Short Story: Vampires of Light

Vampires of Light

She stands at the cusp of a gorge atop a mountain. It is the highest she has ever been, but that isn’t saying much. She knows from the magical dial on the cuff of her shirt that it is nearing noon. But the sky does not reflect it. Instead the sky is dark, filled with the artificial clouds of the vampires that had overtaken her world well before her birth. She was here at the highest point she had ever been to clear the sky and banish the vampires of light. The people had given up, but Atieno had grown up with knowledge, and that gave her hope.

She holds out a book and opens it to the first page.

“I call you out, Lords of the Night,” she says. Her voice barely wavers.

Atieno had been born in the basement of a bookstore, between the shelves for dusty books about history and less dusty books about magic. From the books she had read, most births in the past had been celebrated, filled with joy and hope. But she had been born in a dark world. As the light had gone out of the world so had hope. Of the dozen or so people who routinely lived in the dugout caverns under the bookstore, Atieno was the only child. She had been a fluke, a mistake, and the unwanted child of a passing traveller. The person who had been her birth mother had left Atieno in the care of the old book peddler Mūz.

This world had no time for children. It seemed as if everyone had given in to the hopelessness of the dark. And in the dark recesses of an old barely used bookstore, she had surrounded herself with her reading by the light of a candle and later, as she delved into the ancient manuscripts of magic, she created her own light.     

“To your dark, I am the light.” Atieno continues. The dark clouds above her head begin to ripple as water ripples at the breath of a soft wind. Each page of the book that she reads from is one she made herself.  

Old Mūz had taught her to read as soon as she could and let the young Atieno at anything she could read. Oftentimes when the patrols of vampires came through looking for fresh prey, Atieno was tucked away in the depths of the caverns below. Mūz was a gruff and foreboding person, but she wasn’t about to let her only charge be taken by the vampires. They preferred the younger over the older, and that was the only reason Old Mūz had survived as long as she had.

“Ignorance will not win, because knowledge is power.” Each cramped line that she reads, a carefully scripted fragment of a larger spell.

“I act like I don’t know anything, and they leave me alone,” Mūz would tell her every time a patrol came through. It was a subtle warning. Those who knew too much, and especially those who acted upon it were taken away, likely to be eaten or turned into the wicked, mindless sycophants of the vampires. The warnings never stopped Atieno from reading everything that she could in the bookstore or asking thousands of questions of the displaced pilgrims that passed through and stopped at the old store for a breather, fresh water, and a brief moment of safety behind walls.

Years later, on her twenty-fifth birthday, Old Mūz was on her deathbed and finally gave Atieno the one thing she had always wanted: to know how the world had ended up this way, with dark artificial clouds in the skies, vampires trawling the surface unhindered by the glow of a sun, destroying lives, and slowly sucking the world dry. It was a thing that had never been written into a book that she could read. And those that passed through never wanted to speak of it, or knew little.

“Ignorance,” Mūz had said. “Is a dark, endless pit.”

“Knowledge,” Atieno begins to whisper. “Is a candle in the dark.” She had bound the book with the fabric of Mūz’s favorite tunic. Wrapped in that dark blue fabric were the threads of a thousand memories from Mūz’s life and the things she knew and loved.

“When the vampires arrived, people couldn’t see how dangerous they were; they ignored the problems, because their hubris prevented them from believing their world was in danger. But in the shadows, in the dark of night, the vampires began to turn people into mindless sycophants. And then, in the bright of day, the darkened minds of the sycophants began to turn more people until there were too many to fight. No one was safe.”

When darkness fell over the world, the only light seen for miles around were the bonfires of thousands of books burning into embers, embers that rose into sky to replace the stars that were now hidden from view. The vampires knew the magic of the world, hidden in its books and its people, were the most dangerous things of all, so those were the first to go. What little survived was hoarded in old hidden places like Mūz’s bookstore. 

“Speak to me, darkness.” The ripples in the dark clouds above intensify as the spells that govern the darkness begin to reach for her.  

Mūz was a young mother at the time, and she hid herself and her children in the old storage areas while the world around them burned to the ground. Her eldest son had died trying to save people in the initial darkening. Her middle child died while wandering the world collecting taboo books for her mother’s illicit bookstore. And her youngest died while trying to fight the vampires on their turf, using the same dark magic they did. After all that, Mūz had little energy for saving the world anymore. She had given up, even though in the hidden corners of the world people knew to bring Mūz any book they could find.

“I am not like you, but I am not so unlike you!” Atieno called to the sky. The dark spells were used to meeting its own kind of magic and absorbing it. Or meeting something so unlike it and destroying it. But Atieno walked the thin line between the dark and the light, seeking acceptance from the dark while also keeping it at bay.

“The dark does not exist without the light,” she says and holds the book up in front of her that carried written amalgamations of dark and light spells.  

Mūz had little hope any more, the last glimmer of which was for someone to take the resources she had managed to gather and put them to use. But by the time Atieno had entered her life, even that was a fading light.

In the many halls of hoarded books, Atieno found that glimmer of hope and turned it into the flame that drove her. With every book that was dropped off, she learned as much about the world and found the point at which all things, even the dark spells that covered her world could find balance.

In her final moments Old Mūz had said, “darkness can’t drive out darkness; only light can do that. You have been the best light in my life for the past twenty-five years, and I hope you can bring that light to the rest of the world.”

She reaches out with her balanced inner light, the weight of knowledge behind her and grasps at the threads of the dark spells above her, and with the lightest of touches whispers magical words into them, bringing them into the light. Force would not do, threats would fail, and aggression would only be met with aggression. With gentle, firm, and steady pressure, she makes the spells her own. Unraveling three decades of darkness. At her back, the people she had called upon to help her see the break in the clouds and add their own versions of the spells into the world. Their conjoined strengths coalesces into a wave of light. The vampires do not see it coming. They too have fallen victim to their hubris that they were untouchable. Ignorance was dangerous, but the illusion of knowledge even more so.   


~Fin

Poem: The Halls of the Sphinx

The Halls of the Sphinx

My beloved friend, my seeker of knowledge,

The answers you seek are beyond that ridge.

Nestled in a copse of willow trees

graced by a light and gentle breeze

Lies the greatest bookstore that ever was.

But to take a book you must follow its laws.

For if you don’t, if you ignore the only rule

A fate shall befall you that is ever so cruel.

It is called the Halls of the Sphinx,

And in its walls is a terrible jinx.

It’s tiny halls are filled to the brim

With books and rhymes of every whim.

There is no keeper or owner, because it owns itself,

But don’t begin to think it doesn’t know every bookshelf.

Once upon a time a man went in

And commited a treacherous sin.

Barter is the way of men, money the fuel

But to try to trade for coin you would be a fool.

To take a book from the store you must bring it one in exchange

Any topic, any look, any lore, it likes an extensive range.

This man took without giving the store something in return

He was a step out the door when his skin began to burn.

His life began to flash before his eyes

And he could not hide from his lies.

His life was laid before him naked and bare

With an inner fire everything began to flare

And each memory from his earliest days

Was ripped from him with increasing malaise

Until nothing was left but scattered pages in the wind.

The foolish man was no more for he had sinned.

Pages as white as bone, ink as red as blood

Began to fill a thick leathery cover in a flood.

The bookface, was his face, trapped in a gaze

That spoke volumes of his inner written essays.

Another man, tried to trade a single page

That was impossible to assuage

The needed balance for trade with the store.

A single page in exchange for a tome is to ask for war.  

So beware my seeker of knowledge

That you carry and acknowledge

A better trade than your breathing life

And avoid a death of everlasting strife.

For every man and woman that knowingly failed

To bring to the Sphinx a trade and was jailed

The Sphinx grows stronger.

And as the days grow longer

One day the Halls of the Sphinx

Shall have all the missing links.

Should we rue the day when the broad collection

of knowledge knows more than our recollection?

Until it knows us better than we know ourselves

Thousands of minds behind its countless shelves.

So beware gentle seeker and learner,

To trade well and be a careful discerner

Or you may be there for more than forty winks

In the tiny, breathing, living Halls of the Sphinx  

Poem: River Poet

Speak to me your songs, o river poet
down the streams of life and unto death. 
Give to me the words to breathe anew
in this shuttered, drowning world. 
Every word, a drop of water that bleeds
into earth to feed the parched and dying.
Water as clear as sky, a clear as truth,
as clear as eyes that know the world.
Tell me song of the world, of the shape
of love, life, and everything in between.
Speak to me your songs, o river poet
before the streams take you away into forever.

Updates

I'll be posting on here more. I've co-founded a writer's group with some coworkers and I've been writing more, so at the very least I'll be posting those things here too.

Book 2 is progressing well, and I think I'm within about two months of finishing it. There are definitely things that need to be worked on but I'm super confidant with what I've got. Some of the difficulties I'm running into right now are that there are three separate storylines in the book that have to twine around each other. In order to see the stories more clearly and give them their due, I'm having to look at each one individually and really focus in on the specifics.

I've also gotten a movie pass so I might as well start my movie reviews again. :)

The Rise and the Set

As the moon rises and the sun sets,
From the deepest dark, I sought you.
Embittered by loss, you fell naked.

As the sun rises and the moon sets,
From the brightest light, I found you.
Ensnared in love, I clothe you.

As the moon rises and the sun sets,
In a thousand broken pieces, you found me,
Embarrassed, I hid my face in shame.

As the sun rises and the moon sets,
You lovingly built a mosaic from the shards,
Emboldened, you showed me your scars

As the moon rises and the sun sets,
In the twilight of an old life, we find each other,
Enshrined by stars, we are united.

As the sun rises and the moon sets,
In the dawn of a new day, we walk together
Entwined, we are become one.

Victory, Death, or Some Kind of Hope

This is very much an Enemy Mine ripoff, but I had fun taking the idea and making it my own. I'd like to keep working on it at some point but for now here it is in all its terrible glory.

PART 1: DEPARTURE

REMI

No one could honestly tell you just how long the war with the Sailfins had been going on, longer than most had been alive, and almost longer than their parents had been alive. Time was meaningless out there above the planet Victory. Every day was defined by another skirmish, another defended beachhead, another ship crashing to the taboo surface of that disputed world. There were no discernible days, and except the slow roll of a clock that had begun to lose its meaning so many light-years from Earth. There was little concept of the passage of hours and minutes beyond the steady rotation of the planets around the foreign star.

Remi was a soldier. If asked she would tell you that she was a shoot first and ask questions later type of soldier. She was generally happy to follow orders and the loss of her parents to the Sailfins made the eradication of the the alien foothold around Victory a personal mission.

Am/Or (That's also another word for love)

Am I in love? 

Or am I just in love with the idea of love?
Love is water, it fills open spaces and changes shape,
the idea of water, like the idea of love, may not be the real thing,
It is a prelude.

Amor... it’s another word for love. Like water between your lips to give you life.

Am I happy?
Or is the illusion of happiness enough to keep me afloat?
It’s okay to just be afloat. Sometimes you have to fake it
until you make it.

Amor... it’s another word for love. Like the seeds of a vibrant flower, ready to burst.

Am I lost?
Or is it like that phrase that tells me I might be wandering?
Sometimes when we seem lost it is not loss, but a forging of a new path
It is discovery.

Amor... it’s another word for love. Like shuddering heartbeats in an empty room.

Am I alone?
Or is the desire for company just the echoes of my own emptiness?
You’re not alone, and you have nothing to prove to anyone
but yourself

Amor... it’s another word for love. Like seeing a reflection of yourself in another.

Am I here?
Or am I somewhere only birds and planes and people with untested jetpacks go?
I guess we'll never know. You think therefore you are, but if you don’t know
How can anyone?

Amor... it’s another word for love. Like finding air, it’s everywhere.

The charlatan and the pilgrims (A story dream)

I had what I like to call a "story dream" it's almost a fully formed story and I'd like to share it here. It will have the nonsense of dreams included. 

The world is ending. Catastrophic floods are only weeks away. A group of religious zealots have overtaken an island where they have built a theme park to celebrate their jubilation at the end of the world. They are led by a man, a charlatan, who is more home shopping network salesman than the leader of the chosen few. He has promised his people that a he has had a vision of a grand pilgrimage of a select handful and they will deliver the final piece of the puzzle: the holy grail (not actually sure if it was THE holy grail or something equivalent).

Hidden in the wilds of Peru is a fabled ancient city, and in it is hidden the treasure. So, the charlatan gathers up the youngest, most devout, of his number. There's only five of them, but one is his hidden secret, her name is Monday. The only reason he has gained such power is because of her, and he hopes that because of her their pilgrimage will not fail him.

"How can we survive this journey with only five of us?"
"Not to worry," says Monday and before the other four divides herself in to seven separate parts. Each named for a day of the week.

So Monday could split herself into seven different people with distinct looks and personalities, but other than that she never really had any effect on the story. It was just a thing that was.
So they began a pilgrimage across the sea towards Peru where the holy grail awaited them.
Across the sea, across the land, through cities that were increasingly empty and devoid of human life, to forests that were teaming with animal life (probably because they didn't know any better)

Finally they reached Peru where the lands were already flooded and the boat they commandeered drove them through rivers that had buried towns. They looked over the edges and saw houses just fifty feet below, now inhabited by fish.

Many of the people in Peru already knew of the coming disaster and seeking the holy grail too were moving in masses towards the mountain where it lie.

Through more jungle where they joined a group of Peruvian pilgrims, they climbed the old steps of a forgotten ancient city, up and up and up until they could see all the land around, clouds flying low and filling the trees with fog.

They reached the center of the city and and when they searched and asked about the holy grail everyone just said: "It is here. It is here."

But they couldn't understand, there was nothing here except an old city.
They wasted away the weeks, the catastrophe drawing closer, trying to find the holy grail in the city, but it wasn't until they began to understand the words of the Peruvians around them that they began to understand that the CITY was the holy grail.

"What do we do now?" one of Monday's seven asked.

"We cannot return, the catastrophe is only three days away."

So it happened, the world flooded and there was no way to tell what happened to anyone else on earth. 

Did they make it to high ground?

They had to begin a new life.

The end!

Dignified Identity

This is a short story dealing with a few issues. Read at your own risk. 

DIGNIFIED IDENTITY

A Story Of Death And Rebirth. A Story Of Loss And Love.

In the summer of 2012 my best-friend and the love of my life tied two cement blocks to her ankles and drowned herself in the ocean. That warm cloudy day, she died and I was reborn.

Cameron Everly was barely a day over sixteen when she decided that she wanted to die under her own terms.

“I want you to take my identity,” she said to me three days after she turned sixteen.

“What?” I asked. I stopped mid-bite, the spoonful of pudding slid off and splattered on the floor.

Cameron had been bedridden for almost two months now and the cream colored hospital room had become our sanctuary since she couldn’t escape up to my attic room anymore.

I sat with her every afternoon after school with the lights off watching the sun go down through the open blinds. Our conversations were usually light hearted except when she pressed me to discuss my feelings about my family. I always felt terrible griping about my silly problems when she was lying there with cancer ridden lungs. But she insisted, she said they made her focus less on her own problems.

“I want you to take my identity,” she said again. She turned towards me, her face catching the shadows of leaves from the setting sun.

I mournfully stared down at my lost pudding but my head was trying to make sense of what Cameron was saying. All I could think of was a stupid conversation we had months ago right before she’d gotten diagnosed with The Cancer. She had said that we could run away and assume each other’s identities and no one would be the wiser. I had been upset that day, I’d gotten into a nasty fight with my parents about something that I couldn’t even remember anymore. And Cameron, ever the adventurous one, had outlined a million ways we could run away to Canada or Alaska and live like the Inuit. I don’t know why she always suggested cold places to run away to. I preferred our well heated Florida.   

“Are we going to run away to the North Pole this time?” I asked with a grin. She smiled softly but in a way that I knew she wasn’t teasing. She was very serious.

“Help me up,” she said. I hopped off the chair and helped so she was sitting upright in the bed.

“I don’t think I’m cool enough to have your name,” I said. I scooted my chair closer to her bedside but I stared at her hand instead of her face.

She laughed. “What are you talking about? You’re cooler than I am.”

“Bah,” I said, and took her hand off the sheet. It had gotten so cold and frail. She squeezed my hand and rested her other hand on my head. I felt the tears welling up behind my eyes again.

She removed her hands and I felt her place something on my head. I opened my eyes. Her perfectly shaped head caught the light of the dying sun through the blinds making her look like a zebra.

I touched the hat she put on my head.        

She had a collection of brightly colored hats that her family had bought her but most of them went unworn. I had learned to knit while I was sitting here with her everyday watching her fall into a depression as her beautiful blonde hair fell away with every chemo treatment. She held off shaving it all until the last minute. I had made her a hat that looked like a Viking helmet. It was her favorite. She cried when she saw herself in the mirror with it on the first time. She claimed it was because she was so happy.

“See, with that hat, you could conquer Disney World.”

“I dunno, I’m more partial to Dairy Queen,” I said and handed the hat back to her.

She pulled the hat over her ears and smiled at me.

“What do you say, do you want to be me for the rest of your life?”

“What are you talking about, Cam? How could I be you?”

“Have you ever heard of Jack Kevorkian?”

“Dr. Death?” I asked. I remembered his name from documentary my social studies teacher had us watch. “Didn’t he die last year?”

“Yeah, but he was an activist for a patient’s right to die if they were terminally ill.”

I didn’t like where this was headed. “What does that have to do with me being you?”

“Winnie, I want to die,” she said quietly.

“What?”

“Yesterday, they told me that I have a couple months left. The cancer is uncontrollable now, the chemo’s not working anymore and it’s only a matter of time before I start to degrade to the point of--” She stopped and stared down at her hands.

I opened and closed my mouth a couple times, at a loss for words. 

 “Here’s what I want to do. We’re going to take my dad’s boat out on to the ocean and I’m going to jump in, and sink like the Titanic. You know I like the theatrics.” She laughed.

“Cameron, you can’t--”

 “I deserve to die with dignity, Winnie. I… I hate this feeling of losing control. If I have to go I want to go under my own terms. If I have to suffer through any more of this… I just can’t.”

“But why that?” I said finally. “Why drowning?

“I dunno, Jack Dawson did it.”

“Jack Dawson isn’t real, Cam. Plus he froze to death. Meat popsicle”

“Beside the point, Winnie. It’s my favorite movie and I get to choose how I die.”

 “But I don’t…”

“Do you love me?”

“I…” I stuttered. “Of course I do.”

“Didn’t you say when we were ten years old that you were going to marry me?”

“Yes.” I blushed. I couldn’t believe she remembered that.

“Well, I want to marry you too!”

“I don’t think Florida is that progressive yet.”

“It’s full of old Republicans, that’s why we get married in international waters and no one has to know.”

“And then you’ll kill yourself? I can’t--”

“But, Winnie, I can feel it. I can feel my body letting go. And I don’t think I have much time left.”

“But maybe…”

“There’s no maybe, there’s no but,” she said firmly. “Do this for me. It’s my dying wish.”

We ended the conversation there. I had to leave and I focused on my guilt about not cleaning up the chocolate pudding on her floor instead of her Titanic style death. I didn’t want to leave her, but my family would be wanting to have dinner and if I didn’t show my face they were likely to think I was hanging out with crack addicts or something.

My disagreements with my family had been trivial up to a certain point, typical teenage bullshit that probably would have passed with a bit more maturity. But I didn’t have a chance to let those trivialities go away.

It started with a casual conversation at the breakfast table. My older brother was talking loudly about his newest girlfriend. He treated girls like trophies and the more he got the higher he was on some invisible totem pole.

I hadn’t really been paying attention when my brother asked me, “so Winnie, when are you getting yourself a boyfriend?”

I laughed, and said sarcastically, “how about never.”

Eric laughed back. “Why? You’re not that ugly.”  

It wasn’t supposed to come out like this but I was feeling happy and secure and I wasn’t thinking about all the signs that should have red flagged me away from saying a damn thing. “I like girls, not boys,” I said.

My mother dropped her cup and it shattered with all her coffee on the floor. “No you don’t,” she said. She said it like her firm statement could change the very weather.

I felt a cold shock run down my spine. Oh crap.

“Never say that again, Winnie, you’re not like that!” she said. She got out of her chair and threw paper towels on the spilled coffee.  

“I…” I didn’t know what to say.

My dad started to laugh, but it wasn’t a kind of laugh that was playful. It was mocking. “Just a phase, Margie!”

I knew my parents were a bit dismissive of gay people. But a couple of my parent’s coworkers and friends were gay so I didn’t think they would be disapproving of it. It was only later I learned that they were okay with it as long as it wasn’t in their own house.

From that point on my parents scrutinized everything I did, where I went, and what I wore. My mother went on a rampage through my room and threw away any article of clothing that was remotely boyish. “No daughter of mine will be a dyke!” She said angrily as all my band shirts and jeans ended up in a trash bag. I managed to rescue the bag and left it at Cameron’s place for safekeeping. Whenever I was home my mom insisted I wear skirts and pretty blouses, but all it did was make me hate the color pink.

A couple nights after Cameron had declared that she wanted to die I came down from my room one night to get dinner and overheard my parents talking.

“Do you think we ought to send her to one of those rehabilitation summer camps?”

My resolve to leave with Cameron had been shaky, but those words struck me like a cold icicle to the heart. They thought they could fix me. But I wasn’t even broken.

I left without even trying to get dinner and headed back to the hospital. Visiting hours be dammed I was going to visit my only friend. I loved my parents, as flawed as their thinking was, but I didn’t want to be in that toxic environment any more than they wanted a lesbian daughter.  

When I finally got to Cameron’s room, she was asleep. She had a ventilator hooked up to help her breathe at night so the machines were loudly breathing with her. I crawled up into her bed and lay by her like a child woken by a nightmare.  

I cried into her pillow and apologized over and over when she woke up. She didn’t say a word and cradled my head to her chest, humming a song she liked until I fell asleep.  She was the only person who really understood me.
          I hated that she was in here, in this sterile place that had generic pictures on the walls instead of her movie posters. She must have been so unhappy to be trapped here.

We began to plan. I wasn’t happy with the planning to take Cameron to her watery grave but her mood got better every day. She had more life and light in her posture those last few days than she had in almost two years. The darkness that had entered our lives when she had been diagnosed with lung cancer at fourteen was dashed away and I felt like we had been transported back to when we were children playing without a care.

I avoided my parents even more. I was more confident about leaving with every passing day but part of me was distraught to leave everything behind. My distancing seemed to freak my parents out and one day they even took me to their pastor to see if there was any way they could pray the gay away. I wanted to puke when they all sat there with their heads bowed and called out to some merciful god to fix me.

Any misgivings I had about leaving dripped away with every snide comment from my father and passive aggressive look from my mother. My brother didn’t seem to know how to deal with me so he didn’t.

The last time I had dinner with them I smiled all through dinner and tried to chat them up. “Everything will be okay, you’ll see,” I said to my gloomy faced parents. I finally felt like Cameron looked. I felt like freedom was just a breath away.

That night after everyone had gone to bed I lifted the keys to my brother’s car and headed to the hospital.

Somehow, filled with some kind of second wind Cameron had managed to get out of bed and down the elevator without any of the nurses seeing her. I don’t know how in her weakened state she was able to even stand but there she was in her rumpled shirt and jeans that were too big for her standing at the edge of the hospital lot.  

She jumped in the passenger seat and giggled like she was going an illicit party instead of catching a boat to end her life. I quickly drove out of the parking lot and Cameron kicked up the radio and sang loudly with after midnight pop songs. I tried to laugh and sing along with her but with every mile my heart grew heavier.

+++

We got to the docks on the coast and parked my brother’s car as close to The Selfish Shellfish as we could. I will never cease to be amazed at Cameron’s ingenuity. Somehow she had managed to get copies of her dad’s boat keys.  She had clearly been planning a lot longer than I had been in on it.

She showed me how to control the boat and we maneuvered out of the docks just as the sun was rising on the horizon. Her father kept the boat fueled so we went out as far as half a tank would take us and then stopped to watch the sun continue to rise in the sky.

Cameron sat me down and handed me a small packet.

“Here’s my folder. It has my social security card, birth certificate, passport, and driver’s permit. It’s everything you’ll need to establish a new identity.”

I held it like it was going to explode. This was really happening.

“But first, I want you to marry me.” Cameron said with a huge smile. She pulled out two little plastic rings that looked like they came from one of those little vending machines in restaurants.

She took my hands and we stood in the middle of the boat staring into eachother’s eyes. She looked so silly with her knitted Viking hat on but all I saw was the pattern of her blue eyes. I dared no to forget what they looked like. My heart ached from the love I felt for her and the loss I was about to experience.

“I, Cameron Everly take Winnie Tyson to be my wife, till death do us part.” She said with such strength I wanted to believe that we were going to be together forever, that we were going to grow old and adopt a bunch of babies and die in bed together with wrinkles on our faces. She took one of the little rings and pushed it onto my pinky. It wouldn’t fit on the others.

“I, Winnie Tyson take Cameron Everyly to be my wife, till death--” my voice cracked, but I pushed through, “til death do us part.” She kissed me then and smiled. I put the little ring on her pinky finger and raised her hand to my cheek. Don’t forget the feel of her skin.

“Let’s eat,” she said.

We had a picnic in the sun and she started to tell a story. In the next two hours she told a story about the future we were never going to have. “We get married out here on the ocean and our boat runs out of fuel. We’re stranded and we have a long conversation about where we’re going to move to after the honeymoon.” She went on on and on talking about intricate details like the kind of carpet we will have in our first apartment to the kinds of coworkers we’re going to have at the jobs we get after college. “Then one day we retire, you from music producing and me from movie directing and move to--”

“Canada,” I interjected with a laugh.

“Canada! Oh, Canada!” She giggled. “And then we buy a house in the woods and grow some flowers that only grow in Canada. And we pay for our grandkids to come up every summer to play at the lake we’ll have.”

“And we’ll spoil them stupid!” I said.

“Fill them with sugar and send them back to their parents!” She laughed herself into a coughing fit. I patted her back until it passed.

“And then…” I started to say.

“And then,” she repeated, “we’re going to grow so old and wrinkly that you look like a prune and I look like a raisin.”

“Why am I a prune?” I asked.

“You’re taller, of course.”

“By like an inch!”

“And then!” she said again, “we’re going to crawl into bed one night, say goodnight and I love you to each other, and a shooting star will pass across a crescent moon and it will be the last thing we both see before we fall asleep for the last time.”

We grew quiet after that. Half-eaten sandwiches between us, I felt like a gap was widening. Her time was growing close. But the smile on her face was bigger than ever.

And for the last time that day I sobbed like a baby. It’s stupid that in the end it was her comforting me, but she was content with her decisions.

+++

At 1:35 Sunday afternoon, Cameron tied the two cinderblocks to her ankles, held the blocks in her hands and stood at the bow of the boat. “I’m king of the world!” she shouted.

Then with my help she sat at the edge of the boat and released the blocks into the water. She sat there for a few seconds and then looked back at me. She smiled and nodded her head. She leaned over and kissed my cheek one last time. Then she took her Viking hat off and put it on my head. “Remember me fondly.”

“I love you, Cameron,” I said.

“And I love you… Cameron.” She grinned and with sigh of relief she leaped off the edge. I trembled with shock as I watched her sink quickly. Bubbles trailed up behind her. The smile never left her face and her eyes never left mine until the darkness of the water swallowed her up.

She was gone.

I sat watching the point where she disappeared some part of me expecting her to rise up and come back to me. But realistically I knew she had used all her strength to come here. Even if she had wanted to come back she wouldn’t have had the energy.

I didn’t move for hours, suddenly lost. All the plans to run away had been so solid up till now. Because strong Cameron had led the way for weak Winnie.

But Cameron had given her name to me, I was supposed to be strong now. Everything that she embodied I had to honor. Her strength had to be my strength. I pushed myself up on shaky feet and took the controls of the boat once more.

 I drove along the coast until the boat ran out of fuel. Then I wrapped up the folder with Cameron’s identity in it and the Viking hat in a plastic bag stuffed it into a backpack and swam back to shore. I came out somewhere near Ponte Vedra Beach and walked up onto the beach. If it was strange to see a fully clothed girl emerge from the water none of the Sunday beachgoers said anything. I took a seat on a sandbank and watched the sky grow dark. It was hot out so my soaked clothes felt good on my skin.

I wanted to cry but I promised Cameron that my tears would only be from happiness after this point.

I opened the folder just so I could see Cameron’s name again or see her face on her driver’s permit. Along with the ID I found a smaller envelope and in it was a letter with some numbers written on it.

Winnie—or should I say Cameron?

Here is the account number and pin for my bank account. No one knew I had this so don’t worry about being tracked. It contains all my birthday, Christmas, and babysitting money from the past two years. I also managed to get ahold of my parent’s savings account information and transferred a portion of my college savings into it as well. I left the rest for my sisters and my parents for any expenses that might come up. Enclosed you will also find a $100 bill. Go get your hair cut, dyed and styled differently. From here on out you are Cameron Everly, unrelated to the missing cancer patient from Orlando.

Be safe, and I love you. Go be the best music producer you can be.

~CE

“I won’t let you down. I promise.” I clutched the letter and allowed one last tear to escape. I didn’t move for the whole night feeling my body go through another shock.

When the new dawn came I opened my eyes and saw the world with new eyes. I wasn’t limited to small minds and small lives. With Cameron’s blessing I could be everything I couldn’t before. She had left this world behind and given me the opportunity to better myself. I would never forget her and with the strength she has passed on to me I will make the world a better place.

 FIN

Word Count Goals plus Audiobook Woes

So my goals for the month of March are as follows.

I will continue to write at least 1000 words a day. I need meet or exceed 40,000 by the end of the month.  I expect that on some days and with more inspiration I can write a little more, and if I remember what happened the last time I got myself to stick to a routine it got easier and easier to write.

Sadly the guy who was going to do my audiobook had a huge acting gig come up and had to bow out. So I'm now looking for other voice talent and it may be an uphill battle! But I know once I got this audiobook done.

In other news, I'm trying to figure out how to make a video trailer for Kinetics. Not sure how to make one and not make it the stupidest thing on the planet.

Them scenes yo

So here I am working on Forces and with a bout of particularly nasty writer's block I decide to switch up which part of the story I was working on just to mix things up. Well I finally got to write a scene that's been in my brain for years. I can't tell you how good it feels to get it out. I hope now that I can write everything around it just as quickly. SO FREAKING PUMPED.

Movie Review: Jupiter Ascending

Genre: Sci-fi/Fantasy/Space Opera
Actors: Mila Kunis, Channing Tatum
Writers: The Wachowskis
Directors: The Wachowskis
Runtime: 127 mins/ 2hrs 7 mins
Soundtrack: Michael Giacchino

IMDB

Rating:
This is not to be considered a star rating. This is my personal point of view on how much I liked it. Some things are worth watching more than once, and some things not.

Never watching again, yuck.
Wouldn't watch again except if someone asked.
Would watch maybe one more time
Would not hesitate to watch again
Would watch multiple times, might drag a friend along for the ride.
Going to make everyone I know watch this movie

Going to buy it when released? Yes.

BEWARE! SPOILERS LIE BELOW!

Intro
Anyone who knows me, knows I love Cloud Atlas-- the previous Wachowski movie that met with mixed reviews. I love the length, the complex story lines and the interesting characters. But Cloud Atlas was based off a book by the same name and much of what I loved about Cloud Atlas came from that book. Jupiter Ascending is their most recent foray into original storytelling not based on anything prior.  The Wachowskis are what I consider TRUSTED. I will generally without hesitation go see what they put out. That being said, I was not disappointed.

The Story
Jupiter Ascending is about the titular character Jupiter Jones, played by Mila Kunis, who at first blush is an ordinary housekeeper who scrubs toilets and  fixes people's beds for a living. In a money making scheme initiated by her cousin to sell her eggs to a fertility clinic she is attacked by Grey-like aliens called Keepers. Thus enters our male hero Caine played by Channing Tatum who saves her and whisks her away to safety. As the story progresses we learn that Earth is a human-farm. That is, the leaders of the Abrasax Empire have seeded Earth with human genomes and after the planet has reached its carrying capacity they harvest the planet for genetic material that extends life. Jupiter is the genetic reincarnation of the former leader of the Abrasax Empire and has been targeted by the children of that former leader. They are vying for the control of Earth a veritable cash cow of sorts and all they need to do is get Jupiter to abdicate control.  

Most movies like this tend to follow the same sort of formula, so not a lot of it came as a surprise, but that doesn't mean it wasn't executed well. I thoroughly enjoyed the storytelling and didn't feel like was watching a poorly-made rehash of the last epic movie I watched. In fact, I was quite pleased that towards the end Jupiter actually took control of her own safety and even took on and managed to take out the Big Bad on her own without the help of our male hero. Yay for feminism!

I especially loved that she got her own gravity boots at the end in the last 5 minutes of the movie. Part of me had hoped that she could have gotten them sooner so her ultimate salvation from the wreckage of the burning city could have been under her own power, but we can't always have everything.

The Music
Another great score by Michael Giacchino! I can't say that I was a big fan of the music at first. It felt a little off in context with a sci-fi epic and it seemed to me that the music would have been better suited to a Gladiator or The 300-era epic. I feel though that it also may have been intentional to sort of evoke the epic feel of those kinds of movies. I did however, come to appreciate the music towards the end, and it never felt bulky or out of place with the scenery. I feel as though on a second viewing the soundtrack in context will grow on me.

Cinematography/visuals/effects/scenes
Wonderful cinematography by the Wachowskis. Very pleasant to view and I didn't feel put off by any of the visuals. The only effects that felt out of place were the lizard-like minions of Balen Abrasax.

The only scenes that felt out of place were a couple at the beginning that were there to establish the idea behind planet seeding. I felt like they could have been better placed or left out entirely. Some of the dialogue and situations later effectively explained the ideas.

Characters
Fairly typical characters for this type of movie, so no real surprises. As I said in the Story section I was very pleased with Jupiter's take-command attitude towards the end. I feel like her character progression took the greatest leap and it made me a very happy camper! I kind of wish Caine wasn't such a simple character, his back story was vaguely tacked on and I honestly didn't really feel the romantic tension between him and Jupiter at all. Which I'm okay with to an extent, but the tension felt a little too forced. Fairly on par with popcorn flick storytelling these days though, so no real shock.

As for our Big Bad, played by Eddie Redmayne, I think I could have done without his low, almost-whisper method of talking, but it certain made it shocking when he yelled.

Overall 
I plan on watching this movie at least one more time and then probably again when it comes out on blu-ray. Super pleased with Jupiter's character, going to give the soundtrack another chance, and I hope Eddie's character can grow on me. Despite the lacking romantic tension, I'm really happy there wasn't any gratuitous sex or or snogging. Lord knows I get tired of sexy times fluff taking away from precious time that could be used for storytelling.

A few of my favorite things
Crop circles! Bees! That Statue of Abrasax's mother! "I love dogs!" The ship designs! Doona Bae!

Favorite Trailer

Audiobook!

I just received the first fifteen minutes of the audiobook version of Kinetics. I'm so freaking excited! The wonderful Brian Richard Robins is doing the voice work and so far I'm super stoked to hear what he's doing with it.

Brian's ACX page

If production goes as planned then the audiobook will be available sometime in May or June.

Book 2 Update

Current word count 15,000.

The hard part is done, I have my beginning and my ending. Now the next step is writing everything in between. But if Book 2 (henceforth referred to as Forces) is going to be anything like Kinetics, then I've got about 90,000 words left to go. I was a little under par for my initial projection for the month of January by about 9,000 words. Real life sadly gets in the way.

My plan for the beginning of this month is to get back to full speed. Minimum 1000 words a day. That seems to be a good pace for me, so I really need to keep up with it. Forces is going to be a little easier to write, mainly because of how strong my foundation is in Kinetics.

I'm also considering what supplementals I'll want to put at the end of the book. While that's almost a cosmetic decision for later I still want to think about it in the process of working on it. In any event, time to get back to it.

~AWB

Pretty-fied

Hi my lovelies,

Just updated the website to look a little prettier. LOOK AT THAT HEADER IMAGE. Still got some things to work on but I'm liking where this is going. I'm working on getting some things together personal-wise but I should have an update on Book Two shortly.

Love ya!

Hello World

Inaugural post.

Not sure what to say.

:D

Hi guys, love you!

Here on this site I will attempt to post any writing news having to do with my books, reviews over movies, books, or other things that might cross my mind.