Welcome to Gaia! ::

Ok, well, I'm going to be working on writing intros here. Also, there's going to have to be format editing done to some of the stories as they aren't formated well for actually reading.

Checklist
Intro
s-Aniese Tate -Jahoclave
p-More or Less - alicemae
s- Absolute Abolition - LittleMissRocketship
p-Silya Elektrika - Kraeela
s-Breeding Grounds - Fawkes *The Starving Artist*
p-Spin - CA.ged
s- Broken Toy - Scarlet Jile

Lookin' good. Now for some recruits! wink

Thanks much to Alicemae for her editing...

Title: Silya Elektrika
Words: 322
Lines: 60
Author: Kraeela


Walking down the corridor
The walls on either side of me
Are bare.
Peeling whitewash
Rust stains on the cieling
Dripping foul-smelling water
Moths fly around the lightbulb
Burnt
They drop to the floor, Dead
I brush them aside with a foot
A heavy foot. A foot with a metal cuff
I shuffle. Down the long hallway
Clang! Clang!
Steel bracelets around my wrists
Weigh down my arms
Clang! Clang!
I come closer
With each step
A dull light
A sterile formaldehyde-yellow bathes the room
A man meets me at the door
Dressed in gray
Devil? Angel? It's too dark to tell
Or is it too late to care
I walk across the floor
Passing bench upon bench of people
A judge, the jury
A woman stands. Crying, cursing at me
Her husband takes her by the arm. Sits her down.
The family stares at me. Chilling eyes
Cold. Hurt. Angry eyes.
The Gray Man makes me walk faster
He seats me upon a chair
A throne
He sets a crown upon my head
A perfect fit
A crown of black sackcloth that shuts out the world
I smile
For so long I've waited to go home
Soon, I will
"We have gathered here today, to witness..."
He murmurs on and on
And I await patiently
"Any last words?" he asks
I shake my head, "No"
I have no more words for this earth
"Ready..."
My body shakes
As the jolt sears through my flesh
Yet, I have left it behind
I feel no pain
The weight of the cuffs no longer drag me down
And as a Man in White greets me
I know for sure whose side he stands.
Yet before I leave
The Earth which was my prison
For once, it is not too late
I say my Last Words to the family that weeps
Before the charred body:
"I am sorry for the crime I did not commit."

OH! Kraeela's poem is so perfect for this, lol. Why didn't I make that connection while reading it in the other thread? *bonks self* Hehehe, The Perfect One strikes again! Woot. xp

Breeding Grounds
1,153 Words
Fawkes *The Starving Artist*

At the ripe old age of seventeen you haven't got much experience with warfare or hatred. I hated that girl who wore the same dress as I did to homecoming but it was nothing compared to what would come to light in my life. Still, I remember the beginning, I had just had my seventeenth birthday and as all young kids think, I was invincible. At least I was, until I got the call that changed my life.

My old red mustang banged down the city streets as I made my way to visit him. He had just returned form a place so far from home that it seemed as though it didn't even exist. The war there was fierce and my few friends that had come back from it didn't like to talk on the subject much. Being a girl was a relief when the draft started; I always knew breasts would come in handy some day. I had a heap of older friends and I was always more comfortable with the males of the species anyway.

He was sitting cross legged in front of the television when I got to his apartment. His mom and dad had just left, leaving a couple bags of groceries and a carton of cigarettes in their wake. He was watching The Simpsons and laughing hysterically. He said he'd missed that show a great deal. I sat next to him and pretended to find it as funny as he did, it was a repeat. When the evening news came on he turned the television off abruptly and sighed heavily with a grimace on his face.

"No one has asked me about the war," he said in a soft whisper. I stood there, not knowing what to say. It was an awkward moment and I wasn't sure I wanted to hear any stories he had but a macabre piece of me was curious. "I suppose they think that talking about it will upset me." He sat on the couch and beckoned me to join him.

I sat and looked over at him, one of my closest friends, and he seemed so far away from me at the moment. "It doesn’t seem real you know," I said in response. "It's all in a different country, far from home. Like it isn't even real." I felt rather abashed and pretended to be very interested in the chipping nail polish on my fingers.

"Oh it's real," he said brandishing his bare shoulder to me. "I think this would prove just how real it is." I looked at a circular scar, no bigger than my thumb. It was his bullet wound, the reason he was allowed to go home so early, and the one thing that brought him back. I nodded; it was all I could do.

He began to tell me about the gunfire and the children and the bullets flying around him. I couldn't handle it and I was forced to throw up a hand in desperation. It became real as he spoke, I could imagine the children wielding the guns and the adults running around commanding them to shoot. My heart ached as I saw his face contort from story to story. He would laugh at a comment one of his buddies had made and then frown as he told me of that same mans death. Once my hand had lifted he stopped, nodding in understanding. "I don’t want to hear anymore, I'm sorry but it's..." I couldn't finish my sentence. He just nodded.

After laughing about the old days for a few hours I left. My heart still sunk into the depths of sadness as I left his apartment. He was sent back a year later and this time he didn't return. I didn't even find out until three months after his funeral. My first taste of war, something I wouldn't have considered a few years prior, had been a sour and fruitless experience and I wasn't even there. I had heard it second hand and it still affected me so horribly. It wouldn't get any better.

Years past and the war went on. There were protests and there were many different stances on the situation. I tended to stay somewhere in the middle instead of choosing a side. I shared the ideals of the peace makers at times but I was fearful of what would happen if we didn't finish and win. So I didn't speak of it, I didn't consider it; it was happening far away and didn't affect my daily life. Not until everyone I knew was over there fighting or would be soon enough. The day my father left was the day I cried the most, I had just turned twenty.

Mother and I pretended he was on holiday, like he'd be returning soon. Four months later my boyfriend Jason was sent off as well, I was petrified. Suddenly it was close to home; suddenly we were in the middle of something we couldn't handle. It was getting too far; it was too much when it affected my daily life and not just the evening news.

It wouldn't be until nearly a year later when I started receiving the phone calls. A friend here, an ex there, all dead due to someone else’s war. I tried to stay calm, tried to remember that Daddy and Jason were much smarter and they'd come home.

We received the letter from the Department of Defense on a dreary September day. Daddy had lost his life for the glory of his country. Jason's letter came to his mother two months later. My second taste of war was just as sour in my mouth but it breeds something worse than just heartache. I cried for days and those tears became hatred and that hatred turned into something so disgusting I could barely breathe through it.

I hated them, everyone single one of their kind. In my mind, the enemy was all around me, he was a different color and there was an accent in his voice and he smelled funny and he wore odd clothes. If I'd had a gun I would have shot him for his sins, he'd killed my father and he'd ruined my mothers life and he'd killed my Jason. He should die. Hatred took me and I folded myself within it.

"This," I said to my mother, "Is what makes prejudice." She looked at me oddly, her face cocked to the side. "I have lost my father and my boyfriend to a man with no face yet I know his color and his creed and even his culture. I hate him and all of his kind, even the ones that fight for our side and live on our land." She came toward me and went to embrace me, nodding her head in an understanding way. "This mother, this is what makes a man hate."

(I dont know if this works for the theme but I wrote it a while ago and thought it might. ^_^

Spin
297 words
CA.ged

Sit speed-surfing channels on mode one-twenty-eight
Blur of colours never fading always too late
Present's inconstant and the future is too far
Got to run away from the past in a brand-new fancy car.

100 years from now, will it really matter?
Let democracy disintegrate as the parties chatter
Let the hungry wither, let AIDS and cancer kill
Defer to your President as he passes bill after useless bill

Follow in your father's footsteps, wage guerrilla wars
Silence the protestors before they get too far
It's voting day tomorrow, it's too hard to think
Succumb to glitz and glitter, McDonald's, dreams and drink

Cut taxes for the capitalists; throw a millionaires ball
Cry death to all the faggots who dare defy the law
Scorn the poor and homeless, let them starve in the streets
Sell your pets to slaughter, they're better off as meat

Invade Brazil and Africa for your exotic treasures
Then declare endangered species and demand dramatic measures
Dump your tons of plastic and your nuclear wastes
Earth deserves to be looted, trashed, raped, defaced

Slow down the world! The police demand
The air is too unhealthy, society already damned
Shut up your politicians and turn off your TVs
Keep the garbage out of airwaves; let the people see:

What a deceived state of mind they live in
How easy the illusions break
Not a thought to hypocrite's morals;
Stop! for earth's sake.

Let go of preconceptions
And take a lesson from the past
Don your flowers and your peace signs
Let's start this over from scratch.

We are the generation that will think for ourselves
We're the generation that leaves history on the shelf
Words can go on into the emptiness of space;
We are the generation where our actions will earn. Our. Place.

Ayn Rand's a good one xd
I had to mention her, she's one of my favs. I think I'm going to enter, so sit tight for a minute~
*runs to crank out literary ideology!*

Thank you...
I rather like you ending.

Though, don't be too alarmed if we send you some suggestions for editing.