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Young Writers Society


12+ Violence

Meet me by the starry seacove, and I'll show you how to die

by Pompadour


A/N: This is the first time I've written in second-person, and it's pretty rough seeing as this idea just hit me and I typed it down in an hour. Anyway, enjoy. =)

***

You know those days where you're all alone, and that's not what's odd. What's weird is the fact that you feel alone, and the walls just stare back at you, silently asking:

"Can we crumble now?"

"Can we fall?"

"Just - please? Teach us how to fly."

It's one of those days when you know the glass is neither half-full - nor is it half-empty, because there's matter everywhere - and yet you feel empty, like your insides have been carved from hollow caverns the sea abandoned a long time ago. There's a vacuum inside you, but your eyes are black holes and all the light and the energy has been sucked away until the bleakness yells out at you. The screams are echoing ... echoing ... and you wonder how the world manages to sleep amidst these cat-calls and the jeering laughter that overwhelms you. You could call it a cacophony, but it sounds more like a despairing melody.

Have you ever felt cold? Like your insides are freezing up? Forget homeostasis and all the other dratted laws of science; you just do. Your fingers are numb - turned to stone. Your soul is of iron, and you're melting, even if you can't make sense out of it.

Hail the waterworks; open the door and let them glide in. Just one thing though: don't leave the door open. Pull it shut with a decisive snap. Even better, why don't you lock it? Then there's no-one to bother you with the "Are you OK?"s or the "Want me to stay by you?"s. There's no one to see you break down, to realize that your face is not an iron-plated barrack and you are indeed human.

And you're fine with that. Really. Because no one understands. And you have a feeling you don't want them to understand either.

You're not being stubborn. You're not being stupid. You're being practical, even though your feet are barely touching the ground. You're in a limbo; somewhere between cloud nine and the sinking stone we've termed as "gravity." And you're struggling, trying in vain to hold up the veil that hangs between you and the utter, stark reality.

You're scared. You're just so scared.

Reality smiles at you; a cruel, pointy smile that pierces through you like jagged bits of glass. And her cold fingers caress your face so gently, every second seems to be a lie. You shiver involuntarily and Reality's smile grows wider.

So cold. So cruel.

And her eyes are hungry.

"Like ice, the writhing mass that is your heart;

watch it crumble and quake.

Your heart may be maroon but red embers

stampede and crawl in its wake.

Are you awake?

Oh darling, are you awake?"

She sings to you like echoing ghouls in a garden shed, and you watch her dance, mesmerised. She twirls and un-twirls, pirouettes and leaps like a ballerina; a rampant moonbeam shattering the silent night-scape and shredding the rest of the night into wallpaper remnants, as though a tiger has clawed through a silk tapestry and you watch it crumble to the ground.

The world is rolling up, rolling up. The walls are coming closer. And you breathe, and you sigh, but every breath you take tears your lungs out and singes your eyes.

And it's crumbling. The night is crumbling.

Faster and faster andfasterandfasterandfasterandfasterand-

she stands by you again, holding an hourglass. Her fingers are snowy white and as she swipes them against your face you can feel the blood rushing out, like rivers of molten dragon fire. But you don't care. The blood is like an old friend, because you're used to it. In your dreams and every single nightmarish day. You remember his anger and his hard hand striking you until you cry and beg for it to stop.

Please stop.

You raise your eyes to Reality's cold ones, and she gracefully slides a scroll towards you, along with a quill fringed with turquoise lace. It looks strange, yet beautiful and forbidding.

"Sign it in blood," she whispers to you, sounding strangely sincere, "and exact vengeance."

But isn't sincerity a snake? Can you ever trust Reality?

Her grip on your hand is vice-like, and you feel your veins clogging up; your erythrocytes and corpuscles and goodness knows what other cells are pleading with you.

"Make it stop!" they scream, "Please!"

And that's when you make your first mistake:

You relent.

You start writing the letter, Reality whispering in your ear all the while. It comes to you smoothly, like music. Except that if this were music, it would be a deadened chord: a funeral march playing.

You're done. You've inked the last letter, and Reality finally lets go, nodding at you appreciatively. You gulp and all of a sudden you're swept over with a feeling of nausea. You watch as Reality's ghostly face fades away, yet the feeling of sickness still lingers.

Like waves sweeping off the shore.

And carrying the land away with it.

~*~

You're standing in the middle of your room, surrounded by heaps of paper and mountains of gathered dust. The air around you is heavy, like a dusky cloud filled with velvet smiles.

The piece of paper Reality handed you is still dangling from your fingertips, and you're reminded of a chandelier that's about to fall. But if it did, you think to yourself, it would mean disaster and chaos. So you raise the paper to your eyes, your knuckles white, your fingers trembling. You remember how Reality told you to "exact vengeance", but the only person you'd want to do that to is the "friend" that forced you to turn your own home into a prison cell. His name was Sam, and you hated him with every sinewy thread of your heart.

But are you ready for this? Are you sure?

Is this really the best way to fight?

Because when you finally read what you've written, you realize that you are far more afraid than you have ever been before. The letter says that you want to talk to him, resolve your problems and part as neutral parties in a war. As happy, different people. But that's not what it should say, and only you know the true meaning behind those words as you drop the letter by his brightly painted apartment door, fingering the knife in your pocket and walking away. An uncharacteristic grimace contorts your face, and your face is replaced with her's. You are not you anymore, but heck, you never knew who you were before either.

Until reality swept by your side, and you were never the same again.

You stand in the foamy stardust waves, a silhouette against the coal sky. The waves crash against the cliffs like a racketing symphony, as if eagerly waiting for the curtains to rise and the show to begin. Your face burns with hatred and terror, but you're not afraid.

Not anymore.

And you whisper:

"Meet me by the starry seacove, and I'll show you how to die."


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31 Reviews


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Thu Nov 19, 2015 1:35 am
FallWolf says...



An answer. (In first person)
(Okay, totally not meant as satirical or anything, but this story! It just needs an answer. If you really don't like it Pompadour, you can take it off or ask me to take it off. I won't mind (= )

I'll meet you by the starry seacove, but you may find me harder to silence than you think. With your blood red lies and contract with reality you may have spun a spiders web, intricate and deadly, but I am a swallow, a song bird that will not be silenced. Am I Sam? No, just a friend. The friend of your old friend, a friend of torn people and broken hearts. Your heart is broken, has broken to let the river of rage out to the world. Slowly, a shadow, your rage creeps out, attacking those around you and you cannot rein it in. You think you can stop this, stop the world from spinning ever down by slicing the nettles that once held you, beat you and broke you. You don't realize what I know, a truth that even reality must know. Drowning the nettles and thorns will not quench the burning in your soul. It never does.
So go back, go back to your room of paper and blood, go back to the darkness and let reality in, and tell her no. Go back while you can, while your heart can still be healed. Go back, I will help you, go back and silence the silencer, the woman who passes herself off as truth when really, she is just a shadow. My shadow, your shadow, it does not matter. You have started down a road, a road that, sadly, many traverse. Once you have silenced the nettle, you will find that the weeds now hold you in their entanglements. Force them down, stomp them under your feet, and you will see that the grass now cuts you, now pricks at your soft flesh. Burn it down, but more will come. There is always something to take the place of what you try to stop, if you try to stop it this way.
I am a songbird. I offer you a song, but will you take it? You have a broken heart, but you cannot fix it with a bandage of death. So I will meet you by the starry seacove, where the water beats the sand. What you do next is your choice, but remember.
I am a songbird. I am not so easily silenced.




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Fri Jan 10, 2014 3:57 am
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Iggy wrote a review...



Hey Pompadour! Here as requested~

You know those days where you're all alone, and that's not what's odd.


Rather weird way to start off the story. Not the context, more like.. the format of this sentence. You start off with a question, then veer off in a different direction. I suggest you reword this so it doesn't sound so choppy.

"Want me to stay be you?"s.


Wait, what. That doesn't make sense.

But isn't sincerity a snake? Can you ever trust reality?


Not sure if you did that on purpose? You go from personifying Reality to putting her back in a general form; by that I mean, not uppercapping the R.

You do this a few more times, so be careful if the intent was not on purpose. If it was, I would suggest you stick to keeping the R uppercapped, since you've given Reality a face and a personality, so she feels like a person, not a general word.


Oookay, so that was pretty dang good. Amazing, actually. I loved it! You've got a creative mind, like seriously. Where did this idea even come from? It was so out of the blue, but genius.

You did a great job with the poem, and an even better job with taking that poetic tone and weaving it throughout the story. It was really beautiful, your choice of words. You did amazing with taking the scene and using imagery to bring it to life, especially with Reality. I really loved how you brought her to life and gave her purpose. Excellent use of personification.

I'll also congratulate you on the beautiful metaphors. You used a lot of them, and while they were wonderful, I feel like you used so many layers that you covered the true meaning of this piece, which is that this guy is angry and wants revenge by killing this Sam? See, that was pretty confusing because it wasn't clearly told, or at least, told by more mentions towards it. You were so busy with the pretty wordplay and the Reality personified. I suggest you add some more details in about this, make it clearer why he wants to kill Sam and what Sam did to earn this.

Overall, I really enjoyed reading this.




Pompadour says...


Thank you so much for the review! :D I'll look through this again and make the necessary edits. Thanks again!



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Tue Jan 07, 2014 5:07 am
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joebot says...



Holy...
This isn't a review, I'm just stopping by to say... wow. The second person POV is amazing here. The descriptions of the emptiness in the very beginning really made me stop and look inward and search for those moments of mine. It was a great setup for a great piece. I love this.




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Tue Jan 07, 2014 4:32 am
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JohnLocke1 wrote a review...



Hello, my friend.

First, might I say that you possess an incredible way with words. Incredible, my friend. The vivid imagery and descriptions within this work were simply splendid. I applaud you for your fantastic, literary voice.

Second, some grammatical things:

Actually, I could not find any major grammatical errors. You are thorough with your checking, aren't you?

Third, some stylistic suggestions:

The screams are echoing ... echoing ... and you wonder how come the world manages to sleep amidst these cat-calls and the jeering laughter that overwhelms you.


I would take out the "come" in this sentence. It would really help your words flow smoothly, in my opinion.

You could call it a cacophony, but to me it is a despairing melody.


"...to me..." doesn't that go against writing in the second person? I never write in second person, so I may be mistaken.

You're reminded of the Snow Queen, the Queen of Narnia; each female monarch with a heart of ice who strides by you with sneers and snide glances.


To me, this ruined the flow of your writing. It just seemed so bulky and unneeded. I wouldn't use another character to describe your own character.

She twirls and un-twirls, pirouettes and leaps like a professional ballerina; a rampant moonbeam shattering the silent night-scape and shredding the rest of the night into wallpaper remnants, as though a tiger has clawed through a silk tapestry and you watch it crumble to the ground.


I don't think the word "professional" is necessary, here. It doesn't help the flow, I'm sorry I use flow so much, of your sentence.

Other than those few suggestions, your voice and style are incredible.

Fourth, your characters.

To be honest, I couldn't see any sizable character coming to life through your words, if that makes sense. Perhaps it's because I am unused to writing in the second person, but I just could not see a protagonist within this chapter. I had no character to latch on to. No one to look through and see the world that you have constructed. I seem to be in disagreement with the reviewer below me, but I simply could not connect with the main character, as well as not picture the protagonist at all. The writing seemed focused on description, and less on character. However, that is simply my opinion.

Fifth, your plot.

This is where I may seem a bit harsh. This piece seemed hectic to me. Your descriptions, similes, and metaphors were aplenty, but actual plot was scare. At a point, one must put aside vivid imagery and begin the plot. I didn't know where to look to find what was happening, because your descriptions and language were so intense. I had to comb through them to try and divine what exactly was going on. Half the time, I wasn't quite sure what was description and what was actually happening. I didn't know that Reality was actually a character until a few paragraphs after she appeared. And between all of your description and words, I could not find a main character. I could not find the soul that I knew would carry on the plot and take my attention by storm. Your language is beautiful, my friend. Absolutely gorgeous. However, I wanted to see the plot and the characters, as well. I'm sorry if that sounded a bit mean, as that was not my intention at all.

Overall, this is a promising start. You have the writing abilities to do anything you want, so I would drive your energies into plot, setting, and characterization. I know this is simply the first chapter, but it is never to early to start. Keep me posted on the development of this novel, or anything else that you write. I would love to read it. You have a wonderful voice. Happy Writing!




Pompadour says...


Thank you so much for reviewing! I'll definitely look through this piece again and edit. :) Thanks again!



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Sun Jan 05, 2014 12:32 pm
Dreamy wrote a review...



Hey there,

Dreamy here to review. This work gave me mixed emotions. This was very well written of course. I was able to connect to your main character. Her transformation and the reason why she transformed. What didn't flow right was, comparing the cold feel to Narnia Queen. It was tad childish and didn't exactly sound right. It kind of made me move out of the exact topic. I really liked the ending. It also sounded poetic and was like a fantasy. Good luck.
Keep writing!

Cheers!




Pompadour says...


Thanks for the review! :D I really appreciate it.




If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you; that is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
— Mark Twain