Challenge Time!

That's right --- AGAIN.

Except this time, it's my turn to pick what we're going to do.

And you know, knowing me, that it's not going to be [too] hard, but it's different, and different is good... most of the time.

Bwaha.

This whole idea came from Katie, who was discussing how hard it is to write from a male POV, or with a male MC overall, by the way, so if you need to blame anyone, it would be her. (Love you, Katiebobaity... Heheh.)

Kay. So.

MY CHALLENGE TO YOU:

Since we're all of the amazingly talented female gender, I propose that we make up a guy character - He can't be based off of anyone you know (Jessie...), and can look/be/have the attitude that you choose.
But that's not really the challenge. The challenge is making him a main character in a short story. Simple.

One catch - it has to be first person, from his POV.

You can make him TELL a story about himself, or just write a scene that comes to mind with him as the MC/POV.

:)

OyVey.

GET TO WORK!

Love,
L!

DEPRESSING?!

Okay.

So I finally DID THE CHALLENGE.

It's a little over 2,000 words - 2,150 to be exact.

And another thing: It's (very) DEPRESSING. AND (very, VERY) CONFUSING.

But if you get it, you'll understand.

If you don't, this will just sound like a jumble-ish mess to you.

------

The funeral was a curious one; since he’d been so young, so charming, and so popular, hundreds upon hundreds of people came, parading around the place in their best black suits and dresses, some even recycling their recently-used prom dresses, crying their eyes out before the service. Most of the guests were around my age, mid-high school level, and it could almost guarantee that half of them didn’t have a clue what had even happened to him; they’d come just to get out of school; to get the attention of supposedly knowing him. The older ones looked tired and worn; as if the death had suddenly affected them, as well.

The service was painful and numbing, the decrepit preacher’s words being drowned out by loud, sudden sobs, randomly across the sea of commemorators, stifled only by the occasional tissue, which even then couldn’t help very much.

The family began after the preacher, giving their eulogies, several friends, and one of his more recent ex-girlfriends. They called him loving and caring, devoted and sincere, joyful and courageous. Memories were shared, pristine images filling the heads of everyone who’d chosen to pack themselves into the old Baptist church with its musty air and stained-glass colors splaying down over the floor, making people think that they’d known that side of him, too.

While the last girl cried for him, trying to tell her stories through her tears, I stood up from my place, the last seat before standing room only, and left. There was no point in being in there anymore, honoring someone’s memory when we all had our own.

I walked outside, out of the chilled foyer, as if they wanted to make you feel stereotypically numb, stepping into pure sunshine. It was ironic that this kind of blinding light could even exist on a dark day like this, like some kind of grim, twisted fairytale, but all the same, the world didn’t stop for one.

It was cold outside, though not uncomfortably so, but I pulled my coat around me anyway and headed out across the battered parking lot to the park. In appearance, it was crowded with laughing children and gossiping parents, but if you walked a little further, past the last edge of the latest installment of sidewalk, on to the torn and trashed rubble that was only slightly similar to anything resembling a path, through the very edge of the towering lot of trees, it was absolutely quiet for almost a quarter-mile stretch.

Not many people knew about this section of the park, or at least came here often. It was overgrown and sheltered, with the more ancient of benches and run-down water fountains in sight. When people did come here, it was usually the skateboarders from the nearby middle school; the place where they could build ramps that weren’t constantly being torn down.

In all, it was like this part of the park was a separate solace.

It was only when I sat down on one of the crooked, warped benches that I could actually feel myself shaking. Blame it on the cold, blame it on sickness – anything; just not the fact that he was dead. That couldn’t possibly be it.

“I’m sorry,”

I inhaled, my breath catching softly. “No,”

“No?”

“No.”

I sat there for another minute, looking at the remarkably green grass, before turning to the bench beside me, hesitant to speak.

Tim sighed knowingly, anticipating my question. “No, Jen. You’re not crazy.”

I turned away again, before turning back once more. “But I haven’t cried.”

“You’re not supposed to. He’s in a better place, and you know it better than most.”

I shook my head, looking up at the sky, feeling outright disgusting. “My best friend.”

Tim nodded beside me. “You’re special, and he knew that better than you think.”

I closed my eyes.

By ‘special’, he meant ‘different’, and by ‘different’, people would say ‘troubled’. Most would consider my differentt as a kind of disease; one that “must have been caused at childhood”, and truly, it had been.

When I was six, I had this old dog named Snickel who loved to be walked… or run, rather. Rachel, my mom, had always let me be the one to run him around the turn-around circle that the neighborhood across the street turned into; a distance of only a fraction of a mile. Being an unusually smart six-year-old, I decided that, one day, instead of running along behind Snickel, I was going to use my brand new scooter to tag along.

The funny thing was that it had worked.

I went three-fourths of the way without problem. Snickel kept running and running, without stop as usual, until suddenly, he smelled something on the street.

He stopped abruptly.

Most people believe that time doesn’t seem as long as most books say it does when you have a hard choice to make, but I’ve experienced different. At that moment, with my manual scooter still flying after the halting Snickel, I had to choose: run over Snickel or make a sharp turn.

I’d always had a heart for animals.

My turn caused the scooter to spiral out of control, throwing me off as it crashed into the pavement.

I screamed.

From there is where everything gets a little more blurry around the edges.

I was blinded by the pain; it was all from my legs, the hurt, the red marks all over that road, gushing out of my kneecaps. I only screamed that once, just because of my six-year-old pride, but the blood was scaring me and I couldn’t walk close to at all.

That’s when I met them.

Two boys, both looking only a year older than me, rushed up to me, asking if I was okay and if I needed help. They stood me up as dirty tears raced down my cheeks, both of them noticing my knees and offering to help me home. I was coughing then, trying my best not to cry too much, and choked out a no.

They sat there and watched me as I stood my scooter up and started home, walking beside it, Snickel no longer pulling. Every few yards, I would have to stop and wipe my knees off in the grass; the blood was running furiously down my legs, actually embarrassing me more than anything.

When I’d reached my house, I looked back one time.

They were gone.

Over the years, I didn’t see them often; only one of them ever went out in the yard, it seemed, and usually he would just pick up a toy and stare at it for a while, talking to no one.

But four years later, on my tenth birthday, I’d opened the door to find both of the boys, still around my age, standing at the door, one of them smiling shyly, the other one with a sad look in his eyes, standing behind the first.

When Rachel could only see only the shy boy in front, John, I knew.

When my friends couldn’t see the other boy when he was standing right in front of their faces, the idea grew on me.

When I had to stop trying to see if people could see him so I wouldn’t get sent to a psychiatrist, I was certain.

I could see an angel.

Ever since that moment when he stepped foot in my door seven years ago, Tim had been with me when I needed him, serving as my guardian angel. He hung out in my room at night, singing softly, or sat in the passenger seat on the first day at a new high school, just kind of watching out for me, talking to me, and making sure that I knew he was there.

He didn’t have wings, or a halo, or even an inhumanly appearance; he was blonde and blue-eyed, preferred worn-out jeans and plain tee-shirts, and had a gruesome history behind his death that he never would tell me all of.

“You couldn’t have…?” I questioned sadly.

“I couldn’t.”

I nodded, swallowing a sob.

Tim sat silently beside me.

“Don’t you feel anything towards this?” I asked quietly.

He looked down at his hands. They looked so real, even to him, as he’d told me once. “Of course.”

“But you still stick to...”

“It’s not in my ability to control life and death.” He said soothingly.

“You can only help little girls when they fall off of their scooters.”

“Right.” Tim quirked a smile. “You were thinking about that, too?”

I nodded, and looked out again at the crumbling sidewalk. “Do you ever feel lonely?”

At that question, Tim didn’t respond for a while.

“Well?”

He sighed needlessly. “I don’t feel the kind of loneliness that you feel – it’s not any kind of human emotion; I feel the loneliness of desertion, of heartache, of deepest desolation, of…”

“Death. Yeah.”

Tim hummed a lullaby, looking off into space.

Often, I would sit there for hours and think about things in Tim’s point of view. Nothing he experienced was often humanly, and just the way he handled himself was something curious; he was always there, but not, with varying looks on his face, though none of them ever revealed what he was actually feeling.

“There’s not a word to describe any one emotion of my own,” he’d said once, when I’d asked him after my father had left. “Whereas you, here, are limited in your speech, while where I am, I can express beyond all of the limits that language enforces.”

Now, looking at my angel, I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. He claimed not to think about things too much; just that he knew them, and the things he did have to think about were usually best left alone.

Suffice to say, we didn’t talk about his family or previous life very much.

“Jen,” he said softly, startling me. Usually it was me who started the conversations, “what did you think of him?”

“I thought…” I paused, trying to gather my thoughts. There were so many of them, jumbled up and tossed into my head, recklessly clashing into one another. “I thought that he was as close to an angel as anyone would ever meet. He was like you in a way, but more… touchable, almost. He would bend over backwards to make sure everything was okay, and most of all, he believed in angels more than anyone I knew.”

“Angels…” mused Tim. “How ironic.”

“Isn’t it? He used to talk about how he felt like he missed half of his own life after… well, you know better than I do… But he would say things about heaven and how he believed we were all being watched over by angels from heaven who could do anything; to who nothing was impossible.”

“Doing nothing is impossible.”

I rested my head in my hands. “So it seems.”

“So it is.”

I could feel Tim’s eyes probing me as I refused to meet them. His eyes were the kind that could see your soul; the kind that made you feel the answer before you spoke it, which made you consider everything before thinking anything.

The wind howled around us, rising through the trees.

“I still think I should cry.”

I felt Tim shrug next to me. “Crying is for those who mourn; you should know better.”

“But wouldn’t you cry, in my case?”

He was still, and what I said sank in.

“Sorry.” I said dully, glancing over at him.

“You forgot. It’s not a sin to forget.”

“I shouldn’t have.”

He laughed. “Forgotten that I’m not one of you? That I’ve never experienced ‘your case’? Relax, Jen, there’s no problem.”

He said that, and I got chills. Sometimes, the way he talked made him seem even more human, though at other times, he could seem more otherworldly because of the same words.

We sat there for a while.

Staring at the trees.

At the grass.

At the chunks of rock.

At countless, swooping birds.

And then I turned to him again.

“What about you?”

He looked at me, questioning.

“What did you think of him?”

I didn’t expect him to answer right away, and I was right in assuming. When he did answer, I could feel some of his soul in the words he chose, in the ways he expressed it.

“John was a believer in me, through hope and faith alone. He would’ve taken my place in a heartbeat had that car not swerved, and I think that he chose to see you again because he knew that you would be able to see me. That’s why you were his friend, Jen. Both of you could see me – through your eyes and his actions.”

I could actually feel the tears, my heart beating hard and slow. “So you miss him?”

“Of course.” He said sadly. “Anyone would miss their brother.”

------

Soooo? What'dya think? A huge lame-o mass of nonesense?

Hahaha. I wrote most of it today. It's almost two in the morning here.

Love,
Lauren.

♥♥♥♥

VICTORIOUS! I DID THE CHALLENGE, BOOYAH!

Okay, so here it is, my short story. Cheesy pasta as it may be it's here. I like it a lot better than I did, I've edited it a bit but not a ton. It's 1,985 words, I could have made it more but I was too lazy to edit it more. You get what you get ;) :P :) (Pssst.....picture is the best picture I could find of the MC......Ergh.)


I was so nervous that day and Ethan had been so…nice to me in the past few hours…I didn’t want it to end but yet, I knew it would, as every word finished the end came near and as I stepped into place my nerves had me worrying if I’d forget anything…Five, four, three; I counted down in my head as I stared out at the black veil before me, waiting for the lights to go up. Two, one; the lights flew on and immediately I felt my heart pounding. Taking a deep breath and letting it out I walked from behind the dark curtain and onto the polished wooden stage. I turned out, staring out at the chairs, blinded by the stage-lighting before turning my head and tilting myself towards my right as I heard gentle footsteps enter and come across the floor.

There he was, walking towards me as if nothing in the world was the matter. His eyes were locked on mine, deep green eyes on a blue ocean background. It seemed to take forever for him to walk nearly a foot from me, his blonde hair looked like angels were kissing it and creating a halo around his head. “Jessamine,” He extended his hand out towards me but I turned my head, “Come on, Jezzy,” His voice pleaded, the nickname falling of his lips like silk. I scrunched my nose and stared down at the small white dot on the wall towards the floor as I crossed my arms.

Ethan crossed his arms, looking away stubbornly as well. My eyes traveled back, right on cue-but it wasn’t the direction I was given that I was thinking of, that I was holding to-oh no. I was looking at him, out of the corner of my eyes, his jaw set firm, arms crossed tight across his firm broad chest, head tilted away at an angle allowing the white lights to kiss his cheeks-he looked completely gorgeous. It wasn’t hard to seem like I was in love with him because I really was. “I guess…” I trailed off, lowering my arms and looking at him; his head turn towards me, an endearing-nearly passionate look in his eyes-never had I seen that look before and it hurt. “I suppose we could do it….for Mrs. Chamberlain and the other actors of course, Eden, it doesn’t mean-”

“We’re talking, I know.” His eyes rolled and he walked upstage. I made a dramatic sigh and followed. It all felt far too real, it was too real. Holding his hand out towards me he looked at me and I slide my hands into his, everything seemed to melt away so fast. Even as Cassandra did her role of being the panicking, nit-picking director and stormed off the stage it was as if she was so far in the distance I couldn’t hear her as Ethan and I pretend to fight by uttering words under our breath. Within an instant later we were sweeping across the floor together and it all seemed to fall into place. No longer did it feel like scripts and props, like direction and stage-lights but truth. It was like the last light of hope had shown down upon us. The way our feet occasionally stomped the floor board and then moved along with each other like waves the next was as if we were fighting some sort of war, some sort of loosing battle where every time we’d try to pull farther and farther away we were just being pulled closer and closer together. Finally, he pulled me in, there was no way to be closer than we were, slowly, gently he dipped his head down towards mine and just as slowly the lights dimmed.

Ethan smiled down at me lightly as the auditorium roared like thunder from yells, whistles and applause. “Great job, Faith.” He spoke simply as we parted at the same time the lights came up and our friends surrounded us. “You too, Ethan,” I said but my voice was droned out by the applause and he was paying no attention to me anyway, he was preparing for the bows. I was the only one still wrapped up in us…in what ‘we’ could have been. Time seemed to go by slowly as the crowd left and we began picking up. Ethan and I parted our ways, walking away out into the night in two different directions with our friends as if there was nothing ever between us, as if we were never friends, as if everything we’d ever been through didn’t matter anymore. For once in my life I felt like I was the only one who didn’t believe it over, or perhaps I just didn’t want it to be over. Either way, I was wrong. We never spoke again after that, both of us parted our ways and after graduation we both went on to college never seeing each other again. Or at least, he never saw me.


“There you have it,” The reporter said, “Ethan Camry on his latest film, The Black Hawke.” My friend sighed dreamily, “He’s so gorgeous,” she mused, “I’d see any movie with his name on it, he could make any girl swoon-making her fall head over heels for him. I’d marry him any day-did you see him in ‘The Great River’ oh dear lord.” She slipped farther down on the couch, “I’d die to have him speak words like that to me everyday.”

I found myself laughing a bit to myself as I changed the channel, biting into my pop corn. I always knew Ethan would be famous; he was so immensely gifted in many ways I was not. Apparently; seeing as I was still the little girl in South Dakota serving burgers at the local diner and struggling her way through college. Acting never got me anywhere, all it was, was a hobby. However, for him-it was everything. Scouts found him the minute he graduated from High school and gave him all sorts of scholarships; he went off to some famous drama schools and then bigger and better things. According to the news he'd won some awards a time or two, he seemed pretty happy-good for him. “Eh,” I shrugged, trying to hide my laughter, “That’s his Characters, Lynn, not he himself.”

“Oh yes,” She rolled her eyes, “like you’d know the real him. No one is that good of an actor, Faith, face it-he’s good to the bone.” I frowned lightly staring at the bowl of popcorn in my lap as her words repeated in my head. I didn’t know him anymore but long ago, when we were younger before he and I both changed we both knew each other as if we were one person. I shut off the TV and placed the bowl down on the coffee table, “We should get to bed, Lynn, I have work early in the morning and you have classes.”

“I wish you’d take your classes up again, we miss you.” She looked at me and I sighed shutting out the light as she settled on the couch, “I can’t afford to take full time classes, I’m working at the diner and trying to make something of myself-I’d be running ragged if I took full time classes.” I shook my head strawberry orange-blond braids swaying, “Night.” I bounded up the stairs as she called the same words up the stairs towards me. It took my a long time to get to sleep that night, a lot of tossing and turning were going on and I just couldn’t seem to rest my mind. However, after a lot of hard mind clearing attempts I finally drifted off.

“One burger, a fry and a grand ole shake.” One of the people from the kitchen called out at me and rang the bell. I took the food and brought it to the man whom had ordered it. “Jib, you’re here on an irregular day,” I mused, “well, thought I’d wish you a happy birthday, Faith.” I smiled brightly, “thank you, enjoy.” I flashed him another smile as my boss called me over and a skated to her, “What’s up, Gia?

“Some guy,” She nodded to someone in the outside patio, “he asked for you, but didn’t give a name, strange guy-have an idea of whom it may be or do you want me to tell him to get?” I starred out the window, “No, its okay, Gia, I can handle it.” I wheeled around her and headed outside, making my way over to the only person outside on the shaded patio on that hot summer day. He was dressed in a foe leather jacket, jeans, sneakers, and dark sunglasses. “Excuse me?” I asked and he turned to face me, “Faith,” His lips curved into a bright, broad white smile, “you don’t know how much I’ve missed you.”

I cocked my head, “I’m sorry, do I know you?” I asked and he smiled a bit, “Well, I guess it has been awhile,” He said and took off his sunglasses placing them in his pockets, revealing rememberable blue and green eyes framed by long blond bangs. Slowly I felt my lips parting and my golden-green eyes widening, “Ethan, what are you-how are you-why are you here?”

He chuckled, Lynn was right, he was captivating, “You think I’d miss my best friends twenty-first birthday?” I tilted my head and looked at him, “Last time I saw you we…” he shook his head and held up a hand, “Fay, listen, that was a stupid fight-come to think of it, I don’t even remember what it was about, I’ve been mad all this time about nothing or….at least…I thought it was nothing.” I must have made an odd face because he chuckled, eyes sparkling like diamonds, and reached a hand out to finger one of my orange-strawberry blond locks that was resting on my shoulder and not on my back like the rest of them in the pony tail. “You know, Faith,” He said looking down at me, “I was just jealous.”

“Of what?” I asked looking at him; his sudden appearance was so unexpected but so uplifting, “That guy, how he liked you-that’s the only reason I made that argument.” I looked at him, “Ethan, you were jealous of him, why ever on earth would that be?” He stared intently at my hair and then allowed his eyes to travel up, locking with mine-I began to feel like a stupid teenager again. “Because,” He said smiling lightly, “I loved you and always have, Faye.” I felt my temperature rising up and flushing my face, creating a bright pink to dust my cheeks. “Oh, Ethan….” I trailed off, “How on earth did you ever know I was still here?”

He slipped his hand around mine and we walked around towards the back of the diner, “Well, I ran into some of our old friends while I’ve been traveling, we talked a lot about new times and old…your name came up a few times and how you were doing and when shooting for my next movie came up to be close by-I thought now was the best chance I’d ever have..”

“To…” I pressed looked at him spinning around on my skates so I was in front of him, “To make up with you, and…” I smiled a bit tilting my head, “to show you actually care?” His eyes narrowed as a playful look filled his face, “That and more,” he said before leaning down and capturing my lips in his. “I’ve never stopped loving you, Faith.” He whispered and I bit my bottom lip smiling, “Neither have I, Ethan.”