|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Posted: Wed Dec 02, 2009 6:23 pm
REANIMATION SOLO
12/2/2009
Word Count: 489
The tree branches were blended like a watercolor picture on a slight Gaussian Blur, with many blobs of contrasting pink-tinted-orange light... and the last place she remembered being was in a drab science lab with a blackened monster that went after her.
'Wasn't I dead back there?' Esen thought as she blinked a few times, making sure it wasn't an illusion from death... and sure enough, there were still branches and sky, though not in very good detail. Maybe if she tried to get up, she could figure out what was going on, where she went... was she actually alive, or in some other form of afterlife, such as Heaven or Hell? If she was in Heaven, wouldn't she have been fed already? Esen's digestive system had felt worse than when she ate wheat, it felt rather... empty.
Rolling over from her back, where she originally was when she awoke, she moved her arms up from her sides and above her head as she rolled to her stomach. From this position, there were some startling realizations:
1) Her upper body hurt, specifically below where her small chest was and a bit above her navel. It didn't just hurt, actually; it felt like stuff was flapping around that area.
2) The apricot-colored flesh on her hands were now a creamy mint color.
Esen's mouth was rather dry, but had managed to vocalize a weak 'Huh' at her hands. Hopefully that was a screwed-up form of frostbite where the extremities became a light shade of green rather than black. Hopefully... maybe? Using those said hands (which did not feel frostbitten), she pushed herself up off her stomach, now in a kneeling position.
Looking down at herself, Esen noticed that her school-provided cardigan and button-down had both became midriff-baring. That would have been easier to deal with until she noticed the source of the flapping.
Her torso had been marred with an open-looking, though also not-bleeding, wound, which she would soon discover was less of a 'wound' and more of a 'all-around-the-waist break.' Worse, there was green flaps of skin around where she was broken apart, as well as on the portions of her midriff she was able to see. At this, Esen had only one dried-out, unusually gravelly, word as she put her hands to her ******** she took her hands off her face, there was another thing she noticed she lacked while staring at her fuzzy hands: Her glasses. At least Esen had enough sight to see where the ground was, pushing herself up out of her kneeling position to her feet.
"Time to search for a pair of glasses," Esen muttered in a not-very-audible whisper as she walked toward the path in the woods. Luckily the sun was rising - the now-all-green girl still had enough sense to know which direction the sun shined in - sparing her the view of what she would become. For now.
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Jan 12, 2010 11:43 pm
“You Wouldn't Follow the Wind” HOSPITAL (PRE/)DISCHARGE SOLO 1/12/2010 to 1/13/10 Word Count: 1,540 (NPCs Ms. Saylor, Doctor, Mr. Reis)
On the second day, after that incident with the volunteer and the lack of a medical chart, Rica gave her daughter a lecture of a few minutes’ length, notified the doctors about Esen’s Celiac diagnosis, and left for the night.
The next four days were a practically messed-up jumble of events. The fact Esen was drinking most of her nutrients didn’t help her stomach feel full, and Rica’s absence made it worse. There was a call somewhere in there, explaining that Rica was busy with work and ‘surprise events,’ but most of the time, beyond eating and that phone call, Esen was drowsy. She was gaining feeling back – a bit of soreness, too, but stitches weren’t meant to feel like a massage – and stayed awake a little longer each day, but she still didn’t have much drive or energy. Why did she have so many stitches and those discolored marks?
The seventh day into her stay, Esen got some answers.
Rica came in along with a doctor, both sitting in pieces of molded plastic that were labeled ‘chairs.’ After everyone was introduced to each other, the doctor, who was holding a chart all about the patient, spoke.
“So, Esen, what you have here is hard to explain… though, not in a medical sense. You have three long wounds on your stomach, and a… well, you were literally stabbed in the back, so those areas were sewn shut for proper healing. You also came in with some discoloration around your body, both under your breasts and around your arm, much like scarring had formed there...”
A few minutes of time passed as the female who held a doctorate explained the treatments Esen received over the past seven days, and the females who either had a Bachelor’s or weren’t even out of high school nodded, paying attention.
“…though, in the end, I’m rather flabbergasted. You’re sixteen, Esen-”
“Sixteen? Uh, miss, I mean, Doctor…” Esen was surprised. Did she fast-forward into the future? She couldn’t have – this was not the twenty-second century, so they didn’t have stuff like that. Esen had to be in a dream, she knew.
Rica interrupted her daughter’s disbelieving words with a hand. “Let her finish; hear her out. Dr. Combore is correct, you know, just listen.”
“February 13, 1993?” Dr. Combore asked the patient, who nodded in response. “…it’s a new decade, January 2010… you’ll be seventeen in about a month, Esen. The injuries you sustained should have killed you; whatever happened in your right shoulder was off by just enough to keep you alive, but not only was there a lack of stabbing implements in you, the cuts you sustained on your torso weren’t the shallowest we’ve seen in the emergency room. You should have been drained out… I’d thank God, or whatever other divine power you look to, that you’re still alive. It had to have been a miracle, because medical treatment, as we know it, can’t put blood back into a dead body.”
Rica nodded, but Esen spoke up when she saw the first lull. “I was stabbed? I was STABBED?”
The doctor tried to get a word in edgewise: “Uh-”
“What the hell happened that someone would try to kill me? I’ve done nothing against the law, and I don’t associate with such people, so what the ******** is going on?!” If Esen was fuming over blueberry muffins… well, she got even angrier now, to say the least.
Rica and the doctor looked at each other for a few seconds, and Esen’s mother turned back to her daughter’s reddened face with an expression not usually seen on the older of the two: somberness. “Esen, please listen to me. You’ve been missing for a year, since the holiday break day trip program – the one I had you in after Christmas the year before last - took you for your first visit. You never came back.” Rica’s tone sounded lifeless: no joy or anger, a simple dead monotone. It made way for a bit of dark bitterness as she continued. “A few days after Christmas, Destiny City found many people on the campus of an abandoned mental hospital - others around your age, along with you. Part of an organ ring and left for dead. Most of these people actually were dead when they were found. You were one of the lucky few who had been simply comatose, though. One of the living children left behind, I’ve heard, has suffered a high amount of brain damage. You really are lucky, Esen. Your life, like Koray – your father - told me when you were born, would not follow the wind.” A sad smile ended the story.
Esen, for once, was silent, processing the information quickly, but when her father’s name was brought up, a memory came back to her, similar to Rica’s:
It was one of many winters in Destiny City, and it was obvious from the way it was decorated that it wasn’t just winter. It was also Christmastime, though not just any ordinary Christmas. It was the last Christmas before the New Millennium, and as there were many people scrambling to prevent the events that Y2K was to bring – some people didn’t want their computers to travel back in time, and others believed that Armageddon was to hit when the clock struck midnight on the 31st – there were just as many embracing the 2000th year A.C.E. All but one member of the little apartment above Smooth Moves was in the latter category: Rica was trying to transfer what information she could from the store’s current computer into the new Y2K-ready computer in the last minutes of Christmas Eve, leaving Koray and his six-year-old daughter, Esen, upstairs, their bodies – one long, dark-haired and tanned, contrasting with a much shorter, lighter-skinned child with hair of bright green – clad in pajamas, lying on the carpet and watching the tree. His olive eyes, a match for his little girl’s, did not notice Esen get up off the floor and watch the snow-filled sky outside instead of the glowy plastic evergreen: only when she spoke did he find that she moved.
“Daddy, what are the snowflakes doing all the way up there? Why do they start from so high up, anyway?”
As the man got up off the floor, he caught sight of his daughter looking at him, an expression on her face matching the curious nature she had. “They dance at your command, Esen. They start from high up because that’s where they come from… one end of their stage is the sky. The other end is right where we live.”
“Really?” The little girl was confused at this point.
“Your name... in my parents’ homeland, it means ‘the wind.’” Koray looked at the skies, the flecks of white shining in the lights against the dark sky. “I told your mother that this little girl will not blow with the wind, because she is the wind. The wind is what makes these snowflakes dance, Esen. Cherish your name: it’s who you are.”
The memory Esen was able to replay had given her a new thought.
“Wait – I just realized something, Mom.” Esen usually called her parents the more formal ‘mother’ and ‘father,’ so this was a change. “Dad… does he know about this? Is he even here?”
Rica shook her head. “He’s had extended business this year, but he’ll be back for a little while soon… no, your father doesn’t know yet-”
Dr. Combore interrupted the two, with a slight bit of urgency. “It’s nice to see meaningful pleasantries between families, but we think that soon, you can have them outside the hospital. It will be a few days beforehand, and we’ll ask you to make sure that you’re taking care of herself for a bit after, but you should be out within another week.” A smile was given by the doctor, returned by Rica with “Thank you, do keep us posted!”, and Esen with a sure nod and a miniature version of the doctor’s smile.
-------------
A few days passed. Visits were more frequent, ranging from topics involving “Where are you going to go to school” (Rica and Esen figured they’d see if Esen’s Crystal Academy scholarship, gained around the time the teen went missing, was still valid) to “What do you want me to get for you to wear when you get discharged” (“Jeans and a tee-shirt are fine, but do we have a coat and boots?” ).
After another five days in the hospital, it was a dark and snowy evening when Esen, armed with some antibiotics, was allowed to go out the hospital gates. A headache set in almost instantly when the two approached the parking lot, but Rica’s driving distracted Esen enough to help the sixteen-year-old ignore the headache.((ALL ROLEPLAYS HERE ON OUT WILL BE AFTER THE HOSPITAL. The Ji-Yeon/Esen roleplay was mostly pre-planned, so despite it not being considered Finished, it's still a part of her hospital stay.))
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Apr 07, 2010 10:50 pm
"Past is Past"
SECOND WAVE NIGHTMARE SOLO
??? to 4/8/10
Word Count: 1,266
(NPCs Rica Saylor, Young Esen, Marie, Jane, Jessie)
----------
The days after she ran from that fast food joint with the floating... humanoids? Well, they were quite a blur; nothing special was really involved beyond the school, afternoon, sleep cycles. Then you had the weekends. Grocery shopping, looking up random minerals, working on any scientific homework not finished earlier that week... life certainly merged into one big chunk of unmemorable existence.
Some time ago, Esen had ate some 'safe' pretzels from a new brand ("Seems like eating healthy is becoming the new trend nowadays," she thought when buying them) while working on a research paper. Her fingers were becoming clumsy on the notebook's keyboard: she knew she needed sleep. Esen didn't usually go to bed at a time earlier than 9 to 10 PM, but around quarter after 8 PM, she was already in her usual blue-striped pajama shirt and pants, her hair was already taken down, and Esen's eyes were shut while lying on her bed. The nightmare that night involved sentient guns and knives aimed for her torso, her unclothed body, and a very blurry piece of black space. When Esen awoke from that one, it was almost time to awaken anyhow; her stomach felt odd, so when she got out of bed, Esen promptly tossed out the leftover pretzels, thinking the nightmare was triggered by hidden ingredients in the pretzels.
While using the dorm bathroom's shower, classical music from afar played softly, for a longer time than it usually did. When the water stopped, the music still played. After getting into her Crystal blue, the music still played. Melody was usually up by now, wasn't she?! Esen shut off the iHome's alarm system, vigorously shaking her roommate's shoulder to get her up. This didn't seem a part of the bland, everyday usual. "Melody, if you don't hurry, you're going to be late, you have a cello practice class today," were the only words Esen spoke beyond basic pleasantries that morning to the tanned blonde.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Now, in the present day, Esen was doing quite the same routine with a different snack food and a different assignment. This time, however, the snack food was long-ago Esen-approved and she actually got the assignment finished before the sandman stopped by at about 8:55 PM or so.
Earlier, she had spoke to Rica, otherwise known as 'mother'; Rica spoke about Smooth Moves' profits going up again, and Esen spoke about some invitation to some dance held by a "Mr. and Mrs. Michael T. Chamberlyn" that she recieved earlier that day, which looked like a charity event.
Rica, as always, had a sort of cheer: "Well, congratulations, Essie, you got your first invitation to a party-"
"Mother, please. Do you not know my track record with those of my age?"
"You know, you were the one who spoke about finding someone who you could trust. I know what you meant then, and I know things got so bad in middle school, we agreed to give home tutoring a try - look, the world's changing, Esen. People change. Eventually, you need to give people a chance. Yes, your future's mostly built by yourself, but..."
Esen tuned out, her mother's words becoming illegible.
"Damn it - thanks for calling, Essie. Forgot I had someone picking up a raincheck after hours. Have to run, love you."
"Bye," Esen replied, hanging up her phone. 'Wait... what was mother trying to say?' she thought after.
Now in bed, she thought about what her mother was trying to say. 'Eh, maybe I'll ask tomorrow...'
==========
A young girl, bearing a grown-out black dye job that covered her rear, walked to the trio of girls sitting near a statue in the park. The wavy texture of her hair was not unlike Esen's, but she did not wear glasses, nor wear two buns in her hair. She was actually a bit shorter. The trio definitely looked different from she.
One wore a high periwinkle ponytail, and a short-skirted dress that, if she didn't sit on the ground how she did, she would expose her underwear. Another leaned against that statue, wearing a puffed vest over a tank top, jeans and a style full of short white curls. The last carried a hefty-seeming purse and wore a polo with a pair of capris, as well as stick-straight red hair.
The girl with the grown-out black had natural green roots, wearing a sweater bolero with a plain tee-shirt and a skirt that hit the shins. Her eyes, an olive color, shone as she spoke with a cheerful bent:
"Oh, hi, uh, Marie, Jane, Jessie! I'm Esen, you know, that girl in science who got the highest score on their lab-"
"Hey, nerdie."
"Hi then, lame-o!"
"How the hell did you get here in the first place?"
"Oh, Marie, that... ah, Jack. He said you guys would make good study buddies, that you guys just slacked off in class but were actually smart kids."
The periwinkle-haired Jane made a muffled laughing noise. "Study? Hah, Jack - he's cute AND he has brains!"
Marie, she of the purse, tossed her head back. "I know, right, Jane? Nerderella fell for his lie faster than a brick in water!"
The puffed-vest wearer, Jessie, leaned toward the pest, showing just how loose the tank was and the frilled edge of her upper undergarments. "You say you're smart, but I bet you haven't even passed Boys 101 yet, lame-o!"
Young Esen started fuming. "Sex ed, I actually had flying colors. Why do you guys hate me so much, though?"
"More like the whole school, Nerderella..."
At this moment, the present Esen went up to defend her younger, black-haired self from the bullies. "You guys are ******** bitches, just stop!" Suddenly, an echo rang in current Esen's head...
"Past is past."
"...you see, we are starting to have breasts. We are starting to grow up. People like you more, the more you've grown up. Look at you, Nerderella-" Marie used her free hand to poke at the young Esen's heart, where Esen's future cleavage should have been. "-you're still a little kid!"
Present-day Esen lunged toward the arm that was poking at herself from the past. Her hand only went through Marie's arm.
"Past is past."
"Am not!"
"Oh? Let's put your knowledge to use, then - Jane?"
"Ah, I see, Jessie... hey, nerdie. Sex ed question. Do you have your cycle yet?"
"Uh.. no, but..."
"Gotcha, then! She scored nothing in that class, huh, Jessie?"
"That's it, I'm telling!" Esen's younger self screamed tearfully, running out of the park as the trio got a good laugh.
The current Esen's face became beet-red with anger. "What the hell is wrong with-"
"Past is past."
==========
This had happened before for Esen. This was the enzyme that sped up her childlike attitude's disappearance. When Esen told Rica that time ago, her second month in the sixth grade, Rica reported the incident to the school. However, Esen's mother spoke of that event with a then-employee while on the job - the then-employee was Jack's mother. Loose lips sink ships, so they say - her mother's patch job sank Esen's lifeboat of solace.
When the classical music of the morning played, Esen became aware of her blanket trap, the feeling of her pillow soaked in saline, and what Rica had said the night before.
"...but the past is past. Nowadays, a lone person can no longer do all the work, eventually you'll need to ask another for help..."
"Yeah... right..." Esen flipped her head away from the sight of Melody's bed, not wishing to be seen.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Reply
