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First Chapter: The Last Day

I don’t really know how they didn’t see it coming, it was really obvious to me what was happening, but that may just be because I had connections. A few kids in Colorado saw it weeks in advance, but no one listened to them. Pity, they were almost right-on with the whole thing.

In the last few days of Life on earth all the signs made themselves clear; a girl in Texas who’d been on life support was starved to death when her tube was taken out, spilling innocent blood. The Pope suddenly fell ill and had to have his throat spliced and diced, leaving him mute for a month before the world ended. This is where the Colorado kids were wrong in their theories; they’d thought it was a cover up, but what the Pope wouldn’t have given to have warned all the good people. The entire world was readying itself for a potential nuclear winter, they’d all been stabbing each other in the back for years, and now the stabbed countries were finally feeling their own spilt blood and were preparing themselves for revenge.

The End was the result of a ticking time bomb, nothing was coincidence, it was all meant to happen, the bombs, the girl, the Pope, all of it. All it needed was time and the elements of surprise and fate. Maybe if the Pope had taken his cough medicine, maybe if the government had kept the girl alive, but they didn’t. They brought it upon themselves like the characters they were, and when it came it almost resembled an exact replica of the Sci-Fi thriller The Bible and its fight for Heaven in the end of days.

On the very hour that The Girl passed on, the Doomed had 16 hours to figure out what was wrong, they would have had 24 had Az not taken out 1/3 of the day – his family has never really liked mankind. Even if they did figure it out, they wouldn’t have been able to do anything.

Stupid #1: It’s the apocalypse! Run!
Stupid #2: Run where? It’s the apocalypse.


And following her death, every two hours exactly after she had died, the note of “E” would ring out in the whole world, each on different octaves, starting from highest, with the last one being the lowest tone. This happened eight times over a period of 16 hours, and I still think only the kids from Colorado noticed. What an oblivious species. Of course, it may be that they were just distracted by what was going on around them. Small children were the first to go- it was the Mormons’ idea- then all the old ones. I find it upsetting they didn’t kill the smart ones first and spare them the agony of having to deal with the rest of the idiots for 12 hours. And, of course, all the nukes were sent off, America was hit first - the Canadians were pissed - then Russia, Pakistan, France, Brazil, and lastly someone had the ingenious idea of hitting the already melting ice caps in Antarctica. Everyone was freaking out, the water was contaminated, people were popping pills to end it, there was mass slaughter everywhere, the moon was turning red (courtesy of Eve), and there were large earthquakes that started up at least once every half hour and lasted five minutes at the minimum. The beautiful thing about it was all the domino effects that were created in the small amount of time that Earth had left; because of the earthquakes every dormant and active volcano stirred and erupted, you couldn’t tell the difference from pictures of ancient Pompeii and Alaska by the time the first volcano let loose. The volcanoes created massive amounts of ash that killed most of the plants in the surrounding areas (surrounding being about the length of a country) and sent acid rain just gushing down, killing everything it came in contact with and creating rivers and lakes of death. The earthquakes had also knocked California off the United States, as everyone knew it would, California was then swallowed by the ocean, as was everything else to about the middle of Idaho. Following the West Coast being eaten, the East Coast lost most of the states from about Tennessee out, the South lost most of Texas, all of the islands in the Caribbean disappeared, along with New Zealand, Central America, Iceland, all of Scandinavia, Madagascar, Japan, most of Indonesia, the Philippines, the Florida Keys, Hawaii, the Aleutian Islands, the Queen Elizabeth Islands, Greenland, Uruguay, Chile, and countless others lost mainly because of the growing oceans.

The weather changed drastically; places that had never seen rain before were being hailed on, areas usually wet were now baking, snow was melting off of Everest, the sea heat up and cooled down in random areas and the winds picked up and brought level 5 hurricanes, tornados, tsunamis, and tropical storms. Dry areas that weren’t being rained on only got drier, and a series of violent fires broke out, helping to turn the sky grey as they not only burnt wildlife, but manmade toxic waste and proof of life as well. Flooding picked up anything in its way; gasoline, acids, oil, cleaners, cars, salt, poisons, and small animals and children as the clock counted down. Even Mother Earth was getting revenge.

As for the rest of the world, most of the animals were dead or went into hiding, except for these kick a** locusts that Az and I unleashed. They’d been Eve’s idea years ago when she had been PMS-ing for a few centuries, they had faces of humans, bodies of horses, huge stingers that belong on something really deadly, like African killer bees on steroids, leather wings, teeth like tigers…if I were on earth, they would not have been something I’d have wanted to mess with. They attacked first the people who hadn’t already killed themselves by drinking the water or popping pills, or been killed by explosion, then they went after the remaining animals. Had anyone been in space, they would have probably committed suicide because of the screams of the people worldwide, and the ugliness of the Earth. The sky was perpetual overcast, fire could been seen from miles outside of the atmosphere, the ocean was no longer blue, but a gross purple-ish orange color, and burnt areas were twice the size of the Great Coral Reef just off the coast of Australia, which had also been swallowed by the ocean in the last 5 hours of Life.

It was horrendous to the Doomed, but where I was, we knew it couldn’t have come soon enough. The Pit played Imagine by John Lennon for 16 hours straight and watched as the planet died. Ah, Kodak moments. Click.

Alright 4laugh

In that case, here's about the first two pages of chapter two!

Second Chapter: My Name is Ebony

Most girls dream of growing up, marrying the man of their dreams, settling down, having babies, and dying next to their lover in their sleep. I, on the other hand, did not. I didn’t have any ambitions or goals, nor did I have any idea as to what I wanted to do with my life after graduating high school. I was, by my family’s and teachers’ standards, a failure. But I was fine with that, they were assholes and I had perfect reasoning for not wanting to live most girls’ dreams.

Growing up? Sure, I wanted to do it, when asked what I wanted to be I always replied; “If I grow up, I want to be a secretary,” and it was simple as that. I had the goal to grow up, although I knew that it was a goal that could be easily interrupted and quickly thrown out of my grasp at any moment, and I always wanted to be a secretary. Secretaries just have to connect people to who they want to talk to, direct people to who they want to talk to, they sometimes can carry a stun gun, and most of the time the boss is sleeping with the secretary. It all seemed pretty good to me, I was getting the social interaction the doctor ordered and I was getting sex. Needless to say, The Man wasn’t exactly thrilled. The Man being all the people who had higher authority than me and could pretty much tell me what to do, even if I didn’t listen or obey.

I didn’t want to marry the man of my dreams because I had no man of my dreams. If you have a man of your dreams, you want perfection, which is humanly impossible (actually, I’ve come to learn that it’s impossible on all levels of being). I just wanted to be with someone who loved me, simple as that, and I wasn’t asking for much more. If I could ever meet a guy who could have a semi-intelligent conversation with me, could love me and accept my values, I’d be good. We wouldn’t even have to get married or have kids together, we could just be there. And actually, I didn’t want to get married at all, the whole concept of settling down just wasn’t interesting to me. If you ‘settle down’ where’s the fun? No more excitement, no more fun, and if you have kids you’ve got little people you have to set an example for, help grow up, keep safe, I just wasn’t up for it. This was the only thing The Man and I could agree on.

So, The Man wasn’t happy, even with my reasoning they thought I would fail in life. It wasn’t like I did drugs, no, I never touched them. By my junior year in high school I was still a virgin, I only ditched when I was sick, I did all my work, and I didn’t have any inappropriate piercings or tattoos, but it wasn’t good enough. I was me, I was a failure, I was sent to reform school; St. Mary’s Catholic School for Girls. And this is where I met Az.

I didn’t want anything to do with the school, obviously, but I didn’t put up a fight with The Man, I just went with it. I went to school during the week and worked in a cubicle on Saturdays and some Sundays as a telemarketer. It wasn’t fun, it didn’t pay well, but I didn’t care, I got paid and it gave me time to surf the internet and discover things most people didn’t care about, such as: the first execution by electric chair was on August 6, 1980, the man’s name was William Kemmler. Kemmler was sentenced to death for killing his lover, Tillie Zielger. I learned that in between punching in and the first time my boss came around to make sure we were doing our jobs. Anyhow, school, it was a closed campus during the day so we couldn’t run off and ‘sin’, but after school there was a ten minute interval where the gates were open so everyone could leave. For three weeks after New Years there would always be a boy leaning against the gate entrance everyday during that ten minute interval, and as far as I know no one ever talked to him, the nuns didn’t do anything (probably guessing he was someone’s brother coming early from an all boys school to pick up his sister, judging by his pants and button-up shirt), and no one ever saw him come or leave.

“Who is that guy?” My friend, Alyssa, asked me the third week he was there as she lit up her cigarette.

“What guy?” I looked up and got a cloud of smoke blown into my face. Alyssa wasn’t actually my friend, she just hung out with me because she thought we were ‘rebels’; I wasn’t really Catholic and she smoked. I didn’t like that she smoked, but I couldn’t have cared less.

“That guy,” she pointed over with her cigarette to the boy. He was leaning with his head down, his white shirt unbuttoned a single button, and his foot propped up against the wall behind him.

“I don’t know, I think he’s here to pick up his sister or something.”

“Nah, I don’t think so,” she took a quick drag and exhaled. “I think he’s here to pick up girls.”

I laughed and looked up again. “I really don’t think so, all the girls have already left and he didn’t do anything.”

“Maybe he did and you just didn’t see.”

“I’m not stalking the guy, I really don’t care why he’s here,” I told her. Alyssa was silent for a few seconds after that. I leaned against a tree and waited for my ride to come pick me up. Finally, Alyssa couldn’t take it anymore.

“Why don’t you go ask why he’s here?”

“Why don’t you? You’re the one who wants to know.”

“I don’t want to go alone, what if he wants to rape me or something?” I rolled my eyes, she was making it sound like we were in elementary school again, only more sexually explicit.

“If he wants to rape you then he’s probably going to take both of us with him," I told her.

“That was optimistic. Please just come with me. He’s been hanging out here for a month, not doing anything but sit there-”

“There’s a problem with that because why?” She just gave me a look. “Fine, I’ll go over there with you, it won’t make a difference,” she was happy nonetheless. Alyssa put out her cigarette on the sidewalk with her Mary Janes and started over in the boy’s direction.

“Hello,” she said when she reached him; I was lagging behind a few feet. The boy looked up and I noticed he had very pretty eyes, although pretty isn’t exactly the word for them, they were more intense. They were red eyes, not bloodshot or anything, but the irises were red-ish brown, like stained wood, and were balanced out very nicely by his tanned out skin and ratty black hair that wasn’t short, but wasn’t long enough to even touch his shoulders. He had a dull expression on his face when he looked up at Alyssa, like he didn’t want to be bothered but he’d put up with her to be nice. Alyssa threw her hand out to him for them to shake. “I’m Alyssa Gold.” The boy just stared at her hand.

“I’m Az.”

“Az? What’s that short for?” Alyssa drew back her hand upon realization that Az wasn’t going to shake it.

“Azreal.”

“Azreal? Like the angel?” She asked. The boy shrugged. “Wasn’t Azreal a bad angel?”

“I don’t know, I don’t care,” he started to put his head down in the position he originally had it in and stopped to look up again, this time at me. “Who are you?” I looked at him and tilted my head. I stared at him closely, caught in his eyes. I saw them dilate ever so slightly and a small smile played on his lips.

Haha. Danke, senor. I'll post the next couple of pages soon.

Aww, thank you! heart

Here's the next couple of pages of chapter two...these sections seem to keep getting longer.

~~~~

“Why?” I asked.

“I just want to know, who are you?” Alyssa turned around and gave me the You-Stole-My-Man look with her hand on her hip.

“I’m Ebony.”

There was a penetrating moment of silence before Alyssa spoke again.

“So, uh, why have you been hanging around here for the past few weeks?” I don’t know why she still wanted to talk to him after that, she usually gave up on guys if they were that strange.

“I’ve been waiting.”

“For what?” Az rolled his eyes up to Alyssa.

“For the sign, if I see it, then I’ll leave, but I haven’t seen it yet.”

“Are you Mormon?” That was me.

“No,” he pushed himself off the wall with his foot and started walking away. Alyssa and I didn’t move.

“Well, now we know which way he was going,” she said and turned to me. “I say tomorrow we follow him and see where he goes.”

“We’re going to stalk him?” I asked.

“No, we’re not going to stalk him, we’re just going to see where he goes.”

“I really think that’s considered stalking him.”

“Why’d you ask if he was Mormon?” She asked to change the subject.

“He’s looking for a sign at an all girls Catholic school. Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses look for signs of the end of the world, and don’t like women.”

“Maybe he’s Muslim.”

“He didn’t look Muslim.”

“He was cute,” she said, I shrugged. “Oh come on, you can’t tell me you didn’t think he was cute, that’s the type of guy you would go for.”

“I don’t go for any type of guy.”

“You can’t say that! You’re sixteen! You’ve got to have some idea of what you want guys to look like for you to date.” Alyssa already had developed her idea of the perfect guy around the same time every other 'normal' girl on the planet had. I had better things to do, like watch paint dry.

“I don’t date. I’m in high school-”

“Technically, you’re not,” she interrupted.

“Close enough, and I don’t date, it would go nowhere. Besides, he was like, I dunno, weird. And what would dating get me, anyhow? I doubt I’m going to marry the guy.”

Alyssa rolled her eyes at me. “I didn’t tell you to marry him, I told you to date him.” Marriage, dating, both were ideas I just couldn't grasp. That sort of binding contract seemed cruel, unusual, and unrealistic.

“And I told you no,” we stood in silence as Alyssa pulled out another cigarette, not to smoke, just to toy with, and waited for my mother to come pick us up. When she finally did arrive in her light blue Buick, Alyssa put the cigarette into her backpack and climbed into the backseat with me.

“What did you learn today?” It was a question for both of us, but directed at me. I think she read in a parenting book to ask that and not accept “nothing” as an answer.

“Nothing,” it was always my answer. I didn’t see how I could really learn anything when we were being taught to believe in something as improbable as God and the story of the Bible.

“I learned that I have a ninety percent chance of becoming a nun.”

“That’s wonderful, Alyssa!” My mother; so perky, so sprite, so faking it. “Ebony, what percent chance of becoming a nun do you have?” I rolled my eyes again.

“Point zero, zero, zero, zero,” I let my head wander around as I rambled off zeroes. Outside my window there was a Pomeranian taking a leak on a fire hydrant. I didn’t think dogs really did that. “…zero, zero, zero, one percent,” Alyssa giggled and I faced forward again to see my mother’s expression in the review mirror.

“And did they tell you why that is?” She asked with a snap like an alligator.

“Because I don’t believe in God, the Holy Ghost, or the Bible and I think Sister Angela is full of it.”

“Ebony!”

“What?” Did you not expect me to say that?

“Do not talk about Sister Angela that way! She is a very nice lady!”

“As true as that may be-”

“Ebony White!” Like my name? It’s an oxymoron. “Do not talk about Sister Angela that way. She is teaching you the right path and you are just throwing it out the window. You’re never going to succeed in life if you keep this up!”

“Oh, but I’ll succeed in life if I lie to myself and everyone around me and tell them that I believe that there is one being who created everything? If I tell myself that I am in fact a sinner because I have breasts and ovaries? That I’m going to burn in some sort of Hell because I was born this way and because I enjoy life, glutton, greed, and can’t help but be angry? Is that how I’m going to succeed?” Alyssa put her head down; she didn’t want to be a part of another one of our mother/daughter fights; she’d seen enough to know to stay out. My mom was pissed.

“Ebony Hannah White,” wow, middle name. “You’re grounded! Do not back talk me, especially in front of your friends!” Alyssa still didn’t lift her head. “I’m so sorry for Ebony’s behavior, Alyssa.”

“Its okay, Ms. White.”

“No, it’s not okay, she’s being very disrespectful to you and our Lord Savior, I apologize for her.”

“Please don’t,” I told her. I put my arm next to the window and rested my head on my hand. My mother gave me another look and drove the rest of the way to Alyssa’s house with a look of pure anger that even Alyssa knew that meant I was in deep s**t. When we reached her house, Alyssa got out and thanked my mother for the ride.

“See you tomorrow, Eb.”

“Yeah, hopefully.” She closed the door and walked up her walkway. A light mist had covered the ground so she looked like a ghost walking up to her door. Usually I would have climbed into the front seat, but the front seat had grown to resemble the electric chair in those last five minutes so I rested in the backseat with my feet propped up on one door and my body leaning against the other. My mother waited for us to pull away before she started ripping into me.

“Why do you have to do that?”

“Do what?”

“Act like that in front of your friends!”

“Act like what?” I can pull off the angst-y teen well, can’t I?

“You know what I mean, Ebony.”

“No, I don’t, enlighten me.” I watched the street grow paler and farther away as a fog set in.

“Don’t start with me again.”

“I don’t know what I was acting like,” if I play with you long enough, I’ll see the vein in your forehead.

“You’re acting like it now.”

“Like a smart a**?” A lady being led by a leash that disappeared into the fog floated by on the sidewalk.

“Don’t curse, Ebony.”

“Too late, I already did,” I was getting tired of our bickering already. “Just tell me what my punishment is and get it over with.”

“Don’t tell me what to do, young lady, I’m the mother here.” I wanted to tell her to act like one.

“What am I grounded from?” The fog became less interesting. I hated Washington.

“No telephone,” who did I ever talk to? “No television,” overrated. “No video games,” I only ever played pong on Atari, and sometimes Centipede. “No friends over,” friends? “No music,” that one hurt, I can’t live in just silence. How long did I have to live like this? “No computer,” I only used that at work. How long without music, woman? How long! “And you have to stay in your room, no going outside or leaving your room unless you have to eat or go to the bathroom. Understood?”

“Yes. For how long?”

“A week,” a week meaning? “That’s seven days, you can get everything back next Wednesday.”

“Back? You’re taking it away completely?”

“Yes, I don’t trust you,” b***h!

I sat in the car stewing the rest of the way home. When mom parked the car I waited for her to get out and go inside before even undoing my seatbelt. I slowly walked up to my room and threw my stuff on my bed next to my TV and speakers to my stereo. I sighed and pulled out my math text book to start working.

I added some stuff in bold to add detail and such. Do you think that works?

Eh it's good... but not exactly what I was thinking.
Like. What you have is
Dialogue
Line
Dialogue
Dialogue.
There's no really introspection. I guess I'm just nitpicky about that kidn of thing.
Have a breaking paragraph to describe things. It can be small, liike two or three lines long, but the entire block of dialogue that you have goes too quickly. It makes the scene seem more rushed than it needs to be. Sometimes it's good, I mean when a person sees and entire blcok of text they're probably thinking "Ugh." but like I said, it just rushesa thing for this scene. Also, it helps to lengthen the story. Like the last paragraph if good, but you only have one of those... I like the fog references, it made it pretty haha.

Suuuuure. (:

Gah! YOU! I need your editing skills.

Do you have ADD? That;s very important.