Pre-Birthday Post

In 45 hours after I post this (posted at 8:00 Saturday May 30th) I will be...

F o u r t e e n !

14

Isn't that awesome? I was born as 5:35am on June 1st 1995. A lot of people are born on June first, which I pretty cool too. But when I'm fourteen... the world will not seem any different. At all. But still, I'll be old enough to have a teensie more bit of respect and get into 14A movies (which I already do, but this time I'll do it shivering free - I shiver when I'm nervous).

Also, in about 9 hours I'm having my birthday party. Sorry I didn't invite you guys, but sometime tells me it'd be thousands and thousands of miles to travel for one 4-hour party.

Also, as a birthday gift to you... (even though I'm the one celebrating, not you) here's the last chapter of Empyrean. You might not get it, because I haven't really talked about Empyrean for a while, but if you go to the labels/catogories and click on Empyrean, you'll find some other bits and pieces about it.

P.S. The "saving the world" thing she's talking about - she actually did save the world by stopping this missile full of poison set to kill a sort of "race" (everyone has one magic power, but some people are less powerful - the poison was to kill off any unpowerful people, including her sister). She's really powerful though, so it didn't kill her.

Empyrean, Epilouge: It's The End Of The End, For Forever And Ever And Never Again

After a week in recovery from the poison that had seeped into my skin, I was able to leave the hospital. They had kept me there extra long, but I didn’t mind one bit. Even when I was in there, torrents of news agencies and reporters had snuck their way through the building security and found me, questioning me relentlessly, even one their way out the door. I had heard it was even worse for Erik and Alexa, because they were out in the public. I was glad they’d decided to keep me in longer to ensure the poison was entirely gone and I couldn’t infect anyone else with it.

The world had reacted strangely to what I had done. Our great country, Empyrean, was quickly split in two. At one side, the people who had been on Emerson Palenstine’s side all along were angry, shooting people on the streets from building up high and blowing up the rest. The other side had retreated into the side of Empyrean I was on now - the side with the peace-keeper countries’ forces ensuring all-around safety and wellbeing, and the side the was constantly being attacked by the other side’s planes and missiles. Empyrean was no longer safe.

People were dying.

It hurt so much to know that what I had done was killing people. Erik, who had visited earlier this morning, said that more people would have died had I not saved them.

I guess I believe him, but it still hurt.

One thing that made it better was that all around my bed, there were gifts of gratitude. I already had plowed through much of the chocolates and felt at least ten pounds heavier, but the cards from people who had known the truth all along meant the most.

Of course, Erik’s card was the most important. It was right beside me, and had been since last week.

“You’re free to go, Miss. Bradburn.” The nice doctor told me. I smiled, and stretched my right arm and legs.

My left arm would never recover. Too much of the poison had seeped into my bone, and even though I was powerful enough to stop it from killing me, I wasn’t powerful enough to stop it from killing my arm in such a large quantity. I was going to have to learn to do everything with my right hand - but that wasn’t the end of the world - literally. I was learning very, very slowly.

“Hey Aerynn!” It was Alexa, back to see me for the second time today - the fourteenth time over all. When she had first come, our reunion had been caught by a reporter, and was now broadcast all over the world.

Olyver, Raechel and everyone working for the Government were in a temporary makeshift jail; most of the big hotel chains of Empyrean had donated their rooms for the people waiting time with the judge. Josh had been one of the first people to get out, and I was glad he hadn’t been charged. I wasn’t so sure that Olyver and Raechel would fair the same good fortune.

As for Emerson Palenstine the Second, he had disappeared, following Erik and Liam out of the building. While Erik and Liam searched for me, a resident in a local town claimed that he had been seen riding off into the ocean on a small motorboat. Searches were out there, but something told me that Emerson Palenstine would never be found.

When I stepped out of the building, I was greeted by the roar of the biggest crowd I had ever seen. The army colours of Kanada, Wat and other countries were mixed in with the normal colours of normal Empyrean citizens. But the best colour was the black of Erik, who was standing on my right. He took my hand and led me through the crowd.

“You really do need to get a security guard, for now at least.” Erik said.

I laughed, “I do.”

I looked around, and I saw everything. Destruction, desolation, death; all the things I had caused. But I also saw love, kindness, thankfulness, and people helping each other get through one of the toughest times in Empyrean history. This was, no matter how you looked at it, all for the better.

We loaded into the limo that would take us to the home Erik and Alexa had been staying in. I couldn’t take my eyes of the country that I had saved, or destroyed.

This wasn’t over, but it wasn’t ever going to be as bad as it once was. This was the New Empyrean, the beginning of the never-ending.

I'm about to say Happy Birthday here, but er... Happy June and start of the last month of the school year!

Changement

I finished my project early!  Finally I got around to changing my blog - I found the perfect (well, I think so) background on Shabby Blogs - which is a really cool site.  I also got the little pictures I've added in from there as well.  It was a lot of fun :D  But I'm still looking for a header again.

On another note, I only have about 14 more days left of school!!  (Not including a week-long trip to Ottowa and Montreal on the second las week of school).  I also have grad coming up - totally nerve wracking, and I'm horrifiedly nervous. 

Speaking of nervous, this weekend I'm having a birthday party - first ever in 4 years - at my house.  And my friends (girls) are going to come over early to attempt to curl my hair.  I just hope I manage to hide all my little-kid pictures - last weekend furing filming at my house, some of my friends opened up the back of a picture frame to find the horrible pictures of me!  Ahhh!!!

Well, I hope all of you lovely readerly people are having an amazing, warm start of the summer/spring.  It was only 14 degrees today, but 30 earlier (damn Global warming.. it'll be up to 40 in July -- eww).

S a r a h

The Car Chase

# WARNING:  a swear word is spelled in this story... I felt like warning you #

This is a short story I wrote totally on urge... and I have no idea what to do with it.  It has backstory, and kinda a promise of a somewhat longer thing - but I'm just stuck.

Also, as of late (Christmas aproximately) I've tried to extend it - this is the longer version, but I have a 1200-word one too.

Oh, and also, I give up on the formatting.  Grr...

“SIR, WE HAVE A CONFIRMED SIGHTING OF THE RED CAR. TAILING SUPPOSED SUSPECT.”

“PERMISSION TO DESTROY.”


* * *


“Emma! Pass me the popcorn.”


I rolled my eyes at the immature and absolutely uncouth boy beside me. His one hand was inches from the bowl between us, yet he couldn’t even bother to grab popcorn himself.


"If you want it, you have to get it yourself.” I said tiredly, casually scratching the tomato sauce on my shirt, which had dried on after that same boy, Nick, had ‘accidentally’ knocked his pasta on me.


“That’s not the way a man works.” Nick told me, stubbornly tilting his chin higher up in the air. Apparently, his pale blue eyes and straw coloured hair was ‘cute’, but I never saw it. All I saw was a disrespectful, boy who liked spilling pasta on a girl’s favorite shirt.


Much to my disappointment, Nick was still on about his ‘way of life’. “The woman fetches the popcorn, clothes in the morning, food in the afternoon and takes care of everything while the man watches the latest football game.”


I rolled my eyes again. “And how would that family survive? Any way of income?” I liked to think about the practical side of things - especially around him. I had said the practical side earlier, about buying the latest skateboard and Nick had just stood there at loss of words for five blissful minutes.


Sadly, that wasn’t going to happen this time. “They don’t have to work. My parent’s own the Grensbey Amethyst mine, when I inherit that, I’ll sell it all and live off the millions I’ll be paid.” He sounded so proud, wow, his parents own a mine. Sure, whatever. I didn’t really care - all I cared about was getting home and away from him. Like that was going to happen anytime soon.



“I don’t think your parents would like that, Nick.” Our driver said. His hands were on the wheel, navigating through the slushy false spring that happened every February. I looked out my window, hoping that Nick would take that as I sign I didn’t want to talk to him ever again in my life, and for him to shut up for eternity. As if.


He wasn’t even supposed to be here. This was a special trip between me and my brother David, who had just returned from Iraq. It had never meant to include the annoying son of my overly generous parent’s friends.


My brother had joined the army a year after graduating from a high school. I could still remember my mother crying when he left, although it was slightly faded because my memory was horrible, and anything two years or more was almost gone. Either way, it felt like an eternity when he was gone.


In this shopping trip I’d ask him to take me on, I’d been hoping to get to know him again. But things never work the way you intend for them to work.


“Emma, are you there? I’m still waiting for that popcorn.” Nick waved his hand in front of my face. Yes, he was the unexpected thing that had ruined the trip. A last minute business crisis had caused the Wilson’s to run off to the other side of country, leaving behind their annoying son and five-year-old daughter in the hands of their kind and always-there-for-you neighbors, my family. Moreover, with my parents taking both their daughter (my younger sister) and the Wilson’s daughter to the zoo, Nick had been forced to come with us.


“You can’t leave him… who knows what that teenage boy could do. Emma, I know your mature and can handle him… even his sister would be more suited to be home alone than him!” I mimicked under my breath.


“What’d you say Em?” David raised his head and looked at me in the rearview mirror.


“She’s talking to herself. The first sign of insanity. How about we leave her at the closest mental hospital?” Nick asked, acting innocent. “We just passed a sign saying there was one five kilometers East on Kings Road.”


The car stopped at the intersection, and pulled away, driving straight ahead.


“Well, sorry Nick. We just passed the turnoff. Another day, eh?” David laughed. It felt to great to have him back at home and with me - only God knew how much he’d helped me growing up - but I cringed at the thought of him joking with Nick Wilson. Didn’t he know? Why wouldn’t he see the stupid, big headed, arrogant side of him and know to stay away?


Outside the car, the ‘Nashville’ sign passed by. A click of hail joined the clatter of rain that had been following us around all day. It wasn’t the best day to go shopping, and the amount of people and activity in the mall had reflected that. Either way, there was a nice amount of bags in the trunk - maybe a not so nice amount of money taken out of my bank account, but I had the money to loose after my summer job.


“…And that’s the start of the real storm.” David said, referring to the hail falling from the sky. I nodded, and my head fell back against the headrest. I closed my eyes and relaxed.


An electronic whirr came from my left, followed by a downpour of rain, sleet, and heavy rocks of hail.


“ARGHH!” I screamed. Nick was just doing up his seatbelt again as I undid mine and jumped on him, pummeling his face with my hands.


“Whoa! Watch it Emma, we almost got into a car accident!” David shouted. A truck roared by, inches from the side of our car, splattering the previously red, but now a dirty pink, splattered car with more slush.


I didn’t say sorry, and regretfully sat back down in my seat, promising myself to torturously kill Nick some other time when it didn’t endanger my life.


As the slush cleared off the windshield, I saw a pair of headlights cutting across the 4-lane road. A car’s horn blared as the silver SUV cut off two lanes of traffic and headed in a straight line towards us.


I felt my heartbeat quicken, and wondered what on Earth the SUV was doing.


David must have noticed the deranged car and driver heading towards us as well, and he swore colourfully. I think he must’ve picked up some words in Iraq, because before he left, ‘shoot’ was as far as his vocabulary went in the profanities direction.


I guess he’d learnt a new meaning for ‘shoot’ over their, and it didn’t mean the same thing as ‘damn’.


“Is there anyone behind us?” In these conditions, which were getting worse by the second, David couldn’t take his eyes off the road. I waited for Nick to look behind, noticing the line of traffic ahead of us.



“Someone!” David shouted at us. Nick hadn’t moved. I checked behind me.


“No one.” I said, casting the lump of wasted space beside me a look that I hope reinforced the ‘I’m going to kill you’ scheme of things.


David’s hands flew at my words, one hand on the gears and the other controlling the steering wheel. The emergency brake was pulled, gear-stick shifted from three to reverse. Our red car rolled backwards.


“What-” I started to ask.


“Shush.” David said sharply. I closed my mouth and looked at the SUV, which was charging towards us as we drove backwards down the road. I looked over at the speedometer, just visible under David’s arm. It read 70 kilometers an hour. I didn’t know that was possible while driving backwards.


The car slid to a stop, David’s hand switching from reverse to first and up as the car regained speed. Now we were speeding towards the SUV.


David spun the steering wheel and our car moved into the oncoming lane. The silver SUV tried to turn and hit us, but only clipped the back. The car fishtailed for a minute, and then David regained control. He sped off down the road, joining back into the right lane when the SUV was far behind us. Back in our lane, David still drove fast, cutting between cars and passing on the left and right.


“A, S, S, H, O, L, E.” Nick muttered beside me, digging through the pocket and cup holder beside him.

“What are you calling my brother?” I asked, giving Nick another death glare. He reflected it back at me.


“No you idiot, that was the license plate number.” Oh, I thought. I grabbed the notepad out of my cup holder and handed it to him.


“There’s a pen in the glove compartment. David, can you slow down and get it?” I asked.


“I have to make sure they’re gone and we are far away from them.” David told me, but slowed down and got the pen anyways.


We recorded the plate and David told us that he would take it to the police station the following morning. Right now, all he wanted to do was go home.



* * *


“WE LOST THEM, SIR.”


“WELL, DO BETTER NEXT TIME. YOUR LIFE IS ON THE LINE - IT’S THEM OR YOU, GESPARD.”



Part 2



That was the first time I realized something wasn’t right. There’s always a first, isn’t there? A first and a last, but here in this cell, surrounded by grey and a shade of green that can only come from one thing I’d rather not name, I’m beginning to think there’s no last coming, no solution, only an end.


* * *


“A FAILED MISSION! WHAT AM I GOING TO DO? YOU LEAVE ME WITH NO CHOICE.”


“NO SIR. THERE ARE ALWAYS CHOICES. TAKE THE RIGHT ONE, I TRUST YOU.”


“YOU TRUST TOO EASILY GESPARD. IT WILL, ULTIMATELY, LEAD TO YOUR DEATH.”


* * *


The second instance that told me something was up happened just two days after the first.


David was heading out to talk to the police about the first incident, and picking up the car from the auto body shop.


“Bye Em! Don’t kill Nick.” He told me. Oh, how I wished I could. I’d actually already had a dream about it. Apparently I had said most of the stuff aloud as well, according to Annabelle, Nick’s little sister, who was sharing my room with me.


Ever since then Nick had gone quieter and quieter, bugging me less and less. I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it - I loved the silence and peace, but the tender side of me kicked in and I couldn’t help but wonder if his ego had taken a massive dent after hearing me talk in my sleep about killing him. He’d gotten so used to everyone loving him, I guess it was hard to know at least one person didn’t.


But I can’t say I wasn’t the teensiest bit happy about the new silence. I curled up on the couch in my basement, ignoring skillfully the horrible gold and green paint job that it’d been given years before, and turned on the TV. I watched random funny shows for about an hour, content in the simple, pure bliss of being alone. It was hard to be alone and have time to yourself when your family of five had taken on two extra members, and especially when every person in your house had at least two extra-curricular activities to participate in. Between hockey games and dance recitals, I hardly got time to rest and be myself.


But now I had that time - or so I thought. Really, I had only a few moments of normality before my life was plunged into total darkness, and total chaos.


I spent those moments watching Who Wants To Be A Millionare and sipping my latest blender-creation. It was heaven while it lasted, but all too soon, the commercials came on and I was called away to get Nick out of whatever trouble he’d gotten himself into.



“Emmily!” His annoying voice called out. It was a lot deeper than most people I knew, but to my ears, it was an annoying as the high-pitched whine of a fly.

P.S. Awesomely great news! On my 3R (retell, relate, response) I got a 94% for writing! Other people (other geniuses) got the same as me, but that was still the highest mark in the class - and like, ever for writing :D

Post #41

Post #41... doesn't that just send of writing vibes?  I dunno, but for me, the sparks are flying.

They are not, however, flying for this pile of homework sitting.. behind me, at the moment.  It's in the form of my backpack, and looks like it'll eat me. 

I have a french magazine to assemble in 3 days, a major biggie math test to study for tomorrow, 3 pages of math to get through for tomorrow, a movie to film on Saturday - at my house, so that means cleaning for hours, a history project to get through in 5 days, and a science rough model and good model due june 5th - plus I'm helping out with the Spring Concert from 6:30-8:30 tonight - I can't even whistle, much less a tune, but I love helping out.  I know I probably shouldn't've, but I did anyways, so shush.

Sure, it's doable, but fun?  Think again!

S a r a h

P.S. As far as InVincible goes, that file - which I long to open, has remained closed for days. 

P.P.S. I have this short story, called The Car Chase (working title) that's about 2,000 words.  I would cut it down a little and submit it to my library for the contest in October, but they tend to go for the more "meaningful" stuff - even if the writing is crappy.  This one has the word asshole in it - somehow, I don't think the judges will like it.  Any ideas for another way of... doing something with it?

And here ends the great Post #41.