Young Writers Society

Chapter 1: The Gates...

Beep

Beep

Beep

I reach a hand out to turn the annoying alarm clock off, but as soon as it escapes the soft black comforter, the beeping stops. I dig my face further into my pillow and groan. Why now? I have school! With great efforts, I drag myself out of the bed, shivering at the cold that welcomes me. I peer at the alarm clock to find that it reads:

4:00 A.M.

I groan again and rub my tired eyes. Unlike most people, I cannot go back to sleep easily once I have woken up. By the time I did, it really would be time for school. I slink over to my closet and pull out some simple grey jeans, my black belt, my white t-shirt, my black and red high-tops, my Mass Effect hoodie, and pull my Halo beanie from behind some used binders before getting dressed and hunting down my small items that have no point in being carried around, but I can never leave behind. I grab my flash drive, ear buds, MP3, pencil sharpener, and stuff some writing utensils in my coat pocket.

Once that is done, I check the clock to find that I only took ten minutes to do all of that. Great, still about two hours before I had to even get ready for school. I ignore my reflection in the mirror my mother insisted putting in my room as I plop down in my desk chair. I know I'm not a bad looking girl, even with my plain brown hair of loose curls pulled back into a ponytail and green eyes. I would be the first to point out the not-so-obvious light freckles across my nose, or how my smile is lopsided. I did not need a mirror every morning to prove it.

After I mull over all the excuses I can find to have the mirror put in my sister's room, I spin in the chair for a while. There are plenty of ideas to get rid of by doing this, or I've always thought so. It does not take me long before I stop spinning and stare at the thick binder stuffed with paper, sticky notes, and doodles at the corner of my messy desk. Well, the story is almost done… Why not give it an ending?

I grab a pen and pull the binder to me, opening it all the way to the back where ten blank pieces of notebook paper reside. I tap the first blank page for a bit before clicking the pen and writing.

---{~*~}---

Ashley looks back at her teammate, Reaper, and then at the unconscious Rebecca. She feels tears in her eyes and drags herself to cover, pain raking through her entire body. They said she was not Ashley Blakewood, that she is no longer human. Yet, they lied. She is Ashley Blakewood all the way to her core, and the reason she died the first time was because of loyalty.

It seems history must repeat itself.

Ashley grips her pistol tightly before standing up, leaning heavily against the wall. A red-like fluid pours from open wounds, and the light from her scars dim slowly. She points the gun straight at her father, his matching hazel eyes filled with rage and his own pistol pointed at Johnny’s head. The teenager struggles in the insane man’s grip, but to no avail.

Ashley puts a little pressure on the trigger, “Put your son down, Jack. Put my little brother down, or I’ll shoot you. I will feel no remorse, or guilt, or any kind of sadness from it. So, standing there with a gun to your son’s head does not improve that any."

The soldier's voiced cracked. Pain was obvious on her face, and exhaustion plain. No one could have fought this far, not without purpose. Her purpose is now before her, and she strangely feels no panic. There is fear, she has feared for Johnny since the day she found out he was the infamous hacker known as Lloyd. She does not panic though. There is a peace, holding her weapon in hand- facing an enemy she has been terrified of confronting since she woke up on a lab table.

That peace, she understands, is an old friend.

Jack pushes the pistol harder against Johnny’s head, “Put the gun down Ashley.”

Ashley shakes her head and takes a struggling step forward, “Not on my life, Jack Blakewood. If there’s anything that I've learned, letting those close fall can only lead to further descent."

“Then you leave me with no choice.” Jack turns the gun from Johnny to Ashley and pulls the trigger.

The sound of the gun-shot forces the room into a heavy silence. Ashley’s eyes widen, and the red fluid drips from a hole in her head. She moves her mouth to say something, but the light from her scars fade away and she falls to the floor. There was no gory scene, no cry of surprise. It is a clean hole that decorates her forehead, marking her inhuman origins plain as day.

“ASHLEY!!!” screams Johnny in despair. He jerks around in Jack’s grip and with a little room, he manages to pull free. He snatches the gun from his father’s hands and points it at him.

“Y-You killed her! You sick bastard!” Johnny bellows with his eyes wide and wild.

Jack only smiles, which makes Johnny snap. The teenage boy pulls the trigger and the demented man falls to the very floor that he forced his own daughter to. Johnny instantly drops the gun and steps back slowly, his eyes now filled with horror; Horror that he killed, horror that he lived, and horror that he was even in this position.

A four-fingered hand rests on his shoulder and Johnny looks back to find Reaper, the Kradroog that Ashley had somehow fallen for. ”You’re safe now, Johnny…”

Johnny shakes his head and stumbles over to Ashley’s corpse and falls to his knees, “But Ashley isn’t.”

Reaper shakes his head and Johnny notices actual tears, “No. She didn’t make it."

Johnny looks at his sister’s glazed-over hazel eyes and whispers, “I only just got her back."

The teenage boy sobs over the body, like a brother truly would. He had no need to, no matter what people claimed. She wasn't his sister, not really. This Ashley Blakewood was just a reconstructed form of a dead symbol. Johnny wept, because she tried. He wanted to believe she was his sister, and she proved it.

He clenches his fists, his eyes falling to the gun he dropped. His mourning was washed away by anger. "Is there a reason she never gets to live her happy ending, Reaper?"

The Kradroog shakes his head and picks the gun up, studying it like a toy he despised. "Because she never had a choice, Johnny. The world threw so many expectations at her, and she could not help but solve everyone's problems. Perhaps, she was never meant to see the good she did."

After all the trials, the doubts, and the pain, she remained true to what she thought right. She may have been too blunt or honest in a moment that required a touch of sympathy, but she was a good person. Johnny understood that; he understood just as Reaper understood. The only difference is that Johnny has lost her twice now due to this unfathomable sense of duty. Duty, in his opinion, is a murderer. Reaper sees it as a way of life.

"She's dead, Reaper. Will the Galactic Leaders cover this up as well? Just like they covered up her involvement with the Vitarien salvation that she first died during? She's a blasted hero, and no one knows. Will she become another piece of digital information to be stuffed away?" Johnny's voice cracks with anger as he continues, "They are fools, they want to forget. I will make sure the galaxy knows, make sure they know who stopped a war before it happened. Nothing will be hidden anymore."

Reaper gives the mourning boy a worried look, "That was GR's intention as well, Johnny, and they turned into terrorists. Ashley would-"

"Ashley died! Four years ago, and today!" the human boy snaps. "Now, I'll make sure it was not in vain."

---{~*~}---

I put my pen down and close the binder, revealing the cover:

Resurrection

By: Laurel Sinclair

I smile and get up, only to run into some creep. My eyes widen and I barely get to glimpse him before he grabs my arm and I feel waves of electricity run through my body. My breath escapes my lungs, and I feel suffocated, trapped by just that hand. No ability to scream for help, no way of saving myself.

My vision becomes blurred and my knees buckle under me, but I do not feel myself hit the floor. Soon enough, everything is black.

---[^^^^]---

I feel cold stone underneath me, biting into my skin even beneath my clothes. Usually, I would have bolted to my feet and gone into a complete panic, but my body does not respond. My head feels like it’s moving through gel, my body feels like all the weight of the world is pressing on it, and my tongue feels thick and unable to be used to form intelligible words. My ears ring, and my eyelids are as heavy as lead.

To sum it up, I feel horrid.

“And the writer finally regains her state of mind! Splendid, I can get on with my speech!” says a voice much like Loki from the “Avengers” movie in 2013. I try to process that connection, but inevitably give up as I gain a headache.

I hear footsteps come closer to me and the voice says, “Well, perhaps you have not quite recovered from the transportation. You humans are such light-weights when it comes to such things, oh well. I’ll just fix that for you.”

A pressure builds up in my head, creating a searing pain that just won’t go away. Then…

Pop!

The pressure leaves, and I no longer feel the heavy weight or hear the ringing in my ears. It’s like magic, but no magic exists. It’s possibly some kind of science that I have no clue of. I sit up though, not being pushed back down, and examine my surroundings. I’m in a circular intersection as wide as a house, with levels of doors reaching up into a celling that I cannot see. Along the four connected hallways are even more levels of doors, unending and making me dizzy. The only door that isn’t attached to a wall sits right in the middle of this intersection, a plain and boring white door with a metal door knob. It seems out of place compared to the millions of elaborate doors everywhere else.

“Are you just going to sit there with no manners, or stand up?” asks the voice from before. I turn to him and see he has thin features, high cheekbones on a gaunt face that seems to be molded tightly to his skull. His eyes are a translucent white, with no pupils. His hair is an inky black, greasy and slicked back. He wears a tuxedo though, which is very out of place on him. In all honesty, I am creeped out.

I stagger to my feet and glare at this creepy man and ask with venom, “Where am I, and why have you kidnapped me!?”

The man gives a short laugh and says with a grin from ear to ear, and I mean that quite literally, “Why, you are in the Hall of Doors, of course! Where else did you think you were? I assumed the hallway of doors would have given that away. As for the kidnapping you… I haven’t, not really. You see, you’re neither here nor there. The door to your world has been momentarily locked in Limbo, unchanging and repeating the same things in the past twenty hours over and over and over again. I call it a run-on.”

He chuckles at his own pun, and I give him a look that shows I am in no mood for humor. He shrugs and gestures at the bland door, “The reason I have brought you here, honestly, is for mere humor. I am rather bored of keeping track of each door that comes into existence, and I have not let a creator walk into their creation for some time. I created a hat and drew from the billions of creators in your world, and it just happened to be your name that I drew. Luckily for you, the story was just completed!”

I lose my look of anger, as it is replaced by one of utter confusion. I have no idea what he has just said, but it’s obvious to me he is a mental case. That probably means I should leave right now, but I highly doubt that I’d find an exit in this place. There is far too many doors for such a daring attempt, not to mention, I am the farthest person from a risk-taker there ever was.

He waves his hand and the scene changes, bringing us up thousands of levels and I make the mistake of looking down. My head flutters and I stumble back, managing to trip over my own feet and falling onto the platform. The man gives me a skeptical look, but I’m currently too busy trying not to internally die over how high I am. I mean, I’m not afraid of heights, but only an insane person would not be scared being up this high. There is not even railing! That’s a death wish just waiting to happen!

“This here door,” says the man, patting a lovingly detailed dusky grey door, “Is your story, Resurrection. Or, at least, the realm in which it takes place. You see, this is my domain. I am the Keeper of Imagination. I am the guide to the deepest parts of one’s mind. I hold the key to every idea even the greatest of man-kind have forgotten. I even hold the knowledge of ideas never completed. I am the Gate Keeper, the all-knowing and eternal being. I will live the length of forever, even if life no longer exists. For ideas never die, they are just forgotten.”

I try to respond, but my lips form words that hold no sounds. I wish to say how insane this whole thing is, but I am too stunned to do such. How absurd this is! I must be dreaming!

He opens what is supposedly the door to Resurrection and I feel as if I could see the eternity he spoke of, except it was just a black expanse the color of ink. Thin black strands ooze from the door, barely the width of hairs, and each one coils themselves around my ankles. I feel a growing panic, and try to scream, except my voice seemed to be missing. They twist up my legs, separating and multiplying, becoming thicker with each inch. First my feet go numb, then my legs, and the rest follow.

I look at the Gate Keeper in sheer horror and he just grins and gives a lazy good-bye wave, “Good luck Miss Laurel Sinclair. We will meet again before your story ends.”

His voice becomes muffled, and I am again consumed by darkness. However, this is different. It feels like spilt ink, and familiar.

“Hmm… What do we do with this one, Captain?” asks a male voice, a bit on the grizzled side but belonging to one younger than thirty.

I hear muffled footsteps, but cannot open my eyes to see whom they belong to. “Take her to the ship; she might know what happened here.”

That voice… It sounds familiar, but I have no idea why.

I do not get the chance to contemplate it further, as I truly fall into an unconscious state of slumber. The world only knows I probably need it, considering the hallucinations I've had…