Wednesday, December 15, 2004

   Hope You Like
My nose is running, but somehow stopped up at the same time. My throat hurts and my eyes burn with the dreadful thing they call: A COLD. I can't believe I'm sick. It really sucks. Of course, my stepbrother is more sick that I am. I think I caught it from him. I wish I was just a carrier or something. I don't know. Bleck.

I watched Fruits Basket and collected some great quotes. I'm going to be putting some up on my website, so please go see it.

This kid on my bus named Forrest (he's in 11th grade) wanted to borrow my poems yesterday. I told him he could take the ones he wanted. So he did. They were some ones that I really liked and that I'd written a long while ago. No one's ever wanted to take my poems before. I feel really flattered. I mean, the only people who compliment me on my poems are the teachers and Kimra (Kimi), one of my friends. Oh, and the people at LEAF who listen to me at the Poetry Slam. Did I tell you I got 2nd place in the Slam in October? Yeah, I was really proud. However, I couldn't get my reward because I couldn't find the MC, Rylie. HE IS SO HOT!!! He's in college, but I don't care. I can still look. He once wrote a poem about sex that made me go weak in the knees. Oh, twas beautiful. Then again, whatever comes out of his mouth sounds good because his voice is so damn pretty! *face melt* Whee...anyway, I feel really flattered that he wanted my poems. I should have asked him what he wanted them for, but I can't. I don't know why, I just feel nervous about asking him. It's odd, I know, but what isn't weird about me?

Rachael just said the best line ever about someone dying (I think). "...Taylor becomes one with the sun, and sets." Isn't that cool? Wow. Awesome. Okay, I'll come out of my Creative Writing brain.

I had a dream last night. Well, as Neil Gaiman's Dream/Morpheus has told us many times, everybody dreams, we just don't remember them. My dream last night was about my whole family (mom, brother, step dad, stepbrother, stepsister, and me) moving to a big yellow house on a thin line of land that stuck out into the sparkling ocean. All of the rooms had lush, thick carpets and their own AC/heating controls. Robert (my step brother) had some red sports car and I had a geo with bright, differently colored splotches on it. Mom had her dark blue minivan and Robbie (step dad) had his big green truck. Kate (step sister) and Duncan (my real brother) didn’t have cars, because they’re both still too young right now. I guess they were too young in my dream, I guess, too. Anyway, that dream house (haha, pun!) was loverly. I want to live in a big yellow house. That would be cool.

All right. I’m going to put the semi-short story that I wrote for Creative Writing on here.

Once Upon A Daydream
Once upon a time, there was a beautiful girl who lived far up in a tower. It was a high tower; its walls could not be scaled and its windows had sharp clear glass bars on them. The girl could not break the bars. They were just glass, the dead butterflies trapped in them glittering. Sometimes, the girl could see them flying inside their crystalline prisons. Then she would look away, and the butterflies would return to their frozen state.
The girl’s room was beautiful too. She had a large canopy bed, a marshmallow-like mattress with deep purple sheets, twilight pillows, and a midnight coverlet that matched her best friend’s eyes. The canopy on her bed was the color of the sun rising and billowed out over her. When she woke up in the middle of the night to strange sounds, she could see the moonlight shining through the yellow gauze.
The girl woke up one night to the sound of her best friend’s whistle, a paper cut in the night’s heavy silence. The girl pulled back her curtains with a smile. She looked down from the tower and saw her friend far below.
The whistle came again, this time low. “ Come on, Jessa! Niamey is having her concert tonight and it is going to be absolutely burning!” the best friend called.
Jessa laughed at her friend. “ You know she’d never start without her Jessa and her Phoenix,” she said.
Phoenix glared up. “ Just hurry up, please!” she replied with fake venom.
“ I’ll be right down!” Jessa called, leaving her curtains open. She pulled on a slinky pink flapper dress and a black pea coat, just to keep out the chill that invaded Niamey’s concerts sometimes.
There was a knock and then Jessa’s door flew open. Her mother stood there, looking like an owl caught in the moonlight that suddenly shone through the haze of clouds. She blinked her big brown eyes and ran her fingers through her already frizzy chestnut hair. “ Where’re you going?” she asked sleepily.
“ I dunno yet,” Jessa answered, slipping past her mother.
“ Are you going with Phoenix?” her mother asked as she went down the stairs after Jessa.
“ Yeah. Why?”
“ Just wondering,” Her mother said.
Jessa’s mother has visions. She had one when she first saw Phoenix, after which she fainted on the stairs. Later, Jessa’s mother told her that she saw Jessa, Phoenix, and their long-time friend, Niamey, standing on the edge of Sanity and then falling in. Jessa had laughed, said her mother was crazy, and walked away. When Jessa told Phoenix, the blue-streaked-haired girl shrugged and said, “ Well you never know.” Jessa didn’t think it was funny after that.
“ Don’t worry, Mom. We’ll stay away from big black holes,” Jessa joked, trying to lighten the mood.
Her mother came up to her and kissed her on both cheeks. “ It’s my job to worry,” She said in a whisper.
“ Then try no to worry so much,” Jessa said. “ I’ll be back sometime.”
“ Be safe,” Her mother said after her.
Jessa walked out the door of her house and found Phoenix standing against the gate to their yard. It was a little white gate, with a fence to the left and right of it that seemed to trail on for a long while until it turned a corner. Malicious, thorny ivy grew along it. Jessa didn’t like the ivy; it had bit her once.
“ So, where’s Niamey playing tonight?” she asked.
Phoenix fished something out of the pocket of her blue silk trench coat. The tail flaps of it flipped behind her, hitting her bare heels as she strode along- for Phoenix didn’t just walk, it seemed as if there was an invisible force propelling her forward, which was why she never looked back.
The something that Phoenix pulled out was a pair of white gloves. She pulled them on, one finger at a time, and then clapped her hands together. A cloud of glitter appeared, and Jessa stuck her hands under it, catching some in her hands like the remnants of a fallen star. She touched it to her face and hair and arms, watching as it became trapped on her skin, stuck there by her sweat.
“ The steps of the Color Town Museum,” Phoenix answered finally.
“ Oh, a big crowd?” Jessa said, awed.
“ Yup.”
The pair walked in silence awhile, Jessa sticking her hand out whenever they passed by a tree or shrub. Eventually, the dew of the muggy night came off on her left hand. Phoenix watched her, hands deep in her pockets. Suddenly, she stopped and put two fingers to her lips.
“ You hear that?” she asked, looking up at Jessa.
“ Hear what-“
“ BOO!”
“ AH!” Jessa exclaimed and grabbed Phoenix’s arm.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Wyllim stood staring up at the high window of Jessa’s room. He was outside the white picket fence that barely contained the roaring foliage of her mother’s garden. Various unidentifiable leafy green things sprawled from the backyard, squeezed around the house’s side yards, and then overflowed into the front. A trellis framed the little gate that led to the walk up to their home, but Wyllim had never walked it. He had never been inside Jessa’s house, however much he wanted to go in.
“ This time, it’s for real.” He said, his hands clenched into heart-sized fists under his sleeves.
He opened the gate and it creaked, sounding familiar. It reminded him of Phoenix’s whistle. He had a lot to be grateful for, including that whistle, which had first alerted him of Jessa, first alerting his heart that it could start beating again.
Knocking on the door, Wyllim felt his stomach knot itself into a tangle not unlike his former girlfriend’s eyes. They were a complicated mass of gold, contrasting with her white skin and lighter hair. Niamey was a whitewashed piece of woman, the only warmth coming from her insides and from the music she picked out on her violin.
Wyllim felt only friendship toward Niamey now. His affections had moved on to Jessa. He was ready to bring her out of home. As far as he knew, only Phoenix had been able to persuade Jessa to leave her tower –as she called it- at night. Wyllim didn’t know why Jessa called it a tower; it was only two stories up, and looked like any other corner of a house. Maybe, she fancied herself Rapunzel, waiting for a handsome prince to come to her rescue. Maybe he would be that prince.
“ Who are you?” a woman asked him. It could only be Jessa’s mother. They shared the same mesmerizing brown eyes and copper-toned hair, though her mother’s had significantly faded to a dull chestnut, the color of a cabinet that hadn’t been dusted in a long time.
“ My name is Wyllim. I’m here for Jessa,” He sounded like a prison warden; not good. He wanted to sound like the dashing prince. So, he revised, “ I’d like to speak to Jessa.”
“ She’s gone.,” Her mother said as if sighing. “ She went to Niamey’s concert,” the woman arched her eyebrows.
“ Do you know where it’s being held?” he asked.
“ No, I’m sorry. But if you’re looking for Jessa, she’s there.”
“ Thank you. I have to go now,” Wyllim said.
The woman had gotten a far-off look in her eyes, which were going a dull mahogany. “ If you can’t find her, follow the fragments of sanity,” She said, and her voice was clear like a wineglass.
“ Uhm, okay,” Wyllim said, then hurried out of the gate. His baggy black pants snagged on one of the vicious thorns, and he cursed as he pulled himself free, wrenching loose a small piece of skin in the process.
The blood only the made the thorn darker.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Jessa’s brown eyes returned to their normal size when she saw that it was only Wyllim who had scared her. She punched him in the arm and glared with no conviction. “ Why’d you do that?” she asked.
Between laughs, words escaped: “ Because…I thought it would be…funny!”
“ It was,” Phoenix laughed, tossing her hair over one shoulder. Wyllim’s gaze didn’t stray from Jessa.
“ How far to the Museum?” he asked.
“ Look!” Jessa said, pointing with her whole arm. The Color Town Museum was decorated to the extreme. The gigantic columns were dressed up as May Poles, and people danced around them like cutout paper figures.
Wyllim took it all in with one sweep of his dark eyes. Phoenix tapped him, pointing to an area where a bunch of people pulsed in a dance. Music flowed above the whole spectacle, dominating the scene with furious, hunting measures and flighty, delicate notes. He turned to Jessa, but she was already running down the road to the huge flight of steps that led up to the columns and the museum entrance.
“ Go on after your lady love. I’ve got things to do,” Phoenix said, nodding at him.
Wyllim smiled shyly at her, then ducked his head and ran after Jessa. He caught up just as she slowed down. They reached the steps together.
Jessa looked up when she reached the top of the flight of stairs. Her gaze met that of a pale angel, whose eyes glistened a knot of gold and whose hair was gilded with white glitter and braided with clear sequins. They reflected the night back to Jessa, who grinned at the angel holding the violin.
“ I came, Niamey,” She said, hugging her friend.
“ Hey, Jessa. Hey, Wyllim,” the angel, Niamey, greeted with her voice of molten honey.
“ Performing new stuff?” Wyllim asked.
“ Brand new,” Niamey confirmed with a wicked smile.
“ I’m sorry I missed the old stuff. Dionysus and the Horned Man kept me up all night with their stupid stories,” Jessa said, rolling her eyes. Wyllim glanced sharply at her.
“ Dionysus and the Horned Man?” he repeated with interest.
Niamey shot him a dangerous look, but Jessa had already started talking. “ These two guys that I found walking by my house one day. They said they liked my mom’s flowers, and we just got talking,” She explained.
“ Oh,” Wyllim said.
“ I’m going to go dance. Wanna come?” Jessa asked Wyllim.
He was about to go after her, but then remembered look Niamey had shot towards him. He nodded. “ I’ll be there in a sec.”
“ All right!” Jessa replied, then flung herself down the steps and started towards the block of dancing people. Wyllim watched her for a moment before turning his eyes to Niamey.
“ What?” he asked.
“ They aren’t real,” She stated.
“ Who?”
“ Dionysus and the Horned Man. They’re not real. She made them completely up. Just figments of her imagination.”
Wyllim shook his head. “ Why would she do that?” he asked.
“ Why would she lock herself in her room for days on end, insisting that it’s her ‘tower’ and she can’t let herself out because that’s disobeying the rules, which are also nonexistent?” Niamey explained in rhetoric. “ None of it’s real.”
“ Jessa wouldn’t do that. She’s got no reason to,” He argued.
Niamey shook her platinum head, rubbing resin along the string of her bow. “ She has a reason,” She said.
“ What is it?”
Niamey paused, but did not look up. After a moment, she continued her work. “ She has a reason.”
Wyllim narrowed his eyes. “ I’m going to dance with Jessa,” he muttered, half to himself.
The angel nodded. “ I think that would be a good idea,” she said.
Down in the block of dancing people, Jessa was throwing herself about with gusto. Her pink flapper dress fluttered against her knees and flew up once in awhile, making her look like a pink butterfly trapped in a sea of other butterflies. When Wyllim went up to her, she was talking to a man in front of her. He had no shirt on, only green camouflage pants that drooped well past his ankles. There were horns atop his shaggy green-dyed head.
“ Oh, Wyllim!” Jessa cried, noticing him. “ This is the Horned Man. Horned Man, this is Wyllim.”
“ Nice to meet you,” he said awkwardly. Niamey had just been telling him that he was not real. His hand was warm enough, he certainly felt real. She was wrong. Jessa wasn’t crazy; she just needed someone to understand her. Wyllim could understand.
“ He’ll never get it right,” the Horned Man said to Jessa.
“ Get what right?” Jessa and Wyllim asked at the same time. The Horned Man ignored Wyllim.
“ You know, the truth. It’s as tangled as the dear angel’s eyes,” he said to Jessa, who nodded thoughtfully as if she understood; she didn’t.
Her eyes lit up suddenly. “ Look! It’s starting.” she said.
Niamey was in between the two main columns, violin resting on her arm and shoulder, bow poised like a falcon. Then the music crashed down, and she worked furiously. Her hair poured down her back in an albino waterfall, her golden eyes flashing as the light glinted off the sleek strings. The notes thundered and crashed, swelled and broke, until the sweat of the dancers mingled with the humidity in the air, and lightning crackled between Jessa and Wyllim’s fingers when they accidentally brushed.
“ Sorry.” He muttered.
“ S’okay.” She said back, turning to look at him. For a moment, he was caught in her eyes. He looked down at his hand, and was confused to see that it wasn’t there. Ready to panic, he glanced anywhere and then back to his appendage; it was still there.
Phoenix was at his elbow. He accidentally bumped her and she grabbed his wrist. “ Stay put, okay?” He realized she was speaking to both her and Jessa.
There was an explosion. The columns blurred before Wyllim’s eyes, so he looked to clarity instead: Jessa. She stayed put, solid if only because she was holding onto Phoenix, who was always calm in a crisis.
People screamed and streamed around them. Hands caught on their clothing; Jessa’s pea coat was ripped from her hands and Phoenix lost one of her purple pearl strands in the calamity. Wyllim staggered when the last people straggled by.
Niamey sat on the steps with her violin on her lap, looking out across the ruined party towards them. She raised one hand in an unmistakable gesture of “come hither.” They walked at a brisk pace Phoenix had set towards the violinist. Once a few steps from her, Niamey seemed to look at Jessa.
“ Thanks for giving me a chance,” She said.
“ Oh, no problem!” Jessa said, smiling.
“ If there’s a heaven…” Phoenix’s voice got so low and quiet that Wyllim couldn’t hear it, then she finished, “ You’ll go there.”
The angel with the knotted golden eyes nodded complacently. “ I know,” She said before disappearing.
Wyllim stumbled on the stairs. “ Where’d she go!?!” he cried, looking from Phoenix to Jessa to the Horned Man, who had apparently come up behind them.
“ Heaven,” Phoenix said, shrugging as if she didn’t really know but was only saying that to hear her voice.
“ I don’t-I don’t get it,” Wyllim muttered, under his breath. “ It’s got to be a trick. How else would it happen? She couldn’t just disappear like that, no one can just disappear.”
Phoenix put a hand on his shoulder. “ You should get some sleep.” She said, concern in her voice. It sounded tinny to him.
“ You sound funny.” He mumbled.
“ It’s because your ears are gone.” Jessa said, and even she sounded muffled.
Wyllim clapped his hands to where his ears should be, but found nothing there. His eyes widened. “ No, I’m dreaming, I’ve got to be dreaming.”
Phoenix shook her head. “ Can’t hear you.” She shouted.
“ Why not?” he asked, but nothing came out. He put a hand to his lips and found that they were gone. His fingers traveled up, but there was no nose there.
What’s happening? He thought, frantically.
“ You’re going away.” Jessa answered. For some reason, he could still hear her. Wyllim had no time to think about how he could hear without ears.
Where did she go? Why is this happening to me? I don’t understand what’s going on! He protested.
“ Wherever fragments go when people are finished with them.” Phoenix said, smiling her classic sad smile.
“ You’re just disappearing for a little while. You’ll probably show up sooner or later, somewhere or other.” Jessa said, giggling a little.
I still don’t understand! Tell me, please, what is happening to me!?! Wyllim thought.
“ You’re just going away.” Phoenix said with a helpless shrug.
“ Don’t worry. It won’t hurt.” Jessa said, trying to be of use.
But…if I’m disappearing like this, is this all a dream? Am I asleep?
“ You’re not asleep.” Phoenix said. “ Dreams don’t sleep.”
If Wyllim had had eyes, they would have widened. What does this all mean!?! He cried, in one last attempt to understand before he disappeared completely.
“ It means that you’re not real.” Jessa said. She reached out and put a hand to his quickly dissolving cheek. “ That’s too bad. I enjoyed dancing with you. Hopefully, I’ll think you up again someday.” She then stepped away, with what seemed to be regret forming on her face.
A dream? He wondered. How could I be a dream!?!
“ There’s a thin line between the dreamers and the dreamt.” Phoenix said like a prophet.
And then Wyllim disappeared.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
There once was a beautiful girl who lived in a beautiful dream.

And that was inspired by the song Let Me Go, by 3 Doors Down. I heard it at like 10 at night and sat down to write this. I finished it at 11. I like it. What do you think?
Comments (0)