From the Failed Novels of my Youth Archive

Because I love all you internet people dearly, and enjoy cringing at the writing of my youth very much, I have dug up for your entertainment the beginning of a novel I wrote in 2008. When I was fourteen. (Only a year before I wrote Girl Saves Boy, but I did a lot of writing in that year. So this is not very good!)

Here we have, in it's original un-edited glory, the start of a weird dystopic sci-fi novel with multiple narrators (one of whom is an escaped government weapon with a very strange name... I so love very strange character names). It is super dramatic! But entertaining in how bad it is. I hope?

It features:

- multiple viewpoints (differentiated by their respective formatting and nothing else!)

- a very vague war-like thing going on!

- a very suspicious underground facility!

- some kind of cyborg character!

- nothing that is fully thought-out!

- a superbly lame title. You'll love it. 

MELODRAMA AND BAD WRITING AHEAD.

The Experimentals

Part One – The Underground

The lights in the hall flickered, the fluorescent light illuminating the cold grey room so it was brighter than day. It was sharp enough to give you a headache, and that was the lighting alone.
Mae’s eyes were dead. The rest of her was alive, only just, but her eyes were dead. I was looking into them and there was nothing there.
She glanced away, as if I’d seen her secrets in those hollow, empty eyes.
Her hair was grey and pulled back in a severe bun, but her face didn’t look any older than forty. Her teeth were slightly yellowed, and there was no happiness left in her smile.
I wondered how long she’d been here. How long it had taken for her eyes to die.
I don’t think she looked like that before.
I brushed my stiff uniform with my hands, trying to iron out non-existent wrinkles. The blue and white striped material simply bounced back in place. It was a formless dress that fell past my knees.
A man brushed past Mae and I in the hall, eyes glued to the clipboard he was holding, barely noticing what surrounded him.
I didn’t get to see his eyes, but I could tell from the way he walked he felt there was little left of value in his life, just as with everyone else.
The skin between Mae’s eyebrows puckered, as if she was thinking. I wished I could reach over and smooth it away, but I knew it would be an entirely odd thing to do and I wanted to make a good impression on Mae-with-the-dead-eyes.
Her forehead relaxed and she plastered a smile to her face, nodding to me, “Shall I show you around?”
I wondered how long it would take for my eyes to die. I’d already lost the ability to genuinely smile.
I nodded crisply back.
“You’ll be handling Ward B Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday,” the smile on her face slipped a little as we walked, as if it required too much concentration, “Wednesday, Friday and Sunday are your off duty days.”
A headache was already forming at the back of my head, like a fist grasping my hair and tugging it backwards. I longed for natural light, but we were fifteen metres beneath the ground and not going up anytime soon.
“Are we allowed to go upstairs then?” I asked.
Mae appeared a little apprehensive. After a pause, in which we stopped walking and paused outside a door to one of the rooms, she shook her head, and I almost sensed sadness emanating from her, “No. We’ll get to where you’ll be staying later. We all have to stay there when we aren’t on duty. It’s quite nice,” she smiled a little bitterly at this point, “compared to this.”
She glanced away, and I wondered what she was thinking. Maybe she’d lost family too. Or they’d lost her.
Then she refocussed, glancing at me and then towards the door we were stationed outside with a slight nod.
“Are we going in?” I asked.
She shook her head again, “Just look through the window.”
I glanced through the small window high in the door, having to stretch onto my tiptoes to be able to see in.
Inside, a nurse was conducting what appeared to be a physical examination on a naked girl who appeared about twelve. Her eyes were small and darted around uneasily.
She didn’t see me, and I felt vaguely voyeuristic, looking in like that.
I glanced toward Mae with a question in my eyes.
“Cavity search,” she answered simply, “Drugs, weapons, those types of things. After this she’ll have medical examination. Once we made the mistake of doing the med exam before the cavity search and Doctor Shepard ended up with a needle in his arm.” She chuckled slightly, gazing up at the grey tiled ceiling as if she were remembering. Then her eyes flashed to me and she patted me gently on the shoulder, “Don’t look so scared. Dr Shepard survived. And you won’t be doing these. Your job is mostly sedating, feeding, and assisting in showering and activities, you know, basic stuff.”
“Are these people…” I began, “Are they…?”
“The kids and teenagers here are here because we can’t have them out on the streets,” she answered my half spoken question, “Most of them have lost all their relatives and are mentally unstable, some can’t look after themselves or are at risk of hurting others. Our job is to keep them here and keep them alive until this all ends.”
I noticed she couldn’t bring herself to say ‘war’. A year had passed since the whole thing had begun and people were still coming to terms.
I guess it’s easier to ignore if you lived underground.
Suddenly I was torn from my train of thought as a sudden high-pitched scream ripped through the hall, the sound bouncing off the walls with nothing to absorb it.
It was a sharp, almost tortured shriek, and it made me shiver.
Almost in unison, Mae and I both turned our head towards the source of the noise – a girl ten metres down the hall.
She was wearing the ordinary garb of every patient here at Tranquillity, baggy white track pants and t-shirts made of flimsy material with the tranquillity symbol embossed on it as you would have your school emblem on a uniform.
The symbol was a waterfall, a miniature replica of the one in the reception area. As I got further and further into Tranquillity, I discovered more and more how much of a farce this symbol was. Meant to represent what its name suggested, this place was far from tranquil.
The girl was different to other patients I had seen. While the rest were gaunt-faced, with shapeless bodies, lank hair and a ghostly pallor, this girl appeared, dare I say it, healthy.
Her cheeks were flushed pink, her complexion, whilst pale, was of a healthy tone, unlike the other vitamin D deprived youths that filled this building. Her body was a far cry from that of the other patients. She filled out her white t-shirt and pants with curves that were becoming rarer and rarer to see since the fall-out, food shortages and complete power-out. Now that people could no longer microwave their meals and sit in front of the TV all evening, they were at a loss of what to eat and where to get it, not to mention how to avoid getting shot at.
That was part of the reason I came here, only part mind you, so that I would have guaranteed food. I got sick of living on baked beans in my basement.
These thoughts, of her Size 12 figure, bouncy brown curls that fell to her shoulders and shimmered with every movement, and healthy skin tone, came second to my observance of what was going on.
What she did filled me with genuine fear.
She’d exploded out of the door of what I presumed was her room, and a nurse of short stature who I hadn’t yet seen stepped towards her, cooing to calm her but conversely brandishing a needle with the intent of sedating her. The girl flung the back of her hand towards the nurse, striking her face and sending her across the hall. That happens in the course of a few seconds and whilst I stood there dumbly observing the situation (the girl growling madly and looking around like a tetchy dog, the nurse wavering in and out of consciousness, slumped against the opposite wall), Mae sprung into action.
“Ash,” she barked to a taller male nurse, who was coming out of a small office across the way, “Help me. Deanna, help Lola.”
Deanna nodded crisply and walked slowly and precisely towards Lola, not making eye contact with the girl.
The girl cast me a glance, looking directly into my eyes and I noticed hers weren’t dead.
But I wasn’t quite sure whether they were alive.
Then she ran.
But Mae and Ash were already upon her, stabbing her arm with a needle when she was pinned to the ground. She slumped over, falling unconscious.
Mae stood and breathed out heavily. She nodded for Ash and another nurse to take the girl back to her room. They struggled a little. She looked heavy.
Deanna helped Lola to her feet. Mae glanced to me and gestured I come over. I noticed as I walked towards them I was shaking.
I arrived at Mae’s side just as she was beginning to lecture Lola.
“That’s not to happen again, Lola,” she said, her voice blunt. She pursed her lips and stared Lola down.
“It won’t,” Lola shook her head vehemently. I observed she was still shaking a little.
“Take her back to her room, Deanna, after she gets checked out by Doctor Cherry,” sighed Mae, then turning to Lola, “Lola, I’m going to move you down to Ward D for a few days. I’ll speak with Yolanda first, but head down there tomorrow morning.”
Lola nodded again and Deanna helped her away. Lola was shaking violently.
I stared after them, before turning back to Mae, “Who was that girl?” I asked.
She knew who I was talking about. “Emo Nightfire,” she sighed, glancing at the door she’d disappeared back through as Ash and the other nurse came out, and returned to what they were doing before.
“That’s a weird name,” I observed.
Without looking at me, Mae said, “She’s a weird girl.”

The nurse placed my tray on the side table and after brushing her hair out of her eyes and behind her ears; she wound them together behind her back.

She was a different nurse, probably new judging by the light left in her eyes. She was small, but probably a reasonable height for her age, which didn’t appear to be much older than me. Her hair was dark blonde, and cut just below her ears. It was longer on the left side, and I liked that.

What I liked most about her was the way she didn’t sneer down at me, her upper lip twitching back in disgust, eyes squinting along her nose, which crinkled as if she’d smelt a bad stench emanating from my soul.

No. She smiled courteously, and I could see she was probably here for the same reason I was, but under different circumstances. It makes a difference what side you’re on outside, because it’s the same in here.

But I’m never really sure who’s good and who’s bad, and in my spare time (which is quite a lot of it) I like to think it through, but never really get any closer to an answer.

I like to think I’m not bad, but the way they’re keeping me locked up like this, I sometimes doubt it.

“Hello,” I smiled, and propped myself up on my bed. I had a small room, barely two metres long and three metres wide, but that meant I got it to myself. I used to be in with a boy called Liam when I was under suicide watch, but that got tiring pretty quick, waiting to see whether he’d strangled himself every time I got back from dining hall or showering or the awful evening activities they make us do.

“Good evening,” she replied. I offered my hand for her to shake and it remained behind her back, not in unwillingness to shake my hand, but merely out of being unsure.

“You’re allowed to touch me,” I replied, smiling slightly as I swung my legs over the side of my bed, “If you weren’t they’d have a glass wall in here. Those rooms are actually cushier, come to think of it.”

The edges of her lips rose vaguely in an uncertain smile before grasping my hand and shaking it.

“I’m Alex,” I said. She let go of my hand (her fingers were soft) and dropped it back to her side, where it swung aimlessly.

She stood silently as I picked up my small cup of pills (a rainbow cocktail of drugs I didn’t really need, but it was better than needles) and said, “Cheers,” tipping them back and swallowing in one gulp.

“You’re allowed to tell me your name…” I paused and glanced at her ID tag, “Storm.” I chuckled.

“That’s me,” she smiled again, but her uncertainty still held her back from smiling genuinely. Then again, she might have already lost that. Her smile, displaced, missing, never to resurface again like that bomber jacket I had which never showed up in the lost and found. She shuffled backwards, and I felt vaguely sad at the thought of her leaving. It was nice to have someone in my room apart from me.

She wasn’t leaving, instead perching herself on the edge of the stiff chair in the corner of my room, painted an undulating white to match my bed and side table. The floor was a dull grey carpet, a shade darker than the cool concrete walls.

I tore the weak plastic cover from my plastic knife and fork with my teeth -yet another preventative measure to stop us hurting ourselves or someone else.

I know people in here who could easily kill someone with a plastic fork, but they keep her under such heavy sedation she can never do much damage.

“Am I under suicide watch again?” I asked through a mouthful of mush. I believed it was a mix of potatoes, water and protein powder. It wasn’t much to taste, but not eating it is worse, especially if someone notices.

Storm’s eyes appeared alarmed, and she glanced down at the clipboard she held. She shook her head, “Just says to watch you eat and check you room for sharp objects… Doctor’s check-up next week…”

I laughed again, and she glanced up at me, eyes confused. I scooped up another mouthful of mush and pointed my knife at her, “You aren’t meant to tell me what that says.”

“Oh,” she said, and her eyes downcast.

I swallowed, “It’s okay,” I smiled, “I won’t tell anyone.” I made a motion of zipping my lips.

She almost laughed, but she caught herself before a noise came out of her mouth. Instead, she asked, “Why are you in here?”

“I’m sorry?” I knitted my brows together in puzzlement.

“Did you kill someone?” she asked, and her eyes were honest. She really meant what she was asking. I noticed she leant towards me and I liked that.

“Do you know how many people are in this ward, Storm?” I asked.

“Fifty?” she asked back, not sure where this is going.

“About,” I answered, waving my spork to illustrate, “In the entire ward there are around sixty people. This is one of the smaller wards. If you put every patient in this facility together, you’d have about five hundred kids.”

“Really?” she asked, using her words genuinely, rather than as sound filler.

I nodded, before going on, “I’d say only about three of those have killed someone, and I’m not one of them.”

She digested this and then asked, “Why are you here then, if you haven’t done anything wrong?”

“Why are you here?” I asked back immediately, almost as a reflex.

She fell silent, and I answered for the both of us.

“This is a war, Storm,” I said, quietly, “We’re both prisoners. Wars kind of obliterate reasons for things.”

She glanced up, and I could see tears welling in her eyes that she refused to let spill over and I wondered why they were there.

“Goodbye Alex,” she smiled, crisp, courteous demeanour returning as she stooped to pick up my empty tray.

“Call me A.J.,” I answered.

She left my room, the door locking automatically behind her.

I liked Storm. Maybe if this whole thing hadn’t have happened, I wouldn’t be three stories beneath the ground in a mental hospital that refuses to be called that, and would instead be at high school. If I met Storm there, I might have even dared to have a crush on her, with her lopsided blonde bob and eyes with light in them, still.

I fell into a drug-induced sleep.

My prison break wasn’t as successful as I’d hoped. Of course it would fail, I lamented myself later, you were still half sedated.
If I wasn’t half sedated Lola would probably be dead, instead demoted to Ward D. Ward D wasn’t so bad, I suppose. They were going to keep me down there, until I jabbed Doctor Shepard. Damn, they got mad. They should’ve been happy. I could’ve killed him. I wasn’t sedated then. But I didn’t. I like Doc Shepard. He’s very good-humoured, even after you make a weak attempt on his life.
My room isn’t like most of the others. For a start, there’s a one-sided window against one of the walls. Windows don’t belong in this building. We are underground after all. My door doesn’t have the standard window in it, because they’re afraid I’ll break it.
It isn’t as if they tell me these things. I can hear them on the other side of the window sometimes. A normal person wouldn’t be able to, but I can.
If we were above ground, I’d be able to bust a window and get out. Here, there’s nowhere to go. This building is effectively a giant coffin with air-conditioning.
It isn’t just the constant sedation and crappy food that gets to me. There’s so little space in here. I long to be able to have command of my senses, be outside, and leap and jump and scream all I like. I want freedom, and I’m choking in this hole in the ground.
There’s nothing to do here. Breathe and eat. I don’t need to sleep, and I can’t. It’s a marker of what I am. A hybrid of human and something else. Something better. Something with power and without weakness.
A victim of people playing god.
You know what, you could even say I was the messiah - if there weren’t more people like me. 

--

END SCENE.

Please comment with tales of failed novels from your youth / melodramatic stories you wrote! (I would love an excerpt. That would make my day.)

Teaser Tuesday: Stranger Things Have Happened

Once I wrote fifteen thousand words of a novel over the course of a few days because the idea wouldn't leave me alone. This was a few months back, and I haven't written a word of it since, mainly due to 1) time limitations (I do have a novel I am supposed to rewrite) and 2) There is a huge gap between where I stopped writing the story and how I think it will end, and I have no idea what to put in between. Perhaps it will work better as a shorter story.

Here is an excerpt! It's written from the perspective of a girl called Andy. She's very organised, particular and logical. She catalogues her entire life. She's an aspiring scientist. She's a big fan of rationality and predictability. Her grandmother is her closest friend, and her exact opposite (crazy and fun and unpredictable), and the novel begins with her funeral, and occurs over a span of an exceptionally weird 24 hours in Andy's life. If I keep working on this I will come up with a better title. Tell me what you think.

--

How strange to make up someone’s face and dress them in their best clothes when no one will ever look at them again. Perhaps this is just a tradition left over from ancient times, like the Egyptian kings and queens thinking that all the treasures in their tombs would go with them to the afterlife. Maybe in the future, when everyone in our society advances to the level I am pretty sure I have evolved to now, we will be a bit more realistic and bury human bodies under crops or something, because I hear they are a very good natural fertiliser. I would not mind eating food that has been fertilised by people who are already deceased, or people eating food fertilised by my corpse. As long as no one was specifically killed for fertiliser and no one ate a stray limb, I feel it would be fairly all right and a lot more sensible than what we are doing currently.

‘I want to be a cremated so I can’t come back as a zombie,’ Grandma told me once.

‘Cremation is terrible for the environment, worse than burying people. It causes a lot of pollution,’ I told her. ‘And also urns are a bit creepy. I always see in movies that people accidentally eat the ashes or something. Apparently it’s common.’

‘I’ll be dead! I won’t care about the environment. I don’t care a whole lot now, to be terribly un-PC. I’ll be cremated and you can paint me into a portrait of myself.’ She tilted her chin up and placed a hand underneath, gazing up at the wall clock of our kitchen thoughtfully. ‘Make me look like a fascist dictator, would you?’

‘That’s even creepier and I can’t paint.’

‘You’ve got plenty of time to learn. Miserable people live forever – you’re stuck with me until I’m at least a hundred.’

I don’t know whether or not Grandma was serious about this, but she didn’t have anything in her will about it, so Mum is burying her and having a big church ceremony. The part where everyone gets drunk at the wake in an RSL is probably the only part Grandma would actually agree with and, if she were here, enjoy.

Of course I have a will and very detailed wishes, kept in my filing cabinet, but I cannot legally file them until I am eighteen. If I die between now and then, everything goes to my mother and she will probably bury my body in a casket like she has done with Grandma, and that is not very environmentally sustainable, is it? Eventually we’ll run out of places to bury people and wood to build coffins.

Grandma did not live that long, by the way. Grandma lived to seventy. This is statistically significantly lower than the average lifespan of a woman in this country. That is four times the age I am now. Grandma could have had a quarter life crisis when she was my age. Sometimes I am thinking I am having a quarter life crisis or a fifth life crisis, and then I remember that I feel like this all the time, and I probably felt as if I was having a fourteenth life crisis when I was five. I don’t think I knew a lot of fractions then, though, as bright as I was.

Grandma is looking at me from the cover of the pamphlet in my hand. I gave this photo to the funeral director. It is her face and shoulders cropped out of a group photo – she hated being photographed, we do not have a single photo of her on her own – and she is smiling and shiny-eyed and it’s a nice photo and I think that is the photo she’d pick, if she were here. I have a photo album on my computer labelled ‘Photos to use in the event of my disappearance or death for print materials and other paraphernalia’ to avoid Mum having to go through the difficult selection process while grieving or searching for me. Someone will have to know my password in order to get onto the computer, though, and they will also have to know to go to the right subfolder. I have to put these instructions in my will.

This is the logic I am using: If I am prepared, this will not happen to me. Bad things always happen to people who think that bad things will never happen to them. If I think that bad things will happen to me and am always prepared for every negative outcome, bad things won’t happen. This is not science but I wish it was because then I would be invincible. Unfortunately, the universe does not work this way.

Inside the pamphlet, there are the hymns, there are the prayers, there’s my name. We’re most of the way through. I focus on little blocks of time, always, to keep going. If I think of everything at once – my whole life, or two hours of Grandma’s funeral – it’s too big. I like this schedule. Five minute reading, ten minute speech. Funerals have an order that death does not have, like it’s trying to make up for it. I don’t even need this. I got my closure the other day. I have seen Grandma dead, and I have known her my whole life, and I am much better at remembering her on my own. I am trying to be present in this moment but there are too many thoughts in my head. Grandma would whisper, ‘Come back to us, Andy,’ if I got too far away in my head. She could tell. She would be amused. But she is not here. I wish I could at least believe in her being here figuratively. That would make it easier.

And then someone is saying, faintly, ‘Andy? Andy.’

It is not Grandma. That would be nice, to be deluded enough to imagine the dead speaking to me. That would be a comfort. Though it would not make me feel any less crazy. It would probably make me feel crazier. Most definitely. Thank God I’m not hallucinating Grandma.

It’s just Mum. Her mouth widens, like she is attempting a tight-lipped smile, but the edges of her mouth seem as if they don’t know they’re supposed to turn up. She is grimacing. We’re filing out of the church now, family first. Everyone behind us standing and waiting. And I’m looking at everyone as I walk past, shoes squeaking. I don’t really see a point to funerals at all.

Teaser Tuesday: Sunny at the end of the world

I have this terrible habit of always starting new stories when I am supposed to be working on something else. I figure, though, that I should at least write the scene or chapter down before the inspiration passes in case I someday run out of ideas and have to go back and work on all of my unfinished novels. (Though lack of ideas is never a problem. Time and making myself sit down and actually write are the problems, generally. It's hard to keep up momentum when the outside world has so much stuff to distract me.) I'm not good at just writing notes and then fleshing out scenes - I tend to come up with bits of dialogue, or a character, or something that requires I type out 2000 words. Getting some writing done is wonderful, but not when you are supposed to be writing something else.

This is a little bit from zombie novel that I've written a few thousand words of, and may or may not continue (I have only a vague idea of plot). There are no actual zombies in this section. I love zombie novels, and I want to write a zombie novel. Also, the more you look at the word zombie the stranger it seems. The narrator of this part is named Toby, and Toby is not really a very good zombie hunter, and it's quite unfortunate he's on his own with a baby during the apocalypse. There's another protagonist, named Sunny, who may or may not be zombified. It's like a zombie love story. It's like an awkward teenage romance with the end of the world as the setting. And a baby thrown in. It's really fantastic in my head. I hope you like this and you will tell me what you think.

--

Dear Ronnie,

What does one wear to the end of the world? You wore a yellow jumpsuit. A very versatile garment, the all-in-one. Put it on and bam! Ready to rock. I’m not sure why it hasn’t caught on with the older crowd. Such a shame everyone grows out of it. I wore a purple three-piece suit. Not at the start – at the start I was wearing artfully frayed jeans and a deliberately faded t-shirt and an unbuttoned flannie, standard party wear, but once I realised life as we know it was definitely for sure ending, and that I would probably soon be dead, I figure I needed to die in style. You and me, kid, we’re going out with a bang. But we’ll get to that.

There are a lot of things that need to be explained to you, Ronnie, some of which I don’t even know. A lot of which you won’t be able to understand until you’re older. I’d like to hope that this will all be over in a bit, and we’ll get your family back together, and we’ll go back to being neighbours with not a whole lot of interest in one another.

As it is, I’m kind of your guardian and protector. I know, I’d be let down, too.

I never really expected to become a father this young. I also hoped that perhaps if I were to become a father, I would actually, you know, get laid beforehand. I bet this is how the Virgin Mary felt. I’m the Virgin Toby. 

Don’t tell anyone at school, though, because I’ve got a whole lot of elaborate lies going on involving cavorting with various girls who live interstate. I have fake Facebook profiles and everything. It’s very involved, fabricating an exciting love life when you have nothing going on.

Though really I am never be going back to school, so who cares? I doubt zombies mind whether or not girls are interested in me. Zombies want me, I bet. And for my brains, too. Apparently the average age at which people lose their virginity is sixteen and I’m already seventeen, so I think the ship has sailed for me. Especially considering the girl I’m interested in is now a bonafide flesh-eater.

You’ll have to forgive me, Ronnie. I’m terrible with children. This is deeply inappropriate. I won’t let you read this letter till you’re at least sixteen. I’ll tell you how this whole shebang started, first up, and how you and I came to be the Dynamic Duo, fighting zombies, taking names. Though really mostly you cry and I cower.

A baby and a scared teenage boy. We’re probably not going to save the world.

--

This is the story of how we met: I mean, properly.

I heard, across the hall, you crying. I didn’t know it was you, yet, didn’t know your name. I’d seen you a few times before, nodded politely to your parents when we’d run into each other in the hall when I was on my way to school. I didn’t know if you were a boy or a girl, and, to be entirely honest which I figure I might as well be now, it’s not as if I were actually interested in small children. Sorry. So I was standing in my own doorway listening, thinking about zombie babies and the possibility of it being a trap and the idea of a baby being eaten alive and the idea of me being eaten alive and where your parents were. Your twenty-something mum with her hair always in a tight bun, and your older dad with a perpetually crinkled shirt. They mustn’t have had an iron.

Ironing. Christ, who wasted good life hours ironing? Not your parents. My mother, sometimes. Before a date with that boring used-to-be-a-babe accountant.

Your front door was ajar and I ran across the hall and my heart felt as if it were in my throat. Inside, your apartment is a flipped version of mine, except yours is decorated with great consistency. Your parents did a nice job. White carpet and tiles and black countertops and chairs and a lounge suite – that lounge suite looked expensive, it probably took a whole herd of cows to make – and a glass table. Tasteful modern prints in black and white adorned the walls at regular intervals. In my apartment, there is a hodge-podge of different styles and colours, and seven different chairs, and trinkets adorning every surface. In your apartment, with its pristine carpet, I was tempted to kick off my shoes and leave them respectfully at the door, but I did not. Sorry. I figured no one would mind. From there in the entrance hall, I could see the edge of the kitchen up ahead, on my right, and a smear of blood on the edge of a cupboard.

I did not go into the kitchen.

I’m just trying to write this down as it happened. You might never read this, Ronnie.

Instead, I turned left, towards the bedrooms and the screaming. ‘Veronica’ was spelt out in wooden pink letters on your bedroom door. In my apartment, this was my room. The door was open. You were loud. You were in a carrier, the kind you put in the car, which is on the floor. Like you were about to leave.

I have no idea how old you are, but knew you were somewhere between a newborn and a toddler. You don’t seem to be able to speak words. I pick you up, and I have no idea how to hold a baby but I am doing my best.

‘It’s okay, Ronnie,’ I said, patting you on the back and swaying you back and forth and speaking in as calm and soothing a voice as I could muster considering the circumstances. ‘Everything will be all right.’

Teaser Tuesday: Little Death

This is not from the novel I am currently editing nor the one I am struggling to write, but a little scene which I wrote quite a while ago. I've had the general idea for this novel and a bunch of scenes in my head for a long time now, and I'd like to go back and write a little more and see where it takes me (I don't really like this scene too much - it's terribly sentimental, and I am far less of a romantic than the things I write seem to indicate - but hey! thought you might like reading it).

If I were ever to write it, this would be a novel about twins, awkward afterlife, and reality not measuring up to expectations (and of course unrequited love, because it's the best kind of love to write about). It's very important that you play this song, and then this one whilst reading. I feel it will improve your experience.

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On a Friday night, just after eleven, Gracie and Wren and I lay on the floor of Wren’s room, stretched out like starfish and staring upwards at the constellation of glow-in-the-dark stars Wren had stuck to her ceiling. Gracie was in the middle, counting the stars under her breath. Wren was playing us all of her favourite songs - we were listening to a Sufjan Stevens one - and it was one of those nights when lying on the bedroom floor and listening to music in the dark with your twin sister and her best friend felt like the height of human existence.

Wren’s room was wondrous, partly because of the girl that slept there. The carpet was all dark blue and plush, and the walls were painted light blue, though the colour only peeked out where the wall wasn’t covered in postcards and letters from Wren’s many penpals (including two children she sponsored in a third world country, a Japanese school girl, quite a few Europeans who sent her very nice chocolate, and a bunch of others, all of whom she wrote to often). The door of her cupboard was permanently open, and stuffed with pastel dresses and shoeboxes filled with sandals and mementoes and all her notes-to-self that she never read. Her mattress was pushed against one wall of her room, and she had a low coffee table against the wall opposite, cluttered with her laptop, speakers and books and stationary and abandoned homework and coffee cups. A full-length mirror leant against the wall there, too, with photos of Gracie and Wren and their various friends tucked into the frame. I was in the corner of one.

Gracie said, ‘I’m making popcorn’ because even though it was Wren’s house, Gracie behaved as if she owned the place, and often decided to make an impromptu snack without first asking the host. Wren never minded. She got to her feet and wandered out, leaving Wren and I alone. The song drew to a close, and Wren got up and scrolled through the artists on her iPod and selected a new song. When she came back, she lay down closer to me.

She tilted her head towards me and whispered, ‘I love this song.’ It was A New England by Billy Bragg. Head still tilted towards me, she closed her eyes and smiled, and began to mouth the words.

There are certain things I took for granted when I was alive. That I would not die anytime soon, that death was for the old and sick and stupid, that I’d breathe and eat and sleep and go to school and be a little bored by it all. That I’d spend a disproportionate amount of time hanging out with my sister, and someday go to uni, and get drunk and fall down, and maybe someday be loved by someone outside my family. That I’d always unrequitedly love Wren, and she’d always see me as like a brother, and I’d feel hopeless about the entire situation. But it’d be okay, because I still got to spend time with her.

And of course I never got to uni, and I only got fall-down drunk on a couple of occasions (both times with my sister around), and I didn’t go to school at all again after that Friday (had I known, I probably would’ve enjoyed Maths Methods a little more, and given my kind English teacher a hug). At least not in my own body.

I’d spent ten years in love with Wren - with her funny laugh and exaggerated stories and her patience and compassion with everybody and her faith in the good of the world - and I must’ve had some kind of inkling of what was coming. Or Gracie must’ve spiked the Coke we’d had earlier in the evening. But whatever it was, I was made brave by the darkness and the music and the perfect moment.

Wren’s hair was crazy with curls, not straightened like usual, and I loved that. She opened her eyes again, ‘This is the best bit.’ I could hear popcorn popping. I saw two shooting stars last night, the song went. I knew it by heart because she’d played it for us before; I had the same songs on my iPod from when she’d burnt mix CDs for Gracie years earlier. I wished on them but they were only satellites.

‘I really like you, Wren,’ I whispered. And this was the understatement of the millennium, and she was quiet for what felt like a long time but couldn’t have been more than a couple of seconds, as the same verse of the song was playing (Is it wrong to wish on space hardware?). And my heart kind of leapt around and did an Irish jig and a full-length marathon in those couple seconds and then Wren whispered back, ‘I really like you, too, Teddy’ and not in a like-a-brother way. And my heart did not slow down one bit.

I wish, I wish, I wish you’d care. She tilted her head closer and kissed me, very softly, like I’d imagined so many times before. And I wanted to bring my hand up and touch the side of her face, and her hair, and her waist. I wanted to kiss her again, and kiss her collarbone, and kiss the freckle on her shoulder, and the scar on her arm from when she’d fallen from a tree with Gracie as a ten-year-old. I wanted to whisper to her every beautiful thing about her and everything she’d ever meant to me. I was hoping beyond all hope that she cared about me to the same degree that I cared about her, and that every pointless and funny conversation we’d shared had the same weight to her. That she’d thought about the few words we exchanged when she came by to pick up Gracie for something late into the night, like I did.

I didn’t get to do any of these things. I never even got to kiss her again.

And obviously Gracie is not to blame for this, though on Friday night she was. The chorus of the song played, and Gracie’s footsteps came down the hall, and Wren and I immediately snapped apart. Those two minutes were the greatest two minutes of my entire year, of my entire relationship (or lack thereof) with Wren, and they were cut short due to the fact that popcorn is obscenely quick to cook in a microwave.

Gracie is usually a pretty perceptive person - well, she likes to think she’s a pretty perceptive person - but I think she’s more tapped into supernatural things (not that I ever believed this, not till later) than plain old teenage sexual tension. She brought the popcorn in and put the light on and didn’t notice me blushing and asked, ‘Do you guys want to watch a movie?’

Teaser Tuesday: This All Could End

I'm editing Signs & Wonders (remember my visual inspiration posts last year?) at the moment (I realise now how much the story has changed since last November. It's kind of a totally different novel now). I'm also working on the first drafts of two new novels (one paranormal YA, one that might be a YA suspense, I'm not sure) to keep myself sane in between doing lots and lots of lovely schoolwork.

So, I thought, why don't I share a little excerpt from one of these new works-in-progress!

This is from midway through the first chapter of what is currently titled This All Could End. It's the first time I've tried to write in third person, so it's tricky for me (I like first person a lot better, but the characters always end up with the same voice and thought-patterns - mine). This All Could End is mainly about a bank robbery, but it's also about aliens, awkward teenage romance and how to deal when your parents are sociopaths. So, you know, it's the sort of novel I'd write. A weird one.

It's an early draft, so it's not perfect. I'll probably be taking it down in 24 hours or so. Let me know what you think!

*cut* Thanks everyone for your comments. Hopefully I'll do another teaser soon.