Posted by: Shelly on: January 22, 2009
The boy raised his hands to clutch at his executioner’s arms, arms that did not know the definition of mercy. Little did he know that the nerves in his body had long been restricted by millions of microscopic needles shot through him seconds before. He heard his own endless scream rise up and out of the room, traveling through the streets of his underworld prison, rising up towards the cloth-like sky that never gave way to darkness.
“Fuck! Did you miss again Kay, because I swear!”, Yan screamed, although failing to look menacing with both hands pressed closely to her ears.
“Hey, it’s perfect,” his executioner argued. “It’s not my fault his eyes are crooked.”
“My eyes are not crooked!” The boy piped in defense from behind the group, not realizing that he was no longer in his still screaming, frozen body tacked to the wall with a now invisible arrow.
The three women fell silent, until Kay abruptly grabbed the back of his shirt and mashed his face against the face of his former, still living body.
“Shut. Up.” she demanded firmly. “If you get us caught…” The boy gulped at what he only assumed was the click of a gun pressing against the back of his head. He wanted to believe that the gun really could do him no harm, but here he was, apparently dead for the first, and not the second, time doubting the accuracy of his intuition in a realm where the laws of the living did not apply. How? The boy’s mind raced as he felt the pressure on the back of his head increase with each new, earsplitting wail coming from a mouth that he no longer had control over.
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Posted by: Shelly on: January 16, 2009
They had lived their whole lives for this day; he had waited ten grueling years of his life for this moment to come. He had done everything in his power not to get himself killed and now he stood before his brother in their rundown basement, burnt decades before his birth, with his left arm raised and knife pressed firmly against his wrist. He stared into the icy blue eyes of his brother, desperately wishing that he would give the signal so the heart inside him would stop its erratic beating.
“Stop shaking. Hold it steady,” his brother hoarsely whispered at him, who extended his right arm adjacent to his younger brother’s left. His brother pressed his own knife deeply into his own arm, “like mine.”
The boy never broke eye-contact with his older brother, but he could tell that his brother was scared too. He saw through his brother’s steady, unwavering facade each and every day of his life; he just never had the heart to mention it. We have every right to be scared. They were putting everything that meant anything into this. With their heart, their soul, and their memories on the line, they could not afford to fail and had everything to lose. This was the only way, the scriptures and the books that remained after the burning and shredding wrote of nothing else. This day, this hour, this minute, this second — this one moment could solve everything.
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Posted by: Shelly on: January 11, 2009
Hell. He was in Hell.
“H-E-L-L.” the girl spelled out for him, her scratchy voice rising higher in pitch for each letter.
Great, he thought.This is fantastic. He flinched at the girl’s voice, giving an acknowledging grunt as he rose from the ground. He briefly raised his head to look at where the rip in the sky used to be and wondered how his brother had managed this one. As he bent to wipe the dirt off of his pants, he noticed that this high-spirited girl was no younger than he was. But no, she’s dead. So age wouldn’t matter. She’s probably hundreds of years older than me.
“It’s nice to see some new people around here.” she said calmly.
Pfft, sure, he told himself. “Hm..so where do I go from here? This is my first time being dead and all.”
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Posted by: Shelly on: January 8, 2009
I have no idea how long this story will last, but it seems to be too long to still qualify as a short story. So I created a table of contents to keep track of all the so-called chapters.
1. Prologue: The Serene Darkness
2. Chapter 1: The Yellow Spring
3. Chapter 2: The Underworld Prison
4. Chapter 3: Chamber of Avici
Posted by: Shelly on: January 8, 2009
Crash. Crumble. Thump.
Silence.
Crowds gathered around the strange little boy that had dropped out from the rip in the sky, now crouched at the center of the playground. Worried mothers poked and pried as fathers spread out in search of his parents or guardians. The boy curled himself into a ball and clenched his eyes shut. He could hear nothing but the explosion that reverberated in his small ears. His body shook and twitched with fear, unaware of the commotion he had created nor of the attention he received.
“Leave ‘im alone,” an old woman spat, staring down at the boy with her lazy eye. “He just got here after all.”
“Y’eah, they’re all like that,” her friend added with a cackle. “Y’all were like that s’well.”
“B..but they don’t u…usually come…this…way,” a frail young woman stuttered worriedly, obviously a newcomer as well.
The two old woman snorted and continued on their daily walk through the park as if nothing was wrong. Together, the two women were nearly two centuries old and they had seen enough in this world to sleep through a hurricane.
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Posted by: Shelly on: July 13, 2007
The next morning, the boy found that he was not himself, but a new boy.
A new boy who ate his breakfast with the rest of the family and not only waved good-bye to his father as he left for work, but even gave him a hug. He was a boy who played catch with his older brother, who was still very much not dead, and helped his older sister in her audition for a commercial for a family product. That day he was a boy who reminded his mother of her lyrics when she sang and even helped her put on her mud mask for the day. He did not even as much as walk past the front living room, the one with the family couch, the wide flat-screen plasma TV, and the newly made chip in the wall.
Oh yes, he was a new boy. A new boy that had asked to play with his friends at the park that afternoon. Friends that their shallow minds would not know he didn’t have, at a park that they didn’t know had been turned into a McDonald’s earlier in the year. He was lucky, this new boy. His new family did not venture out into the local area of their town, the local area that they did not personally own, the local area whose houses were molding and whose money was dampened with the sweat of the working class.
A new boy that only needed an excuse to get out of the house to buy a lighter.
Posted by: Shelly on: July 13, 2007
The maids had rushed into the room and he could tell from the heavy, fake sobs behind him that his banshee of a mother was standing on the stairs, most likely still with her half-dried mud mask on her face. But the boy could not spare even one brain cell to worry about anyone else, nor did he have the time to control his racing heart. His eyes frantically searched the television screen for his father, but to no avail. with each new clip being shown, the boy crossed his fingers and prayed silently to God to let one of the men being put onto stretchers be his father. He needed to see that one of those men was his father. He needed to see that he was still alive, he needed to know that he would be saved, he needed to know that his father was not already with his brother and grandparents.
Hours had passed, and the boy remained in front of the television without having moved a muscle. Thankfully, he had remembered to continue breathing before he passed out. In the background, the maids shuffled anxiously around while trying to busy themselves with something other than getting in the way. He tried his best to ignore the shrill voice of his banshee mother as she screeched and screamed into the phone, trying to get a hold of her husband — a man the boy wished he would not have to see on television that night.
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