woman's closeness with Jack
Hollis had only made Maggie's presence in Kate's psyche all the more prevalent.
"Are you
insane?" The lawyer demanded of her schizophrenic persona, realizing the
futility of the question even before it passed her lips. Still, she pressed on.
"He's trying to destroy the city. He's a psychotic killer-"
"So are
you," her other half reminded her. Kate pressed her lips together. The
psychotic killer bit was not entirely true. She wasn't psychotic. She wasn’t
crazy, just a little... unwell. And she hadn't been the one to kill her father.
That had all
been Jack.
What child
wouldn't run from a swinging fist and a swinging belt? And wasn't it simply
natural that she run out the door? To run straight into the arms of the one
person in all the world who understood that blood warmed her ice cold skin,
that fire against her eyes made her feel alive? Because he had felt the same
way. His hands, colder than ice, colder than death, were warm when blood made
them wet and hot. His eyes burned with the fires that blazed all around them,
burning, always burning....
Why did you
do it? She had
whispered.
Authority is
obsolete, he whispered
back, his breath scalding against her ear. They are the Obsolete. They
deserve death. And so did your father.
Kate wasn't
sure if the moisture on her face was from her suddenly stinging eyes or the
shower. But why would she be crying? It didn't make sense.
On her side of
the pristine cubicle, Maggie wept into her hands, the strings of black hair
dripping wet around her face in a sable curtain. Sometimes the ADA wondered if
maybe she were the hallucination and Maggie the host form. Because it seemed as
if Maggie was the only one who truly allowed herself to feel.
I miss him, Kate thought suddenly, and tears welled
up and flowed like fresh blood. Inexplicably, she realized it was true. She
missed Jack.
With David, her
best friend since she was a little girl, she was Kate, fresh and good and kind,
a fighter against evil, a bringer of justice. She worked within the system to
bring about the end of crime in New York. Warmth radiated from her soul,
impervious to the smog and grime of the city.
And with
Harold, her fiancé, she was pretty much the same, except he considered her a
little more naïve. David at least knew what she had dealt with in some aspects—her
father's abuse, her mother's suicide and the consequent depression, the
loneliness in law school thinking David had died, and even the tiny war waged
against the corporate monsters intent on destroying her hometown. Harold hadn't
seen her in those days, before she'd started on the meds.
But Jack...there
wasn't a need for medications that numbed her soul and made her heart ache
around Jack. He understood what blood and fire were for. Jack understood that
the fires burning in the windows of the dark and decadent city burned red as
blood. He knew about the allure of star bright steel, the shiny draw of a knife
blade, the way blood over metal sang and smelled of new pennies and fireworks.
Jack understood
things she had never had to explain. David and Harold would never understand
the pull of the chaos. Only Jack.
"Can you
live like this?" Maggie demanded. "Because I can't. We hide behind
the masks, let the world smudge and erase who we are. We're losing ourselves,
Kate. Jack is only one we can truly be free with." Tears rolled down the
mirage's cheek. "Everything is so dark out there. How can you not want to
light it all up? You need to! Let go, Kate. Just let the need flow."
"Let the
blood flow," Kate whispered. "Isn't that what you mean? The blood and
the fire flooding the darkness?"
Damn Maggie, the
ADA thought, because Kate had to admit to herself that she was right. She could
not live like this. She had to let the fire come.
"We'll
go," she said softly, brushing her hair from her face along with the
tears. "We can go. Stop crying," the brunette added, watching Maggie
with eyes that, though a deeper, darker blue, were colder than the ice blue of
Maggie's gaze. "Come on, before we turn into prunes."
We. The
unquestioned, unquestionable we. With Jack's return and the gifts that had
begun to appear, Kate had returned to that once-obsolete habit, the
schizophrenic "we" of her middle school and high school days when she
and Maggie had acted as a cohesive unit, aware of each other and working
together to protect themselves and survive in the world that hated them both.
Now she tried to bite back the tiny thrill that ran up her spine as she said,
"We." The assistant district attorney didn't want to admit, even a
little, that she was glad the meds that kept Maggie away weren't working.
Once out of the
shower and drying off, Kate glanced at the neon-yellow messenger bag on the
vanity. A gift from Jack when they were in middle school, she still carried it
everywhere. In the blinding glare of the white lights surrounding the mirror
she could barely see its contents, but she knew they were there: the red rose
and the invitation.
Come out, come out wherever you are.
The city is dark and cold.
Light hellfire in the windows.
The Obsolete are washed away in the
storm:
In with the new, and out with old.
Come play with me, Kate.
Oh, they were
going to play all right. They most certainly were going to play.
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