Young Writers Society

Hey, gang. Octave got a wee bit busy all of a sudden, so I think she'd like it if we kicked things off and got 'em moving. Remember that this is just going to be a fun storybook, so no stress. ;)

Sam | The City

Sam was driving. He always had loved driving, and thought it was a good sort of therapy, even if it did cost gas--and gas prices were awful, of course, so his therapy didn't come cheap. But Sam was driving with his best friend, Andy, on their way back from a friend's house across the city. Sam's favorite song was on the radio, and he and Andy were singing it in seven different keys, belting out the high notes like the little girls they were on the inside. They were being real men.

It was when Sam closed his eyes for a second to belt out one of those high notes that things got weird. The sound of the engine cut out, the sound of the radio--everything just vanished from his ears. And Sam opened his eyes and thought he was hallucinating.

Black and white.

Stick figures.

Everywhere, everything was washed of color, completely turned into a child's doodle. He slammed on the stick breaks, clutched the stick steering wheel, and jostled forward as a stick car rammed him in the stick bumper. This wasn't a hallucination, it was real--the panic was real.

It was the worst when he turned to see Andy, turned into an angular, black-and-white doodle himself.

Sam.

Freaked.

Out.

He jerked on the car door's handle and stumbled from what had been his car, but was now a crumpled box of lines and faces. He took steps back, steps into the stick traffic, and kept breathing just as hard as he had been--completely panicking.

It wasn't just his car. It wasn't just Andy. It was the entire world, it seemed--even the clouds. An artist's nightmare.

Why, he thought, am I still normal?

And then a stick car rammed Sam in the backside, knocking him to the white road as the weightless car rolled over him.

Scarlet~ The City

Scarlet looked at the dozens of little prescription bottles on her table and tried to remember which ones she had to take today. First pink bottle, then orange bottle, wait ten minutes then little green bottle, follow with the two pills from the red bottle. Yes, that was it.

She took her medication and grabbed her bag, stuffing her wallet, notebooks, keys and four bottles of medicine to take during lunch. She closed all the lights, turned her iPod on high and went out the door, busying herself with locking it.

While humming along to her music, Scarlet opened the front door of the apartment building and almost threw up in fear.

Everything was...in stick figures. Oh, gosh, it was orange bottle first, then pink bottle! Scarlet shook her head, closed her eyes and counted to twenty like her therapist said to. This wasn't one of her normal hallucinations, unless the voices somehow changed the way her eyes worked, but as she opened her eyes again, she realized nothing had changed.

Scarlet sank to the floor, leaning against the metal door, before noticing that the door was too a black and white stick figure version.

She closed her eyes again and prayed this hallucination away.

Save me a spot please!

Max | The City: Home

You know that feeling when your heart is in your throat, and your body is moving 101 miles per hour which makes everything feel slow motion, but you can't stop yourself because you're gonna be late for work!? I hated that crap feeling.

As soon as I saw daylight touch my eyes in a sudden veil of brightness, I immediately shot out of my bed --or, futon-- and over to my messy dresser drawers for some clothes. I had the early shift this morning, and I knew I was late. The bright red blinking numbers of the failed alarm clock sitting on my night stand had been the first sight I'd met. How I despised mornings.

It seemed as though I couldn't dig through the drawers fast enough. What was I even looking for to wear? --Work shirt! That's right. I dug through the flurry of different colored clothes until I found the black polo with my work's logo on it. Once I was dressed to rushed-decency, I booked it into the bathroom to make sense of the disheveled mess that was my hair, and to rinse away the sticky morning taste lingering in my mouth.

All too quickly it seemed I was shucking my backpack over my arm, nabbing my long-board from the linoleum of the kitchen floor, and heading towards the front door of my dinky studio apartment in a matter of minutes. I began to breathe a sigh of satisfaction as I realized I now had some chance of making it to were I needed to be. It felt as though my smile were about to seep through all the tiniest cracks of the world as I hauled my way through the stairways of my colorless apartment building and-- . . .

. . .Wait a second.

My stride began to slow as I looked around blankly at the unreal conditions of my surroundings. I glanced down at my feet.

What the heck was this?

I hated absinthe-worthy dreams more than I hated mornings off filled with overtime. I rubbed my eyes roughly in the palms of my hands as I continued my aimless jog down the last flight of stairs and over to the heavy double doors that led to my exit. My breath didn't seem to come to me as I pushed open this blank white slates which led me to the outside.

My board fell to the ground from my arm as I took in my surroundings in muted awe. My brow furrowed in confusion as I turned my head away from the bare city scape and into the sky. Expecting to catch a whole world of grayish-blue, I was shocked to find that there was not even the slightest speck of color blanketing the world above me. Just stick-like outlines.

My head fell down with slow care to each detail of the naked buildings, the bare sidewalks, to the paint-less streets of my barren city. To everything that seemed like nothing but an empty coloring book.

Where did all the color go?

This sounds so cool! Is it too late to join this?!