Do real people and/or places inspire your writing? Yeah. Readers, especially--I love it when people read my stuff and ask questions, so that I can later answer them somehow.

How many blogs/websites/internet haunts do you have? I OWN THE ENTIRE INTERNET DUH

What is your favorite character? Or do you choose to remain unbiased in case of a revolt? I try not to have favorite characters. My muse keeps making me kill them off. =(

Do you talk to your characters? Do they talk back? Not really.

Are you more comfortable with girl or boy main characters? I think I'm more comfortable writing females, but my muse prefers guys. Go figure.

Do you follow basic overused plotlines with new twists thrown in or do you depart from the norm all the time? I dunno. D:

Do you feel God has called you to be a writer/poet? Will you grasp "the power of the pen"? I think so. I feel like I have talent at writing, and I just plain love it, so even if He wants me to do something else, He might have to drag me kicking and screaming.

Um...I tag...PoeticMaiden and writer4him. And anyone who wants to do it.

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Decided that 13 and 14 basically went together, so here they are together. Package deal. ;)


Chapter Thirteen
Sean was pulling out drawers in the kitchen and pulling them apart, one by one. He was about to decide that she’d mislead him, maybe, or something, when he found a small bag that clanked. He opened it up and found quarters. Smiling a little bit, he took out half a handful and set it on the counter, then started putting the kitchen back together.
Creeping down the hallway, he tried to keep quiet. He cracked open the door, sticking his head through to listen.
Eileen’s breathing was barely audible, but it was slow in the ways that sleep changes it. He allowed himself a victory smile, then worked on opening the door without it creaking and waking her up. With the door swung open, he paused in the doorway, listening for any sign of her starting to wake up.
Assured that she was sound asleep, he stepped carefully into her room. It was dark, and he had horrible night vision, but he had to do this now…
He spotted it. It would’ve been difficult to miss, he decided later, but at that moment he was relieved.
He moved towards the dirty laundry hamper and picked it up. Carrying it out, he bit his lip as a precaution against grunting. While Eileen was probably a heavy sleeper by now, he wasn’t going to take any chances. He wanted the surprise, to maybe help her start to believe in him again. It would take doing.
He hoped he could.
Heaving the laundry basket down the hallway was a bit more of a struggle. The hallway was narrow, and it was heavy. He paused in the living room to stuff the quarters in his pockets, then slipped on something that looked like a pair of sandals. He started to open the door, then realized he didn’t have a key.
Turning around, he started to look for one. He couldn’t lock himself out, or leave the apartment unlocked…he didn’t want to think of what would happen in either scenario.
Eventually, he ventured back into Eileen’s room—thankful that he had forgotten to shut the door behind him—and started searching. He didn’t find it, and he heard a rustle of the covers. He froze and stretched out on his stomach on the floor, in hopes of being less conspicuous. He took his time before he started to move again, because he was certain that if he tried to explain to her what he was doing that she wouldn’t believe him. She probably shouldn’t, he realized. He grimaced at the thought, then crawled on to continue looking.
It took him nearly half the night to find the small pieces of metal that would let him leave the apartment. He dropped them into his pocket along with the quarters and left the apartment, heaving the laundry down each step.
Sean was relieved beyond measure when he finally made it down to the Laundromat. It didn’t hurt that it was still open, too. He opened the door and held it open with his foot as he shoved the hamper in.
“Been avoiding laundry day, have you?”
Sean looked up. A man waiting for his washing had been the on who’d asked, and he grinning a bit at him with tobacco-stained teeth that looked like they’d drop out if he spat too hard.
“Yeah, just for a few weeks.” Sean grinned at him, and it felt strange on his face, like the muscles had forgotten that they were capable of that particular action.
“Well go ahead and take a coupla machines, otherwise yell prolly take awhile, eh?”
“Probably,” Sean agreed. He wasn’t looking forward too much to staying in this place with only this person to talk to and keep somewhat sane with, but, well, laundry had to be laundered.
The doors stuck on the washers, and he had to really pull, but just when he thought they were never going to open, they popped right open. All three did that on him. He laughed a little with the other man, who introduced himself as Jack.
Sean spent most of his time watching the clothes spin around, cycles and swirls of colors. He wondered to himself how he was going to fit it all back in the hamper and get it back up to the apartment before Eileen woke up. He wasn’t sure if he would make it. He sighed and went back to the mind-numbing task of making sure the laundry didn’t get stolen.
The impatient beep that meant his task in the stuffy Laundromat was over wouldn’t sound fast enough for him.


Chapter Fourteen
He’d fallen asleep by the time his first machine finished. He awoke to Jack shaking him by the shoulders and repeating over and over that one of his wash loads was done.
“Thanks,” Sean told him, smiling at the man. Jack just nodded in acknowledgement.
He opened the door and started to shovel clothes out. Paralysis snatched him the moment he touched the wet clothes.
“Shit.”
It had totally slipped his mind that, after running the clothes through the washer, he would need to send them through a dryer. He groaned, slapping himself on the forehead. How could he have forgotten something so basic?
“Forget coins for the dryer?”
He’d forgotten Jack was there, and jumped when he spoke. Laughing a little, he rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah.”
“I could--”
“It’s okay.” Sean made sure to cut him off early. “It’ll work, somehow.”
Jack nodded and turned away to hide the grin spreading on his face.
Sean wrung out each article of clothes before dumping them back into the hamper. Halfway through his first load, the second load declared that it had finished, too.
After he’d gotten all the loads back into the hamper, he said good-bye to Jack, who had apparently gotten over his irresistible urge to smirk.
“Don’t wait so long fer laundry day, next time,” Jack told him.
Sean laughed again. “I won’t, no worries,” he assured him. He hefted the hamper and left the place.
He stopped at the bottom of the apartment stairs. Staring at the cement, he spaced out.
It had felt so wrong to laugh. To speak. Feeling the sounds vibrating up his throat and coming out his mouth had felt twisted. Every time he’d turned and molded his face into a smile and talked to Jack, he’d felt the weirdness, like he’d been detached from society and all of a sudden he was coming back. It was more like moving from a hot tub to the freezing waters of a swimming pool. 
It took him awhile to thaw his brain out. Grunting, he started up the stairs, dragging the hamper up the stairs, where it made a wet mark that trailed behind it.
He opened the door and hefted it in, staring around. Would his idea work? Would they have enough of the materials he needed? Dropping his doubts along with the hamper, he walked into the room most likely to have it: the kitchen. They had just about everything in the kitchen.
He tore apart more drawers, and then pulled out several lines of string. Humming to himself, he laid them out separately. The key poked him in the thigh while he bent over and reminded him that it was there.
He went down the hallway and put the key in the center of the doorway on the floor, where Eileen would notice it, right off the bat. He nodded to himself—that job done—and went back to the string. He took one long line and taped both ends up. Then he picked up a shirt, and stares at it. It wasn’t quite dripping, but it would take its time to dry. He set it up on the line and started to fill up the line with clothes. When he finished, he picked up another string and taped the ends.
It ended up taking four strings that spanned across the room to hang up all the now-clean laundry.
He nodded to himself a few times, and the nods slowed as his neck muscles relaxed. His legs crashing down, he made it to the couch before falling asleep.


See you later!
~Christi
Word count: 42,094 (just started writing though, plus I got five chapters ahead outlined)

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...It's been about a week since I updated this...oopsies.

Chapter Twelve
The shower didn’t really spray as much as it sort of spurted water at her body. She closed her eyes and turned her head so that her hair got clean, at least.
After awhile, her hair felt rinsed enough and she just stood in the shower, her eyes closed. She liked how the water wasn’t predictable—a squirt here and another there, maybe a quick downpour—in a way that was more comforting than if it periodically splashed her back. It seemed almost like rain to her.
Eileen turned off the water with reluctance, wishing that she could somehow continually shower until she withered to nothing…She shook that thought out of her head, along with water hanging in her hair. She grabbed a towel and started to dry herself off.
She let her mind wander. A dangerous thing to do, letting your mind wander, she mused to herself. You never know what you’ll discover, about yourself or anything. Maybe notice something you didn’t before.
Shivering, she wrapped the towel around her tightly. She exited the bathroom, and found Sean walking through the doorway of the room. They both paused where they stood. She turned around and went right back into the bathroom.
Sean stood there, lingering for a moment then hesitantly shut the door and went back down the hallway. Where he belonged, it seemed. He shook his head. Stupid, stupid.
Eileen waited a minute, then cracked open the bathroom door. The bedroom door was closed. She surveyed the room. Status: empty, she thought to herself humorlessly.
The room wasn’t transformed after her cleaning session—that would take major surgery, darling, and you’re just not cut out to be a surgeon—but it was definitely different. She could see the floor, though the dirty laundry hamper was full past bursting, and there was a little note that she’d written to herself taped to it. “Laundry money in kitchen drawer, go to the Laundromat downstairs.”
She looked at it, then fumbled around for something that resembled clean pajamas. She slipped into them, then climbed into the covers.
Another day, gone by.
Or was it a century?



Enjoy...

~Christi
Word count: 42,013 (ALMOST THERE WOOOOT!)

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I forgot to update this yesterday. That's okay, I guess. Second entry in a row that you get two chapters. =D


Chapter Ten
Eileen was staring at the lock.
Hunger was begging for a bone in her belly, it was sort of just asking for food in a hopeless fashion, it didn’t expect to be satisfied. She grimaced. She hadn’t eaten a thing all day…
Would Sean have passed out by now?
Her hand cupped her throat. She couldn’t take any more chances.
She jumped down from the bathroom counter and paced around, trying to stretch her legs and shake out the twinges and twitches from her restless muscles.
The lock jumped out at her every time she turned, seeming to leap from the door and jump into her peripheral vision. Out there, an almost-murderer waited, and there was only a slim chance that he was out cold.
There was also food.
She stopped and stared at the door. If Sean was still awake, would she be able to make it back?
She bit her split lip, then stopped and soothed it over with her tongue. Lifting her foot, she absent-mindedly massaged her ankle where her heel strap had bit into it.
Her hunger had decided to stop asking. Obviously that tactic wasn’t working.
Eileen had to bend over herself, grabbing at her abdomen in an attempt to keep her body together from the hunger trying to rip its way out.
She squatted, leaning against the wall for support.
“Wow, Eileen,” she whispered to herself. “Reduced to squatting in a bathroom to hide from your crazy boyfriend. Amazing new heights you’re discovering here. Making friends with the rat yet?”
She could imagine her mother saying the exact same thing to her if she’d been here to witness her daughter’s actions. I didn’t raise you to be a pathetic wimp. Get up. Get up.
Her mother’s voice echoed in her head, and she shuddered. For once she was glad that that particular witch was resting in her final bed, and wondered if she was comfortable in that vase.
Eileen leaned her head back against the wood. What am I doing here anyway? I should just pack up a suitcase and go.
She stood up abruptly, catching her shirt on the knobs of the cabinet and scraping her back. An involuntary groan let itself out. She bridged her shoulder blades on the counter and her feet somewhere near the door still. “Ahh…ow.” She let her arms dangle and uselessly try to grab at the pain.
"Go where?" she asked herself quietly, pushing herself up into a straight standing position. She grabbed the lock and twisted it, then let herself out.


Chapter Eleven
Sean was out cold when Eileen made it down the hallway. He was on his back, arms and legs splayed out like he was preparing himself to make a snow angel on the carpet. He'd taken off his shirt; his skin across his arms and chest was a bright, angry red. When she paused to examine this, she noticed it was splotchy at places--there were spots of innocent-looking skin. It almost looked like he’d been exercising and collapsed on the floor.
She walked away from him, giving his sleeping body a wide berth. It looked pretty convincing that he was unconscious, but she reminded herself that she couldn't take any chances by taking in a sharp breath.
Entering the kitchen, she found that, while he hadn't made it to the bathroom, the puke wasn't painted across the floor. She breathed as little as she could, and turned the faucet's setting to high as she tried to wash the crusty stuff down the drain. She ran the garbage disposal. It didn't work really, but...the puke went down.
She rifled through the fridge, irritably pushing bottles out of the way. Pulling out a loaf of bread, she looked at the slices. "Well, if I ever need mold, I know where to find it..." she mumbled, tossing it into the trash. She continued scavenging through the fridge.
 Her search turned up nothing. No leftovers, no random foods...She sighed. Time to pull out the desperate guns. She opened the tiny freezer and pulled out a TV dinner. It's about time to go to the grocery store... she mused.
She opened the microwave door, she ripped the lid of the TV dinner off and put it in. Punching in the time made her wince; the volume of the beeps was obscenely loud.
She rummaged through drawers for a fork, starting to relax. Sticking it in her mouth, she pulled her dinner out of the microwave a few seconds early. She slammed it shut, then leaned against the counter to enjoy it. Well, as much as you can enjoy a TV dinner.
She picked at her food and pushed around. Overcooked string beans and limp beef didn’t look all that appetizing, but…
She ate as quickly as she could, resisting the urge to plug her nose and not taste it.
Tossing the dinner into the trash, she sighed. She was getting a headache and her throat was starting to get really sore. Starting to rifle through the cupboard to look for some painkillers, she heard something fall, followed by quiet swearing.
The sounds made her entire body freeze, then suddenly tingle all over like it was preparing for the attack. Eileen turned around, deliberately slow, and gulped. The action hurt a little, but she ignored that. Sean wasn’t lying where he’d been before, right in front of the kitchen entryway. She crept towards it, keeping her back to the counter so he couldn’t sneak up behind her.
Sean was sitting on the couch, running his fingers over the burns on his skin. A bottle of Aloe Vera had tumbled to the ground, but he hadn’t bent over to pick it up. He looked calm enough, but Eileen ducked back into the kitchen. It was too late to turn off the light and pretend nothing ever happened in it, but at least she could make it so he didn’t see her.
That didn’t mean that she didn’t peek occasionally. She had eaten, now she could return to the safety of the locked bathroom. It was inconvenient, but necessary, she told herself. She could take a long shower.
“Hi, Eileen,” Sean said. His voice was limp, hopeless. “I know you’re there…but I guess if you feel better hiding, go ahead.”
Eileen’s heart froze in her chest. She hesitated long enough to apply the shock paddles and restart it. It wasn’t the time for a virus to crash her system.
She walked to the entryway and leaned against the wall, folding her arms over her chest. “Hi,” she said simply. She ducked her chin a little, but she knew he saw her dark purple throat because he looked away.
He opened his mouth, then closed it again and did that a few more times.
“There’s…not really a way for me to apologize anymore, is there.”
She bit her tongue to hold back the wishy-washy replies and the screams she had hiding in the cavity of her mouth.
She stood there, barely controlling herself. If she had thought it would do any damage, she might’ve flung herself at him screaming and start hitting him.
Instead she turned and walked back into the kitchen. She leaned over the sink and worked at the latch on the window. She grunted a few times, then gave up.
“Open this **** window, Sean.”
Puzzled, Sean walked over and opened it for her. There were a million questions in his eyes but he chose to look at the floor.
Eileen opened the door of the fridge and grabbed the case of beer with both hands. She groaned at its pure weight, but swung it towards the sink.
“What…what are you doing?”
She ignored him and heaved the case through the window. Breathing hard, she repeated the process until the fridge was empty. There were some water bottles left, and a bag of old carrots she hadn’t noticed earlier, but otherwise it was totally empty. She slammed the window shut.
“We’ll see exactly how sorry you are,” she said, quietly but firmly.
Sean just stared at her. His mouth was dropping open to gape.
Eileen reached up and pushed his chin upward to close his mouth, then turned around again and walked into the living room. She leaned down to grab the Aloe Vera bottle, stared at the label for a moment, then set it down on the table. As she walked down the hallway, she heard Sean walking out of the kitchen and was pretty sure he still had that shocked expression on his face.
She felt strange, like she wasn’t herself, maybe she was having an out-of-body experience, and hey, she could write a book about it and make millions. She scavenged through a cupboard and pulled out a washrag. She returned to the living room.
“Sit.”
She motioned to the couch.
Still looking dumb-founded, Sean obeyed her. She poured some Aloe Vera onto the washrag and started applying it to his skin. She was really only doing it for a distraction. If she didn’t focus on something she was sure that she’d just start crying and that sort of crying would lead to sobbing and then that would lead onto something else, something more painful and she just wanted to avoid all that completely. Even if that meant having Sean stare at her with that strange, amazed expression on his face and having to be so close to him.
When she finished, she stood up and turned away. She put the bottle away and tossed the washrag into the dirty laundry hamper.
It wasn’t enough. She needed to do something else, needed to keep her mind occupied, needed to not think about the aches in her arms, needed to do anything else.
“Eileen?” His voice still sounded weird, like he was calling through a tunnel and it was weak and needy and…
“Yeah?” She turned towards him walking down the hallway.
“Would you believe me if I said thank you?”
“Nope.”
“Well, I can wait.”
Eileen looked at him, shrugged, and walked towards the room. For the first time, she saw its total ignominy. She could’ve snapped a photo of it and sent it to people who wrote dictionaries, saying that this was the true definition of disorganization.
Lowering herself to her knees, she grabbed at dirty clothes scattered across the floor. The steady rhythm of cleaning was somewhat soothing. It had more of a weird affect on her, like it was pushing her soul to the side. We’ll organize that later, it seemed to be saying. Then everything’ll make sense. Now, don’t you worry dearie, we’ll make it all make sense and ‘til then you can feel numb; here’s the anaesthetic. It’ll make you feel better, it really will, don’t worry about the needle, focus on the anaesthetic.
She could feel her joints and muscles and tendons turning mechanical. She looked around the room, then gave into the cleaning’s anaesthetic.


Dum de dumm, there it is.
See you guys later.
~Christi
Word count: 36,686! I'm hoping to get to 40k tonight. Prob'ly won't happen, though.

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Well...chapter eight is super short. And so is chapter nine.
So enjoy a package deal today! =D


Chapter Eight
 Eileen carefully slid her way up to a standing position, pulling herself up with her arms. Her legs were abominably weak; they were about to leave her neck-deep in wet sand and run.  She leaned against the counter, putting all her weight on her palms. Trying not to pant, she had to hang her head to catch her breath. Almost dying sure takes a lot out of you, she thought. She laughed a little bit, then stopped in favor of not hurting her throat.
Her throat wasn't as swollen as she expected. It was bigger, to be sure, than normal, but it wasn't about to approach balloon-sized anytime soon. She inhaled experimentally. The air seemed like it was claustrophobic as it went down, like her windpipe was much tighter despite that her throat was so swollen. She swallowed. It worked okay. She hesitated, then nodded to herself. She could function.
She reached down and tore the straps off her ankles, tossing the high heels off to a corner. Picking up a pair of pants, she changed from her skirt. Reaching out blindly behind her, she grabbed at the knob. She started to turn it, then stopped. It was still locked, but that wasn't why she'd hesitated. Outside this relatively safe sanctuary was a drunk who was much larger and stronger than her, and had, only ten minutes earlier, tried to kill her. The knob slipped between her fingers and she stared at the door unseeingly.
She sat back onto the counter, and stayed there.


Chapter Nine
A woman picked up the charred toilet paper roll, rolling it in her fingers thoughtfully. "Look at this," she told her companion. The second woman looked at it.
 "You think that little stick of a girl did that?"
"No one else here is documented of having talents, and the possibilities of an uncharted talent is--"
"Yeah, yeah, I know. A couple billion to one."
The two women paused and regarded the paper.
“It could easily have been a pyro with a match.”
“They wouldn’t have left it.” The woman holding the toilet paper roll looked up at her, daring her partner to challenge her logic.
"An interesting talent,” her partner said instead.
"There are dozens out there with this exact type of talent."
"That doesn't lessen my interest in it. Though..."
"Yeah, I agree. I don't think she'd make a good weapon. She's pathetic."
"I hate it when you do that."
"I know."
The first woman carefully put the paper roll in a plastic bag, then hid it in a duffel bag. "Well," she said, "are you ready to go?"
"I've been ready since we walked into these forsaken doors."

*giggles*
See you later!

Christi
~ Current word count: 32, 722! For now, yet again!

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Poor Eileen doesn't have a very lucky chapter this time, though.

Chapter Seven
Six minutes.
Eileen absent-mindedly scratched her itching fingers, staring intently at her computer screen’s clock.
She tapped against the keys, making up rhythms to pass time. She itched to get up and walk out, but she had to stay at least ten minutes after her shift was up if she wanted to keep her job. She knew that. Oh, and she had to stop using up all her sick days and vacations. And actually do some work.
She turned her attention back to the numbers on the monitor. She typed at the numbers, and she wished she had decided to be anything but an accountant.
The clock deliberately took its time.
She glanced at her in and out boxes. Empty. Nothing to do there. She straightened them up, trying to do it as slowly as possible. She turned back to the computer and typed a tad bit more. She tried to bend herself into it, focus. It seemed impossible. She glanced at the clock every now and then, stretching the time between each glance. Finally the time was up. She got up, wiping her palms against her skirt. She grabbed her jacket off the chair and walked out, making sure that her steps were even and smooth so she didn’t look too eager to get out. She waved good-bye to the receptionist and faked a smile. She pushed the door out and exited the building.
It was a long walk, still, until she would be home. She decided to get started.
Her mind numbed with the rhythm of her steps after awhile, cataloguing the streets that she’d seen so many times that she could’ve walked home with her hands bound behind her and a bag over her face. She took the apartment stairs one steps, her hand trailing on the railing, not really holding on but still ready. Ready for what? She wondered. She shrugged and dove her hand into her jacket, fishing for keys.
The apartment door yawned at her from the landing she arrived at. She paused at the doormat and dug deeper. After a battle, she pulled her hand out and retrieved the key from all the lint. She jabbed the key into the lock and turned hard. “Ugh,” she muttered, grimacing and combining her right hand’s forces with her left’s. She’d forgotten how horribly the tumblers stuck on the lock.
The door swung open and she yanked the key out of the lock. She stepped in and had to force herself to shut the door behind her. Sean must’ve not made it to the bathroom, she thought, grimacing. The smell of puke hadn’t permeated the room; it had conquered it, and now it ran at her. A cough smacked her throat on its way out.
Eileen could’ve stuck her tongue out and tasted alcohol. It hung heavily like a second skin on top of her, she could practically feel it soaking into her and it was everywhere, it was everywhere, it was everywhere.
She took a deep breath that turned into another harsh cough, and started walking in, unzipping her jacket as she went. When she was starting to pull her arms out, something shuffled from the dark hallway. She froze, turning towards it with eyes about as wide as the bottles sitting around. A shape jumped at her and suddenly she couldn’t budge. Her pulse skyrocketed.
Sean had her arms pinned behind her, still in the painful position of taking off her jacket. His beer-stained shirt pressed into her face and she had to turn her face so that she could continue to breathe. He lowered his head. “Hello,” he whispered in her ear. It came out more like a snake’s hiss, more a menacing threat than a greeting.
Eileen could feel herself trembling. Sean apparently did, too, because he tightened his grip.
“Nghhh.” The little pain-filled whimper was all Eileen could manage. He picked her up, laughing to himself—heh-heh-heh-hehhh—and her lungs fought his arms to expand and compress so they could process oxygen. He’s never been this bad!
Eileen wanted to scream. She had to remind herself that she could barely breathe. She couldn’t run. (could I have run if I had been able to? Would I?)
Heh-heh-heh-hehhh.
“You know what, Eileen?” He whispered in her ear, setting her feet down on the floor. He rocked her gently from side-to-side, like they were dancing to a slow song that he really liked and wanted her to enjoy it too, and maybe to him they were dancing. His breath was a smell all its own. Beer, and peanuts maybe, and puke, and the stink of gingivitis. She would’ve gagged if she’d been able to breathe.
One of his arms let go. Eileen tried to escape, but the lack of oxygen had worn her out already. She took a gulping breath—a drowning person in a whirlpool—and his other arm clamped down to hold her just as tightly as both of his arms had. He slowly, tenderly stroked her head with his free hand. “You know what?”
Sean’s large hand traced the shape of her face, curving the shape of his hand to cup her cheek. His hand gravitated to one side, then it was covering her mouth and she really couldn’t breathe. She sucked weakly against his hand, trying to sneak in an extra one, but it was like he’d vacuum suctioned his hand to her mouth; there was no air. She grabbed at his hand, clawing her nails in to his knuckles. She’d grown a second heart, her fear, and it pounded in her head.
I can’t breathe.
She struggled hard, but she felt like everything was going sluggish.
Can’t breathe.
“I was thinking of putting you out of your misery.”
She writhed, just now remembering her feet. She tried to kick out with them, tried to struggle…
Is this what oxygen deprivation feels like? Probably.
The fire, the crumbling toilet paper roll, pressed into her mind. She could see it on paper, stamped with the word URGENT on them. Yeah, thanks, she told herself, another thing I never got to figure out.
Eileen thought about it again, and she could tell that Sean was saying something, and she should be paying attention, but she just couldn’t. The fire. It had sprung to life, and then when she touched it…it had done more than just flare up. She had felt it. Somewhere other than her finger. It wasn’t her soul, she thought, and not her heart, or her mind…it was more like it discovered the very essence of her humanity and touched it and it had changed.
She’d caused it.
Hm. I must be getting brain damage from oxygen deprivation.
She was grasping at water, or maybe some grade of fine sand, and it was going to just slip through her hope. She could try anyway. All right, fire, come save me now.
I could really use some saving…
Sean shook her and released her mouth for a moment. She gasped out her air and sucked in just a little more, just a skim off the top of what her lung capacity could hold. She could think a little more again.
“Hey now, don’t die on me just yet.”
She was going down faster now, gravity had gotten stronger on her all of a sudden, and her brain was crashing. This must be what a TV feels like when it’s just getting static. Never thought that static would feel so fuzzy, it’s velvety with such sharp edges…
Her vision came in and out of focus.
“Eileen? Hey. Don’t die yet.” He sounded irritated, angry. She would’ve laughed if she had been able to.
Don’t die, eh? I’d be all too happy to comply. Now let go of my windpipe.
Sean growled, and he sounded in pain. Her bleary mind seemed proud of itself to be able to recognize that.
He suddenly let go, crying out and screaming curses.
Eileen sputtered and gasped, holding her throat, as if she was trying to hold it together after being squeezed so tightly and then so rapidly released. She panted.
“Ow, you little--”
His words were cut off in her ears in wake of a discovery. She held out her arms in front of her, watching them as they gradually lost their flaming red color. Her skin had looked like it’d been burned, all at once, and it had healed before her eyes. She wheeled around and watched Sean watching her. He came after her and she scurried, running and turning hard on her ankles. Her heels didn’t seem to matter anymore. Mind over matter, she supposed.
She rushed into the bedroom, running for the bathroom. Sean was right behind her. She had to go faster. She made it in, was closing the door…he was right there, starting to push against her closing it…
She cried out and shut it. Her fingers fumbled with the lock for a scary moment, then it latched. She hurriedly sat down and leaned against the door, pressing her feet against the opposite wall.
Sean rammed his shoulder solidly against the door a few times. She cried out, and she almost thought the lock would break, but he gave up after failing.
Eileen gathered her knees to her chest and stared at the bathroom cabinet in front of her, little pants whistling through her cracked-open mouth. Her throat felt like it was bruising and puffing up to a few times its normal size. She was shaking. She tried to hold back a sob, but it racked through her body harder for it.
She waited out her body’s response to extra adrenaline and tried to calm down.

Off I am to clean my room then write some more!

~Christi
Word count: 25,063!! For now!

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Okay, I read through chapter five on my blog today, and for some reason the word "c-h-i-n-k" is starred out. Which I don't get. It's a sound effect word, not a swear word--as far as I know, anyway...

I liked writing these next two chapters. They were fun.

Chapter Six
The screen was white, blazing. She’d been staring at it for so long she was pretty sure that the image was being burned into her retinas.
Eileen jerked herself out of her reverie. What are you doing? You’re at work. You don’t have time to goof off. Stupid idiot.
Her eyes wandered the confines of her cubicle, which were the light blue-gray of Styrofoam walls. It was totally empty, and she could count the number of tacks on them with two fingers, as long as she curved them to make a nice rounded zero. She spun around in her chair, trying to gather her willpower and start working. Her legs hit against the edge of her desk, and she pushed off it to spin in the other direction. While she was used to cramped places, her cubicle was starting to shrink on her, it seemed. With each spin, it got worse and worse, she was going to get squished, it was like all those cheesy Hollywood movies where the heroes are escaping then all of a sudden the walls are closing in on them, and she was going to get squished—
She stood up and got away from her desk, not exactly sure where she was heading. She quickly realized, through the foggy screen of her restlessness, that she needed a reason to have gotten up. She ran through a checklist in her head: the bathrooms were in the other direction, and she couldn’t turn around…she didn’t have anything going to a printer…she didn’t have anything to copy…
She ducked down another row and realized that she was out of the cubicle maze. There were cubicles on her right and an actual wall to her left. She had forgotten that this row was pretty much a dead end, except for the break room…
The break room!
She nodded to herself with a slight incline of her head. That was the perfect excuse. She needed water. She lengthened her strides, in a hurry to get through with it and go back to her cubicle.
Her hand reached for the knob.
“Did you see her come in today?”
“Who?”
“Eileen!”
Eileen froze outside the break room door. She could hardly breathe. Why would someone, anyone, be talking about her? She thought that she was pretty much…wallpaper. Worse than that, she thought that she’d always been like wallpaper in a doctor’s office: it was there but you didn’t pay attention to it. It didn’t really matter. But you could always tell that the wallpaper thought itself rather important, and there always were those odd people that inspected and admired the wallpaper.
She listened in, leaning lightly against the wall.
“Yeah? So what?”
“Did you see that cut on her cheek? I heard that her boyfriend drinks. A lot.”
Eileen’s face started darkening; she didn’t have a light switch it was more like a knob, and someone was turning the notches down one at a time.
“Soo…?”
“Obviously her boyfriend did that!”
“Accidents happen.”
“That is no accident.”
“Seriously? How do you know?”
“I talked to her! She confides in me, you know.”
“Right.”
“Seriously!”
“Okay, I believe you.”
Eileen turned her back to the wall and stared at the cubicle wall, struggling not to pant. People are such liars! She wanted to scream and run in there and grab some sort of club and beat them over the head. She had a huge rush of adrenaline, hate, and anger.
She confined it in a tight box, wrapping it inside herself like a Christmas present. It bounced around, maybe she’d tried to wrap up a puppy for a present and really, she should’ve known better, puppies don’t take well to boxes.
She kept her stride brisk and focused, and mentally placed blinders at the sides of her eyes. I see only what’s straight ahead of me. There is nothing else. There is only the area ahead of me. There is nothing else in my mind, only my path straight ahead.
Had the bathroom really been all the way across the building?
She looked at the sign as she pushed the door open, almost like she was making sure she was going through the right door.
She slammed the stall door behind her, and stared at the disgusting fry sauce pink paint they'd colored it with. She needed to lash out. She needed to slam her fist against the stall walls and scream and pull the metal apart with her bare fists. Mind your own business! She’d scream.
Eileen collapsed onto the toilet seat and hung her head onto her hands between her knees. It’d be much worse if you’d had any Band-Aids and put one on the cut, she reminded herself.
What was supposed to be a small consolation only aggravated the hopeless frustration roiling inside her. It was unbearable. There was nothing wrong with a cut or two! It wasn’t their business whether or not her boyfriend beat her.
She was wallowing and seething in these thoughts when something crackled and popped loudly in her ear.
It was the sound of a fire.
Her head snapped up in surprise.
The fire seemed to have been born on the toilet paper and it was growing rapidly, maybe it was even an adolescent now. It hissed and snapped with the same sort of fury.
It was worse than when she’d found Sean gone. Her heart completely stopped, and her lungs suddenly were too distracted to process oxygen.
Spontaneous combustion just isn’t possible!
Eileen’s mind was running in circles and her eyes were just watching the fire eat through the toilet paper roll. It was dangerously close, but somehow she wasn’t afraid of it. Her frustrations and worries were wiped away like the fire had burned them away rather than the toilet paper. She felt something in her self, her heart maybe, connect with it.
Entranced, she reached out a hand towards it. She could watch the delicate bones in it as her fingers stretched out to the max to pet the flames. Her entire hand curved for it.
The moment her finger touched upon it, it flared. She might as well have touched liquid oxygen to it. Frightened, she jumped back. Her back jammed into the toilet mechanisms, and she was sure that she was going to get bruises from it that Sean could only inflict if he used some sort of weapon. She groaned in pain, as quiet as she could, and looked back up to see if the fire was still there.
It wasn’t. It had vanished without a smoke trail.
Amazed, she cradled the toilet paper roll. It was still hot and nearly burnt her fingers. Or, well, it should have. She barely felt the heat, but her fingers were turning red. It was a neat sort of red almost, like its warning was in the helium-high-pitch that sometimes happened when you were in a lot of pain and were trying to stay calm. Could you please let go now?
The roll hit the linoleum and crumbled. The ash made itself a nasty pile. Eileen reached over and scooped it into her hand, quickly sweeping it into the garbage like she was afraid someone was staring her down.
She left the stall and washed her hands, taking much longer than necessary, rubbing the soapsuds onto her hands so that they almost blanketed them. Then she scrubbed them off thoroughly, watching the water rinsing her hands for about a minute longer than there were soapsuds.  
She was in a state of mental paralysis as her legs carried her back to her cubicle. She sat down and started working, her numb fingers stumbling over the keyboard. She tried to get herself to work, but only managed to keep up an appearance that she was working. It was difficult to focus on numbers and spreadsheets when your mind belonged in a hospital bed and on a ventilator; her mind was a vegetable.
Spontaneous combustion is impossible. Did I hit the roll? There was some sort of match under it, some sort of trap rigged to set off when someone pulled out some toilet paper. Silly, but just plausible. Someone put a small bomb there and it was supposed to just scare the person who accidentally set it off.
She nodded to herself a few times, and it felt like she was about to go to sleep, her head just rolled back and forth on her neck too smoothly.
Eileen turned her attention back to the screen and pushed thoughts about flames to the side. There was work to be done. She could unravel mysteries later. She glanced at the clock on her computer.
Exactly five hours, thirty-three minutes, and twenty seconds later.



Still a couple chapters away from where I actually started to like Eileen. Funny how things get a lot easier when you like your main character...

All right! I'm off to write chapter twenty-one!

~Christi
Word count: 22, 161...for now!

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Hmm, the titles of these blogs make me feel special. xD
(I'm over 20,000 words total today! =D)


Chapter Five
“Oh, it’s fine.”
“Don’t worry, I can take care of myself.”
“What do you mean? Bruises? No, I’m okay.”
Sean stared moodily at his coffee mug, swishing the dark brown mixture around. His thoughts ran with the centripetal force, finding circular and rectangular logic.
I hurt her again.
I shouldn’t drink any more.
Compulsively, he latched onto that statement and stood up for action. He slammed the coffee down on the table and rushed the fridge—the forces go down faster if you charge and scare them, show no mercy, men, but don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes—and hauled the rickety door open. He stared down the beers, then ripped them out, one by one, and threw them onto the counter. The glass clanked together and against the counter; the bottle seemed to be conspiring against him. “I’ll show you,” he hissed. He threw one of the bottles against the wall. “How’d you like that? Huh?! Huh?!!” He yelled, smashing another one. “I’LL NEVER DRINK AGAIN!” He was screaming now, maybe he was in hysterics, he didn’t quite know and wouldn’t for awhile.
He panted, leaning heavily against his thighs. He nodded to himself and straightened. “Time to get rid of this,” he told himself. He must be firm.
He grabbed the bottle opener and cracked the first one. He turned the bottle upside down and watched the liquid flow out from the neck to the sink, down the drain—don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes. He repeated this process.
On his fifth—maybe tenth, he didn’t keep count, the casualties on the bottle’s sides were just growing and his victories were too, the bottles ought to cut their losses and run—he paused midway through the purging ceremony, just after he’d cracked the bottle open. He rocked the bottle by its neck in a circle.
“It seems like a huge waste to just dump it all,” he thought out loud. “Maybe just one more before I send it all down? A farewell drink?”
He hesitated, a shard of what had prompted him to throw the beer away trying to get him to flip the bottle back over, come on Sean-y boy, flip it back over and keep going. Shoot ‘em down, soldier, they’re weakening, they’re just playing with your mind now, ignore them, IGNORE THEM. He brought it towards his lips in jerks, little flops and twitches of his muscles.
Throwing the bottle upwards, he tossed his head back and chugged the bottle’s contents. The bottle had stuck with it, had won the fight, it had its slave back.
He set the empty bottle down, wiping his mouth with a hairy forearm. “There. That oughtta do it,” he muttered to himself. He cracked the next one and again hesitated before hurling the liquid down the drain. He shakily brought it to his lips too—just one more. It won’t hurt anything, it’s just one little drink.
The hush of the bottles was almost excruciating. They seemed to be watching him guzzle it down, waiting for the tipping point where he’d lose all his own self-control. It was soon, they knew. Maybe they’d even missed it.
He seized the next nearest bottle. It’s all right, he mused. It won’t hurt anything if I have another. As he chugged, he reached for the next one, almost finishing the one he was working on. He was on a roll.
The bottles weren’t silent anymore, they were starting to murmur, trying so hard to be quiet and not break the magic happening. They were getting him back and couldn’t disturb it yet, oh no, they couldn’t stop him yet.
He kept going, and he didn’t hear the bottles, not consciously, he was immersed in the godawful taste and the ringing in his head that was starting to buzz, and that was the pleasant sound, the pleasant feeling.
The bottles grinned at each other. They had him. He was back to where he was supposed to be.
Chug. Chug. Chug.
He was a paradoxical parallel to the little choo-choo train that could.
He chuckled to himself. Giggle-hic-giggle. What had he been worried about before? There was nothin’ to worry about. That was fool’s talk, worrying. Eileen was fine, yep, she really was. He laughed and raised the bottle. “To Eileen!” he cried, making a ***** sound as he raised his glass into the air, an imaginary toast.
He looked at all the bottles on the counter. They were cheering him on now, he could hear them. He laughed and bowed. “In good time, my friends, I’ll get to you in good time.”
He sipped at the end of his beer and was surprised when it came up dry. He let it go; it smashed against the floor, crying and sobbing during its travels. It was not satisfied by the trip, it wanted a refund.
He grabbed another bottle, another friend. It hissed when he pulled off the cap and he started glugging it down right away. Wouldn’t want the first ones to get lonely, after all.
The other bottles chattered excitedly while they waited for their respective turns.



This chapter actually made me rather sad to write...

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A bit more drama! The next chapter is far more dramatic, however.


Chapter Four
Eileen took a deep breath. It didn’t seem enough to prepare her. She straightened her skirt, a fading brown cloth, and tied up her hair so that the split ends weren’t so noticeable. She clacked old heels against the bathroom floor, leaned into the mirror and wished she had foundation to put over the cut. She had poured more disinfectant on, just to be totally sure that it would heal quickly, but it was still rather obvious.
Duty called. She was all out of sick days, and her vacation time was zilch. No more time off for her. Squeezing her eyes closed, she clasped her hands and whispered a hopeless prayer to God that Sean wouldn’t be too drunk when she got home, that he’d be able to take care of himself for the day.
She knew she was going to find Sean with his head hanging in the toilet when she got home anyway.
Straightening her collar, she shrugged out a few wrinkles and gave up. Her heels clacked against the bathroom tile, then sunk into the carpet.
When she reached the hallway junction, she stopped dead. Her heart hit the brakes, then alternated to the accelerator to make up for it. The blankets were all torn up, tossed up. The pillow was across the room, and the cushion of the couch was askew.
She was used to pandemonium, but not leaving an unconscious man and then returning to find him vanished.
She peeked around the wall covering part of the kitchen. It was dark, but she knew that he wouldn’t have turned on the light. “Hello?” she whispered. She tried to be as quiet as possible, but knew that her voice was going to hurt.
A lump in the darkness winced.
Cautiously, she stepped into the kitchen, dropping her feet down slow so it would be absolutely silent. “Hey,” she whispered hoarsely. “I’m going to flip on the light,” she warned.
Eileen pulled the switch up.
Sean’s shirt was ragged, splotched with sporadic brown stains and she could smell his reek even though he was across the room. He closed his eyes tightly, more like a child whispering to himself that there really were no monsters in the closet, it was okay to go to sleep, than a man in pain.
“Could you make coffee please?”
Sean’s voice sounded more ripped up than she would have guessed. Eileen nodded to him, walking across the tile—clack, clack—and crouched in front of the cabinet. When she pulled it out, Sean sighed to himself and tried to document in his mind that that was where the coffee was.
Eileen spooned the grounds into the filter and pressed the button to start it. She even got him a mug, setting it on the counter.
She sighed a little, humming silently to herself.
“I’m sorry.”
No you’re not, you lying jerk, you say that every time you get sober and every time I just know you don’t mean it—
Eileen seethed internally, and her anger seemed to solidify into a globe in her upper intestines, it didn’t hurt but seemed to be expanding as she stood there. She hunched over the counter, glaring at the coffeepot, glaring at the coffee starting to spit out.
“Eileen? Did you hear me?”
Eileen hated his words. They were lies. Lies. He didn’t mean it. She wanted to explode. She wanted to rocket into the stratosphere and take that lying, abusing jerk with her and hurl him into outer space and watch him turn blue.
“Yeah. Sorry, I spaced out for a second there. It’s fine,” Eileen told him, turning around. She gave him a wavering smile.
Sean frowned and stood. He reached his hand out ahead of him and stroked her cheek with a rough, large hand. “I hurt you again.”
She reached both of her own hands to cover his one and closed her eyes. “Don’t worry about it. I can take care of myself.” She smiled a little at him.
Sean’s face was scrunched up, his eyebrows twining together in worry lines and already she could watch the self-hate building behind his eyes. He’d never been as good as she was at acting. He wore his heart like a badge on his chest. It changed colors sometimes, but mostly it just had large letters on it that said exactly what he was thinking.
Eileen cradled his hand against her cheek for another lingering moment, then removed it and stepped away. “I have to go to work. Will you be fine on your own?” she asked him, watching his eyes. He nodded distractedly, still staring at the spot she had stepped from. She gave him another smile and walked out the kitchen, leaving for work without eating breakfast. Her appetite had left her when she’d seen him.
She felt Sean watching her out the door, and she turned in the doorway to wave at him. “See you at six,” she promised. He nodded again, and she could tell he was feeling bleary and tired and wanted to collapse. When she turned away, her face was already distorting in dislike and pain.
“Wait!” Sean cried suddenly. He stumbled towards the door, and Eileen waited for him, surprised.
“What?” She asked. Her surprise must’ve shown on her face—need to fix that, stupid me, why did I show surprise? Sure he hardly ever talks to me in anything other than commands and worthless apologies and when he’s drunk, but that doesn’t matter right? Of course not, it doesn’t matter—because Sean paused a few steps in front of her.
“Have a good day,” Sean whispered, and gave her a quick hug. He let go in a rush, aware of her shock and not wanting to stain her shirt. His stench hung over their heads and weighed down. It leaned down on Eileen, chuckling to her: This is just a blast, ain’t it?
Eileen caught the final good-bye smile that Sean sent her way and returned it with one of her own. “You too,” she replied—society dictated that she say that, of course. Her mind was already blown. Sean had blown the circuits, **** him, and now she was fried, she didn’t have a spare motherboard lying around and she couldn’t afford it, and now…
She closed the door behind her, waving as she went.



Fare thee well, reader. *bows*

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And now we get into Sean's head a tad. :D

Chapter Three
His brain would be better off, he decided, if he just sawed the nerve endings out.
“Ughhh.”
 He rolled onto his stomach, and he felt like he was rolling down a ramp into a ship, he was a barrel maybe, a barrel full of sloshy acid that hurt his head so much. He buried his head into blankets and pillows, stacking it all on top. That'll keep my head from cracking like a rotten egg in boiling water, he reasoned.
His blind hands scavenged without guidance. They fumbled, and something fell over: the bottle of painkillers.
The cascading pills were like some sort of artificial landslide, a train wreck to his temples. He groaned, whimpered, then tried to swing back to business. He scrabbled around for the pills—hey, he was in pain because of them, he was going to take them—but his fingers were useless. They feel like he traded them for steak fries, and they have thawed out and he had no “fine motor control” or whatever it was that his teacher had called it back in school—high school? He was just surprised he could remember the words.
His hand met pills.
 Excited, he grabbed up a child's handful of them. In the process of bringing them towards him, however, he lost two thirds of what he'd scooped up. Even with that, he still maxed out the label recommended amount, but he didn't care. His head was going to split into a thousand billion zillion trillion gazillion pieces if he didn't take them.
He concentrated, working his hand into a fist. He was not going to lose any more pills. After the train wreck he deserved them. He deserved to take them all. And, by god, he was going to.
He reached out for water, but found nothing. Air swooshed lazily through his spread fingers.
Stretching out again, he reached until his arm felt like it was going to pop out of his shoulder socket—then something wet spilled all over his forearm. The water is a mellow warm, but he yelps like it'd been dry ice in contact with his skin. He curled up in response to the noise...noise bad. He groaned and searched for the bottle. His hand closed around it and he grinned triumph to himself. It was open that was good. Yay! He thought. Good is...good. He laughed silently to himself: he was just plain witty!
Pulling his head out of the cloth-dirt pile, he reared it back to pop the pills. He opened his jaw as far as it would stretch and poured water all over his face. He hoped some would make it into his mouth and help the pills down their passage, but mostly he just got his face sopping wet.
His throat worked, swallowing again and again his dry tongue, trying to remove the sickly sweet and prickly sour taste that pills always scraped against it. His eyes were carefully covered by his eyelids and a forearm, he wouldn’t be able to sit up without his safety darkness. The taste lingered on his tongue, calling out to him: “na-na-nana-naaa!”   
He couldn’t get it off.
He fell back on to the pillows, grabbing at the blankets like he had no fingers. He felt like a rat scurrying into a burrow two sizes smaller than his body actually was. His body went very still. It was time to wait out the true hangover: the time between when one woke up and when the pills kicked in.
Had he had a heavy metal concert take place in his skull? It felt like it. Well, it was the best venue, "The Sean." There're some job openings too! Hey, you wanna be the janitor? You can start today! Our place is pretty much trashed, so we'll pay you extra special if you start right now!
He clawed at the blankets. The sound of their rustling trumpeted in his ear. He waited longer.
An hour's millennia passed and he tested his pain. It was thudding dully in the back of his cranium, but when he moaned, the sound didn't intensify anything. He arched his back, and slowly retreated out of his makeshift sleeping bag into a sitting position. His eyes were sticky; he rubbed at them and raked the globs out.
When he opened his eyes(dead weight), the first thing he saw was the sunlight that had hobbled its way into the room. It was more like gunshots at pointblank to his throbbing retinas than autumnal sunshine. He snapped his head away from it. His head thrummed in protest, whining. When he moved his neck, it was more like his head was an oversized puppet's. The person directing his movements was clumsy and the strings were getting knotted together.
His bleary vision snapped onto one thing and held onto it, desperate fingers scrabbling at the edge of the cliff. The water bottle. It was at a precarious angle, sitting oddly at the corner of a blanket. By all reasons it should’ve been totally empty, but at the bottom there was water, sitting around and talking amongst its molecules. Did you see what just happened to all our buddies? Joe promised we’d have dinner tonight!
He seizes the bottle, his large hand shaking as he went for it—it’s shaking, shaking in slow motion, how could it be shaking? It seems barely in existence, the shaking, it’s shaking, it’s shaking—but ends up closing his hand around air. He tries again and this time the bottle is in his hand—it feels so round, the ribbed edges are so strange, it feels like I’m going to drop it, oh man I’m going to drop it I’m going to drop it. He threw the opening of the bottle into his mouth and downs the rest in a gulp.
The bottle slips from his steak-fry-fingers, he was right, he did drop it. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand, which proved rather ineffective, as his arms and face were soaked.
He crouched, grabbing at the couch to stay steady and not fall. He was pretty sure that if he fell he wouldn’t be getting back up for a while. The ground was suddenly a huge black hole that only his feet could cross without his entire body being sucked down into non-matter. He pushed against the cushion to stand—bad choice. The cushion just compressed under his weight, and while he got up to half-standing, he almost fell. At the last moment, his flailing hands caught a hold of the coffee table. He grabbed at it, and the dutiful table helped him up. He stood, bent over and grabbing the table, for a while, just gasping and trying to catch his breath.
Experimenting, he moved his feet. It’s more of a stagger than a step, but he decided to settle for it. He looked up, and the autumnal sunshine/gunshots behind him are illuminating what’s in front of him. He moved for the kitchen entrance, shuffling his feet against the floor to minimize his chances of falling. The room shifted views on him: cackling, it tilted and rolled, it was a roller coaster now instead of a room, it was going through a loop now, whoosh, now it was climbing, climbing, climbing—are you ready?—then plummeted.
He’d thought that he had been walking in a straight line for the kitchen, but the wall seemed to stretch out its arm and it clotheslined him. He grabbed for it, falling again—againagainagainagainagain, that roller coaster sent him flying out of his seat and he was falling again now and he hated gravity—and managed a second time to remain on his feet. He held onto the wall for a few more moments, then let go with one hand and reached out for the counter inside the kitchen. Once he had a stable hold on that, he let go with his other one and kept both on the counter as he moved inside the kitchen.
The kitchen tiles had sharp edges that Eileen hadn’t noticed with her shoes on. Where the tiles had been burnt down, the edges had curled upwards and grown thorns. Shuffling across the maze of these, Sean’s socked feet found new ways to say “ow!”. He pressed on firmly with a goal in sight: the coffeepot. The coffeepot was all the way across the square of a kitchen, and he had to hold onto the counter like an old man clutching his walker to get there. When he managed it, though, he punched the button to start the coffee and it just sat there, staring at him almost like he was an idiot. He punched the button again. In the dark kitchen he hadn’t noticed that Eileen had forgotten to prepare the pot for making coffee. He swore, slamming a half-made fist against the side of the plastic pot.
After searching the kitchen, exploring dank cupboards and cabinets, and banging his head against the table when he’d been crawling around, he gave up. He stuck his hands out in front of him and crawled until he found a chair leg, pulled himself up, and sat down to contemplate life until his head stopped aching from the banging his head and the hangover.




--Dangit. I just noticed that none of the italics that show up in my Word doc. show up on the blog. *is too lazy to fix it* Sorry.

Hope you enjoy!
As of all two chapters I've already put up, critiques equal love. :D

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I believe I used most of this chapter for my NaNo excerpt.

Chapter Two
Life's like a play, isn't it?
The curtains open in grand sweeps....
    ...to reluctantly close on a fading stage...
If only it could be a musical; this is more like a warped form of Hamlet, some sort of modern interpretation with more real consequences.
Eileen rolled over with her thoughts, trying to ball the blankets around her with as little movement as possible. Her mind worked just fine, maybe better than usual, but if she tried to move, it took her body a few minutes to respond. Maybe she needed a new modem or more RAM. Hello, God? Could you pass the salt? And maybe some blessings while you're at it? Just for a sec, I swear it won't take long.
She turned slightly to the other side, inching throughout the toss.
The apartment felt uneasy, settled in a sprawled sort of quiet. Perhaps it's sleeping, she thought. Or maybe spread-eagle and waiting breathlessly for sleep. Half its occupants are asleep, after all; if only that troublesome second half would agree and sleep too.
She relaxed into the mattress, not jittery or freaked out, no extra adrenaline sloshing through her system that she had to wait out, no upset feelings about Sean's outburst. No. She was used to it by now. After watching leaves floating down again, watching drinks float down his throat for a year—oh god a year of this, a year—and she realized that the only difference was everything. One was digested. The other is beautiful.
She flipped over, losing her blankets like wind scattering around her. She cussed to herself, trying to gather everything back together.
Her muscles gave up on her. They committed mutiny and she lay there with exhaustion building its nest with bird screams and hisses. She might as well have had crash cymbals clanging together continuously in her ears.
Lying curled up on her side, she closed her eyes. She focused on each muscle in her body for a moment then moved on, plucking the tiredness from them and storing it away for later. Sometimes the exercise worked, sometimes it didn't; she might as well have flipped a coin and gotten better odds to get to sleep.
She should've guessed that it wouldn't work on tonight of all nights; it was the Law of Sleep. The more you needed to sleep, the less likely you were to manage it.
Huff. The sigh mangled itself on the way out of her throat.  Her cheek stung angrily, deciding to spit its venom now and whine to the supervisor. It didn't care for formalities; it wanted to be attended to now.
She swung her legs out ahead of her, scouts to make sure she didn't impale herself on sharp objects. Her legs could barely support her, but she made it to the bathroom. She peered up into the mirror, angling her face so that she could analyze the damage.
The cut wasn't quite visible. She ran her fingers across it, and something snagged at them. Frowning, she leaned closer to the mirror and dug into the cut. Pain shrieked through her entire body, making her wince, but she kept at it, slicing it back open. She pulled out a shard of glass about as long as half her index finger and very thin.
She tossed it into the trash can, where it made a small but satisfying thunk. She leaned back towards the mirror, pulling at the cut again. It was bleeding—not much of a surprise. She opened the medicine cabinet and pulled out disinfectant. Dabbing it on, she accidentally splashed in too much. A scream whimpered through her lips, restrained at the very last moment. The alcohol in the disinfectant rampaged through the cut.
At least it's clean, she told herself, grimacing in the mirror. She set the bottle down and searched the cabinet again. The band-aid box was dangerously light; it was empty. She threw the box into the trash to make friends with the glass.
“That settles that, then,” she mused. She stepped back and looked at herself.
She wasn't exactly disheveled so much as dishoveled—like someone had dug her out of her coffin in the earth with her own hands. Her face passed beyond pale. The skin stretched tightly against it, like she had slipped into a spandex suit that yellowed with age instead of wrinkling. She imagined that if she walked down the street, people would think that she put an excessive amount of black eyeliner on and was trying to impersonate a rock star. An ironic smile reflected back at her. She leaned in closer and pinched the skin just below her eyes, pulling it out and letting it go. It snapped back into place. She stood back up straight. Months neglected, her hair had clawed-at split ends, the results of her attempts to tuck them into the messy, limp bun at the back of her neck.
Her eyelids closed against the image.
She spun around—she felt the bun flop around now, she seemed hyper-aware that it was so loose and so ugly and so messy and it was just so fitting—and strode out of the bathroom. She continued through the mess, the silent cacophony that expressed itself tactilely instead of the normal eardrum bursts.
Sean was sleeping exactly where she had left him last. Of course. A drawn-out breath she hadn't held—she swore to herself that she hadn't, she didn't worry about him—blew out, and she moved towards the sounds of his snoring.
Just above his head, Eileen looked down at him from her seat on the couch. He looks sober in his sleep, she realized. Her expression melted from stoic to sadly tender. She tried not to cry.
Drooping her arm, she arched her wrist and raked her fingers gently through his hair. Glass tinkled out. When she retracted her hand, it stank of beer. She closed her eyes, then bent over him to start to work.
Practiced fingers pulled through his hair and she sat there for maybe half an hour, gathering a decent pile of glass.
 Her only question was how he could possibly get that much glass in his hair. His hair. She supposed later that she should have asked herself why he was drinking, but she had given up on any expectations of an answer on that subject long before she gave up on her hair.
She swept the glass into her palm and threw it away as she went back to bed.

Enjoy Eileen's pain. xD
;)

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Why not?

Just don't...I dunno. Don't be scared. I guess. The plot changed on me a couple chapters from what it seems to be here.

Critiques will make me love you. =D


Chapter One
“You--!”
 His yell wasn't so much a sound as an assault upon her eardrums. The words were accompanied by a much more physical assault.
The green bottle smashed against the wall, a hand's spacing between her and it. She barely had time to close her eyes and raise her arms for weak protection. She felt a long, thin shard inject itself down her jaw line, not a gentle needle but a projectile.
“Sean!” She cried out. Her voice sounded pathetic. The glass had sounded louder; it had been a volcanic eruption compared to her little squeak. “Sean! Stop!” She ducked, a flinch magnified. He was coming closer, cocking his arm back.
“You...you've always been plottin' 'gainst...'gainst me. Eh, Eileen? I'll teach you. You won't...plot, you scheming little witsh.”
His words slurred together so dirtily, like it was snow in a highway. No longer pure and innocent and beautiful in simplicity, he was screaming vulgarity.
He swung his arm.
The forward momentum of his attempt broke his balance. He fell, the volcanic eruption and her squeak were inaudible compared to the sound of his body thudding against the carpet.
Eileen's hands shook, and she slowly bent her knees, then touched them to the ground. She skidded across the ragged carpet that saw more things than walls would ever notice, her kneecaps reddening with burns, friction snagging at her. She loosened her fingers and stretched them for Sean's shoulder, moving so she was in a better position to haul him. Her fingers clasped down, balling up so hard that she thought for a moment that she was going to leave bruises against his skin. Move him...move him somewhere soft...safe. Somewhere safe.
 “Wait,” she whispered, then flinched. Her voice scared her more than the too-calm silence the room had that seemed to sit lopsidedly on a coat hanger. Well, it said. That was interesting.
Her fingers let the cloth of his shirt, more rags than material, slip away. “Don't move him,” she decided. “What if you hurt him?” Her lip whimpered pain, and she removed her teeth from it, quietly reminding herself to stop biting.
She clenched her hand together again, then let it out, pushing against the floor to steady her ascent to her feet. She wouldn't move him, but she couldn't just...leave him.
She swayed on feet stinging with sleep. She shook her head. Her fatigue had to wait. It didn't matter. It didn't matter! She repeated this to herself sternly, like a mother wagging an angry finger at a toddler.
She entered the kitchen, crossing her way over rotting tiles and black marks where unfortunate fires had popped down to enjoy short lives. A note in her scrawled handwriting was stuck on the fridge door: “REPLACE FIRE EXTINGUISHER.” She was pretty sure she'd written that to herself a couple months ago, but hadn't gotten around to motivating herself. She just went limp inside out sometimes.
Her hand shot out to the handle and dingy light crawled out from the inside. There were more dark green bottles of it than food or water. She made a face, but took water and left it on the counter while she hunted through a cabinet for a bottle of painkillers.
On her way back to the bedroom, she left those at Sean's head. After her return trip, Sean was somewhat bundled in a blanket, head tucked above a pillow, with the bottles in a more strategically placed area so he could reach them. She thought for a moment, then reached down and cracked the water bottle open and removed the pill's lid.
Eileen straightened her back, snapping some part of her spine maybe and her neck popping. She nodded to herself: her work was finished.
Just to be a cliché, she slapped her hands together, being careful that they didn't reverberate enough sound to wake Sean up. She hobbled down the hallway again, trying not to but limping anyway.
She removed her day clothes, running soft fingers(rippling water) against her skin. When she hit the tender spot, she bit her lip hard and examined it. It was yellowing. Good and old. She nodded. There was nothing new.
She looked down at the bed and released her muscles. Closing her eyes and letting her arms flap, she was in free fall for a few moments before landing on the mattress.



See ya's, I'll put one up tomorrow. A chapter a day keeps the mortician away. =D

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I wonder how many people have heard of NaNo? Okay. Most people I've talked to haven't, or at least haven't recognized the first part. NaNoWriMo, anyone?

Fine. It's National Novel Writing Month. I hope this's the last time I have to explain it. It's where someone writes a novel (that is 50,000 words long) in 30 days. This means a minimum of 1,667 words a day.

Since today is the 8th, I have to be at 13,335 before I go to bed tonight. I'm currently at 13,235.

Agh.

Oh. This isn't too great an introduction, is it?

My name is Christi. I don't feel like anyone needs to know my last name, and more importantly, it doesn't really matter over the internet.

There are maybe a dozen different ways to spell my name. I'm warning you now that if you misspell it, I will probably ignore you. Hey, you're talking to someone else, right?

I like gloves that don't have fingertips.

I like the color black.

Notebooks are cool, but I prefer word documents.

I suck at math, but somehow I manage a 4.0 at my school.

Yes. At my school.

Apparently this is for homeschoolers, sorry, but my friend made me get a blog at this particular site. I don't see how it's any different than, say, Blogspot or myspace or facebook or any of millions of places you can have a blog, but whatever. Show me this place is different, if you like. If you don't like me, tough luck.

I'm writing a story. (See how good I am at transitions? You should be proud of me.) It's called Judgement but I won't put it up here unless prodded.

*fears prodding*

So, yeah, I should be writing it, but here I am, writing on this blog. I suppose it's worth it to stop Mari from prodding me...

Anyhoo.

I'll talk more later.

Bai.

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