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 Posted: Wed Nov 11, 2009 7:38 am
The Dark Side
(671 words)
How infuriating.
Khalla was angry. No, she was more than angry – she was seething. Not only was she angry at the girl she had just encountered on what should have been a routine clean-up of the park, but she was fending off a deep disappointment in herself.
After the encounter with the dark haired girl, whose name she had not caught and did not particularly wish to at this point, Khalla had simply walked away to a different part of the park in hopes that she could return later and pick up everything she had left behind. At the moment she was simply pacing back and forth beneath a tree, walking circles so furiously that any onlooker would tell you she’d worn a path in the grass by now. It was very un-Khalla-like behavior, and perhaps that was what was so infuriating.
Of anyone she had ever encountered she’d never met a single soul so utterly rude and callous as that girl and before now she had never quite lost her temper to such a degree. She actually felt like screaming, or pulling out her hair. The urge was so strong that she was flexing her fingers involuntarily as her eyes tries to burn holes into the ground. Several of the frequent park visitors knew her, but none that saw her had dared approach. Perhaps they thought she was best left to her own devices or maybe they were confused as to whether or not it was truly her. Surely that could not be the sweet-mannered Khalla who never had a cross word to say to anyone?
Khalla sighed to herself and paused in her tracks, scuffing one foot over the bent blades of grass beneath her feet before she tugged off her gloves with what was obviously an over-zealous effort. She stuffed them into the pocket of her overalls before reaching up to run her hands through the few pieces of hair that had come loose from her long braid, giving little thought to cross-contamination at this point. After all, that wicked girl had taken quite good care of that for her already, hadn’t she?
“This is ridiculous,” she breathed to herself, turning her eyes up from the ground to stare pointedly out at the park. She almost expected the girl to be there, following her, maybe ready to go at her for round two. As she looked around her though, all she saw were old ladies feeding pigeons and children playing fetch with their dogs. There was no girl stomping after her at all, and for that Khalla was more relieved than she could even begin to describe.
It was ridiculous to stand there any longer as far as she was concerned. She had a job to do, one that had been interrupted, and she’d probably made more of a mess with that little escapade than if she had simply never bothered. It simply wouldn’t do to leave the trash were it was, where all sorts of animals could come picking at it and causing a nuisance. With a sigh, she walked out from beneath the shade of the tree and started the long trek back to the other side of the park. She would definitely need a new bag for the trash, so she had to hope that some delinquent hadn’t nabbed her backpack by now. After all, she’d left it unattended for quite a while, though it wasn’t her fault that she’d had that little.. interruption.
Most of all, she just hoped that girl was gone. Long gone. As Khalla walked back towards the scene of the crime with her hands in her pockets and her head held high once more, she could feel her anger ebbing away ever-so-slowly. The fact that it was so massive to begin with was what frightened her. The girl had brought out her very worst and shown Khalla a side of herself that she never wanted to see. It was ugly. She had to hope that she never faced it again.
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Posted: Mon Dec 21, 2009 2:01 am
A New Life
(646 words)
Khalla, newly dubbed Sailor Alkaid, had only just gotten back to campus after her long battle with the youma and Nemesis. It was lucky that she had a dorm to herself for the time being, otherwise her roommate might start questioning her health. She had snuck back into her dormitory, as quietly as possible, and collapsed immediately onto her bed. From that moment onward she had simply been staring up at the ceiling blankly, as if it held all the answers in the world.
She had never really believed in fairy tales. Sure, they were pretty stories, but fantasy did not cross with reality and that was the way it was. Everything about her life had been driven by the fact that she had to work to get there and no magical force would intervene. Yet, here she was, living proof that there was some kind of magical force in the universe, even if it wasn’t going to do things like answer little Timmy’s wish for a G.I. Joe.
If she hadn’t seen the dirt from the alley battle in her mirror when she trudged through the door, she might have just chalked it all up to a dream induced by bad food before bed. As it was, she couldn’t explain this away as a dream and everything that had just happened to her was.. real.
“Augggh,” she groaned aloud, to no one in particular, but then it was meant purely as a stress relieving action. She reached up with both hands and rubbed at her face, her braid messy and slowly coming undone. There was just so much to think about, it was hard to concentrate on any one particular little detail. Sailor Senshi, Youma, the Negaverse, Guardian Cats. She was frequently used to cramming her head full of more information than it could really handle but this was taking the cake. Learning about a whole new world in one night?
She wanted to find someone, anyone, that was willing to talk to her about it. She wanted to learn about it, to know more about it, but there was one little fact that was stopping her – Chloe had made it quite clear that this was all a secret. She wasn’t to tell a soul about herself, not even her darling gran. That thought alone kind of hindered her ability to gobble up information left and right. Of course, there was always the possibility that she could just find other Senshi, track them down and find out that way. She groaned again as she realized she was getting sucked into this, and not in a good way. It was new and exciting, which meant she wanted to know more, learn more, devote herself to it. Yet she also knew that there were other things she needed to devote her attention to as well and getting obsessed with this new part of her life would only get in the way of those.
With a small sigh, she sat up and stared at the desk across from her bed. There were papers and books piled on more papers and books. She had assignments that she had intended to come back and do, assignments that she really shouldn’t put off, but as she stared at them now they just seemed to pale in comparison to this world that had suddenly opened up to her. That wasn’t the reason that she walked over to her dresser and began to change into her pajamas though, it wasn’t the reason she clicked off her light and crawled under her covers. She was simply dead tired and couldn’t fathom school work on top of the mass of knowledge she had just gained as well as the weariness that was beginning to set in from her very first battle.
She promised herself she’d just get up early and do it in the morning.
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Posted: Mon Dec 21, 2009 8:37 pm
Find the Balance
(696 words)
Khalla sat at her desk, a small smile lingering on her lips as she stared blankly at the wall in front of her. The last couple of days had been better than she could describe. All that Senshi business aside, her day-to-day life seemed to be taking a turn for the better.
She had met new friends. Not that one should take that the wrong way – Khalla was friends with a lot of people, friendly to even more beyond that. It was just that she had finally met people that she could well and truly call friends – the type of friends that were there for her when she needed them and not just the other way around. She was used to being the friend other people called when they needed help studying, or a hand moving their stuff into their dorm. To know that she had friends that she could call on now to do those things for her.. well, it was really nice.
With a bit of a sigh, she drew herself out of her dreamland, dropping her hand from where she had been using it to prop up her head while she stared at the wall in front of her. It was unlike her to get so dreamy over silly things, or even dreamy in general. Staring down at the stack of papers in front of her, she knew that she didn’t really have time to sit around thinking about idle things. On top of these new friendships, she was working to balance an already packed life with her new alter ego.
“Why does this have to be so hard?” she groaned to herself, dropping the pencil she was holding and pausing to recount the stacks of papers and books she had been pouring over for hours. For once, this wasn’t even extra credit. It was just regular old homework. She stared at the mass, trying to imagine what her teachers must think of her. Not only was she falling behind in homework because of all the patrolling she had to do, but she was starting to fall asleep in classes. That was a very, very rude thing to do. Her teachers were all so kind to her and she was disrespecting them by not giving them her full attention at all times.
But what was she honestly supposed to do?
She sighed and leaned back a little in her computer chair, staring up at the ceiling this time instead. With as little time as she had on her hands, the last thing she needed to be doing was staring mindlessly off, but she was trying to think of any possible way this was going to work out. She had taken the hardest classes, the ones with the biggest work load but best pay off, at the beginning of the semester because she knew she’d have time to commit to them. Talk about life biting you in the.. butt.
What she really needed was to talk to her Gran. If anyone would have a solution to this, it would be her. The only problem was that she wasn’t really allowed to talk to her Gran, so the one person she could go to for advice was strictly off limits. It was so infuriating that she was beginning to get a headache. With a small huff, she leaned back up in her chair and tried once again to concentrate on her homework. She had to get this done. Just as she touched pencil to paper, however, the alarm on her clock started blaring and she let out yet another sigh.
She stood and walked over to turn it off, staring at the flashing red letters that read ‘7:30’. Had she really wasted two hours thinking about nothing? It wasn’t the time for that now, she supposed. School work could be postponed, but her job as a Senshi was a little more important, even if she felt like she was about to explode from trying to balance them. With a shake of her head, she opened the door of her dorm and flipped the switch to her lights. She would just have to do it tomorrow.
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Posted: Mon Dec 21, 2009 9:34 pm
The Cold Hard Truth
(680 words)
It hurt. Her nose hurt, her face hurt, her head hurt – everything in general just hurt.
Gabbie and Khalla had managed to make it to the hospital without further incident, but the nurses at the front desk had taken one look at her before ushering her away from the comforting arms of her new found friend and into an ER bed where unfamiliar fingers poked and prodded at any number of injuries lining her body. She’d listened to coos of ‘poor girl’ and ‘how terrible’ as nurses fed her pain relievers, their murmuring reaching her ears as they talked about her as if she weren’t even there.
While it was true that she had been beaten up by a bad guy, the story they fed the hospital wasn’t exactly the truth. There had been no mugging, unless the stealing of a perfectly innocent man’s starseed counted. Now there was talk of calling the police and having her give them a report, because my, my if she wasn’t just the most pitiful little thing. She was just a poor little Crystal Academy girl, all alone at night and beaten up by a mugger. It was times like these that her innocent appearance grated her nerves, but in the end, she couldn’t fault them. She had been helpless, she had needed someone to save her after all.
Khalla curled up on her side in the bed, squeezing her eyes shut and tugging the crisp white sheets up around her body, trying to find some warmth in nothing but a hospital robe. Silent tears pricked at the corners of her eyes and trailed down over her swollen face, staining the white pillow beneath her head and mingling the smell of salt with the bleach from the bed sheets. The florescent lights overhead beat down on her, amplifying the dull ache that pounded through her head, and more than anything Khalla just wanted to sleep.
But she couldn’t.
She opened her eyes to stare down at the IV fed into her hand, watching the horrific needle that protruded from her skin beneath the sticky tape. She had a concussion and wasn’t allowed to sleep tonight, and just for fun they were keeping her as well. That left her alone in an alien room, huddled in an alien bed, with no one she could call. She couldn’t tell her Gran about this and she certainly didn’t want to face Serah or Z right now, even if they were awake. Her only hope was that Gabbie had stayed and that the ER nurses would let her in now that all their initial testing was done and she had been moved to an overnight room.
Still, as weariness crept in, a weariness she couldn’t stave off with actual sleep, her mind began to wander. Until now, her job as a Senshi had been easy - patrol, scare off youmas. She hadn’t actually encountered any in the Negaverse previous to this and she had no way of anticipating that they were so.. horrifying. She could still see Tanzanite’s grin etched into her memory, she could still see her purple hair whipping in the wind as she launched herself at her. To her, Tanzanite had come to embody everything she feared about her job, all in one single night. Until now she had thought this new job was nothing but rainbows and sunshine, a fairy tale come true. Now that she was curled up in a hospital bed with a concussion and a broken nose, she was slowly beginning to realize it was more a nightmare than any fairy tale – except maybe the original versions of the Grimm books.
She was in for a long night, she knew that much. A night filled with no sleep and a lot of contemplation, but at least no sleep meant no dreaming. That meant her nightmares couldn’t start yet and she was sure, beyond a doubt that tonight would be the cause of many nightmares to come. In a way, her concussion was a curse and a blessing all at once.
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Posted: Mon Dec 21, 2009 11:07 pm
Contemplation
(567 words)
Prom? Khalla sighed and reached up to run a finger through her loose bangs as she stared at the sidewalk beneath her feet. It was a completely foreign concept to her. She hadn’t even really thought about it up until now, not with her schedule demanding that she plan every single moment of her time. After she had been injured she’d been more worried about carrying out her Senshi duties and being able to keep up with school. She certainly hadn’t been thinking about such trivial things as the prom.
With a little tilt of her head, Khalla kicked at a rock, watching it skitter down the sidewalk that led to her Gran’s house, skipping along before finally coming to a tumbling halt on the grass to her left. This usually short walk suddenly felt like it was miles with her injuries, especially since she was carrying her bookbag, lightened though the load was. Maybe she should have called a cab now that she thought about it. She simply shrugged it off and let her mind wander back to her thoughts, her gaze turning up to stare at the clear sky overhead. If she thought instead of concentrated on the injuries, she found that they hurt a little less.
What was it that had really changed her mind? She didn’t have a date, so it certainly wasn’t the idea that she could cuddle up to a cute boy and spend the night dancing like something out of a fairy tale. It wasn’t because she was so vain that she would spend three hours dolling herself up for one night, although she wouldn’t lie and say the prospect of being able to dance around in a beautiful dress wasn’t appealing. No, she thought perhaps that the only reason she had agreed to Serah’s demands at all was the fact that she would be there with Serah. Khalla couldn’t really recall the last time she had done something so big with a friend. Actually, she couldn’t really recall when she had ever done something so extravagant with a friend. She was severely lacking in girl’s nights.
As Khalla turned down the driveway to her Gran’s house, silently thanking whatever powers that be that she had finally made it, she was smiling brighter than she ever had before. It was a good thing no one else was around to see it, or they might have thought she was a bit mental smiling in such a manner at nothing in particular. A quick glance at the driveway told her that her Gran, per usual, was running late. Even that thought couldn’t bring her mood down, however, and she simply let herself in with her key. Once inside, she made her way to a recliner and burrowed herself into the soft cushions after she deposited her bag on the floor, taking comfort in the soft embrace of the old chair as opposed to the stiff benches of the ice-cream parlor she had just visited with Serah.
After a moment of silent contemplation, she leaned over (not without wincing) and dug around in her bag until she produced a pencil and notebook. If she was going to prom, then she had to make a to-do list! There were things to buy and preparations to make. If Gran was going to be late, well, she might as well go ahead and get started right?
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Posted: Tue Dec 22, 2009 12:05 am
Swallowing Pride
(806 words)
This was beginning to be irritating.
Khalla Anselm helped other people. She cleaned the park, she helped old ladies cross the street, she volunteered at the soup kitchen and the homeless shelter. Khalla Anselm did not get help from other people. Khalla was not crippled or incapable of taking care of herself, she was able-bodied and driven and could do everything she needed alone. In fact, it was her capabilities in these areas that allowed her to take care of those less fortunate than herself!
Except now Khalla found herself crippled. She was still trying to do the same old things despite her multiple injuries, but time and time again she was proving to herself that her body was not as strong as her mind no matter how hard she tried to push it. Pushing it, in fact, seemed to be a really bad idea. The more she struggled to do what she wanted, the more her body cried out for a break. It just wasn’t fair, especially to someone that wasn’t used to asking for help. It was bordering on humiliating.
Khalla stared at the box of cereal on the top shelf, stared at it and tried to make it move with telekinesis. She was a Senshi, wasn’t she? If that didn’t come with telekinesis, what good was it? No, no, now she was just getting irritated and letting that get the best of her. With a sigh, she reached up and tried to grab the box again. It was a pitiful attempt - she couldn’t stretch her arm out all the way because of bruises along her ribs and even the idea of standing on her tippy toes sent shivers of nausea rippling through her belly. With a loud groan, she dropped back down after a few moments of flexing her fingers in vain at a box inches out of her grasp.
Luckily for her, a young stock boy was walking down the aisle, wheeling a cart of pop tarts to be shelved. After he noticed her failed attempt, he simply walked over and plucked the box down with a smile, holding it out to her. That would have been fine if his smile hadn’t been so sympathetic, if his eyes hadn’t said ‘you look pitiful’. Despite that, Khalla smiled with gritted teeth and murmured a ‘thank you’ before she turned and walked away down the aisle. She tried to be proper and polite, but she didn’t want to be looked at as someone incapable of taking care of herself. She hadn’t asked for help, she could have gotten that box! It might have taken her the next twenty minutes and some very imaginative ideas, but she could have gotten the damn thing. In the end it boiled down to the fact that Khalla was just simply too proud.
She meandered around the rest of the store, plucking the rest of her grocery list from shelves that were thankfully more at eye level, and stuffing them into the cart that she had gotten when she walked through the doorway. Once done, she made her way to the cashier and began to unload the items, plopping each one onto the counter with a ‘thud’ that was tell-tale sign of her irritation with her predicament in general.
It wasn’t until she was standing next to the bags and handing the cashier the cash for the groceries that it hit her. As the sweet older woman handed her back her change, she took one look at Khalla and one look at the bags before she asked: “Dear, how on earth are you going to carry all of those home?”
Khalla faltered as she reached for her change, the idea only just hitting her – how was she going to get all of these to her Gran’s? She took the change and pocketed it, then stared long and hard at the small army of brown bags that had suddenly become her enemy. She hated asking for help but in a situation like this, what else was she going to do?
“If you could just give me a moment,” she said to the cashier, who simply responded with a knowing smile – after all, she was injured and could obviously be afforded a little more patience. Digging around in the pocket of her lose coat, Khalla produced her cell phone. She scrolled down to a number that she had only recently acquired and felt her heart thumping hard in her chest at the mere thought of having to ask such a thing at the drop of a hat from someone she had only met. He had been so sweet to her though, despite her initial impression, and she wasn’t really sure who else she could call.
She pressed send and took a deep breath as her screen flashed: Dialing Zac Bantock.
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Posted: Tue Dec 22, 2009 12:51 am
Guilt
(744 words)
She wasn’t supposed to feel bad. After everything that had happened, she wasn’t supposed to feel bad for taking a kick at a Negaverser’s face. Yet here Alkaid was, sitting on the edge of a roof top with her legs dangling over the side, staring forlorn at the empty street below. She’d seen a few people pass, but thus far no other Negaversers or Senshi and certainly not the one Senshi she was looking for. Where was Saiph anyway? She was always good at cheering her up – not that she had ever needed it much since their first fateful night together.
Left to her own devices, Alkaid was just wasting the night away contemplating. She was really good at contemplation. She drew one knee up and frowned down at the flickering street lamp below, making a mental note to complain to the city that they needed to work harder to maintain not only the walkways of the park but now, in addition, the streetlamps as well. Didn’t they know what kind of nasties were out here lurking at night? Probably not. Their definition of ‘nasties’ probably referred to the Senshi – the terrorists that were currently being broadcasted all over Destiny City news.
With a sigh, Alkaid propped her chin onto her knee, momentarily allowing her eyes to shut. It probably wasn’t a good idea, not with the way her head was throbbing, because that fiery haired woman might have caused a reoccurring concussion or something. Was that possible? Alkaid wasn’t sure, but it seemed plausible. Besides, at that moment, she didn’t really care. She wanted to shut her eyes and shut out the world. She wanted to wake up and realize that this was all just a bad dream. She liked helping people and her Senshi abilities (sort of) allowed her to do that, but when it came to hurting others, it felt like she was betraying everything she’d ever stood for, even if those others were Negaversers. Now she understood the guilt that had plagued Saiph and hurt her so deeply after that battle with the Negaverse boy. It had been easy to preach to Saiph about their duty to the citizens of Destiny City, but now that the shoe was on the other foot it was a different story.
The last glimpse she had of the mirror-wielding woman had been horrifying. Not in the nightmarish way that Tanzanite was horrifying, but in the ‘this guilt will haunt you for the rest of your life’ kind of horrifying. She had been pouring blood from her nose, grasping for her mirror, and staring with a horrified expression that Khalla couldn’t imitate even if she tried. It had been a matter of life or death at the time and she’d reacted purely on survival instinct, but the way she’d done it felt like a really cheap shot. To kick her in the face and run away was a coward’s move.
Alkaid groaned and brought her hands up to her face, rubbing at her bright eyes as if she could make the last twenty-four hours simply disappear. Then she flopped backwards onto the roof unceremoniously to stare at the sky, staring out at the world she should be more familiar with than she really was. What was her purpose if she was useless? She couldn’t fight on her own, she couldn’t stand up for herself, and she only survived that battle (if one could call it such a thing) with the Negaverse woman because she’d gotten lucky. Why had she even been awakened? What use was she to anyone? They expected something from her that, up until this point, she had been absolutely useless to provide.
Khalla didn’t like feeling useless. She had spent her whole life being everything but useless. She was still trying, still fighting to prove herself, but she couldn’t do a damn thing. She still needed Saiph to accomplish anything.
That thought reminded her that she needed to stop wallowing in her own self-pity and get up to go find her partner. She had to be somewhere close, though how she was managing to elude Alkaid thus far was beyond her. With a sigh that spoke measures of her current mood, she pushed herself up to her feet and turned to stare out across the rooftops. She chose a random direction (after all, she didn’t really know where she would be) and began a quick pace cross the roofs of the city.
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Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2009 11:50 pm
The Solution
(787 words)
Khalla frowned to herself as she strolled through the halls of Crystal Academy, the night before still imprinted clearly in her mind. If that Captain had been more serious about hurting her instead of just simply toying with her and preying off of her fear (she still couldn’t get over the fact that the crazy woman fought with a mirror of all things) then she might not be here right now. She might not have ever seen her dorm that night, she might not be walking the halls at that moment, and she might have died without ever seeing her Gran again. As she watched her feet, watching the blue tassels swinging on her shoes, she realized one thing.
Castor had been right.
She needed to find a self defense class, take lessons, and gain the knowledge she needed to win in these situations. What if that had been Tanzanite again? There was no Saiph that time, there was no one around to rescue her except for herself. Khalla sighed and pushed open the door leading outside, tugging her winter coat tighter around herself as a gust of cold wind hit her. She brought her eyes up and looked out over the schoolyard, then made a beeline for the bulletin board that students often posted things on. Maybe there would be something about more private lessons there, because she certainly didn’t want the whole school to know she was taking classes after she’d just spent a few weeks sporting bruises.
She stopped before the board and looked up at the collage of bright colored papers, some with tabs that had been pulled off, others just advertisements for gigs at dark, smoky cafes. Every inch of it was covered by something, some of the posters covering up others until it was just layers upon layers of ads. It told a history, but that was certainly not something Khalla was interested in right now. She’d been to the board many times, advertising things for the teen help line or the homeless shelter (in fact, she still saw a couple of her posters peeking out from behind their newer counterparts) and she knew what she was looking for.
As she scanned the board once, twice, and then a third time, Khalla only found one little advertisement. It was small, plain, and read simply: self-defense class, call 975-3246. That didn’t tell Khalla a thing and it seemed to be a little shady as far as she was concerned. She stood there for some time, simply staring at it, as if by sheer will it would suddenly transform into exactly what she needed it to be. It was some time later when a voice behind her chirped up.
“You interested in self defense classes?”
“I, uh,” Khalla turned to find a girl a few years younger than herself, bright and cheery. Khalla didn’t recognize her, but then again, the school was big. “Yea, I’m trying to find something like that.”
“Here,” the girl reached up and grabbed a poster (one that had been spammed across the board many times) and dug a pen out of her pocket. Folding the paper in half, she scribbled something on the back and held it out to Khalla with a smile. “That’s a gym that has some really good teachers, you should check it out if you’re interested.” The girl apparently had other things to do because she simply reached up to take a tab from another poster for guitar lessons before turning and walking away, but not before giving Khalla a small smile.
Khalla let out a slow breath and looked back up to the shady paper pinned to the board, then back down to the address of the gym she now held in her hand on a brightly colored piece of printer paper. She didn’t really know any more about this one than she did the other, but she at least had the recommendation of someone that Khalla didn’t think would send her to a shady place just because she could. Then again, her judgment of strangers these days was a little harsher than it’d been in the past.
Finally deciding that a gym was a better bet than a number taken from a shady advertisement, Khalla stuffed the paper into her pocket and turned to head back to her dorm. She had an early day and had to be up early, not to mention she’d likely be gone for most of it helping the blind center. She should really head up and get started on some of her work. When she was done tomorrow though, she’d go and check out that gym. After all, she still had to keep that appointment with Castor.
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Posted: Thu May 13, 2010 10:38 pm
Epiphany
(538 words)
Khalla frowned up at the speckled ceiling above her old bed, in her old room. She had been staring up at the popcorn texture above her so long that it was beginning to swirl, probably because of the strain of her eyes, like some strange vortex. With a sigh she closed her eyes and brought up a hand to rub at her eyelids, simultaneously yawning aloud though there was no one to really hear.
It had been a long day and an even longer night. She’d spent the majority of it doing work until she felt like both her hand and eyes were going to fall off/out. Somewhere between an essay and a book she had fought with Amara over.. well, she didn’t really know. She sighed and rolled over onto her side, opening her eyes and staring at the alarm clock beside her bed. It read 1:47 A.M. It definitely wasn’t her latest night as far as work was concerned. She’d spent longer working on essays or out on patrol, but she’d never really stayed up this late just because her mind wouldn’t quit thinking.
In her defense, she really couldn’t help it. Every time she closed her eyes she saw the bruises spotting Amara’s skin, then she thought about why they were there. She knew why she got bruises – from youma, or negaversers, but Amara definitely wasn’t a senshi. That meant that what was affecting her had to be something more normal. Khalla lay there on her side, tapping her fingers against the bed beneath her sheets, trying to think of what would cause reoccurring bruises all over her roommate’s body.
Then, with a gasp, realization hit.
“She’s being abused,” she whispered out to no one but herself in her empty room. She sat up quickly, sending her dreads flying around her head. Her eyes were wide and her mouth remained a little open, slack jawed in her surprise. She scrambled across her bed and slid off, nearly stumbling, to reach her desk where her laptop was still open but had long since gone into sleep mode. Wiggling the touchpad, she opened her browser and.. her fingers faltered. What did she search for?
She needed to know who was abusing Amara for starters. Her parents seemed unlikely from everything she had ever heard about them. They were overbearing sometimes and her dad could be disapproving, but his idea of punishment had been to send her to an all girl’s school to live in a dorm. Her fingers tapped lightly on the keyboard of her laptop as she thought this over, chewing at her bottom lip. Who did that leave then? The next most likely culprit was a boyfriend. Did Amara even have one of those?
Khalla sighed and typed “spousal abuse” into the search bar, grimacing slightly to herself as the links popped up. After a quick glance-over she chose the first link the search engine gave her: Domestic Violence and Abuse: Signs of Abuse and Abusive Relationships. With knowledge of the time forgotten, Khalla began to skim the site, connecting the dots between the warning signs listed and the behavior Amara had been displaying.
She was going to be at this for a long time.
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Posted: Sun May 16, 2010 10:23 am
Alone with her Thoughts
(700 words)
Khalla sighed deeply to herself as she climbed the stairs to her room, listening to the chatter of her parents in the dining room where they were entertaining her grandmother with tales of their latest trip. It wasn’t that she didn’t like listening to the things they did – quite the opposite really, she loved it – but there were just so many things on her mind that she felt it was rude to sit in on the conversation when all she could do was zone out. It was a shame that it had come to that because her parents were so rarely home. The fact of the matter was she was distracted because of a number of things: she couldn’t sneak out to go on her rounds, she hadn’t seen Gabbie or Amara in days, and the issue with Rohan kept surfacing and resurfacing in her mind.
She reached the landing and turned left down the hallway, reaching the door to her room and opening it onto the darkness. With a flick of the light switch, she kicked her bedroom shoes off and collapsed onto the bed after shutting the door behind her. Something about being at home and curling into the blankets on her bed was extremely comforting. And yet, even that comfort wasn’t enough to push the idea of that night from her mind.
Since then she had thought over every interaction she had ever had with Rohan. She’d reevaluated every visit to his office, every time he had helped her with homework, and even the rare encounters they had outside of that environment. Every little thing he’d ever done suddenly seemed completely different from how she had remembered it before. She had no idea how long he’d felt that way about her, when his feelings had started to change. Had she been unintentionally leading him on, like she had the night of the wedding?
Khalla sighed in frustration and grabbed a pillow from her bed. She let it fall unceremoniously over her face before she simply groaned into it, the sound muffled even to her ears, let alone anyone that might have passed by the closed door of her room. It was such a frustrating situation, and not just because she had to think of how to react to this knowledge, but also because the knowledge had uprooted some strange, new feeling in her that she couldn’t quite come to terms with.
She pushed the pillow off of her face and instead decided to stare at the ceiling above her, as she often did whenever contemplating the ‘greats matters’ in her life. This matter was starting to become an issue simply because even the smallest thought of Rohan, the picture of his face in her mind, the memory of his voice – all of it sent a flutter of nerves through her belly. She was quite sure that she hadn’t been experiencing any of this before he had unintentionally expressed his feelings for her and she was left wondering if her feelings were real or just a shallow shadow of his own. She liked to think she wasn’t a vain girl, but what if this was just the product of some need to feel wanted?
As she had done many times since she’d begun her philosophical debate with herself, Khalla reached up and rubbed her palms against her face, as if she could scrub away all the thoughts with the simple motion. Why couldn’t her life just be simple? Why did he have to go and do this to her? She dropped her hands to the bed and rolled onto her side, staring at the back of her door and trying, without success, to rid her thoughts of Rohan and anything associated with him. She didn’t like being the girl that wallowed in bed and pined over a guy – she had never been that girl and never thought she would be. Sadly, even as she told herself this she could still fill the butterflies fluttering violently in her belly over the mere idea of seeing Rohan in less than a week’s time.
Before that happened she just had to decide on one thing: was this feeling real or not?
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Posted: Fri Nov 19, 2010 12:32 am
The Stranger
(2,021 words)
Khalla had parted ways with Gabbie in town but hadn’t powered down from her alter ego until she got within a block of the house she shared with her Granny. Even though she had moved into Amara’s dream house, she still felt like her Granny’s house was still home – it always would be. The cracks in the pavement (that she was carefully stepping over or around) were engraved into her memory and she knew how many trees were between the Robinson’s house and her own. Just entering this part of town gave her a feeling of homesickness, particularly tonight. It had been weeks since she’d had time to come see her grandmother between all of her volunteer work and being a Senshi full time.
Tonight, though, tonight they had scheduled a dinner! Unfortunately, the always-early Khalla had managed to be miserably late tonight. She had been caught up with Senshi duties and was now rushing down the sidewalk while simultaneously staring at her watch and willing it to rewind thirty minutes so she didn’t have to make up a miserable excuse and lie to her grandmother once more. The poor old woman already thought that Khalla had abandoned her to be with Rohan, even if she’d never outright say that to her. It wasn’t the truth, not at all, but Khalla couldn’t think of any other excuse and simply let her grandmother go on believing the worst of her boyfriend.
The sun had gone down before Khalla had even powered down and now the whole world was thrown into shadow. She supposed she would have felt more afraid if the streets in this part of town weren’t well-lit. It didn’t hurt to have superhuman powers either. Despite the shadows and the street lamps making everything look almost alien in their pale wash, Khalla could see her Granny’s house before she ever got to the driveway. The old woman always left the porch light on, even when Khalla wasn’t going to come home, just in the off chance that she might.
Khalla smiled at the thought and turned down the path that led to the steps. As soon as she got there, however, a sickly burnt smell wafted from the open front door and through the screen. Smoke? Her mind set into motion with a frantic whirl and she whipped the screen door open. Once inside, despite still being panicked, she realized there wasn’t any fire. Her Gran had just left something cooking too long.
“Gran!” she called as she moved quickly towards the kitchen, her brows drawing down into a furrow when she heard no reply. She reached the kitchen, peering through the hazy smoke until she realized it was coming from the oven. Was that the roast for tonight? And why wasn’t the detector screeching yet? It took only a moment for her to remember that her grandmother always turned it off out of aggravation. She rushed around the island in the center of the kitchen to quickly flip the oven off and, just as she was about to wrench the door open she remembered a chemistry lesson about fire and oxygen. She withdrew her hand from the handle and instead flipped on the oven’s fan, hoping it would disperse some of the smoke in the room. She’d come back to check in a few moments as soon as she figured out where Gran had gone. Surely she wouldn’t go do something else for so long that dinner caught on fire? She’d never known her to be that careless.
“Gran?” she called out again, experimentally, but again received no answer. Despair began to grow slowly in her chest and she felt uneasiness settle over her. She glanced once more at the oven before deciding it could wait, and turned from the kitchen to head back into the living room. She walked to the stairs and peered up, finding nothing there but darkness and silence. No, if Gran was upstairs doing something, one light at least had to be on.
She sighed and reached up to rub a hand across her forehead, wiping away at imaginary sweat. Maybe something had happened and she had to rush out? One of the neighbors could have had an emergency. She was still trying to convince herself that everything was perfectly alright when she found herself back in the kitchen, the condition of which hadn’t improved much with the small hood fan. She found a pair of oven mitts on the island top and shoved them on. Carefully she stepped back over to the stove, put one hand on the oven and used the other to try and shield her face, then opened the door the tiniest little fraction. Prepared for a wave of flames to rush out and engulf her, she winced, but.. nothing happened. A sigh of relief swept over her as she opened the door all the way and waved one mitted hand against the swell of smoke. Well, that roast was ruined.
She took the mitts off and walked over to open the window. She managed to get it open before the smoke became awfully overwhelming and she began to cough. Covering her mouth with one hand, she grabbed the plates on the counter and began to walk towards the swinging door of the dining room. Gran had probably already laid out the side dishes and when she got home, they could at least eat whatever else she had prepared.
Khalla, still shielding her mouth, backed through the door so she could push it open with her hip. She’d always assumed that her Gran had a revolving door just so she could open it with full arms. She was toying with this thought as the door opened onto the room and at first she simply began to walk to the table. But once her smoke hazed mind began to clear, Khalla stopped dead in her tracks. On the other side of the table she could see a pair of feet connected to a pair of stocking-covered legs, to which she could only assume was connected the rest of her grandmother. Time slowed as she dove for the other side of the table, dropping the plates in her arms with a shattering crash that she didn’t even hear. Everything went numb, all her senses dulled, and the only thing she was concerned with was getting to her grandmother - her motionless grandmother.
“Gran, Gran!” Her curious calling from earlier had evolved into a panicked shriek as she fell to her knees at her grandmother’s side. She reached out to grab her shoulders, shaking her like she might have simply decided to take a nap on the dining room floor. As no response came, tears flowed forward to fill the gaping silence. Her skin was still warm, she was still..
“No, no,” she sobbed brokenly through her tears, scrambling halfway across the carpeted floor on her knees, dragging herself until she found her feet and half-stumbled through the swinging door. She burst through the other side and nearly toppled over, only managing to salvage the motion by grabbing the overhanging counter of the island. She rushed to the door leading to the living room with barely more grace, completely ignoring the stifling smoke. She yanked her grandmother’s old stretch-cord phone off the wall mount and fumbled to find the simple three numbers every American anywhere knew by heart through her tear-blurred eyes. Somehow she guessed at their positions and she heard an operator on the other end.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
“My grandmother, I..” a lump in her throat rose to steal her words away, leaving her to make a choking croak of a sound.
“Ma’am, are you there?”
“I found my grandmother unconscious. She’s unresponsive.” She drew in a deep breath to try and steady herself even as a sob threatened to send her into convulsions. “Please, I-I need an ambulance.”
“Alright, they’ll be on their way.”
She barely stuck around to hear the woman’s last words before she clumsily slammed the phone back onto its hook and rushed back to where her grandmother was. She hadn’t moved even an inch when Khalla fell back at her side.
“Granny please wake up,” she pleaded again, like a naive child, reaching out with both arms to grab her grandmother’s upper arms. Her eyes were closed and she seemed.. no. Khalla leaned down to put her ear to the older woman’s chest, searching desperately for any sign of life, even the smallest little heartbeat. There, wasn’t that it? Wasn’t that a thump? Khalla’s tears began to fall in earnest then, unable to tell the difference between reality and what she willed to happen. The hands on her grandmother’s upper arms moved to encircle the older woman as best she could, allowing Khalla to cling desperately to her as she continued to try and hear anything. Hot tears rolled down her face to stain her grandmother’s shirt and her eyes stung so harshly that she had to squeeze them shut. Everything faded as she lay there, sobbing but unable to hear herself.
How long did she lay like that before she saw flashing lights illuminating the room from behind her eyelids? Red pulses poured through the windows and she was dimly aware of shouting from the front door, though it sounded like she was under water and nothing could reach her. Then hands were on her and she was screaming, prying at arms attached to people she couldn’t see. Someone was talking, it sounded soothing, but she only had eyes for her Gran. Someone had leaned over her on the floor, doing something she couldn’t see, as the arms around her began to drag her out of the room. They were tearing her away from the only person that had ever been there for Khalla and she couldn’t leave her like that. What kind of granddaughter was she if she let strangers rip them apart?
If she stayed with her, this wasn’t real. If she stayed then her Gran would just wake up, smile and laugh and tell her it was okay. She’d pat her on the cheek and make Khalla feel better. She’d explain this away as nothing. It was nothing.
Khalla was still struggling as the mystery arms pulled her back through the revolving door. The smell of smoke reached her and with that acrid scent of burnt roast everything came rushing back to her. Sound returned to her ears in a deafening roar, her senses came alive and her stifled pain raged inside of her chest. She heard the sirens outside, saw them flashing like a tragic light show over the walls through the open kitchen window. She heard men in the dining room, men outside, and the man she was struggling against still trying to soothe her.
“There’s nothing you can do, ma’am. Please just let the medics handle this.”
Her bright orange eyes peered up at him, as if she were only just seeing through them, and his face made the last thread fall away. Her body slumped and he caught her, even as she buried her face against his chest to try and hide from the world and the pain threatening to consume her. There really was nothing she could do – this was the end.
She was aware of being led to the living room to sit down, she was aware of Mrs. Robinson rushing into the room to relieve the officer of his babysitting duties. She felt the familiar arms encircle her shoulders and distantly she knew the woman was talking, just like she knew she was sobbing and crying – staining yet another blouse with her hot tears. She couldn’t control herself at all, it was almost as if she were someone else entirely, watching herself from a distance.
She was someone else when she saw the medic walk into the living room with a solemn look on his face. And she was someone else when the gurney was wheeled in to carry her Granny out to the ambulance under a white sheet.
She was someone else watching her life fall apart.
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Posted: Thu Dec 23, 2010 10:57 pm
Losing Hope
(850 words)
Khalla stared down at the hole in the ground, the hole that was swallowing up the closed casket. It felt like that hole was eating everything she’d ever known, swallowing it up and leaving her with nothing.
She heard the priest standing at the head of her grandmother’s open grave. She heard his voice, the sound as it filled the empty air of the graveyard, but she didn’t understand the words. All around her people were sobbing and sniffling into handkerchiefs, or simply covering their faces with cold, frigid hands. Some of them put a hand on her shoulder as she stood at the front line, others murmured softly under their breaths how sorry they were. But what good did their sympathy do? Their sympathy wouldn’t bring back her Grandmother. It wouldn’t suddenly alert her parents wherever they were, in whatever third world country, that their daughter needed them. Khalla stood alone, the only family her Grandmother had in this crowd of strange old souls, the only one who was watching their blood be swallowed whole by earth that was as foreign as it was familiar. The only person she’d ever counted on, the only person that had ever risked themselves for her, that person was dead and Khalla could feel herself dying with her.
She heard the old man’s voice rise up, she listened as something about God carrying her grandmother’s soul back home rang out. She heard people agreeing in whispers, she heard the ‘amen’ as it echoed in quiet waves around her. As Alkaid stared down at the hole beneath her grandmother’s suspended casket, she knew that there was no God. She knew that her grandmother’s starseed was returning to the space cauldron to mill with others that had died before her. That was a place so far removed that she would never know it until she died – a place nearly as useless in her mind as the idea of heaven. In a way it was no different. Senshi looked to the cauldron like humans did to heaven. Senshi looked to the idea of Serenity just like humans did to God – she would come, she would save them, and all would be right in this world. That thought rang hollow and empty in the swelling darkness of Khalla’s heart.
Khalla knew now that Serenity would never come, just like she knew that no God existed to save them. Serenity was an idea the Senshi clung to because they needed hope, they needed to believe that something could make a difference. Staring at that lifeless, dull coffin, Khalla knew that she no longer had hope. Khalla knew she no longer believed in a savior. The idea of Serenity was as far removed from her as the idea of God. Khalla was alone in this world with no parents to care for her and no other family to turn to. The last hope she’d had in her Senshi life had died when Nemesis took her out into the galaxies beyond to show her that there was not but desolation left beyond the confines of earth’s atmosphere. Her past life was gone, all meaning in this life was lost, and she had nothing but a barren future to look forward to.
As they began to lower the casket and the people around her dismissed themselves with sobs and condolences, Khalla stepped forward to the edge of the grave. She watched as the casket lowered into the darkness, left the light of the sun, and she brought up a hand that had been clutching a single yellow rose. They had always been her grandmother’s favorite and it was the last comfort she could offer to a soul that had probably already left. She dropped it down, letting it fall carelessly to the top of the casket, and stared at it for a long moment. In that single gesture she was letting go of everything – her hope, her brightness, Alkaid. In that moment she swore off her generosity and her promise to protect and help others. From that moment forward, Khalla swore to look after herself and those she cared about before anyone else. Was greed a sin if she’d spent her whole life until now being selfless? She didn’t care. All selflessness had ever done was take away those that needed her.
As she finally tore her eyes away from the grave, she looked up to find Rohan patiently waiting at her side. Throughout everything, he had been the one constant support. If all she had left to look forward to in life was him, at least there was that small shining light in an endless darkness.
“Let’s go home,” was all she said and she knew without a doubt that he would understand and ask nothing of her. She turned away from the only real family she had ever known, abandoning her grandmother to earth’s cold embrace, and marched back down the road that had led her to the graveside. Nothing from that moment forward could ever be the same but somehow Khalla would manage, just like she always did.
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Posted: Sat Feb 12, 2011 1:01 am
Afraid of the Dark
(635 words)
Alkaid stared into the mirror, studying the unfamiliar face that stared back at her. Who was this girl with the lonely eyes, the long blonde dreads, and the ghastly black hole in the center of her chest? All she could be sure of was her own name and even that seemed foreign when spoken in the voice she couldn’t remember as her own. Bits of the last few days were coming back to her, but slowly – certainly too slow for her tastes. She was frustrated and bordering on a breakdown that was only held at bay by the words she had first heard when she awoke. She had been promised it would all work out, that everything would be alright, and that soon she would know her purpose.
Soon was not soon enough.
She reached out with one black gloved hand to trace the line of her face in the mirror. She couldn’t remember this stranger, or any other for that matter. Who was she? Did she have a family? Did she belong somewhere? Frustrated with the questions she couldn’t answer for herself, the newly corrupt senshi turned her back on the pale face in the mirror and walked back to the bed she had been given temporarily. She crawled into the dark sheets and drew them up around her, feeling like a child trying to hide from the monster in the closet. How did you hide from the monster when it was in your own mind?
She sighed and pulled her knees to her chest, then buried her face in them like she could escape this world as easily as a child escaped their nightmares beneath the comfort of a security blanket. The only problem was that this world was all she knew and she had nothing else to escape to. Her strange face, her unfamiliar surroundings, it was there waiting for her in her dreams even when she could relax enough to fall asleep. There was no escaping this vast nothingness that stretched endlessly in her mind.
She just wanted a little solace, a little comfort, but there was none to be had in this harsh new world. Her only memories were a pair of hateful red eyes, a crumpled figure she could never see in detail, and the words spoken to her when she finally came to. Since then her life had been miserable – but who could claim peace when every moment was a fight with herself, with time?
Not for the first time, she felt the burning sting of tears as they filled her eyes and her arms reached out to hug her knees closer to her body so she could curl up into herself. She fell gracelessly to her side on the bed, a tiny ball of black cloth and zebra stripes, and sobbed carelessly into the dark sheets that had been her only comfort in this place. It was hard to be strong when there were no memories to draw that strength from and Alkaid felt like her life had been nothing but one pity party after another.
Her biggest fear was that this would never change. She was scared that she would never remember herself or her purpose and eventually there would be nothing left but an empty husk, even more hopeless than she was right that moment. When you can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, it feels like the darkness is all you have. Alkaid couldn’t see anything but endless darkness for miles. Was darkness all she would ever have?
As sleep finally began to sweep over her in the early hours of the morning, even her dreams were kept at bay by her exhaustion, but a lack of dreams was no solace when she woke – without dreams, darkness was still her mistress.
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Posted: Tue Aug 05, 2014 8:32 am
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Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2015 11:23 am
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