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Slumbersome generated a random number between
1 and 100 ...
52!
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 Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2007 2:01 am
Melee//1
Fairy Tales, The Beginning
Before Melee, her name was Melanie. Melanie Summers, daughter of Raul and Eleanor Summers, a well-meaning English couple who couldn’t have children of their own. It was never explained to her, the little doe-eyed six-year-old bundled in a perfectly white smock, what it meant to have golden skin and black eyes in a household of platinum hair.
A year was spent blissfully in that sprawling manor of wood and stone – lush gardens filled with ferns and hallways alive with footsteps and laughter. Melanie thrived in that place. She thought it was a castle, and there were so many rooms she barely thought of Korea. That country seemed an ever and a dream away.
Alas, good things never last. Barely two weeks following the anniversary of Melanie’s arrival, a miracle child had settled into Mrs Summer’s womb. Another nine months and there was no room for Melanie, not even in a house with two wings, butlers and a vineyard. For people have a fickle way of abandoning things deemed useless and a foolish way of being blind when it suits them. Soon, Melanie became a memory and the girl without a name found out what it truly meant to be a foreigner. The manor of wood and stone sprawled still, but no longer a castle. Now it was a prison.
For years, the nameless girl lingered, exchanging barely a handful of words with the other residents. Left to her own devices, the little English she’d learned slipped from her mind. Who can say how long she would have drifted if she did not meet that man?
It did not happen quite like this, because this is merely a retelling. Perhaps this is enough.
To be continued...
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Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2007 1:59 am
Melee//2
The Manor
Within the pages of this journal is the print of a mixed medium painting that Melee can't bring herself to hang.
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Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2007 7:16 pm
Melee//3
The Doctor
Min Hyuk awoke sharply. Crying. Crying in the guest wing where he had been assured he could live in solitude until his services were required. Cringing as whatever it was sniffed particularly loudly, he passed a hand over his face and tamped down his temper.
Glasses… Long fingers groped in the dark for the edges of his bedside table. Ah... there! Sliding the wire frames over his noise, the neon blur of the clock rearranged itself into glowing numbers. 03:56? A growl tore itself from his throat as the man stormed from the bed and thrust open the door.
Silence.
The corridor was dark, the only light a sliver of moon that reflected from his own bedroom window onto the marble floor. It took several moments for him to pick out the line of a dress and body from the patterned walls. “You,” he growled, beckoning with a finger. “What are you doing here?” He’d assumed it was one of the numerous maids, lost in this draughty labyrinth of a house.
As she uncrumpled and drew close, it became apparent that he was wrong. With pale arms, liquid eyes and a tumble of long, dark hair, even the cynical doctor glanced at her white gown and thought, ‘ghost.’ He faltered.
When morning came, it bathed her black hair a healthy brown, painted blood beneath her cheeks. Not a ghost then. Just a mute waif of a girl with eczema on her hands and barely a drop of iron in her body. She spoke Korean like a child and no English at all.
He called her Young Eun.
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Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2007 11:02 pm
Melee//4
The Ghost
The Doctor has tried many times to tell Melee just what he saw the night-morning he met her.
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Slumbersome generated a random number between
1 and 100 ...
84!
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Posted: Sat Nov 17, 2007 3:25 am
Melee//5
Young Eun
Before Melee, I was Young Eun. Before Young Eun, I was Melanie. But who was I before that? I often wonder, though I don’t think I will ever know.
I don’t remember much about Korea. How could I? I was six when I left and I have never returned. Sometimes after a vivid dream, I can recall it at the very cusp of waking, but it doesn’t linger for very long, the memories dormant until I am struck by some familiar sound or smell: the cold steel of chopsticks, the hot, delicious burn of dopoki down my throat and the vivid, red spice of kimchi.
How strange that all my memories are of eating and the warmth of a kitchen. Of course, I was an orphan, but even then I must have been a hungry child. The Doctor merely laughed when I told him so, regaling me with stories of his own childhood. He had a nice laugh, and a very handsome face. He never seemed to grow old and looked the same as he did when I first met him. He saved me that night. From what exactly, I cannot say.
I was like a sparrow in a cage. I stayed away from the busy places in the day and though I cried loudly at night, no one ever heard. Except him. He soothed my hands, knew what do to about the constant heavy pressure in my chest and fed me cherry-flavoured medicine. I thought he was God.
He even got me away from that place, eventually, thinking it was what I wanted. I may have longed for freedom then, but it was love that I really needed, and once I left him, the world was as dark as that hallway he found me in. He doesn’t write anymore. I think he knows I’m not his Young Eun.
Was I ever?
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Posted: Sat Nov 17, 2007 6:44 pm
Melee//6
Sparrow
The light murmuring of sunshine melts the bars. Suddenly, the dark seems warmer, inviting.
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