Saturday, November 1, 2014

NaNoWriMo New Book - Home. Chapter 1 - Welcome Home

Hey, how's it going! Today is the first day of NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month. I'll be writing a novel called "Home" which is about a boy returning home after fulfilling his destiny in another Realm. We have tons of stories about how the hero saves the day and fulfills his destiny, but nothing about what happens after.

Now the way this is written will be odd. The chapters will alternate between present and past. The first chapter is set in the Present, but the next chapter will be set somewhere in his past. I'm very excited about this piece of writing, it's something I wanted to do for a while.

But wait, what happened to the s sequel to "Joseph Pierre's Angel of Death?" I wrote it last year for NaNoWriMo, but the person who I was writing it for is no longer in my life. So I needed to move on.

If you want your name to be in here, let me know. I suck at creating names. Ok here it is for real.




Chapter 1: Welcome Home

            The cold winter air burns my nostrils as I breathe in my homeland for the first time in more than a decade. Stepping out of the violet portal into a half a foot of snow, I find myself blinded by the glaring sunlight reflecting off from it. Rubbing my eyes with my hands I wipe away the excess blood on my face and flick it onto the ground, staining the snow. Children are running around, building snowmen, snow forts, and even throwing a snowball or two at each other. I take another step, the leather boots keeps the snow from wetting my feet, but my thin black torn pants aren’t as resilient. I continue my march on what appears to be some sort of playing field occupied by the children, I look behind me to ensure the portal dematerialized safely before proceeding. I’ve returned to the exact place where I was taken from so long ago, Westwood Middle School.

            The children stop throwing snowballs as I slowly walk across the field. They whisper, they stare, but they don’t scream. I’m not a threat, I’m simply passing by. They keep staring at me, judging me with their young eyes unsure if they should let me be, run away, or yell for help. I’m not the friendliest looking person. The giant tattoo of a black crow’s wings on my pale back is not the most interesting thing about me. It could be the dark red shoulder length hair, the amount of scars on my body when it’s not covered in dirt, mud, and blood, or the tattered state of my clothing which now consists of tattered black pants and a bandage wound wrapped around my stomach trying to keep my insides together. But if I was a betting man, I bet they’re looking at Cressidra. Cressidra is my lover and my scythe, a long steel pole with a black curved obsidian blade stained green and crimson, belonging to the blood of Orcs and Men. I hold her tightly in my right hand, letting a small part of the pole drag in the snow. The children slowly back away and move in the opposite direction of the way I’m going, towards the school.

            My left hand rests on my bandage as I walk, every few steps I feel uneasy as a sharp pain shoots from my stomach to the rest of my body. I keep telling myself to continue, that I’m almost home and I can finally rest. The last few days on the battlefield were rough. My stomach was cut early on in battle and my guts nearly fell out of my stomach. Without rest, and desperate to continue fighting I made up bandages from the tattered clothing of fallen Orcs and Men. Tightly the makeshift bandage was wrapped around my body to help ease the pain. The anger and desire for revenge from the pain kept me going, but now acts as a hindrance and I start to lose focus. I keep thinking to myself I’m home, and everything will be alright.

            The kids scatter. People on the sidewalks stop and look at what the kids are running away from. I see some of them on their cellphones, talking frantically as I continue to walk towards the two story school. Westwood Middle School hasn’t changed much in the past twelve years. Dull green paint covers the school, supposedly to compliment the green initiative suburban neighborhood. The neighborhood is known to be one of those nice places modern families can come in and settle down in. The place still looks the same from what I can tell, no big development condos or commercial towers, just homes and the odd apartment building. It’s as if I never left.

            As much as I want to keep on walking, I needed a rest. I managed to avoid falling and leaned against the side of the school building with my face pressing up against a classroom window. Nobody in the classroom, but I’m sure the school is on locked down now that people have seen a man with a scythe walking towards the school. I’m sure the police have been called, and that’s the best I can hope for. If I wasn’t able to make it home, I would want someone here to find me before anything happens to me, before I slip into the darkness. I keep my focus by looking inside the classroom, the school looked a lot bigger when I was a kid. The lights are on in the classroom and I start looking at things to keep me focus, desks are organized in groups of four, teacher’s desk is near the front of the classroom, but the thing that catches my eye was the date on the blackboard, December 3rd, 2014. I was taken in 2013.

            I wasn’t only gone for a year, was I? I thought to myself, and with that I lost focus. I fall to my side against the concrete scrapped free of snow. My head cracks against the cement and a rush of warm blood bleeds out of my skull. The wet and warm fluid warms my ear and the back of my neck as I turn onto my back. I look up to the cloudless afternoon sky and my body shakes and trembles, like I’m having a seizure. I look left and right for Cressidra, and when I do I know the change is happening, the Obsidian blade pulses a black aura. The trembling in my body worsens, I hug myself with both my hands gripping into my shoulders wanting my nails pierce inside my skin. My hands move down my shoulders as if I was ripping the skin off my body. My back arches as my spine cracks and elongates into a new position. My mouth opens, jaw unhinges, and my tongue rolls to the back of my mouth. My vision is tinted red, the tightly wrapped bandages around my body bursts open as my stomach becomes bigger, my body is rapidly healing myself for the change, and I look around to determine the cost.

            Snow melts into water, and the water evaporates as if it’s a hot day in the summer. The grass underneath the snow turn into a brownish colour. Life around me dies so I can heal. Luckily no one is around me, but it becomes noticeable. Concrete around me cracks, electricity for the block goes out, and trees around me wither as if they were nothing but neglected house plants. The more I begin to heal and change, the more damage I attempt to do to myself to prevent the change from completing. My hands dig into my stomach, attempting to re-open the slash wound but it’s fully healed. My head is pounding, pulsing in pain, and I lose focus completely. I black out, and let it take over me.

          
         It’s like being a passenger in a speeding car. You can only watch as objects around you are nothing but a blur. You’re not in control, you don’t know where you’re going, and you get a little dizzy trying to think. When I find myself back in control, it’s by waking up and finding myself handcuffed to a hospital bed. I attempt to move my hands, but I’m not able to move them more than a few inches. The lights in my private hospital room are off, only the light from the city and the moon lit the area. I look around studying the room, passing over several walls finding nothing out of the ordinary, until I looked around again and see a man who wasn’t there the first time. A male figure leaning against the wall, he wears a police uniform but his facial features are hidden in the shadows.

            “Neat trick officer, I can see you know” I responded. He replied back in a French Canadian accent.

            “You’ve got a demon in you. A bloody strong one too. You’re lucky I was able to stop him.” The cop said walking forward and into the moonlight. He has a small goatee, brown eyes and is moderately fit for a police man.

            “And how do you know this?” I asked, looking at him with concern. For the past decade dealing with folks who weren’t human became normal and dangerous. I’m pretty sure incidents like the one earlier today are a very, very rare occurrence and that this realm doesn’t acknowledge anything outside of humanity’s concepts of science. The officer shrugged and smirked when he approached the bed. A normal officer with experience in dealing with demons worries me, it possibly means I’m being played.

            “It’s part of the job. Detective St-Pierre, RCMPs odd mysteries unit. I’m here looking into disappearances that happen a year ago. I was in the area looking around for clues. Then I felt you change, and boy it’s a big demon you have in there. You’re lucky I had brought some stuff with me today to work. Isn’t that a stroke of luck?” He laughed as if it wasn’t a big deal. I wasn’t sure what he did, I feel fine. But the way he spoke and the way we met, it was too odd as if someone wanted us to meet, pulling both of our strings to entwined, like characters in a story. A person I met long ago told me that whenever one runs away from their destiny, cutting a thread will only be replaced by another to help them get back on track. He asked for my name before I can ask him how he was able to subdue to the demonic force inside of me.

            “You got a mortal name?”

            “Jamie Smith Davis. How did you..” I was interrupted before I can answer.

            “Well, what a coincidence. You’re the person I’m looking for.”

            See, thread and strings.    

No comments:

Post a Comment