Ratty's Freewrites /// 7/17

Added 7/17
The young man was on his hands and knees, his breath coming in huge gulps, dark red liquid dripping from his shoulders and belt and jeans and long dark hair. His green eyes were squeezed shut, blocking out the images that continued to flash through his mind. His shoulders shook uncontrollably, and it took him a moment to realize he was sobbing.
Nearly silent footsteps moved towards him and then stopped. He opened his eyes, peering up through his sweaty bangs at the woman in front of him. Her clothing was splattered with the same blood that soaked the man, and her eyes glowed red.
“H – how can you get used to this?” he whispered, rocking backwards so that he was vertical but still on his knees. He hands shook and he clenched them tightly, resisting the urge to bring a few drops of the crimson liquid to his lips.
“Don’t fight it, Jeremiah,” she replied simply, her voice soft and elegant, so unlike her appearance. “Your instincts know what to do.”
“But. . . but I. . .” He trembled as he fought the very same bloodthirsty instincts that were fighting for control of his body.
“What you want doesn’t matter. Let go.”
“Let go. . .” he echoed in a murmur. Yes. . . Relaxing would be so good. It was so hard to fight. . . Why should he? It didn’t matter anymore.
He released the pressure building inside of him as he fought the voice in the back of his head, letting the bloodthirsty half of him take over completely.
The next thing he knew, his mentor was smiling down at him where he lay prone on the floor, sprawled on his back. The manic red glow of her eyes had dimmed a bit as the freshness of her hunt faded, but through Jeremiah’s now crimson-tinted vision, everything was gleaming scarlet. It was beautiful.
“Now do you see?” she whispered, kneeling down to caress his cheek in her bloodstained palm. “Now can you understand, Jeremiah? Isn’t taking human life worth it. . . for this?”
“Oh, yes,” he whispered, dazed by the sudden intensity of everything. Her fingers were cool against his fevered skin, her eyes ablaze with the fiery passions of their kind. “Yes. It is. . . so worth it. Everything. Anything. I would do anything for this.”



Added 6/29

I stood perfectly still, hardly daring to breathe. The guard passed by, one hand on his gun holster. All I could do was try not to move and hope I blended in with the wax figures of cavemen and Neanderthals and things. The seconds ticked by, each like hours. Finally he passed me and I let out a hardly audible sigh of relief, stepping cautiously out of the exhibit.
Beeep, beeep, beeep…
The alarm blared, red lights flashing all around. I could hear the heavy footsteps of security guards rushing in front all over the museum. I whirled on the spot, looking searching desperately for somewhere to hide. A pair of big, beefy arms suddenly wrapped themselves firmly around my chest.
“Going somewhere?” a gruff voice growled in my ear.
“Get off me, you big, hairy ape!” I spat, struggling to get free, but the guard was too strong. I even tried the standard groin kick, but his nuts were like iron. A moment later two more uniformed guards rushed in, hugging and puffing like the big bad wolf. One detached a two-way radio from his belt and turned away, speaking quietly into it, but I could still hear what he was saying.
“Control, this is Seven Seven Two. We have a Code Indigo. Repeat, Code Indigo. Requesting immediate backup. Over and out.” He put away the radio and turned back towards me. I was still trapped in the first guard’s arms, face contorted in fury. He leaned towards me, an ugly sneer on his already ugly face. “You’re in big trouble now, girlie. You have no idea what you’ve just gotten yourself into.”
I spat contemptuously in his face. “Go **** yourself.”
His sneer twisted into anger. “Oh, you’re going to pay for that one, girlie,” he snarled, raising his clenched, meaty fist to strike me. I braced myself for the blow.
“Seven Seven Two,” the third guard, who up to this point had remained silent, said coldly. “You will desist.”
“Just let me give ‘er one good blow.”
“Now,” he emphasized. “We need her in good condition.”
“Why?” I growled. “What’s the point of not beating me up if you’re just going to throw me in jail anyway?”
“Oh, you’re not going to jail,” the third guard said coolly, clasping his hands behind his back and turning away.
“Yeah? What are you going to do with me then, send me home?”
“No, no, Indigo.” I stopped struggling momentarily, startled that he knew my name. He turned back towards me, a cruel smile on his face. “You have no idea just how bad things are about to get for you.”

The girl frowned in concentration at the page in front of her. It was blank at the moment, but if she concentrated hard enough… Ah, there it was. Page 352 of her history textbook. She began to read, absorbing the information into her mind and filing it away for a later date.
She’d been able to do this for as long as she could remember. Flip through a book once, and call any page to mind at any time, to be projected onto another blank page. She kept a blank notebook in an identical cover to all her textbooks so she only had to carry the one book around and not the 8,623,297 other textbooks she’d been given for the year.
Academics came easily to her. Social skills, on the other hand, did not.
“Hey, bookworm!” someone called. “Want an apple to chew through? Here, I’ll throw you one!” A rotten apple soared past her head, narrowly missing her nose. Raucous laughter followed the fruit. “Oops, I forgot, you can’t catch, can you? Worms don’t have hands.” More laughter.
She got stiffly to her feet, closing the book and tucking it under her arm. She’d go wait in the classroom until the bus came.


Added 6/26

The young girl lay in her hospital bed, her face deathly pale against her dark hair, which in turn stood out in vivid contrast to the stark white hospital bed sheets.
The heart monitor beeped erratically, the little squiggly line wriggling all over the place like a snake in its final death throes. But there was no one around, no one to call the nurses, no one to hold her cold hand and stroke her too-still cheek and tell her that everything was going to be all right, that she was going to get through this, that she would be fine, totally fine, if she only held on.
No one was there to watch as her heartbeat gradually slowed, each quiet beep farther and farther apart. No one was there to see the monitor flatline as her pulse stopped. No one was there to yell “Clear!” and zap her with an electric shock in hopes of restarting her heart.
No one was there to cry as she slipped silently into the great, dark void that some call death.

The girl sat at the top of the hill, her knees pulled up to her chest and her arms wrapped loosely around them. She gazed out across the familiar New York City skyline at the horizon, which was currently streaked with orange and pink from the rising sun. She felt as if there was something she was missing, just over that horizon… If she just went a little farther, she would find what she was looking for. But she didn’t even know what she was looking for.
On the other side of the world, the boy stood at the top of the Great Wall of China, his hands clasped behind his back, gazing out between the battlements at the setting sun. His smooth brow wrinkled in concentration as he tried to figure out what it was that he was missing. His long black hair hung like a curtain around his face as he leaned forward to squint at the sun.
Where are you? she mouthed, not even sure who she was talking to. She brushed her mousy brown hair over her shoulder, gazing longingly out at the horizon.
Why aren’t you here? he thought sadly, wishing for the person that he had never met and yet had left a hole in his heart, waiting to be filled by that person.
She got to her feet and started towards the horizon as if in a trance, though she knew she would have to go too far to walk.
He felt the hole inside him ease just a little, and knew she would be coming soon. He wasn’t sure how, but he knew, and he would be waiting at the airport to greet her.

The sun sparkled off the impossibly blue surface of the lake. Tiny waves lapped at the sandy shore. Above the crystal lagoon rose a range of mountains, snowcapped and majestic. Worn down through the eons, they were not as high as they once were, but formidable nonetheless. An eagle took off from its nest and soared above, silhouetted against the clear blue sky. Its flight dislodged a few pebbles from the mountainside, which skittered down the sheer cliff face to land with small splashes in the water. Ripples spread from the places where they’d fallen, overlapping and bouncing back as they reached the shore, gradually fading away. The screech of another eagle echoed off the mountains, rebounding over and over until it too faded into the air and the serene location returned to its nearly silent state.

Tears streaming unchecked from her eyes, she stumbled onto the bus, glad that her long hair obscured her makeup-smeared face as she paid her fare and took a seat just behind the driver, where no one but the person in the seat directly across from her could see anything but her back. She folded her hands on her lap and wrapped her coat loosely around her shoulders so that no one could see them shake as she sobbed silently.
He left. He said she wasn’t right. Claimed she’d cheated. But she hadn’t… had she? Did holding hands with an old friend count as cheating? She wasn’t sure, but he obviously thought so, and wouldn’t allow her to explain anything.
She straightened her shoulders, swallowing the rest of her tears. He wasn’t right for her, then. If he really loved her he would allow her to explain. Honestly, he just seemed to be grasping at any excuse to break up with her. He wasn’t worth her time. She would move on.
***
Across the aisle, a man hid behind a wide-brimmed hat and a newspaper, his head ducked as if he were reading intently. His eyes were closed, though, a familiar galloping noise echoing through his head. He was never quite sure where it came from, but it seemed to appear at the most inconvenient times. The first time, for example, had been right in the middle of an important meeting. He had started looking around for the source of the noise, and, even after it was clear that no one else could hear it, kept insisting it was there. He wasn’t the brightest, you see, and his boss had fired him directly afterwards for making a bad impression on the company’s biggest clients.
The second time he heard it was during a job interview. He had been smart enough to keep his mouth shut by this point, but it was so distracting that he hadn’t gotten the job anyway, even though there was only one other applicant and she was barely qualified.
And just now, it had come again, right as he was in the middle of proposing to his girlfriend. Too embarrassed to face her, he had hopped onto the nearest bus, and had no idea where it was taking him.
A flash of light burst across the inside of his eyelids and he started, surprised. A fiery mane whipped into view, quickly followed by the rest of the horse. By fiery, he didn’t mean red, though. He mean literally made of fire. It stopped in front of him in his mind’s eye and leaned forward, as if asking him to pat its nose. Hesitantly, in his mind, he reached out to touch its snout. To his surprise, it wasn’t hot at all, merely pleasantly warm. He smiled behind his newspaper. Looked like he had made a new friend.

The little boy ran into the house, remembering at the last second to take off his muddy sneakers before entering. Unaware that anything was wrong, he ran into the kitchen, where his mother would be waiting with a warm hug and an after-school snack, like she always was.
Only this time she wasn’t.
“Mommy?” the little boy called, frowning. His stomach growled; it was used to having a snack at this time every day. Heavy footsteps moved across the ceiling on the floor above him.
“Mommy?” he called again, scampering happily up the stairs. “Are you hiding? Is this a game? Ready or not, here I come!” He laughed, opening the door to his parents’ room, and the sound cut off abruptly. His mother lay facedown and limp on the floor, motionless, a puddle of dark red liquid pooling around her head. A man with a gun looked up from his task of stuffing valuables into a sack, his cold, dark eyes locking on the little boy.
The child was frozen in place, shock rooting him to the spot. This couldn’t be real… could it? It was just a game… The man was his father and any second his mother would stand up, laughing her familiar laugh at their little joke.
The man turned his gun on the boy. He pulled the trigger and the shot rang through the otherwise empty house. The boy crumpled to the floor.
A pair of muddy sneakers sat outside the door, forlornly awaiting a pair of feet that would never return.

She sat on the bench, her breath misting in the cold morning air. Hands in her jacket pockets, she shivered.
Summer? she thought. What summer? What ever happened to relaxation, fun at the beach, working on her tan? Summer was supposed to be warm.
Instead it below 30〫. She was surprised it hadn’t snowed.
Dryly, she wondered if she had somehow been transported to Australia, or at least somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere, in her sleep.
She got to her feet, slapping her hands against her thighs in an attempt to warm them up and get the blood flowing again. They wind bit into her nose and cheeks and she leaned forward slightly so that her long hair fell around her face.
She wandered down the path, through the grove of trees that made up the tiny park near her house. Suddenly, she felt just a flash of heat. She backtracked, trying to find its source.
There it was again. She walked around in a small circle to determine which direction it was coming from. After several minutes of this, she discovered a small, perfectly round pool of water that she’d never notice there before. Even from a distance she could feel the heat radiating from it.
A hot springs? she wondered, kneeling beside the pond. She dipped a finger in the water; it was the ideal temperature for a warm bath. She longed to take a quick dip, but she didn’t want to wet her clothes; it would only make it colder when she came out.
Glancing around to check that no one was around – what idiot would take a walk in the park in this weather? Oh right, her – she stripped down to her underclothes and quickly slid into the warm water. When her bare feet touched the sandy bottom of the pool, the surface lapped neatly at her chin. She smiled, allowing her stiff limbs to relax and her mind to drift off peacefully.

I’m floating here… Well, not floating, exactly, because I don’t think I have a body, and I don’t think there’s anything to float in.
Maybe I’ve been here for a second. Maybe I’ve been here for eons. I can’t tell. Maybe I’m not here at all?
What is real, in this place? All those memories, all those bright, vivid colors and horribly loud sounds. Light. I long for light. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this is all there is, maybe those were just brief flashes of imagination… But what is imagination?
Maybe I’ve always been here, in this void I may have once called death. Or maybe I called it morte. Or shi. Or tod, or bás, or surm, or kifo. So many ways to say the same thing, that may or may not even be real.
What is real?
And then, suddenly… a light. A single, tiny speck of light, shining far away, cutting through the darkness.
What darkness? There had been no darkness. There can never be darkness without light.
But now there was light, and so there was darkness. And then the light began to move towards me, or maybe I began to move towards it, and it got bigger, and brighter, and hotter, until it enveloped me, wrapping me in so much light and heat that I could hardly stand it and then-
And then.
What?

This is the end. The end of everything. I’m lost. They’re gone. He’s dead. There was someone else too, I know there was, but... I can’t remember. I don’t know why. I know he was important. I know he was more important than anything else. But that’s all I know. I can’t remember his face, or his name, or what he did... I just know that I loved him. But now it’s like there’s a block in my mind, like I can’t think right. The light is blinding me. The darkness presses in on me. The noise is too loud. The silence is deafening. I can’t tell whether I’m standing or sitting, upright or upside down, I don’t even know if I have a body anymore. Maybe it’s been ripped apart. Maybe it just drifted away and I’ll just be a lost spirit, floating here forever.
This is the end of everything. And everything is just beginning.

“L!” Near exclaimed, tugging at the leg of the older boy’s jeans. “L!”
Lawliet glanced down, his dark eyes landing on the child crouched at his bare feet. “What is it?”
“Look!” Near pointed proudly at the tower of alphabet blocks he’d created. The letters on the sides of the cubes spelled ‘Near’.
Lawliet smiled tiredly wearily tolerantly. “That’s very good, Near.”
The small boy happily went back to his building, one hand rapidly constructing towers and the like while the other was busy twisting a lock of his wavy white hair.
Lawliet navigated carefully around the small boy's construction and
walked over to Mello, who was nibbling happily on a chocolate bar bigger than his head. Lawliet reached over and broke off a chunk, popping it happily into his mouth.
"Hey!" Mello protested, but Lawliet just smiled and turned away. Matt was on the floor, orange-tinted goggles over his eyes, utterly fixated on getting beating his high score in Grand Theft Auto. Lawliet crouched beside him, swaying slightly as the car Matt was supposedly driving swerved over the virtual highway. Another car smashed crashed into his and he careened over three lanes of traffic, finally smashing into the divider on the side of the road. The words "GAME OVER" flashed across the screen and Matt set down his controller, a scowl on his round face as he lifted his goggles away from his eyes.
Lawliet patted his shoulder and got up, his dark gaze
roving across the room to land on a box in the middle of the space on a table in the corner - a puzzle. He dumped the contents of the box out on the table and called the smaller kids over, and they set to work.
Near quickly began to assemble the edge pieces, snapping them together like he'd been born for the task. Matt had stolen two pieces and was making them race along an imaginary highway, adding sound effects as they accelerated and crashed into each other every few seconds. Mello was trying to eat a puzzle piece while absently trying to fit a chunk of chocolate into the puzzle. Lawliet laughed and moved the blonde boy's hands into the correct orientation.

“Mother!” the boy wailed, reaching for his parents in the dark. “Father!”
There was no response, only the young couple’s sorrowful faces fading away into the darkness.
L’s eyes snapped open, taking in his surroundings. He was in his room at Wammy House, crouched on a chair rather than using the bed. Judging by the light, it was about three in the morning.
Too wired up to try to go back sleep, the young man got up and left his room, wandering seemingly aimlessly through the halls. But, though it didn’t look it, L did have a destination in mind: the kitchen.
He slipped inside and raided the fridge, eating anything sugary he could get his hands on. Stress always made him crave sugar.
Stress, you ask? Why would L be stressed?
Because today was the day.
Today, the three top Wammy boys - Near, Mello, and Matt - would have their final assessment before L chose one of the three as his successor. Having eaten everything containing more than a few grams of sugar in the fridge, he proceeded to check the freezer, pulling out a half gallon of ice cream and beginning to eat it straight out of the carton while wandering around the rest of the kitchen to ransack the cabinets for more sweets. He had a feeling he was going to need them before the day was through. He made sure to leave a good-sized stack of chocolate bars for Mello; he’d seen what had happened last time that boy hadn’t been allowed to eat chocolate for a day.
“L?”
The young man turned to see a small white-haired boy in light-colored pajamas gazing blearily up at him, one small fist rubbing at his eyes and a teddy bear dragging from the other hand.
“Hey there, Near,” L said with a smile, kneeling to ruffle Near’s hair fondly. “What are you doing up?”
“Couldn’t sleep,” Near replied. “When’s the assessment?”
“Eleven o’clock,” L answered. “In the back yard.”
The boy nodded. “Okay.” He turned and wandered off, presumably back to his room, his teddy bear clutched to his chest.
A few minutes later L finished his ice cream and, his pockets loaded with sweets, he left, heading down the hallway back to his room. As he passed Matt and Mello’s room, he noticed a sliver of light shining through the crack beneath their door. Padding silently barefoot over to it, he pressed his ear to the wood, and could just barely make out a faint beeping sound and hushed, angry voices. He reached for the knob slowly opened the door, peering around it.
Matt was on his bed, a video game in his hand, utterly absorbed. Mello was on his own bed, a scowl on his face. L assumed he had been telling Matt to shut the thing up and go to bed already, but he had turned towards the door in surprise as L entered.
“What are you two doing awake?”
“It’s Matt’s fault,” Mello complained. “He won’t even turn off the sound on that thing.”
“Just give me a sec,” Matt said absently, his eyes glued to the tiny screen in front of him.
“Yeah, that’s what you said two hours ago.”
“Go to bed,” L told them, pulling the game out of Matt’s hands and switching it off.
Matt scowled down at his empty hands. “I was almost done,” he muttered under his breath, flopping back onto the pillow.
“Uh huh,” Mello replied sarcastically.
“I was!”
L hid a smile and left them to it, switching off the light as he left the room and pulled the door shut behind him.