Young Writers Society

Pain pulled at my back. Something drew me from my sleep; something that wasn’t right. I arched my back off the bed to relieve the pain. My wing flipped off the pillow that had somehow gotten underneath me. Sitting up I reached up into the air. Opening my wings to stretch, my muscles pulled and strained. Oh it felt so good. I reached up to the ceiling that I could not see. Dim amounts of light filtered through the blinds making my vision able to distinguish only shapes. I was still groggy, but I rolled out of bed anyway. My feet landed on the floor silently. I dug into the depths of my bag, the black ribbon I pulled out silky and smooth. I wrapped it around my short hair creating somewhat of a nub. Time to go and find some food. Slowly pulling open the door I peaked out into the dark hall. The window at the end gave some light for me to see but, definitely more than the bedroom. The door on the opposite side of the hallway and a little farther down it was cracked open a bit. I had the inclination to take a peak inside, even though I knew exactly what was inside already. Nervously I sneaked toward the door. I did not realize that I was biting down on my lip. I inched over the door hoping, wishing that it would not creak. My wishes were answered. The door stayed silent as I poked my head beyond the frame. The room was pitch black, and I wasn’t able to see anything. I sighed giving up.

Heading down the set of stairs I turned into the kitchen. I looked for a light switch, there was one positioned on the wall under the cabinet to my right. It was one of the ones that slide up to make the lights at different levels of brightness. I slid it half way up, but even that was bright. Stumbling over to the fridge I looked inside. Eggs, bacon, milk, wasn’t there something interesting in here? Yogurt hid behind the containers of left over food. I sighed shutting the fridge. In the corner of the kitchen a door held a sign: “Pantry” it read. There could be something good in there, quietly turning on its hinges the door revealed a walk-in pantry with food covering every side. Admiring the stocked up pantry I turned around in amazement. A small section of shelf was used for cookbooks on every subject of food anyone could imagine: sushi, desserts, breakfasts, gourmet, margaritas, alcohol, Chinese, European, the list went on forever. Skimming over the breakfast titles I looked for something that would be quick and easy. I found one with just those words for the title. Pulling it off the shelf I leafed through the pages looking for something that looked appetizing by the picture. Perfect, a recipe for eggs, of some kind. I didn’t know what they would taste like. What the heck, its not like the food that you make is going to be poisoned. Pulling to eggs out of the fridge I set the in a bowl so that they would not roll away. I was glad that I had helped Adrian with the dishes the night before, now I at least knew my way around the kitchen. Covering the bottom of the cast iron skillet with oil I cracked the two eggs into the pan letting them sit on a low heat. Taking the black spatula that had the butt of the handle melted to a stub. I tried to tuck the spatula under the whites of the egg so that I could flip it.

“The trick is to get them to be able to slide around on the pan before you get them to turn over.” Adrian leaned on the door frame in a pair of jeans and a clean-cut short sleeve shirt. I jumped in surprise, which moved the spatula up. Of course this broke my egg yoke letting it spread out all over the pan. Shoot, the recipe book had said that should not have happened. “Sorry, let me help,” He walked over gracefully and lightly grabbed the pan and I handed him the spatula. I stole a glance at his hand from last night. White gauze was wrapped around all of it, so it looked like he was wearing a mummy mitten. I held my weight up on the counter trying to see what Adrian was doing. He took the egg that was broken and threw it out and flipped the other one over. “Start to pieces of bread in the toaster,” he pointed to the black pop-up toaster in the corner. I hurried to the toaster and pulled to pieces of bread from the bag that sat right next to it. Dropping them in, I pushed down the two buttons.

“How did you sleep?” Adrian asked me half-mindedly.

“Fine,” I shrugged and fell silent as I remembered my dream from the night before. Matt. Why was I dreaming about that night? The night that he had lured me into his world, the night I had lost my sanity. The night I thought that I could trust anyone. I recalled the aftermath of that night, my after that night. Oh god what was wrong with me that I even decided to go and dance with him. Why?

“That’s good, I did too,” He did not look up from his eggs. I stared at the wall beyond compression. My mind was literally spinning out of control making the world incapable of standing still. My legs lost all ability of holding me up because of the shock. The cold of the tile seeped through my pants and soothed the heat on my legs. “Katie,” Adrian was next to me in a split second. He put his hand on my shoulder and let his fingers play with my feathers. “What’s wrong, are you sick?” My senses didn’t register anything; to me Adrian’s words were barely audible.

“Matt,” was the only word that fell from my lips. The one simple name that I hated, the one simple word that would haunt me forever.

“Matt? Who is Matt?”

“Nobody,” I was grateful for Adrian’s generosity, but I wasn’t going to tell him my deepest secret. The fact about my existence that I had never told anyone, I had barely accepted it myself. “Just let me go,” I pushed away from him, not wanting any contact with life. Why couldn’t I close that chapter of my life? Just get to the next one and stop regretting that one. Tears streamed from my face as ran up the steps to the yellow room where my bag lay on the floor. I could barely see as I jammed my clothes farther into the bag and harshly zipped it up. My tears made it hard to see. The one time that I left my isolation his memories came back to me. I sprinted to down the steps into the living room. Adrian stopped me mid step, his hands gripped my shoulders.

“Katie, forget it. His name can’t hurt you.” Little did Adrian know that every time I heard that name I felt pain roll through my stomach like a tidal wave. I put my hand up to stop him and pushed him away emotionally. I walked away to the front door. My wings spread to full extension as I stepped out the door the black feathers soaked up the rising sun. How horrible the sun was, I hopped it to be cloudy in the old part of town. The sun symbolized hope that I did not posses. I beat them heavily rising ignoring the pleas from Adrian. I did want to be near anyone right now. The silence of solitude described my attitude, and it was going to stay that way. I flew over the city toward the old part of town. The buildings were a blur beneath me. The wind whipped my face forcing my tears to my hairline. The familiar dark buildings came into view their silhouettes outlined by the rising sun. I veered to the right heading to the church. The sun flashed into my eyes, I dove in reflex. More tears were forced from my eyes. I flew through the circle of the church and landed not all that softly. I just stayed crumpled on the ground hugging myself and crying. How could this happen. How could I let my life try to get better when I didn’t deserve it? I hadn’t listened to my friends or family, I had completely ignored Amanda. How could I cause everybody so much pain and then not expect karma and my conscience to come around and torture me. I painfully pushed myself to my knees and proceeded to crawl across the roof. I was too devastated to stand for the slightest moments. I stared down the whole time figuring that I would know when I got to the wall. Sure enough I did, my head ran right into the wall sending off a showering of dust into my hair. I didn’t want to look up, to see the world beyond the stone, to see the world beyond the thick wall I had built up around my little world. Turning to put my back against the wall I hugged my shoulders. There were demons inside of me; they ate away at the hope. This was freedom to me, out here in the middle of no where, where I couldn’t bother anybody. Where my thoughts and feeling could soar higher and fly wider without bring back memories, or hurting anyone. I wanted to love somebody, but my ideas and memories made it impossible and improbable. The prospect of opening up to anybody was frightening. Not only would they run away screaming I would as well. The tiny time that I let someone try to be nice to me my memories shot me through the heart with a lead bullet. How I would pay for it if I ignored that feeling. The last time I did that I ended up in Heaven with regrets that would always fill my heart to full to allow for love. If they, the memories, were drained from my heart then I could fall in love, but then they would be filled with more regret.

Wing beats filled the air. The silent, perfectly still air. I didn’t move to open my eyes so that I could see the new comer. I knew who it was. I stood and took off just as the wing beats softened and feet touched the ground. “Katie, comeback.” He was pleading again. I would not be pleaded to. Groveling bothered me. I flew, still nearly blind. Foggy shapes drifted in and out of my sight. I steered wobbly toward a solid looking wall. Trying to grab on to the ledge I wrapped my arms over it. The emotional weakness running through my body affected my physical strength. I struggled to hook a leg over the wall and let myself drop onto the other side of the ledge. Rotting wooden boards creaked under my weight. I felt the soft grain under my fingers. His wing beats came again. I was too exhausted to run. Who knew that by just letting water out of my body would I feel like I had just run a mile. Feet landed next to me, and his back leaned against the same wall as mine. I was hoping that he would not say something. He granted my unspoken wishes. A wave of emotional pain racked through me, bring a new wave of tears. He had come to me. I couldn’t have him here. I didn’t deserve it.

“You want to know something I learned a long time ago?” I didn’t move, waiting for the response, “you can’t run from your fears. They always are one step behind you. You have to fight them. There is only one way to get rid of them.” I stayed silent except for my sobs. “You want to know another thing I learned a long time ago?” This time I nodded. I wanted him to talk now. “Being alone is hard. When you are with others they can help you.” My thoughts were whirling through my head. They were becoming scary. I didn’t want to give them time to register and give me knew realizations.

“Why are you here?” my voice cracked.

“Everybody needs a friend?” his voice was soft. “And you forgot this at my house.” I just looked up at the bright blue sky, not what he held in his hand.

“I don’t deserve a friend. I am a monster. My life is a mess.”

“A monster, just because your past is frightening, it doesn’t mean that you’re a monster, it means that you’re conscience is actually working. Katie, I am willing to help you get through this. I want you to trust me.”

“Adrian, the last time I trusted somebody I ended up here. I don’t know but if I trust you I may end up being more of a demon than I already am.”

“Demon. You think yourself to be a demon. Katie are you joking? You are the sweetest, prettiest angel I have ever met here. Demon is farther than far fetched.” The sky held clouds dancing jovially in between each other. What it would be like to be a cloud; coming and going with the wind. Angels were like clouds, and I was a dark one in the middle of a blue sky.

“I don’t deserve anybody; I’ll just break their soul. All the people that I use to love, I did that to them. My best friend, my family. The one person that I shouldn’t have trusted I trusted, the people I should have trusted I did not, and the people who had relevant things to say I just shrugged off aimlessly. I can’t do that to you or anybody else. Okay, it is best if you don’t stay with me because that is what would happen if you did.” Adrian was silent for a moment, contemplating for a moment.

“I never knew that somebody could be so wrong. You are so, deserving of everything good that comes your way. It is not possible for you to break a heart, not in the way I see it. It takes time to walk around the earth, I think that you just need some time to get around it and see this from a different angle. Time can heal everything if you let it.

“Time has had three years to heal my heart, but it is still scattered in pieces across the horizon. If it hasn’t been fixed it by now, it never will.’

“You haven’t given it the nurturing it needs. You haven’t had anyone to help you pick up the pieces. That is why you haven’t healed, because you can’t do everything on your own. Help is a necessity in life, but you have to ask for it to get it.”

“Love the life you have Adrian, mine is a lost cause.” I wasn’t sure if I wanted his help or not. It was so nice, but the world was too harsh for me to keep from my pain.

“Katie, I have a knack for figuring out the meanings of peoples names. Do you want to know yours?” I looked to him. What did this have to do with anything in our conversation? His eyes were soft, but not puppy like. He was being tender and kind. “Your name means pure. If that is your name then you must surely be clear and strong in your heart. Your beliefs are that you are evil and mean. Pure people are not evil and mean. There is something hidden behind your façade that is just waiting to break free. It is stunningly fragile, but it is gorgeous. It is the real you. Your pureness and your capability to be yourself.”

“My name is just a coincidence. There is no significance to it.” I was purposely fighting him now. I was not the one to believe his silly games. I was just being toyed with. I would not give in.

“Katie, stop this evasiveness. Why are you trying to pick a fight? It isn’t fair to me.” He was getting frustrated.

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you that the world isn’t fair?” I snapped.

“Didn’t anyone tell you that your life is what you make of it?” He bit back with more force than I had. I drew back in surprise. “Right now you’re making your life pretty hard for yourself. No one else is affecting it but you. You are the one to decide what it is like. Not even Matt.” A fresh wave of pain rocked through my body.

“Of course—”

“No that is your memories affecting how you feel. You’re letting him get to you. And if it the Matt I am thinking of he might have a found a weak spot, but you didn’t fight it back. You just let him take over you.’

“You know Matt?” I was in disbelief. The boy who wanted to help me knew the boy who had destroyed me.

“In Heaven, almost everybody knows everybody. Matt has a power that he can affect peoples minds, he can play with them mentally. But his power is only so strong, I don’t know exactly how it works, but I know that he can only stretch over a certain distance. When you came to my house, you probably came within his mental reach. He would torture you mentally just for fun. He is that kind of a person. Just because he can do that though does not get you free from what I said earlier. You did not have to run. If you had just fought back.

“How can I fight back in my sleep?”

“Not fighting in that manner. He is provoking you. Trying to find more buttons to push. If you ignore that you are fighting him, in the word fighting I mean resisting. Resisting his control.”

“He can actually do that? Control me?” I went rigid with fear.

“Not literally, but when you let him win, he gets a victory that allows him to control you on the way that he knows what to do to get you to do what he wants, to manipulate you.” The words sunk in slowly. He was right. My voice was incapable of creating a sound. I wanted him to say something more. He wouldn’t, we just sat there in silence. I noticed the reality of his words and how much I impacted my life.

“Why are you so persuasive? You were able to convince me to come stay at your house for a night and now you were able to do it again just now.”

“I know how to argue a point.” He stated simply. My eyes wandered to his face, calm and controlled by no emotion. How did he see my out-bursts?

“Adrian, I am not ready to go back to the city. I like it out here. The quiet is going to be good for my healing. Out here Matt can’t bother me while I try to put myself back together. Also I think that it would be a good idea for me not to go into public like this.”

“Like what? No one will notice you if we change your wardrobe,”

“Even though black and white are shades of gray, they are on opposite sides of the color. I would stick out more like a sore hand than a sore thumb.”

“I guess we’re going to have to find some more hair die.” He tried to muffle his laugh. I smiled for the first time today. “I understand that you don’t want to come back just yet but you need to come back soon.” I nodded understanding what he was saying. I couldn’t lie to him. I had to heal a little and then fight my fear, and then heal a little, and then fight my fear again.

“How am I going to get through my fears?” I was afraid that Adrian would make me confront Matt; make me literally face my fear.

“We are going to talk. You are going to tell me everything about Matt, how you met him, what he is like, why you are afraid of him. I will tell you about myself in return.” I was taken aback I had never spilled any of my secrets to anybody and I sure was not ready to now or anytime soon.

“Take a couple steps back. My history is my problem, and I am not willing to tell my deepest darkest secrets to you or anybody else. I wouldn’t even tell you my power last night, why do you think that I would tell it to you now.” I really appreciated his help and it was really sweet, but that was crossing the line. “Not even Amanda knew everything about me when I was human. I am like an onion. You have to build up my trust before I will let you peel off one layer, and then you have to build up some more trust before I’ll let you peel off another. That is how it works. Nobody ever got past the first couple layers. My parents didn’t even know much about me even though they thought that they knew my life in subsequent order.” I was so frustrated. I hated it when people asked about my personal pats. Did they not get the personal part of it?

“Who is Amanda?”

“My best friend.”

“Was she there when you met Matt?” He was trying to trick it out of me. Getting my story out through asking simple and irrelevant questions, instead of letting me tell him. I did not say another word. I saw nothing as I gazed ahead to the other side of the roof and started blanking out. “Sorry, just this how I learned to help. I always found out that the best way to fix something is to talk about it. I guess that this needs to wait till tomorrow.” I nodded tears starting to brim over. “Don’t cry. Then you’ll make me cry.”

I tugged on my lip with my teeth trying to hold back the tsunami that was about to break from my eyes. It didn’t help, salt water crashed down my face in a torrent of tears. I didn’t like being forced into anything. He sat there silently not knowing what to do. No guy ever does. When a girl cries he just sits there like an idiot oblivious to the obvious. It was so aggravating. “Katie, stop please. It isn’t making me feel any better about what I did.” He gave the typical guy answer. The waves of tears kept coming, but the tide finally started to recede.

“So,” I wanted to get my mind off the subject. “I need to go back to the church and get my bag.” I stood on the wooden boards hoping that they wouldn’t snap under me.

“I grabbed it before I came after you, and this you dropped as you took off from the house.” He held out a black ribbon. It must have fallen out of my hair when I flew off. I don’t know why, but I felt in the back of my hair for the ribbon; it was no longer there obviously. I gingerly took the ribbon and tied it around my stub of hair.

I leaned against the wall behind me the comfort of something to lean on was nice. Amanda had done that for me. A shoulder to lean on. I wished that I had never let her go, that I was still with her, still talking and sending notes to her. Our little notes full of secrets and whispers. I should have saved them. I should have kept every single one of them. So no I could look back on them and remember all the times that we spent together. Maybe it was a good thing that I left them in the trash can. Now I wouldn’t cry over them or her, but I guess all the crying I had done the last three years had partly been for Amanda.

“Katie, do you want me to stay?” Adrian’s words broke through my thoughts. I was about to contemplate my answer when my mouth just fell open.

“Yes.” why had I said that? I didn’t think I wanted him to stay, or leave for that matter. My mouth always became unhinged when I had been crying. “I think so.”

“Good, because I wanted to, I enjoy spending time with you.”

“Why? I am so stand-offish.” Why he like being around me puzzled me.

“Does it matter why, isn’t it just that I like your company?” His words were true. Why should I care if he liked it?

“As long it isn’t a bad reason, I guess,” I sat there pondering for a while. Everything had not happened that fast, but now the details seemed blurry. Maybe I had just seen everything blurry because I had been crying. Matt. What did he want? What was his objective to bothering me? Why could he not leave me alone, he had already ruined my life once, was he planning to do it again? If he was, I needed to prepare myself for the oncoming attacks no matter the form. “Actually, I don’t want you to stay.” Adrian looked at me with blank stare, like I had jus betrayed him, “I want to go back to your house. I need to face my fears and knock them down like the weak walls they are.”

His face was calm, with no emotion. “Two things Katie that you need to understand. Fear is not weak, it hunkers down inside of us, and not always can it be completely gotten rid of. The second thing is…” he trailed off, “This is going to be hard.” I nodded understandingly. “This is your comfort zone; I think you should stay here for a little while longer, until you are totally ready.”

“I am,”

“I’m not,” That puzzled me. How could he not be ready? I was the one facing the challenge. I for got the idea as he stood up. He was leaving. I didn’t want him to. But there must have been things that he had to do. I let him go reluctantly, only waving goodbye. As he disappeared I stared at the backpack at my feet. Standing up I took of toward the church where I usually spent my time. I contemplated the reasons to stay against the reasons to leave. The stats were much more toward staying here. A smaller risk of failure, with a huge chance of success. It would be so much easier to disappear into the depths of the old stone buildings, and never appear again. But Adrian was right it was time, and what was the quality of life if I spent it out here, where all I would ever do is morn, verses going out and taking a chance at what Heaven had to offer and all the Angels had to give. I had to try to heal. I could always come back here when I wanted to escape the tension of attempting.

Please criticise me harshly, I really want to improve this.