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Lost in NYC, no place to go, problems spiralling into the eye of the storm |
| [Introduction]
The thing that really gets you, is the cold. Never ending and bitter, inside and out. After a while you just... adapt... Nothing keeps out the chill because your as icy internally as you are physically and that's what really hurts now. Not the reason you ended up here. Not the reason you look up at the Trump World Tower and wonder if prehaps if you could fall from there... Would wings catch you? Or would it be a welcome end ninety storeys below? - Bran Willis * In New York strangers always roam the streets, foreigners as well as national unknowns. They sift through the streets as easily as the wind. Today though there are the ones which when the sun sinks will not be returning to their hotels or flats or brownstones. Through out the streets there are youths that are crashing on the sidewalk for the night. Runaways, abandonees - alone. You are one of them. * This story will start at the base of the Trump World Tower. Your character can be of any gender, of any nationality or from any state. They could be local to the area or not. Whatever floats your boat. Decide on a character but NO bioblocks. Simply add. If you need an example : In the Land of Benden, is a good one! Happy Writing! |
| The world around him was dark. Very very dark. And it would have been perfectly fine with him if it stayed that way forever. In fact. He really wanted it to. He had tried to make it hadn’t he? -What happened? How did I get here?- He asked the absent voice in his head. After nearly five years alone, one would have thought he would be accustomed to the silence... But he still tried to find voices, and the silence still disappointed him. He inhaled deeply. The smells were all around him. Tarmac, litter, petrol - the smells of the city. His eyes opened. Only to be greeted by the glaring, uncaring lights of traffic. He whimpered a curse as he squited against the brightness. He wanted the light to go away, but now that he had let go of the darkness and opened his eyes, even closing them again did nothing to fade the light from outside of them. "Why am I alive?" He asked himself again, glancing down at the silvery track marks along his wrists and arms. He frowned. -Because they forced you to live...- Yes, they, the doctors, had forced him to life, pushing his heart back into action even after it had stopped. His mother had refused to let him go, despite the fact that afterwards she had kicked him out of her house. -If you want out that badly, why dont you try again?: No one cares this time.- "No one cared last time..." He had himself for company. -Me, myself and I?- And if he thought about it... There were the occasional pidgeons to accompany him at night. The light passed across the street before it vanished. Groaning, he rolled back to his original position in the flower bed. If he looked up, he could see the ominous obelisk of the Trump World Tower scraping the sky. -Don't think about it Bran. Stop thinking about it...- Would 90 Storeys be enough to destroy his identity? Would he be filled with euphoria as he fell? If he fell. If he ever made it to the top. Shivering he let the dew fall across his face. This was his unwanted life. He should try to accept it. |
| sara O'Hallaran sat on the edge of the bench, listening to the slow trickle of the 100 un plaza waterfall. She stared into the bleak oblivion of the 1st avenue tunnel, watching lights emerge from its dank depths as it passed by the un at the foot of the trump tower. Shivering, she wrapped a worn black pashmina tighter around her frozen body, her blue eyes searching for the sillhouette of her twin, James, who was begging at the associated supermarket on 2nd and 48th. The market was a good place for street rats to find food, for the UN was just down the road, and the workers there were slightly more sympathetic. It was also known well to the siblings, who had shopped there before the IRA bomb had killed their parents and left them bewildered, homeless, and facing extradition. Before the blast Sara and her brother had lived in the sword like building who's blade pierced the skyline of new york as though it had been thrust through the buildings either side of it. The tower in the shadow of the pretentiously tall citadel that some rich guy had built years back, called the trump world tower... ... and yet now they were reduced to sitting on the benches where sara had seen the punky streetrat crash, night after night, back when they still had a home.... She sighed, clutching her bag closer to her, cursing the catholic bastard who had blown up her father for being a protestant and a guardsman. oh well, she got some satisfaction in the fact that he had died in the blast too.... She stared up at the trump tower again, wondering what it would feel like to fly off it, into the bleak nothingness of oblivion, all the way to hell, where she could get her hands on that son of a bitch and tear him limb form limb...what it would be like to float into the inky waters of the east river, the smooth silk smothering every part of you as it enveloped you in the silent embrace of death, until your body washed up on liberty island and gave all the tourists a fright. As she pondered this thought a brief smirk flitted across her face, fragile, and so fleeting that one would have to stop time to catch the slightest glimpse of it. She stared up into the swirling smog of the old city, and saw a frail body balancing on the line of her vision, flickering between life and death, indecision and certainty coming through the shadows at one second intervals. He, for it was a he because Sara had decided so, was placed in her mind and her attention diverted from the dark humour that had just occupied her so fully. Who could he be?? Sara was playing with his character. Morphing a story for him from the dark mists that smothered him, playing that game with him that you do in the station as a child, inventing a backstory for any person you glimpse that catches your eye.... ...He could be that street kid. Why not?? more often than not sara had glimpsed him staring up at the pinnacle of the tower, as she did now, and not understood, but now she did. Why she would even fly with him if it weren't for the fact that her dad's last words had been stay safe. Evil git. Why hadn't he told her to jump off a cliff like he normally did?? It would have been much more fun for Sara that way. No guilt. But it was an order, a dying request that one was bound to honour. "Jump! jump for me too!" sara screeched into the night hysterically, but then her sense came kicking through. If it was indeed someone like the boy, then her imagination would be ruined..and she would have to pick up the pieces of just another street rat. The police certainly wouldn't bother. Well...maybe, but only because it was infront of the old UN building, where they kept Tony Blair's head in a jar to warn people not to piss off terrorists. "Don't!" sara shrieked again, although she higly doubted that someone ninety stories high would have heard it, even on the third floor. "I care! the world might be a shit hole, but i care!" oh who was she kidding, if she was in their place she would jump. why be mean to whoever it was by telling them they can't die. If they should have control over one thing it should be when they die... <your father didn't> her remnants of concience whispered "so? he was a fool! it was his fault he and ma died!" <You know it wasn't....> "Go away!" Sara looked, and probably was, crazy. A skeletal irish girl screaming into the night as she waited for begged money to buy food with. ...she needed to go to Barnes and Noble and listen to music. |
| "Calixta," she played with the name on her tongue, "Calixta." It sounded far too posh and pretty for where she was going, for where she was running to. "Cal?" she didn't like the name as much as her old one but because it was similar she would be able to remember it, "Cal it is," she muttered to herself. Cal reached her dark skinned hand deep into her pocket and closed it around the last few coins she had, having spent most of it on the train. She hadn't really understood then but the cold reality hit her now, after these coins were gone she had nothing save the thin clothes that covered her back. That was the first problem, she had been naive enough to have left with only the rucksack slung across her back although, she consoled herself, even if she had been more organised she couldn't have stolen much more from her parents having been in the rush she was. She couldn't risk them catching her, she couldn't go back now. Cal shuddered as she thought of the fate her parents had decided for her. To be married off to some 40 year old while she herself was barely 14. Cal sniffed and pulled her thickest jumper out of her backpack,it was pitifully thin and she knew she'd have to find something more substantial if she wanted to survive. Then again maybe she didn't want to survive, maybe the best thing to do would be to find a tall building or a fast moving train and simply 'slip.' One little step and she could leave the horrors of this world behind, but would Allah accept her then, had he already cast her out of his sight because of her flight from her parents will. In Cal's mind, there was little to chose between the horrors of life and the terror of death. |
| Sara could see james' weak frame loping doggedly towards her, his in jangling pitifully. she swore, predicting another day starved of food. A piteous battle against the power of time. She let her knees give way, sinking slowly to the bench, and chewing on the ends of her hair. Maybe she could convince someone to let them sleep inside one of the many underground carparks of the city, for a fee. a fee which reflected the biterness of their poverty and satisfied the sick peadophiles of the city enough to let them live for one more day. What was the point? at the end of the day they were another day colder, wetter, more wretched. The shirts on their back certainly didn't keep out the chill. They were legal aliens. not belonging to any nation. Not entitled to any benefit. The only thing they had of legal value was their passports, but their visa to america had expired and even if they could afford the flight home they would be kept in an american jail for the next ten years for over staying. Ironic really, when the only thing they wanted to do was return home, even if their grandparents thought they had died during the explosion. They should have, really. It would have been easier on everyone. She was so wrapped up in her own thoughts that she did not see the grin on her brothers impish face. He began nattering inanely, making her look up. "$10.00, a whole ten, ten." He was muttering, obbsesively, as if it was the best thing that had ever happened to him. Sara could see that it was in fact, considering the fact that the bombing seemed to cancel out anything that had happened before. "what is it james?" she sighed, thinking her brother had finally cracked under the pressures of life on the streets. "the lady, she gave me ten dollars. By accident! and i stole some bags from the vendor in the park. we can sell them." She looked up, the back of her mind regretting the fact that she had been reduced to a common thief, but so elated by the news of money that she completely forgot about it within a nanosecond. A smile began to spread slowly across her face. They could eat. She glanced to the top of the tower, where the shadow had dissapeared. Perhaps she had imajined it. Perhaps not. "We'll go to the duane reade on second. We can get food. supplies. then spend the rest on more food and supplies." She was so happy. she almost forgot.... |
| Patricia was sitting on her bed at home thinking, simply thinking. Her parents wanted her to find love and happiness with some loving male, but what would happen to her girlfriend Tracey were that to happen? She couldn't do it, she just couldn't. She threw her pillow across the room. "Now come on darling," her mother said, "God wouldn't want you to be upset now would he?" "All you care about is God! If you love God so much why don't you marry him?" Patricia screamed. "God did marry your father and myself underneath Holy Matrimony and we are so happy," her mother said, "all I want is for you to have that kind of happiness as well." "All I want is Tracey," she said looking at her mother. "You know what I think of that girl, she is against God, it is not the will of God for her to act like that. Looking all male when she is in fact a female, if she could sharpen up she could be such a happy little girl with a wonderful guy. Just like you could be," she said. "Oh for Christs sake," Patricia said, "Don't you get it? Your daughter is GAY and I don't want to change and I don't give a shit if it's an act of God for me to be or not!" "Well you can stay in your room until what stage you decide that you are willing to live in this world and stop your imagination from getting away from you young lady," her mother said. That was when Patricia started thinking, maybe death was the only answer, she could find herself another world where people would accept her for her, where she didn't have to pretend to be someone else any more and where she could be happy just being who she is. She started thinking of ways to kill herself and finally she thought of a sure fire plan. Climb to the top of the 90 storey building and jump feeling the breeze of the wind in her face as she plumeted to a better existance. She climbed out her window and into the night, tonight was the night she was going to go through with it. Tonight she would find eternal happiness. |
Making his way through the crowds, the young boy hunched his shoulders, glancing at each of the overflowing dumpsters. He almost flet like he was hiding... Disguising himself as somehting he no longer was.... A police car waited at the traffic lights. He usually ran from cars like that... After all what would they do to a homeless, runaway minor? Normally he'd have vanished by now at the mere sight, but then again he would have tried to hide himself from any other type of civilization too. What am I doing here? he thought to himself for the upteenth time. In broad daylight, walking toward Barnes&Noble there was no need for a place run; no-one spared him a second glance. He had always been different but in New York, different was normal, and he prayed it would always be that way. The domineering skyscrapers vanished into the cloudy morning. He needed music, he needed art... He needed to calm down and figure out something for today... The World Trump Tower still seemed so expectant and welcoming. Strawberry Jam on the pavement, he had never been a fan of messy deaths but even in the hubbub of life he felt alone. The boy’s long, black hair flowed behind him as he shook dashed across a red light. Lonliness, he had realised was the real killer. The pain of hunger; the pain of homelessness; the pain of bruised flesh, they were nothing compared to the perpetual loneliness of his predicament. Before and after his attempted suicide... He had been lonely but now it was beyond that. It was emptiness. A tear pricked in his eye as he passed through the revolving doors of his favourite book shop. And that was when he ran straight into the lean form of a girl. |
| Sara turned, gripping the flimsy paper to her cheast and opening her eyes to the sounds of the city. The river oozed silently beside her, giving off a rancid smell that awoke her nostrils. the park, though wild and derelict, listened to the suffering song of a lonesome bird, and the people walked past her with the collars of their trenches whipped to frozen cheeks by the rush of traffic. for a split second, she was transported. To another time and place, when she had been a happy stranger to the greatest city on earth, rather than a homeless native. The air danced around her, and she was snapped back to reality with the return of gravity, meeting her cheek with cold, hard, pavement. James lept to his feet. Ready to pound the boy who had knocked her over into smithereens. Sara rolled her eyes and curled her fingers more tightly around the crusty bill, wondering vacantly how many people had done the same thing before. She turned her eyes towards her aggressor. "you." the word slipped out as a bare whisper. creeping out before she could stop it. She leant back on her other arm so that she could study him properly. The boy looked confused. Sara looked flustered. "and...you are?" He snapped, as though she had interupted his train of thought. "...going. Come on james. lets get to barnes and noble so i can listen to the libertines." James cocked his head at her. As he did when something was running through his mind. He paused for a second, then smirked. "more of that crap noughties music Sara? honestly. you should be living in your own decade." "oh shut the fuck up, mr. i think that the-spicey-fluffs-are-decent-music!" He rolled his eyes. Sara pushed her hands against the frozen slabs of concrete until she was standing. She could smell the frozen tang of sweat on her forehead. "how the fuck do you recognise me?" the boy asked. His eyes boring into the back of her head. Her stare had seemed familiar to him, although he had never seen her till the second she was pinned beneath him. Sara felt her breathing gorw heavy, her heart pounding a dancing rythem of blood around her. Deafening silence seemed to blank out the sounds of the city for a split second. "i-I- When we used to live in that building, i saw you at night from my window." "oh. so you were spying on me. Rich brat." He practically spat out. "No. You were always there. Of course i noticed you. and besides. I'm not some rich fucking brat. I'm an street orphan and a legal alien. So clearly you aren't as intelligent as you seem to think." Sara was defensive. And as her brother knew, good at arguing. "i wouldn't have thought you'd be distinguished for ignorance. you looked somewhat- interesting. I guess appearences can be deceiving." "And why am i ignorant?" he raised his eyebrow. He was enjoying this. They began to walk along 48th, James loping dogedly behind. "well, you've had one idea and that was wrong. it doesn't do much for the impact of your mind." He smirked at this one. "So when did you study Disraeli then? my little english street rat." "when i was 10." "long memory." "i've always liked to think so." They were sparring back and forth now. Playful jabs that tested each others boundaries. It might not appearedit, but the fellow urchins were testing to see the others weaknesses. "the libertines huh? I was always partial to english punk. it was more- sex drugs and less on the rock and roll side." Sara stopped as she reached the end of the street. There was silence. James limped to her side, and they turned to walk down second. "i'll be seeing you gladstone." She muttered to the air behind her. "Disraeli." he nodded his head at her. " brush up on your music taste. Everyone knows the sex pistols were better." With that they were gone. Sara and James merged into the hustle and bustle of the city, it's buildings rising up like sheer, sheer cliffs with a wind whipped sea of people far below. |
| Patricia commenced walking to that tall lean skyskrapper building that she had seen so many times when out with her mother. This would show them. This would show everyone. She was in control of her life nobody else was. She couldn't stay in a world where things were so cruel and ugly. That's when she happened to walk straight into a woman. Her mind was so far away that she didn't even realise what was happening until the girl looked at her. "Hey watch where you're going!" |
Gladstone.... he liked that! He turned the name over in his mind as he listened to a random track my Fall Out Boy. She had been just like him. Hurt, alone and yet... He was still jealous of her. She didnt seem to be afraid of life like he was. She seemed just as self-assured as any normal person did. Or maybe that was a well acted front. Her companion, had looked less certain. So prehaps it was for him she held up that facard. Smiling slightly, humming along, he switched to Sex Pistols, revelling in their talent. Once he had wanted to be a part of a band. He had played the guitar. He had played everyday and become as good as half the people he had heard of. Living in ireland he had had no porblem in finding band mates. It was after they moved that it had become hard. His mum hated music. Hatred it with a vehemence that had scared it. And one day after he had left for school she hd taken his precious Aria guitar that had been a gift from his father and smashed it. Well... She did not dirty her own hands. Rich, her fiancee of the day had done it, pounding it into the wall. Bran had come home and his only release, his only connection to his dad was shattered into red splintered wood. That had been the beginning of his troubles. He and his mum were never friends. He was something she had never meant to happen but some twisted form of guilt had kept her from kicking him out. So he had started to make adjustments that she would loathe. A tattoo on his back started it off, a small scorpian at the small of his back. Eyeliner doned and peirced lip, nose, five in his left ear, three in his right, on through his eyebrow. Another tatto came later, a crouched tiger, snarling at some unseen foe. Or atleast, unseen to everyone else. He was the tiger, trapped in a cage. His name meant raven and he was going to live up to it. Black winged and angry, that was when he first began to consider his ninety storey high drop. Of course back then.... Knives had seemed more interesting. With a sigh he reaslised he had been lead into the vortex of time again. Bran sat on the floor. He sat there until he was asked to leave as the shop shut. |
| Sara walked away from the noodle shop, sticky sweet general tso's noodles clutched to her body, warming her frozen torso as it radiated heat, her mind was wandering, skipping, prancing. And she remembered. vague mists of memory swirled in her head, a memory of a memory. a dream of a dream. the dream of when she had first seen the boy. gladstone..... The buildings stood in grandeur. Sheer, sheer glass cliffs rising straight from the sea, so far that the riding waves of people were nothing but ripples on a huge calm and the sun was masked by their enormous presence. Past these cliffs an intangible stench of pollution was wafted to and fro on the wind over the huge city, wrapping tendrils of smog between the sky scraping towers and causing the light on the city’s cold concrete bed to dance and dapple. Yet in the air above these cold glass citadels a bird swooped, desperately edging itself forward, faster, to freedom. It seemed strangled, smothered by the oozing black smoke that infiltrated the skies. And had anyone below given the bird more than a moment of their buy lives they would have seen it flutter hesitantly in pain before it soared into the heavens, touching the face of god as it disappeared into the ceaselessness of eternity. The girl gazed vacantly at the street below her, its yellow taxis and colourful cars so far beneath her that they appeared to be bugs, scurrying under a toddler’s stare. She allowed a small glimmer of a smile to flitter across her face briefly, before turning towards the forgotten piece of paper that lay on the Adirondack table of her balcony. The sun’s first grimy rays had begun to paint the sky amber and beyond the Chrysler buildings peak her observant eyes made out the form of a bird, fluttering in confusion in the air above Manhattan. Glancing once more to the paper, she smoothed its crumpled edges, her hands repeating an action that seemed thoughtless, as though it had happened many a time before. Indeed, the page was worn and yellowing, and two eyes bored out of it, the face they belonged to worn and haggard, sallow and sunken in, from years of torture. Pencil markings darted across the page skilfully, the creases in the boy’s clothes drawn in so deftly that they appeared to leap out the page. She remembered the first time she had seen him, sitting on the same balcony that she was now, dreaming vacantly as only a dreamer can do. He had been lying on the bench outside the building, listening to the waterfall tinkling as he tried in vain to get to sleep. Watching as he shivered in the rain, she had been captivated, a fish drawn in by the bait. He was just a boy, humming softly into the night’s sky, an unwanted urchin; Scars were laced up his wrists, the skin of his arms bruised and battered, like leather on an over used pair of boots. His black hair was matted with the freezing rain, and his grey eyes were dull with worry. He was tossing over his situation, dredging up the last of his already over exerted energy to mutter curses into the night, praying that they would land on his cruel mother, who had banished him to this death filled life; the life of a street rat. Death had been a welcome end for him. Smothering his body with a warm blanket. Enshrouding him in comfort. Filling every crevice. He had been safe. For the first time in his life, he had been safe. Drifting up to heaven on wide spread wings, a bird escaping the bleak cityscape. Yet she had stopped him. Not out of any last modicum of motherly love that she had left, but to punish him. How dare he escape her? Escape the hell filled life that he had then inhabited? And so the bird had been shot down, and he had awoken to the pounding fists of well-meaning doctors, thrown out of the ice palace to live an even slower, more painful life. The thing that really got to him was the cold. Never ending and bitter, inside and out. Nothing kept out the chill because he was as icy internally as physically and that's what really hurt. Not the reason his mother kicked him out. Not the reason he looked up at the pillars of darkened glass and wondered if perhaps if you could fall from there... Would wings catch you? Or would it be a welcome end many storeys below? Food had been scarce. bran had been scouring the bins for days with no luck, not a tuppence coming from the callous people who walked the streets; their hearts as frozen as the pavements through all the layers they wore. He was bedraggled; A bird who could not fly, a dog that could neither play nor curl in front of a warm hearth and dream of chasing cats. The dull and never ending ache that normally lay forgotten in his stomach began to throb painfully, making his tongue stick to the roof of his mouth, and he groaned with a hoarse whisper. |
| All was quiet in the damned city, Bran staggered through the lines of obelisks, alone with only shadows occupying his head. Everything blurred in the night's bright lights and sounds. He was so lost, dragged and buffeted by starvation, his body crying out for the few nutriants he needed. He was almost numb in the freezing night air, stumbling weakly past people in warm, furry coats. His fragile frame was barely covered, his jeans ripped and frayed, his jumper full of holes. The battered old scarf hung limply from his neck only just doing it's job. Deep down he knew unless he sort refuge somewhere some he would not survive the night. But he wanted to die. Didn't he? What easier way than to fade away into the snow, bury into his hunger, die? Unconscious tears fell from his vacant eyes, Bran fell. Broken glass and filth scratched his arms as they struck the earth first, they dug into his knees as he curled into his arms. He wanted to see the tower... That place, so dominating and in control... He wanted to be able to imagine he could fly from it and float away. -I'm dying.- he thought. It was different form the last time. Last time he had felt it, stricken by grief and hopelessness, he had felt life fading behind him and he had, ironically, for the first time, felt like he was living. Now he just felt numb. Even his heart seemed to be numb, he could hardly feel it beating in his chest. "Gladstone?" Murmers passed and played through his ears but seemed so nonsensical. "Gladstone! Wake up! Shit!" Vague sylables made it through the bleary conciousness to his brain but the connection was just out of his reach. "It's ok. Don't worry..." Was that voice talking to him? -I'm a snow angel and I can finally fly away...- He smiled slightly and blackness clouded his mind. |
| Sara's heart beat faster as she watched the boy's face contort in pain. He was so cold that the skin on his face was like clingfilm, barely covering the bones of his skeletal frame. "Help!" she screamed into the night fraily, her voice hoarse with concern. The legions of tall, dark strangers pulled their trenches closer, their steps quickening as they looked down at the flagstones below them. "Help you damn fools! This boy has hypothermia! are you just going to let him die?" The people marched on to the beat of a silent drum, their ears deafened by years of war and grief. Their hearts could not take the strain of love, and so their minds had become focused on fighting their own battles. His pulse was week, fluttering fragily like the wings of a hummingbird as darkness clouded the skies around her. James paced silently round to the other side of the bench, lifting the boy's slight frame with the last dredges of his energy. Sara caught his eyes, a grey that swirled with unvoiced grief and concern. She remembered a nurse, a friend of her mother's dfrom the time before, and she nodded her head slowly, the back of her throat tingling with fiery tendrils of fear. |
A suspect surrounded and shot dead in a crowded street. Four through the temple as he skwirmed on the ground. A woman screaming for help in a near by alley as a man rapes her, cuts her, breaks her. A child whoring herself out to dirty old men, just to fund her broken home. A snarling face as a body was ripped into a million lived red records in history. Bran's mind swirled and tortured him with his memories, the words spoken, the blur of colour and sound and fear the whole time through. He had seen too much thee last few years, heard and felt more than he should and now they seemed to be snatching at his frozen soul. Tearing him down. So he smiled. It would be over soon... He could just forget... He would never have to think again... breath again... live in that loneliness again... A caress, a smile, a concerned laugh as he fell back into darkness... At least those last memories were happier he wondered as he fell back into the miasmer of his thoughts... *** That's the funny thing about the never-ending battle between life and death - the goalposts keep changing. |
| Sara watched plaintively as her twin hoisted the boy into a shopping cart, limp in his arms, as though it were clothes and not the human inside them, that he was holding. Faint fluttering movements could be seen through his paper thin shirt, which was drenched with the rain that was now running in streams down her face. They began to walk to the nurse's appartment, the first floor of an old and decaying brownstone, which was between third and lexington a few blocks south of their location. Taxis and cars rushed past in short bursts, the heartbeat in the veins of a city with no heart. She turned to check that the boy was still breathing, throwing the black pashmina over his shoulders, and watching has his face shivered Unconciously. Distant memories of an english boarding school flooded her mind, of a compulsory life saving course she had taken. As hypothermia progresses, shivering stops in order for the body to conserve energy. A victim of hypothermia that has stopped shivering may be getting worse rather than better, so she realised that there was still hope for him. As these thoughts crossed her mind she became completely distracted, walking along as though in a trance. The rain darkened the skies like etchings under tissue thin paper, and yet her mind seemed wrapped up in yet more layers, till she was completely blind to the details of her painting. Suddenly these layers were peeled off as she collided with another girl. "oh for fucks sake! watch where you're going" she cussed, her irish voice lilting softly against the bustle of the street. The other girl looked somewhat shocked and sara quickly added, "sorry. It's just this kid has hypothermia and we need to get him 5 blocks really quickly, when it's 5 degrees colder than most humans can survive in a tee shirt." She carried on walking, runnng a little to catch up with james and his shopping cart. Suddenly she heard a voice calling out. "Wait! Let me help. I have nothing better to do!" It seemed to be directed at her so she turned around and saw the girl walking after her. "alright then....." "Patricia." ..."trish." |
He remembered why you weren't supposed to wish on falling stars... They were falling... He remembered why they were meant to make the wish come true... because they would bring your wish to earth... But they weren't really stars were they? They were lumps of rock falling from their orbit just beyond Mars and burning up on the atmosphere of the earth. He remembered his dad... or at least he thought it was his dad telling him a poem about Christopher Robin and a girl named Alice and... Buckingham palace and changing guards and and... He couldn't remember the man's face but his voice wasn't cold. It was blazing with some emotion he had never heard from anyone else. He remembered a bonfire... On the 5th November in England... On a trip to see his grandparents when he was a little older than nine... He remembered the heat radiating off it in pulsating waves. Warming him and dancing through his veins. He remembered... Disraeli... And he remembered the IRA. He remembered the bleeping machines and the strangulatin wires. He remembered the way the scarson his arms had stayed a livid redish purple for months before they bled silver.... And then he tried to remember... Was it the left half of your brain or right that deals with logic, language, calculation and reason? That would be the half people percieve as their personal identity. That would be the conscious, rational, everyday basis of our reality. Was it the right side of the your brain or left that is the center of your intuition, emotion, insight, and patter recognition skills? Your subconscious. Your left brain is a scientist? Or was it the right? Your right brain is an artist. Or was it the left? He knew that people lived their lives out of the logic half of their brains. It's only when someone was in extreme pain, or upset or sick, that their subconscious can slip into their conscious. When someone was injured or sick or mourning or depressed, the creative brain can take over for a flash, just an instant, and give them access to divine inspiration. A flash inspiration. A moment of insight. "Abaissment du niveau mental" It could just let you connect to a universal body of knowledge. The wisdom of all people over all time. This was why we don't learn anything new, our soul has lived so many lives that we already know everything. Teachers and education is only a reminder of what we already know. Our misery. This suppression of our rational mind is the source of inspiration. The muse. Suffering takes us out of our rational self-control and lets the divine channel through us. Enough of any stress, good or bad, love or pain, can cripple our reason and bring us ideas and talents we can achieve in no other way.... Where did that come from? He wasn't sure. He wasn't thinking straight. He could hear voices around him talking. Someone whispering to him that it was ok and he'd recover. And then he realised that he was still alive. His subconcious trip down memory lane had woken up his latent philosopher and now he could feel the pins and needles trickling over his numb body and he was waking up. Did he want to? He lied this darkness... He liked this sleep... |
| "Wake up you lazy faggot or i'll leave you here with all the tourists by bryant park." Sara muttered at the immobile form that lay, sleeping, in the bed beside her. She felt the coverlet rustle beneath her, and remembered a long lost wish that Americans would learn what a duvet was. Her stomach was painful, unused to the amount nourishment that the over-exited nurse had so hastily poured down her throat. Which, to be honest, hadn't been that much; another depressing thought. Sara had grown used to constant hunger, and now felt strange without it. As if a key part of her present existence had suddenly been jerked out from underneath her. Her papery skin was brittle and felt strange to be clean, warm, moisturised and patted down. A calculated groan rumbled from beneath the sheets and blankets. "Do you want me to play the empire state building card?" she muttered A head now proceeded to pop out, bleary eyed, from beneath them. Bran blinked at her wearily and then his eyes darted around in horror at the situation. He was in a poink room with a soaking girl beside him in bed. Dis.....raeli? That was her name. "There is no need to look like you've been caught working as a gigolo. You're in a nurse's bed, and you almost got pneumonia." "If i got pneumonia, why are you wandering around soaking and opening windows?" Sara replied in her southern lilt,"Trying to wake you up...this woman's nice, but i'm an orphan without a green card or a visa, and we have crashed on her hospitality long enough....." and then silently "she's already in shock from thinking I was dead." "what?" She thought of somehting to distract him from her last slip of the tongue. "Oh...I said you're still ignorant, I'm half Irish..you called me you're little english street rat." "well you accent changes alot." (It worked.) "Only when she's defensive." another voice came in, strong, southern english, but with a hint of gaelic song. Sara's twin entered the room. "It's a boarding school thing." "You went to boarding school?" Bran spluttered. "Not in the American sense. Come on, we're going. The nurse knows we're orphans, and she's far too kind for our legal status. We can't get her in trouble." She began to walk out of the room, grabbing her worn leather jacket from James and slipping it over her tattered teal sweater-dress. She had worn more or less the same thing for two years, and shrapnel dust stained the hem of the dress and her once indigo jeans. "Clothes??" Bran asked. "You're wearing them. And you do look good in pink if i say so myself" James smirked, letting his full irish timbre slip out. "oh. that. The nurse gave me a sweater, and i decided you needed it more than me." Brans face whitened. "relax, james put it on you." His face returned some of its initial colour. and he raised one eyebrow. "I think it looks good with your jacket," she said, chucking him the black leather one that lay tossed over a chair. "It's still hot pink." "Bloody effeminate if you ask me," grunted James, who looked much more like the rugby player he had once been when he was fed and warm. "anyway, get up, we have to go while she's still on her shift." |
| Bran felt himself shrinking slowly into his head as he realised that they were going back outside. He always hated the transition. If he ever made it anywhere he wanted it to be a place where he would never have to be cold. Never have to go outside even. He could travel around in bubbles of warmth like he had when his dad was alive. Metaphorical bubbles... He'd had no need for pretences then. His dad would have given him a scarf and gloves and wrapped him up snuggly... He didn't know where his dad had gone. "Where are we going?" He asked quietly, pulling his jacket closer to him as they made their way down a series of stairs. "We'll find out." The girl was obviously the one who lead the pair infront of him. She had an air of determinacy, an aura of purpose that he rarely saw in anyone he interacted with any more. She had hope tucked up her sleeve... Which he guessed was why he hadn't been too afraid when he woke up to find himself with her. It wasn't that which really made him think though... Why wasn't he angry with her for saving his life like he had been with his mother? He still felt the hole inside himself, he still couldn't feel anything like life within his body. But some how he didn't feel resentment for her. Despite the fact that he knew that dying out there on the streets would have given him some kind of release. He felt a little miffed at the fact he was decorated with a new pink jumper. But he remembered one a bit like it from when he was really small. His cousin had worn it. He wasn't sure what happened to his extended family after his dad disappeared. His mother had only had one sister and she was a spinster that lived in an office somewhere in Paris. For a second he found himself lost in vague memories again. He often found himself looking for the happy memories. Searching for something... He wasn't sure what. And that was when the cold hit him as he stepped out the door. She had that sort of look. As if she was searching. "Hey James, what time is it?" the girl asked, looking at the sky, she couldn't see the sun because of the clouds. "A little after 3." "To Barnes&Noble!" |
| James shrugged and loped doggedly after his twin. Two years ago he had been happy, confident, her big brother. Sara had been his kid sister, born two minutes after, incredibly naive. Increasingly, it became harder and harder to live with the memories of happiness that burdened him, soaked in blood that made them three times the weight. The bitterness was such that James, once a brilliant actor, had come to the point where he barely spoke, for even the sound of his own voice brought back painful memories of a family that had been sliced in two by shrapnel wounds and torn apart by an ocean. He had seen the newspaper reporting his death after he had woken up 3 months after the explosion. The date on the paper was his only reference. Comatose, he had lain for roughly 92 days, unaware that the days between the 29th of February 2008 and his apparent death had even passed. He saw the words on the page, saw the generic expressionless school photograph they had borrowed, read the words of an aunt and a detested teacher. He was made out to be a saint. A saint with a sister. At the time he had been in such a daze that he'd forgotten if she was even dead or alive. The paper said that she was dead, but then again it had said he was too. He looked around him at the graffitied house and the inky black puddles of crusty mud that surrounded him on the floor. Maybe dead wasn't the worst word to describe him. "James O'Hallaran, missing, presumed dead, victim of an assault by an IRA assailant." He had never imagined that they would break off peace negotiations. Never imagined that an American national of questionable Irish ancestry would be so stupid and misinformed as to think that the fight was still on, that blood still had to be spilled. The fucker had not only destroyed four lives, he had crushed any hopes of Northern Ireland's freedom. Hell, James had never known what it would feel like to think that you were dead. The hunger had struck him then. With the impact of four Lamborghinis flaming past at impossible speeds. It was starvation. He had looked down at his body, feeding off it's own muscle, and been shocked. Bones. It had never been so clear, but the skeleton that held up his body for fifteen years was there in almost anatomical detail, like the plastic hinged variety in his old school science lab. Calcium and bone marrow were his last links to anyone on the planet. Calcium and bone marrow. Stumbling for days through the ruins of the house, James had finally come across what appeared to be a rotten bag of flour. Black stains of mould covered the bag, but at the time, and even now, the prospect of any ingredient, however raw, had been more than his own life was worth. The greed with which he peeled back the burlap sacking was astonishing. He had been reduced to an animal, fighting for survival, with only the base nstincts intact. The lack of emotion was the only thing that had stopped his heart from slowing to stop at the realisation that his family was dead. The course grain of the bag was like sandpaper against his bloody hands, grating off flakes of dried blood, pus, and metal. It hurt to bend his fingers. As his eyes adjusted to the light, he had realised that it was not flour in the bag. It was a creature, hairless but for a mop of black hair. It was his own sister. |
He scowled, thinking back to the effeminate comment but said nothing as James, loping ahead of himself and the girl, opened the door so that they could go into the warm embrace of Barnes&Noble. "Great place this." He murmered, looking around at the huge expanse. The smell of books rustled through his nose and made his face crease into a smile. There was a small cafe like area in one corner and the scent of fresh coffee made his stomach tie itselt in knots, grumbling as it did so. Blood rushed into his cheeks, heat suffusing them. He probably looked like an idiot, in a pink jumper and ripped up jeans, his hair tangled and his skin blotchey where it had heated up against his usual death-like pallor. Not that Sara could claim she looked any better. Her nose was reddened and sore looking from the cold, her lips an off white. "Yeah. Isn't it." James was already browsing through the shelves, his fingers brushing over the still smooth spines, occasionally pullingon out to read the back, "We come here a lot." It was Sara that bothered explaining things to him though. "Same." Ever since he was very small he'd been a book worm. He loved them. Loved the smell and the feel of books. Loved the way he could lose himself in them and forget things... Loved that everytime a story developed, he learnt something too, whether about life or the human condition or just some small nothing. It always made him smile just a little, if it didn't make him cry. "I need to find Paradise Lost." He said without thinking and began to move away. "No way. Me too." She was looking at him with a half sceptical eye. But he wasn't so sure if that was on purpose anymore, rather that she had to weigh things up before she could be satisfied with anything. "I've been reading it whenever I've come here... Or at least I have been for a while now." "I only started it that first time I ran into you." "Oh." He tried smiling again and hoped she'd take it as it was, "Well shall we go find out how many copies of Milton there are?" She nodded and he turned away before she could see him blush. |
| As Sara walked through the open shop floor, displays of books creating a maze, she felt eyes bore through her. BLushing, she automatically straightened her back, glancing through the corner of her eye at a pair of shop assistants, pointing at her and whispering among themselves as though she were a thief. With clothes that were tatty, faded and ripped she looked a sight. At least she'd had a shower at the nurse's place. Her hair was clean and her skin was pink from the scrubbing that had taken place, a years worth of dirt shaken off, revealing raw skin. The moisturiser had burnt through, and shaving her legs once the sting had gone had been bliss. But still, she felt suspicious stares and once again wondered what she had done that deserved the life of an outcast from society. She wasn't poor, she was destitute. Beyond saving. But now James had found money. She could actually by a copy of the book. Leaf through it, her own. That would show them. Pausing briefly to rest her aching legs, she let her hand flutter onto a book shelf, resting against it and closing her eyes. She could feel the blood pulsing through her body. Behind her eyes, her temples, her thin white wrists. Her own reflection had terrified her that morning. Cheeks pinched, her hair was matt with dust and, once washed, she realised that she had a grey streak. One lock at the front of her forehead. Completely white against raven black hair. She felt something brush her hand and her eyes snapped open instinctivley as it clenched. "I see you found it...." came a deep voice, and she opened her eyes to ind the street rat staring at her. "what?" She looked at him, her eyes boring into his. Is cheeks were pink too, had they been scrubbed too hard too? "the meaning of your life stupid.... You're standing opposite Milton. See? You're resting on James Napier." "I object, You don't know my real name yet, and yet you make judgements on my intelligence." "Daydreaming?...uh..." "Sara, my dear padjo. Anyway, I'm not daydreaming, i'm worrying. Females do that occasionally." "About?" "well for starters i'm destitute, and after a few things, like food and supplies, and my relations that think I'm dead, James." "He seems to be healthy enough for a..." "You didn't know him before. He barely speaks, it's....nevermind. He wandered for days before he found me, He was the one that found the body..." "Yours?" "what was left of my father.." "Oh, I'm sorry." He said, lowering his gaze as a glint passed through his eye, hatred. The word father... Sara watched as a thin white hand reached for the book and pulled it down. "You get first refusal." "why?" "I dunno. Maybe you're growing on me....sara." He let it roll off his tongue slowly, mimicking her irish tone. |
| With careful hands and steady concentration, Bran tended to his thriving thirst for the epic. Its gray-brown cover pealed away to reward him with the fluttering music of paper on paper, as he turned the pages , looking for his place he pushed the blooms of colour and intrigue away gently. Outside he heard a tree stutter in the wind. It was one that had bloomed in August and had been one of his favorites in the summer; although he considered the flame eucalyptus in the florist window on ninety-sixth was something to behold as well. The cold would always bother him, but Bran was glad as he settled into the flourishing poetry of Milton that he was glad to be like the eucalyptus today, protected from the outside. He hummed a bit as he worked through the pages. He glanced over Sara. He hadn't meant to flirt with her... She was running one of her hands through her hair that depite being washed still looked like a wisteria that was threatening to tangle. He smiled and his eyes crinkled in a way that made him look both older and younger at the same time. His entire imagnation was bursting with the verse that begged him not to look away. But he was because she and her brother and himself...this was their habitat. Their lifes had entwined the last few days and now he felt he knew something more... They knew nothing about him. Perhaps he spoke too soon, or there was a fickle wind in the air, whatever the reason; Bran faced his new trouble with the same outlook he had with everything else. He didn't much care that it was a girl and boy he was dealing with. Effeminate clothing seemed the least of his worries at the moment. With a ragged backpack over one shoulder and hair that rivaled a wild Aloe--was the most striking person he had ever seen. And that person was Sara. She was a painting that hadn't been painted yet. He would never have called himself particularly worldly. He knew a lot about pain and had so many times stared up in the face of suffering. He had watched the smog curl about the tips of towers four hundred times his height and sighed as he saw another bird, or another plane, ricochetting off their faces into a different kind of freedom. Yet when he stood next to her... He almost felt as if she had seen the weariness that ached in him and made him feel a lot older... Though it was probably less than a year if that. Most who had ever known him would agree that he was strange though impassioned, and very seldom expressive. That was, until you saw his pictures or read his poetry. It might have been fate or a strange sort of irony, but it seemed he was now face to face with someone just like him but who was... better than he could ever hope to be. He was long and lean, with frayed jeans and scabby shoes. He had lawless, out of control hair that stuck up in the oddest of places. Ruffled, scruffy, and looking like a soul without a home. She gave him a patient smile as he continued to muse and occasionally glance her way. She was a waif and and the backpack slung over her shoulder looked to be bound with silver tape. She wasn't as anorexically thin as he was, so much as lithe and shaped. She had delicate hands and a delicate disposition. He thought that if she fell, she would break. The long black hair drooped into her eyes, and she made an amusing show of blowing it to the side. She laughed. This youth was beautiful. Her face was sculpted, shaped in fragile curves and sensitive cheek bones. She had wide and remarkable eyes that made him look twice. His rapture was broken with a word. |
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