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 Posted: Sun Aug 20, 2006 6:25 pm
Wakes up and goes outside his trailer. "GOOOD MOOOORNING MINERAL TOWN!"
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Posted: Mon Aug 21, 2006 1:39 am
((Prepare for a very long post!))Samara pretended to be sleeping when Daphne called her to breakfast the next morning. She didn't feel like getting up and socializing. Eventually the ceiling became a very boring thing to stare at so Samara occupied herself with putting her clothes away, neatly folded, into the dresser. It was only when Samara was putting her suitcase beneath the bed that she found something more interesting to do.
There were books underneath the bed. Not just the normal horse training kind that Samara had come to expect from this family but photo albums. And they looked old. Without hesitating to thing that this might be an invasion of privacy, Samara opened the oldest-looking leather bound book.
All of the pictures in this book were black and white.
A skinny woman wearing a poofy white dress that no doubt was covering a tightly laced corsette (since no normal human being could possibly have a waist that small) was sitting on top of a black horse being held by a tall fat man with a black mustache. Since the woman had a veil on her head that nearly reached the ground and covered half the horse Samara guessed it was their wedding day. This picture took an entire page.
Next there was the same woman standing in front of a barn without a roof. To her right was a starved little girl barely five years old wearing the worst dress Samara had ever seen. It made her look like a purple marshmallow that ate a full grown elephant. Samara pittied her. She could vaguely recall a time when she was about that age when her grandmother thought it would be a good idea if she wore a bright pink dress with more lace than the curtains that she insisted on putting in every window of her house (and her house had many hundreds of windows since her husband died and left her a bunch of money). The worst part was they had gotten pictures. Luckily Samara made them "disappear" before anyone else could see them.
In the pictures following, the woman sat on a bunch of different horses and the little girl got older and older. Finally the album ended with the woman and the man looking very old and tired with wrinkled faces and dull expressions sitting on a porch swing while their daughter was perched on a rocking chair, wearing a dress that was considerably less embarrassing than usual. It had only a few ruffles at the bottom. Samara wondered if, judging by the annoyed expressions on her parents' expressions, it had anything to do with something she said.
"Samara. I know you're awake by now." Daphne opened the door to find Samara still laying in her bed with the covers just below her ear, snoring soundly and saying something about lemon waffles. "Fine. I'll just wash the dishes myself."
Samara dove into the second album the second she heard the door slam and Daphne's angry cursing fade down the hallway.
The second one was emptier and there were no signs of the girl in the other one or her parents. There was someone that Samara recognized from an old family portrait that used to hang in her house. A crazed-looking old man with very long white hair, glasses that made his eyes look huge and a white tuxedo that must have turned heads when he walked through town. He was sitting on a park bench with his two sisters (his other five sisters were crouching on the pavement in front of them) All of the girls looked the same: brown hair, brown eyes, pale faces and thin glasses. Except for their brother. He had bright blue eyes, a very tanned face and that wild hair of his that had always been white.. ever since he was about five years old and an experiment went wrong..
Samara flipped through pictures of his sisters on their wedding days, pictures of their children and their homes (all in the city) and then noticing how different they turned out compared to their terribly awkward brother.
He moved into a big ranch house (the very same one that Samara is currently in) with a basement where he could continue to experiment. Just what he was trying to find was completely unknown. But he promised to share the profits with his sisters if he ever made any from it.
Then he bought horses. For some reason or another, possibly out of sheer lonliness and fear of human contact, he bought fifteen horses, bred them, and started the ranch. He married five times in his life, all of his wives died, and only one child came of it: since his wife died the second the baby was born (a girl) he named her Rose.
Eventually she grew up, got good at riding horses, met a trainer from another town, got married, had a bunch of kids, one of which grew up to be Lira, the family friend who offered Samara a place to live. The book ended shortly after the funeral pictures from when Lira's parents died and the pictures that had been sent from the city of her sisters' apartments, husbands, and children. Samara was bored. She put the albums back and, just when she was about to go out and offer her services as a dish washer she noticed something. The room had a closet (the door blended in so well with the wall that it was difficult to see at first glance) and the door was open just enough for Samara to see a box with the words 'GET RID OF AS SOON AS POSSIBLE' written on it.
Once again, ignoring the fact that this might be considered rude, Samara walked up and took the box from the closet.
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Posted: Mon Aug 21, 2006 1:11 pm
Inside the box was what looked like a veil to a wedding dress, a picture of a fat blonde toddler sitting on an annoyed-looking white pony, a bouquet of wilted roses, a letter so old that the envelope was dark yellow and the letters on the front had disappeared. Samara started with the letter. Luckily it wasn't sealed.
Inside was a letter that was surprisingly white compared to the ancient envelope. It was, Samara soon realized, a suicide note. Normal people would have dropped it immediately. Samara wasn't a normal person. The letter read as follows:
If there was a purpose for me being put onto this earth then I have failed to find it in my eighteen years of living.
Never has there been a more miserable, useless person. It was only through some mistake that I was born into such an uncaring, unsupportive, horrid family.
Never again will I stand at the family reunions and let our braindead relatives insult me. I will never see any of the dispicable people that I once claimed as my aunts, uncles, cousins, sisters, parents.
I wish to live no longer. Why I was even born in the first place I haven't the slightest but that's not the point. The point is that you will never have to tell your friends that you are related to me. In fact, I wish that you would just forget about me. Since that is already done at least one of my wishes in life has been granted.
If there were words to describe my "condition" as you called it those words would proberbly be these: A stupid miserable girl who went and got herself locked up in the Looney House for fifteen years. A girl whose family abandoned her. A girl who, compared to her other relatives, wasn't the black sheep. Wasn't the dark horse. Those are animals that have at least a little bit of attractiveness. She was the slime-covered sewer rat. Her sisters were golden retrievers, perfectly blonde and socially accepted even though their hearts were as cold as the ice in the tea they insisted on drinking all the time. And their baby sister was the rat that scrounged around the dining tables searching for food. Always in search of food, as you once said.
Well, you wont have a black mark on your perfect record any longer because I have ended. I know you wont give my room to anyone since no one would ever want to live somewhere where a person like me once dwelled.
I wont say goodbye. I wont say I love you. Even though I dont mind lying to you. This is the end of the letter. Go ahead and burn it.
Samara had read many suicide letters but they were fake and it was in her psychology class in high school. Seeing an authentic one was extremely disturbing.
The picture of the fat little blonde girl had a crack in the glass. Samara wondered if that was her. Curious, Samara walked right out to the dining room where Deidra and Daphne were drooling over fashion magazines and asked point blank.
"Who is this?" She held out the picture. Deidra and Daphne suddenly looked smug.
"That was our Aunt Mildred. She died a few summers ago. She was one of the best horse riders in this town. She won a whole bunch of awards."
Samara was a little disappointed.
"Did she have any sisters?"
Deidra and Daphne laughed. They had long skinny faces and until now Samara thought they only looked like horses. Now she knew they sounded like them when they laughed, too.
"She had seven sisters! They all rode horses, they were all blonde, and they were all extremely successful." Daphne looked out the window at the horses outside. "I'm sure we're destined to follow in their footsteps." Samara reminded herself that these two were only seventeen. They looked forty years old already. Heaven forbid they ever turn sixty.
"Was there another sister? One who wasn't blonde?" Samara knew she was getting somewhere when neither of them answered. "Answer me."
Daphne spoke first. "The family was forbidden to speak about her since she was such an embarrassment. You see, she had a bunch of weird thoughts in her head. She would say strange things and soon her parents grew concerned so they sent her to the mental house a hundred miles away. They hoped she would never come back. When she did, that very night, she..." Daphne paused dramatically. "She killed herself."
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Posted: Mon Aug 21, 2006 1:55 pm
((Don't worry, I'm actually going somewhere with these long posts.))
For some reason that night at dinner, Deidra, Daphne and Lira talked about their aunts. From what Samara gathered all seven of them were very smart, good at riding horses, had tons of money and were the envy of every single person in Harvest Lake.
"Aunt Madalin went to Europe and got married to someone who was very close friends to the prince." Daphne bragged. "They moved back here and, as mother always used to say, I look just like my cousin Lela. She won the Harvest Lake Beauty Pageant five times in a row." Looking at Daphne's skinny face, bulging eyes and fake-looking teeth Samara highly doubted this. Either that or they gave Lela that award because they felt sorry for the poor girl.
"It's strange that, when all of them eventually got married and had kids, they all had three and they're all girls."
Deidra giggled. "I dunno. Cousin Georgina might just be a man. She certainly looks like one and that mustache is coming along nicely." Everyone except for Samara laughed. It wasnt that surprising to her that these people would have an ugly cousin. Lira wasn't as bad as her sisters. She had a normal face and the family blonde hair but nothing extrordinary like Daphne was going on about.
"There was an eigth sister. She killed herself." Samara often said awkward things such as this at dinner tables. She had grown accustomed to the stares and whispers. "I found her suicide letter."
Here was a new thing that Samara wasn't prepared for. Screams. A moment later she realized it wasn't any of the girls screaming it was coming from outside. Lira immediately jumped up and ran out the back door, leaving Daphne and Deidra staring at Samara. When Lira returned, it wasn't with good news.
"The hay shed caught fire." She talked slowly as though explaining it to a two year old child. "Our horses have no food except for the grass in the pasture and those are crowded as it is." Daphne and Deidra honestly looked like they couldn't care less. "We'll have to go to town and buy some more tomorrow." The next second the phone rang. Lira answered it. All the color was drained from her face in the blink of an eye. Then she was sitting at the table explaining how the bank they kept their money in blew up, destroying their mountains of money. Worse, the bank wasnt going to replace the money since their policies delclared that if money wasn't insured that it would not have to be replaced in the event of disaster.
Deidra and Daphne were sobbing about all the clothes they wouldn't get to buy. Lira sat down close to Samara and asked in a low voice, "When you looked in the box... did you touch the roses?" Samara nodded. Lira fainted.
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Posted: Mon Aug 21, 2006 2:21 pm
((I am actually going somewhere with these really long posts.))
That night, while Daphne, Lira and Deidra talked about their relatives, Samara stared at her plate and didn't say anything. As usual no one was asking her questions or acknowledging her existance so she was free to, in her mind, critisize the ugly pink pattern around the edge as well as the strange smelling roast.
"Aunt Madalin married a prince of some sort from a country.. cant remember which one." Daphne seemed to be bragging even though Samara wasn't listening. "They only had one daughter, Lela, but she was so pretty she won the Harvest Lake Beauty Pageant five years in a row. Mom used to tell me I look exactly like her." Samara practically inhaled the roast, she was laughing under her breath, at this statement. Either Daphne's mother was just trying to give her daughter some false confidence or the Harvest Lake judges only gave the award to Lela out of pity for the poor, ugly girl.
Daphne and Deidra started laughing and, even though Samara already knew they looked like horses with their long skinny faces and teeth that bulged out of their mouths, they sounded like them, too. Lira wasn't ugly like her sisters, she was average looking. Samara wondered just what went wrong in the gene pool when the phone rang. Lira answered it at the very second when they heard shouting outside. Thankfully the phone was cordless so she could go outside and investigate without missing the call.
Daphne and Deidra, ever nosy, sprinted to the window. Samara kept her seat.
Lira ran in a minute later, pale as the sheets hanging outside on the line. "The hay shed caught on fire. All of it was destroyed."
Daphne and Deidra had returned to their seats. They rolled their eyes. "You can buy more tomorrow."
"Our bank exploded. Our vault was destroyed and, since neither of you lazy oafs wanted to insure our money like the company policy highly recommends, we aren't getting any of it replaced."
There was never a time when either Daphne or Deidra had felt sorry for themselves in their lives. Now they felt sorry for themselves, the clothes they were never going to get to buy, and guilty that they weren't willing to take out a few extra dollars a year to insure their fortune.
Samara didn't offer comfort to them. She was still staring at her plate when Lira walked up to her and sat down.
"I found a suicide letter in the box in my closet." Samara told Lira with her head still down. "There was an eigth sister that no one liked." She had no idea why she was saying this now when she could have earlier when they were talking about their relatives.
Lira's voice was panicky when she spoke in Samara's ear. "Did you touch the roses?"
Samara nodded, recalling the time when she picked up the picture of the fat girl on the horse that she had to remove a dead rose. Samara heard a thud as Lira fainted.
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Posted: Mon Aug 21, 2006 2:56 pm
After a brief shower and breakfast, Dr. Z hopped in the Red Shark and sped off towards town at a ridiculous speed.
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Posted: Mon Aug 21, 2006 4:38 pm
Harris starts his daily postal route in mineral town.
what a beautiful day harris said to himself.
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Posted: Mon Aug 21, 2006 6:12 pm
HarrisIII Name: Harris age: 45 Bio: harris is a policeman during festivals and postman during tuesdays - saturdays (Uh...Do the WHOLE Profile that I made...And make more descriptive...)Zex walks around the town and sees something going into the town at EXTREME speed,"Wha?"
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Posted: Mon Aug 21, 2006 9:39 pm
"Her name was Lillian." Daphne began the story. When Lira woke up from her fainting spell she convinced Deidra to go to the local pub with her for a few hours. Samara was left alone with Daphne, a comfy chair in the living room, a warm fireplace, creepy paintings of old relatives hanging on the walls in golden frames, and a cup of ice-filled tea she refused to drink.
"It was about fifty years ago, I'm guessing. Locals will tell you there were only seven girls in the Copper Axe Ranch family but that is because they know the whole incident was so humiliating to my family and didn't want to cause them any more heartache than had already been endured." Daphne paused for a moment to eat some of the ice chips in her own cup of tea. Samara remembered a part of Lillian's letter where she said her sisters' hearts were as cold as the iced tea they insisted on drinking. "She was always the odd one. She wasn't born with the family golden hair and sea-blue eyes." Samara had just noticed that Daphne's eyes were blue and, somewhere underneath the hat she was wearing, her hair was proberbly bright blonde. "She had icky mud-brown hair and dark brown eyes. She was plain-looking and no one in town noticed her. She hated horses. Horses hated her. So she never rode. She instead acted as a maid to the rest of the family. She cooked and cleaned and took care of everyone almost every minute of her life from the time she was old enough to walk and talk and take orders." Daphne didn't say this as though it were a terrible thing. To enslave a child just because she's different from the rest. She said it as though it were as normal as leaves turning colors in the fall.
"One day when she was fourteen, Lillian met a boy in town that, a few months later, she would fall in love with. The day she turned sixteen Lillian asked her parents if she could marry him. They refused, of course, good help is hard to come by and they didn't want to lose their slave." Once again she didn't sound as though this were out of the ordinary at all. Samara was disgusted.
"But little did they know that very night Lillian ran away with the boy. She was gone for only a year when everything began to go wrong. Lillian showed up in a small town, yelling at anyone who so much as looked at her. The sherriff picked her up and took her to jail where she was diagnosed with some sort of mental disease. They later moved her to the looney house. Eventually they found out she had a husband. They found him dead in their log cabin in the mountains." Samara shivered as Daphne munched on more ice cubes.
"Since Lillian was suffering from a mental disease and her husband was dead they blamed her for the murder. She remained in the looney house for nine months. They released her because she had a baby." Daphne glared at her fingernails. Samara didn't notice. She was staring at the carpet. "When they released her back to her family they asked if they wanted to keep the baby or send it to an orphanage. Considering their daughter's mental state they decided she wouldn't make a good parent. They said they would take care of the baby. And so they did. No one in town knew about the baby and none of them ever would for she disappeared the very night that she arrived. No one ever even gave her a name." Samara, for the first time in her life, was looking up at the person speaking to her. "As for Lillian she lost her mind completely. She was aware of the fact that she had a baby and was devastated when it disappeared. She knew her family had something to do with it. It was on the day when her parents were sending her back to the mental place that she killed herself."
"Do you know where the baby ended up?" Samara asked, knowing that she was proberbly wrong but decided to ask anyway.
"Nope. Only my grandparents know where she went. They never told any of their daughters. They kept it a secret." Daphne's voice became grim. "Now we get to the part about the curse. The curse you have brought upon all of us." She glared at Samara for a second then continued.
"When Lillian came home she brought with her the bouquet of roses she carried at her wedding. She declared that no one was allowed to touch them and if they ever did they would suffer for the rest of their lives, she would make sure of it.
Sine she was dead already, one of her sisters, Talia I believe her name was, went into her room, saw the roses that were still alive, and stole them for her own wedding. She didn't have any more money for flowers and as long as no one knew about it she wouldn't be in any kind of trouble." Daphne paused when a fly hovered above her head. It eventually flew away and she continued. "Lillian stayed true to her word, even in death, and the next day Talia's husband died, all of his money got stolen from the bank, only his account, no one else's." Daphne pointed to a painting on the wall of a sad little blonde girl with blue eyes wearing a white dress standing in front of a boarding school. She had slight dark circles under her eyes and an unhealthy tint to her skin. "That's Talia's daughter, Luna. She was born nine months to the day that her father died. Her mother only lived to see her first birthday because Talia died in a barn fire along with all three of her horses."
"Has anyone else bothered the roses?" Samara asked. Daphne nodded.
"Why do you think all seven of my aunts died? They all died on their twenty-first birthdays of fires and riding accidents, mostly but not before all of their husbands died and their daughters were born. It's Lillian's curse and now it has been brought down upon all of us."
Samara shook her head. "I'm sorry." That was the first time she had ever said that and meant it.
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