Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

 
 

View User's Journal

Report This Entry Subscribe to this Journal
FurrySoft/Catsue's Journal This is where me and my character Catsue will type our Gaian lives for all to see.


Ze FurrySoft
Community Member
avatar
0 comments
Portals, Part 1
She was running as fast as her little legs could carry her. The grass rushed beneath her flashing feet. Wind pulled at her clothes and long, blond hair. She didn't need to look behind her to tell the big men were closing in. She could hear their panting, feel their panic, even smell them. She wasn't going to make it out of the park before they caught her.

Just before the bald one caught hold of her, she dodged and turned to face them. "Please," she started, but there was something wrong with the way their minds worked. They didn't seem to hear her, and didn't stop reaching for her no matter how she dodged. Something had terrified them and all they could seem to think about was catching her and ... it was hard to tell what they had planned then if anything, but it didn't seem good. She'd never been so scared before. When the dark-haired man finally did catch hold of her, she screamed, "Stop!"

She screamed it right into their minds with all her might. She screamed it on every layer of thought she could. "STOP!" And both men stopped. There was a moment of confusion, then she pulled free as the dark-haired man crumpled to the ground, eyes staring in shock. The bald man closed his eyes finally, letting her run away to safety. It had worked. They had stopped. But the dark-haired man was never going to move again.

Gloria was out of breath by the time she ran into her house. It seemed odd to her that her father was sitting so quietly in his chair, reading. Brushing a stray strand of her long pale hair out of her face, she remembered that after the encounter, she'd clamped down on her telepathy and he probably didn't even know she was home until the door slammed. Her father looked up, eyebrows raised over his glasses. Her eyes were wide with remembered terror, and she ran into his lap to bury her face in his shirt. He barely had time to put down his paper before putting his arms around his strange little girl. He stroked her hair, a golden shadow of her mother's, as she trembled in his lap. He was at something of a loss what else to do with the child. He missed his deceased wife at these times almost more than any other. She would have known just what to do for Gloria now. He simply stroked her hair and whispered meaninglessly soothing sounds until she finally fell asleep.

Thomas carefully picked up his sleeping daughter and carried her to her bedroom. As he laid her in her bed and took off her shoes, he couldn't help admire the tiny perfection of her sleeping face and blond hair. She looked like an angel to his loving eyes. It helped that her eyes were closed. As much as he loved her, those bright yellow eyes were eerie even to him sometimes. Another trait inherited from her mother. He kissed her softly and left her to sleep.

The local news the next day was full of the story of two escaped mental patients, one found dead in a field near a playground, the other suffering amnesia but otherwise unharmed. The cause of death was listed as heart failure with no sign of foul play involved. But Gloria knew. She had somehow killed that man with a word, and the force of her telepathy. She never paid much attention to the amazing recovery of the other man, who never regained his memory but whose mind otherwise seemed better than ever. All she could think about was the death she had caused. She made a silent vow: I will never again speak, because it makes my telepathy dangerously strong.

Gloria had hardly noticed the passage of time. When her father remarried Violet he thought he was getting a new mother for his troubled daughter. Instead Violet hated Gloria, who simply dodged her attacks and ignored her. When Violet insisted the child needed to be institutionalized, Gloria had entered hell willingly, then withdrawn nearly completely from the barrage of intrusive madness. And so the years had passed nearly unnoticed as she wrapped herself in her own private world, an island of peace and wonder in a dark and frightening reality. Books were her only touch point with reality, and she read everything she could lay hands on.

Gloria suddenly realized something was terribly wrong. Her inner sense of peace was disturbed for the first time in a very long time. Who was threatening her? She took in her surroundings, and was surprised to find herself in her home of years ago. A dream? But no, there were differences. The kitchen curtains were covered with vegetables now rather than sunflowers. Something large and white squatted on the counter that had never been there before. Her step-mother Violet was there, and the years had not been kind to her. And the threat was immediately obvious. Violet held a gun pointed directly at Gloria.

Gloria's withdrawal had been so complete she hadn't noticed the trip home or the confrontation Violet was obviously ready to have with her. But now her mind struggled to make sense of what was happening in time to avoid being shot. Violet's mind was boiling mad in every way. She was angry, she was not thinking clearly, she was obviously dangerous. Gloria dodged as she had dodged so many strikes before, but this time the result was not a simple miss. This time it was a bullet rather than a hand she was dodging, and this time she wasn't alone with Violet.

Focusing on Violet's wild emotional state and erratic thoughts took all of Gloria's concentration as she tried to avoid getting shot. She'd never dealt with an armed person before, and didn't know exactly how to handle the situation. Her father's voice coming in behind her didn't really register at all before the gun went off and she dodged out of the way. It worked! She was unharmed. But the look on Violet's face wasn't simply disgust or disappointment or frustration. Horror filled her emotions, her mind. Her eyes widened with it. Confused, Gloria turned around to find her father lying in a growing pool of blood, the life rushing out of him in a wash of startled pain.

Gloria ran to her father as her mind struggled through the years of self-imposed withdrawal to understand the reality before her now. She had not spoken since her word had killed, and the tears streaming down her face would have prevented speech now in any case. But her father managed to whisper (or was she simply reading his thoughts as he would have expressed them had he the strength?), "I love you, Gloria. I'm so sorry I wasn't a better father for you." She hugged him, sending all her love into him, feeling his peace as he drifted beyond her ability to follow, pulled by a force too strong for her to hold him against.

Violet stood in stunned shock for those few moments as father and daughter bid a last farewell. Her thoughts had scattered and she was having trouble accepting the realization that she had killed her husband instead of that terrible teen-aged girl. She looked at Gloria, slim and beautiful even through the red-rimmed eyes and puffy nose and tear-stained cheeks. Somehow that girl had tricked Violet into killing him, and she would pay! Violet aimed very carefully at the girl's back as she bent over her father's body. This time she couldn't miss!

Events moved like a jerky series of vignettes rather than reality. Men shouted at the front door. Violet pulled the trigger. Gloria dodged at the last moment as her sense of danger warned her. The bullet lodged in the dead man's body, jerking it. The front door crashed open. Violet screamed again in frustration, pulling the trigger again. The bullet seemed to disappear. Men rushed into the room, guns drawn, aimed at Violet. Hands grabbed Gloria, pulling her out of the room. More shouts. More shots. And suddenly, silence.

Gloria slowly realized a woman was talking to her. The woman was dressed in a floral blouse and wore large flower earrings. Her brown hair was pulled back in a pony tail and her gray eyes were kind and concerned. Her voice was the carefully soft voice of a professional talker, be it counselor, psychologist, nurse or whatever. Gloria made eye contact with her bright, eerie yellow eyes.

The woman blinked in surprise at the eye contact. "Gloria?" She searched the girl's eyes for signs of awareness. "My name is Lexi. I'd like to help you, if you'll let me." Gloria slowly nodded, understanding and agreeing to 'let' Lexi 'help,' whatever that meant. Surely there was little harm she could do now. "I'm sorry about your father. Do you want to talk about it?" Gloria stared at the woman for a moment. She hadn't spoken for years, why would anyone think she'd start now? Slowly she shook her head no. "All right. I'll do the talking for now. I understand your father removed you from the place where you've been living for the past 8 years because you're about to turn 18. He said he didn't want you to be stuck there if you were ready to," she checked notes in a file folder and quoted, "come out of your shell." The woman met Gloria's eerie yellow eyes again. "So I'm guessing you really have come out of that shell. I'm going to include this in my report. For now we're returning you to the place where you've been, but I don't think you'll be there much longer." Gloria shook her head no. She could not survive with her sanity intact in that place of madness now that she was, as Lexi put it, coming out of her shell. Her mind would not be able to withstand the telepathic beating there. Lexi noted her concern, but said, "I'm sorry, Gloria, but at the moment there is no other place for you. It won't be for long, I'm sure." Gloria knew then what she had to do next.

Gloria waited for everyone in the house to be distracted. She reached out to Violet, but there were no thoughts there. Either she was dead or completely unconscious. Lexi was on the phone to someone about her, but she wasn't watching her so Gloria stood up quietly and slipped out the front door. The neighborhood looked pretty much the same as she remembered it, with trees waving now-bare branches and a bit of snow on the ground. She realized she wasn't wearing a coat, had no money or food, and maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all. But her feet were already taking her down the street to the main road a few blocks away. Before she could make up her mind about returning to the house of death for supplies, she was walking down the sidewalk, watching more cars whiz by than she had seen in years. They did look a little different in shape, but they were still very fast. She walked to the next intersection, and stopped, looking around for a safe path.

Suddenly cars stopped moving, and the noise changed to a screeching horror. Before Gloria could register the first cars involved in the crash, another car joined the pile-up. Then another car crashed into the mess. Other cars were slowing down and one even went off the street. Shouting came from bystanders stunned a moment before as some of them started to flag down oncoming traffic to slow down before joining the wreckage. One of the car doors tentatively opened and a man limped out, his face bleeding. He staggered off the street and sat on the grass, dazed. In another car a person slumped forward on a limp white cloth, unmoving. A third car contained a boy in one seat trying to wake the woman next to him. Gloria stood stunned, looking at all the confusion.

Gloria could tell the woman that the boy was shaking would not be responding to him in the near future. If she was not dead, she was completely unconscious. Finally the boy got out of the car and climbed over to the other side to get his mother out of the wreckage. Gloria darted into the street as she realized he would need help to move her. He reached into the car and began to pull on his mother just as Gloria got to them and began to help. At first the limp form did not budge even with both teens pulling. Finally they were able to pull her free. Gloria helped him carry his mother to the grass beside the street.

Gloria looked from the worried boy to the limp, pale woman. Tentatively she reached out to the woman's mind, digging below the empty conscious levels to the more automatic levels. She wasn't even breathing. Gloria looked at the boy, who was watching her with a growing sense of hope and despair warring on his face. She couldn't look into those deep brown eyes, so she turned back to the woman, digging even deeper into her mind, or whatever might be left of it. Not even the slightest heartbeat distinguished the body from the ground it lay upon. Sadly Gloria finally turned her eyes back to the boy. There was no doubt in her mind that the woman he so clearly loved and needed was gone from his life forever. He read it in her eerie golden eyes, but only started to shake his head, closing his own eyes to shut out the truth. "No." He spoke quietly at first, but then louder, "No! She's not dead!" Gloria held her breath, knowing he would not be able to deny the truth he knew in his heart for long. What would he do then? How would he face this unbearable reality? She decided to stay with him until he didn't need her any more. Unknown to either of them at that moment, it was a life-changing decision.

Gloria watched the boy closely. He was about her age, almost fully grown with a shadow of a mustache darkening his upper lip. He stood suddenly, a burning need to escape filling his mind. Gloria looked around but saw no obvious way out of the situation. People were busy running to and carrying victims from the wreckage. He turned into the yard beyond the sidewalk. Gloria followed him. On the other side of a large tree shading the front yard, she saw a huge hole upright, stretching from the tree to the house, surrounded by sparks that did not seem hot enough to catch anything on fire. What she smelled reminded her of birthday candles being lit. Around the hole the yard was as stable as ever. But through the hole was another world entirely. A field stretched into the distance, dotted with flowers of various colors. When the boy stepped through, she followed without considering consequences like how she might ever return. There was nothing in this world for her anyway.

She barely noticed the odd flowers in the field she found herself in. The boy was running away from the -- entrance? -- and she ran after him. She heard a sound of compressed air behind her and spared a look over her shoulder. The "hole" was gone. But running took her attention as the field gave way to an even stranger forest. The boy wasn't slowing down, and she didn't want to lose him now. Careful of the uneven ground, she ran after him, dodging low-hanging branches and raised roots of odd trees.




 
 
Manage Your Items
Other Stuff
Get GCash
Offers
Get Items
More Items
Where Everyone Hangs Out
Other Community Areas
Virtual Spaces
Fun Stuff
Gaia's Games
Mini-Games
Play with GCash
Play with Platinum