I’ve found some old materials on my laptop, which I’ve decided to re-read, edit and share. Typos are only in your imagination. o.o I have about four “Chapters”, which means I wrote some, then broke off into the next piece and so on. I’ll post them piece by piece and hopefully…start adding to what I already have.

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I was unusual for a teen. I appreciated my parents, loved their attention and was so intelligent that it made me a social pariah. I attended a private school, had my own car, and lived in a sprawling three-story house with my parents and I had the top floor to myself. If I’d been spoiled and selfish, I would’ve been a princess. As it was, I was just mature. I worked in the summers to pay for gas money, but I did my best to fit the stereotype of the rebellious teen. I played my stereo so loud that I could feel the bass beat in my chest, I refused to do the dishes or lawn work, but I did manage to stay within the basic rules. Go to school, get home quick and never go out after dark. I trusted my parents. They were distant, but they cared and I knew it.

I stayed in town for college, deciding to get my basics done while I could still live at home and transfer somewhere else once I decided on a major. It wasn’t until then that I really started to notice my parents as people instead of the simple classification of “Mom” and “Dad”.  Just before my twentieth birthday, I became suspicious of my parents. They got a call just after ten pm, and rushed out of the house with suitcases, claiming an emergency for work. It baffled me. They worked in an office building downtown, strictly nine-to-five stuff. I had to ask myself what could compel them out of the safety of our home and out into the night on such short notice. They had drilled into me the dangers of being out alone after dark, reminding me that even with a friend I might not be any safer since I would be the only one trained in self-defense. I had listened, believed them, and followed blindly. But somehow now it was weird. It wasn’t just caution they were drilling into me; it was downright paranoia. If I’d been less in control of my imagination I’d be jumping at shadows. And now, the call – where two people who seemed to think the night was terrifying rushed out into it at a moment’s notice.

Something about this late night call didn’t fit. It was a puzzle, and I thought that I had to have the answer. I ignored the first one, and the second, but it kept happening and eventually I got so curious I could barely stand myself. Apparently, I read too many mystery novels as a kid, because I decided to spy on my parents. I readied myself for the next late-night call, sure that there would be another. I dug through the attic and found an old rotary phone, knowing that all I would have to do was pick up the receiver slowly enough to keep them from hearing a click – the cordless always made a beeping sound when it came on, even if someone had already picked up. I learned that in my teens when my parents would need the phone, not realizing I was already on it.

That night there was a call around 8, which turned out to be my cousin Amy dialing our house by mistake. I stayed on and listened to the exchange, trying not to breathe into the mouthpiece so loudly as to give myself away. Then after that nothing for several hours. There hadn’t been a call every single night, but I had been sure that I would get to overhear a call soon so I was a little disappointed.

It was just after midnight and the ringing of the phone woke me up out of a dead sleep. I waited until the phone stopped ringing, counted to ten and carefully lifted the receiver to my ear. I held my breath and listened. The conversation was rapid.
“–breach.”
“We’re on it,” I heard my dad say tersely, “reporting in ten.”
There was a faint click and the line went dead. I heard another click, my parents’ phone being replaced and I quietly followed suite. I heard a door open and shut downstairs, followed by muffled footfalls. I wasn’t sure what that was about, given that I’d overheard so little, but again curiosity was needling me to find out what was going on. Quietly, I tiptoed to my closet. I pulled on a pair of black jeans and a purple shirt, pulled a black sweater over it, arranged my hair into a messy knot on the back of my head, and slipped my feet into a pair of black ballet-like shoes. I heard the front door slam just after I finished getting dressed, then the car started in the driveway. I edged out of my room cautiously, a little thrill going through my body. I was breaking the rules, and soon I would find out what was going on. I mentally replayed the conversation as I made my way to the driveway with my car keys in hand. It sounded almost like a security company. Maybe their office had been broken into? I shook my head at the thought. They were just employees, not owners or even managers. They wouldn’t get a call like that, and even if they did, why would they head out there in the middle of the night. Who would they be reporting to and more importantly, what would they be reporting about?
I knelt by the front tire of my jeep – my baby – and looked at the street from underneath it. I saw may parent’s sleek, black SUV signal to turn right as they pulled up to the stop sign. From my position I unlocked my car, using the key instead of the button on my key ring, which would have made the lights flash, and opened the door. Feeling stealthy, I did my best to slither in. It was more clumsy than I had envisioned it and I knocked my head against the steering wheel. I grimaced, pulled my seat belt on and looked over my shoulder. I debated whether or not to pull the trick I read about of just putting your car in neutral and letting it coast down the driveway, but I saw my parent’s car already turning and decided I’d have to go ahead and start it if I wanted to keep up. In my head, I was thinking “shhh” as the engine fired up. I pulled out quickly and made it to the stop sign. I caught a glimpse of a car several blocks ahead of me, coming up on a fork in the road. I couldn’t be sure it was my parents’ car, but there wasn’t anyone else on the road this late at night. I waited to see which way it turned before I pulled around the corner and out into the night. I ghosted my parents for several miles. They pulled in at an old building at one point, forcing me to drive past trying to look inconspicuous in the wee hours of the morning. I went up a couple blocks and pulled onto the curb in front of a house, then turned off my lights. I waited, and it seemed like ages had passed. I gave up and pulled back onto the road, heading back toward the building. I was just in time to see my parents pull out behind me.
At first I thought I was busted, but they didn’t pull ahead and stop me so I continued driving straight. Fortunately, traffic had picked up. It was nearing three am and all the drunks were heading home to sleep it off. There were two near-accidents on the road and I almost missed it when my parents car stopped trailing me and turned left into a residential neighborhood. I swore – a new experience for me – and maneuvered my way around the block to the road they were on only to find that they had stopped and gotten out of there cars. Afraid to drive past them again, I turned into a sidestreet that bisected the road we were on and parked. I was feeling less confident now. I was tired and stopping in a residential area had baffled me completely. Obviously, I was losing my mind.

Unexpectedly, my parents didn’t walk up to the house they had stopped at and knock on the door – they went to the alley between the two houses, sort of crouching down looking at the ground. This time, I managed to slither as I got out of my car. I knelt on the curb for a moment and was debating about whether or not to shut the door when I heard a rumble of thunder. I fought the sudden urge to giggle. It was a dark and stormy night. I shut my door as quietly as possible and shuffled around the corner to peer down the street. My parents had come back out into the front yard and they looked alert, watchful. It confused me even further. They went to the car and opened up the trunk of the SUV – or whatever it is when you open it from the back.  They were standing at the trunk, sifting through it and stuffing things into their clothes.

A horrible thought occurred to me and I gasped audibly. I had to ask myself: what are the chances that my parents are drug-dealers? No, I told myself. Surely not. But then…we did seem to have more than a modest amount of money. I shook my head to myself. My parents were not drug dealers. I went back to concentrating on watching them. They had closed the trunk while I was sifting through the confused mire of my own speculations and now they were walking around the houses again. I watched my dad disappear in between another set of two houses while my mother stayed out front, looking like a lookout for a bank robbery. Suddenly, she whirled around. My dad came out of the shadows and tackled her.
They hit the ground hard and my dad rolled off my mom to face the sky. They both held their arms up, extended toward the shadows and they each held…guns? My eyes went wide. My parents had guns? They’d taken me shooting at the range, but they never went around with them. Suddenly, I heard a loud crack, followed by a rumble in the sky. Light flashed and under all the other sounds I heard something squeal. There was a rush of movement from the shadows, like they had coalesced into a gob of sentient fluid. I began to blink rapidly, trying to adjust my vision. Something darted out of the shadows, thin and sharp, and pinned my mother to the ground like a butterfly. I opened my mouth to scream, but nothing came out. My dad fired shots into the monster and I recognized the sound as the crack I had heard earlier. Out of nowhere came the storm. The thunder had seemed so far away before, but now wind, rain, lightning and a roaring loud thunder seemed to come out of nowhere. Suddenly, I was soaking wet, watching my father shoot the things that shot out at him, like the thing that had pinned my mother. My mother. I looked at her again. She was limp, not moving at all. I looked back at my dad and another thing shot out of the dark. This thing was a large, solid, hulking shape. It was dark like whatever it was I had seen before, but somehow more real and solid.
Before my very eyes, it tore my parents to bits. For the first time in my life, I was at a loss to comprehend what was going on around me. Frightened, I ran toward my parents, but realizing that that thing was still out there I turned around and jumped in my car. I looked back and saw my parents, broken apart like plastic toys. I grabbed my cellphone. How could I tell the police my parents had been killed by pieces of a shadow?

I called my uncle’s number, but before I even heard the first ring, I passed out.

For lack of inspiration – and since I don’t believe the Muses actually exist – I’m going to search out a prompt…in the dictionary. Why? ‘Cause I’m a word nerd. I know, I know, you’re shocked.
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Word: Informed Consent (okay it’s two words, but it’s in the dictionary…)
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Informed consent, in the medical field, means that a patient has been made to understand the risks of a treatment or procedure and given their consent. It means signing papers, but it doesn’t really mean that the patient understands. Hospitals, doctors offices, they’re all intimidating…at least they are if you aren’t familiar with them. If you’ve been through enough the mysticism surrounding the scrubs, the white sheets, and the somehow generic attitude of the place vanishes.
Standing in the hall outside of a hospital room is like standing in the middle of an airport without looking like you have someplace to go: you get ignored or you get looks that imply you’re either an idiot, or suspicious. Nurses seem to have perfected the ability to be brisk, efficient, and drone-like in their ability to keep going without really noticing the environment around them. The newer ones aren’t like that yet…but it happens, and I doubt they realize it. That lack of awareness, and the necessity of a certain lack of compassion seems inhuman.
…
Standing outside of the hospital room, I heard the doctor asking questions of my mother in a low monotone as he looked her over. I couldn’t quite make out the words, and at this point I was grateful for that. She was lucid this time and I didn’t need to answer all the questions for her. No known drug allergies, but a list of medications that could produce an array of reactions if you so much as gave her a whiff of the wrong antibiotic. At this point, we had the list printed out with all the details so the nurses or interns could just make a copy for the files whenever we saw someone new.
This surgery had, in my opinion, been put off for far too long. It was not an especially complicated procedure, but the patient was extremely likely to have complications. Despite that risk, the doctors seemed to consider it nothing at all. They showed no hint of concern. I knew hospital procedure pretty well at this point, so when they got ready to wheel her into surgery I made sure I was allowed to follow them down in the elevator and stay with her in the little curtained pre-op waiting area until they wheeled her back for surgery. I went into the waiting room off to the side, and spent about ten minutes glaring at the little phone on the table at one end of the stylish, but very uncomfortable couch, that was provided. Then I started to pace. Honestly, I wished I’d been able to put on a set of scrubs, wash up, and go into surgery with them even if all I did was sit in a corner. At least then I would see, I would know what was happening and possibly I could get a running commentary instead of the solid wait.
It was like this every time. I stayed cool and collected until the nurses were out of sight, smiling and being confident for as long as my mother could see my face. Once I got to the waiting room I always, always hated the phone, the couches and chairs, and the way I had to struggle not to hyperventilate. It wouldn’t do for me to become a patient. Not when I would be needed so shortly. It could be two hours or six, depending on how everything went. It could be much less if she died on the table from the simple mistake of not getting air, or someone not monitoring her blood pressure closely enough. It would be easier if she could’ve been sedated instead of put under, but some things you just need to sleep through. As “safe” as surgery is, it’s still major trauma to your body.
All these thoughts were going through my head as I waited, and more random thoughts interspersed themselves with them. Did I remember to feed the dog? the fish? I couldn’t remember locking the front door, but surely I did. I needed to mail out birthday cards to my twin nieces, because I really did love them even if their father was the most useless older brother I could ever have dreamed of and their mother was a twit.
I decided to go see if the hospital cafeteria was open. I never could remember when or if they ever closed, but the last time I had managed to get a wonderful tasting slice of pie. They must give the dregs to the patients, hospital cafeteria food was never all that bad. It wouldn’t do me any good to stay cooped up in this little room, going stir-crazy. I could eat in peace and be back in ten minutes – and that stupid little phone never rang for me anyway.

One of the most common pieces of advice I’ve gotten about writing is to just start writing. Which I do, but without ever letting people see it…because hey, every time I write it’s my own little brain-child and I don’t want it to get picked on by the other kids.
That, however, has also kept me from writing consistently and I have yet to finish any of the longer projects that I’ve started. Last year I did NaNoWriMo, but I didn’t finish because, well, life got in the way – and this year I was so wrapped up in school and work that I didn’t have time to even contemplate it.
Still, I shouldn’t have to wait until next November to write…and I need to learn how to let other people see it, criticize it, etc, before I’ll ever have the guts to consider being published which, in my heart of hearts, I would really like to do. I don’t want to be #1 on the NYT Bestseller list, or anything like that…I just want to write and hopefully well enough that it’ll be worth sharing. If I can make a living off of it, so much the better.
But I’ll never get there if I don’t work harder, and certainly not if I don’t start letting people actually read what I write…
So, some of this may be short writing exercises, some of it may be rants, and some of it may turn into a story that will span several posts. In any case, I’m going to welcome comments and constructive criticism – comments like “You suck” will get their full due: deletion.
So…here it goes. Enjoy watching me spill my guts.