Memoirs From the End of the World: Entry #28

It's Friday again, and time for another foray into a dark world.  For those who need to catch up on previous installments, you can find the entire story on this PAGE.

Memoirs From the End of the World

Entry #28

Confusion came first.  What in the world happened? RC wondered.  Why do I feel like I’ve been flattened by a train?

Pain.  An intense ache had taken root in every part of RC’s body, though some parts were worse than others.  She lay unmoving for several long moments, keeping her eyes closed.  The drowsiness kept her immersed in a fog as she tried to remember what happened.  All she knew for certain was that she didn’t feel right.

Nothing felt right.

Then she heard a voice.  She couldn’t distinguish the words at first, but the sound sent her heart racing.  Gas Can.  He was close, and that knowledge alone sent her heart racing.

The memories began to return, and that certainly did nothing for her calm.  Alyx.  What happened to him?  Where is he?  Is he here?  That question prompted her to open her eyes, though she peered through the tiniest crack between her eyelids.  She didn’t want to draw any unwanted attention.

The room was dark.  The warm air proved that they were indeed in an area friendly to Gas Can and his cohorts, but the stone wall that dominated her vision told her little else.  She lay on her side less than a foot away from it, and she could smell its earthiness.

“You really are more trouble than you’re worth, aren’t you?” Gas Can demanded.

“If that’s what you think, fine by me.”

Tim!  So they captured him too.  Did Ollie and Jill get away, or were they squirreled away somewhere?

“You realize what I’ll have to do to you if you don’t cooperate?” Gas Can replied, his voice rising with his rage.

“You can’t use my sister against me now, so why should I cooperate?”  Tim spat.  “Get it over with.  I’ve been waiting to die for weeks now.”

Okay.  So Jill got away, which meant Ollie did too.  She couldn’t have possibly been strong enough to escape on her own.  Though this did little to help her personally, she took some comfort in knowing that someone would be all right.

A chilling laugh made RC shiver.  “Very well.” 

She heard a set of footsteps rapidly approaching, and she didn’t have time to react before rough hands were hauling her to her feet.  Instinctively, she tried to resist, but she quickly learned that her wrists were firmly bound together, as were her ankles.  Any efforts were only a waste of precious energy at this point.

“Oh look, she’s even awake,” Gas Can announced gleefully.  “Now we can use her cries of pain as incentive.  I know she isn’t your sister, but surely as a human being you’ll still feel something in witnessing her suffering.”

Though these words unsettled RC, she took the opportunity to note her surroundings.  Tim was once again chained up in the same way he was when she first saw him.  This time, however, he looked much more alert.  His eyes pierced Gas Can like lasers.  His body was beaten, even broken, but his spirit sure wasn’t.  If anything, the knowledge that his sister was out of this monster’s hands had strengthened his resolve.

A situation Gas Can clearly wanted to remedy.  He moved his hands from RC’s shoulders to her throat.  “I could squeeze the life out of her, you know?  It wouldn’t be hard at all.”

Tim laughed.  It wasn’t a joyful sound, but a sound of mockery.  Derision.  RC had no doubt that Tim despised Gas Can in a rare way that only comes from intense suffering.  Even as a human being, seeing her suffer, someone he’d barely met, might not even begin to rival his deeply rooted need to defy this person he despised so thoroughly.  “I watched you torture my sister, and I still didn’t crack,” Tim announced coldly.  “What makes you think I’ll give in now?  Do you have any idea how many people I’ve seen die?”

Under normal circumstances (which she admittedly hadn’t found herself in for quite some time), she would have been furious about his casual dismissal of her.  However, in that moment, she could hardly blame him.  The rules had changed drastically since their alien overlords landed.  People had to be cautious about their allegiances.

“Are you sure about that?”  Gas Can still sounded smug as he tightened his grip around her throat.

RC’s heart beat so hard it felt like it was trying to break through her ribs.  She tried to draw a breath, only to find the effort futile.  The pain of strangulation shot through her body like a spider web, tendrils of pain exploding here and there.  She wanted to scream, to kick, to punch anything, but her bindings held firm.

So this was it.  This was how death would find her.  In a stone room, tied up so she couldn’t lift a finger to fend it off.

Then, as she cast her eyes about the room as that was the only part of her body capable of movement, they landed on a welcome sight.  Alyx lay against the opposite wall, bound up in similar fashion, only he was on his back.  His face was swollen and bruised, courtesy of Gas Can’s hospitality, and his eyes were closed.  Yet she saw that his chest moved with each breath, reassuring her that he was all right.  At least for the moment.

I wish I could talk to you one more time, Alyx, she thought.  I hope you don’t feel guilty for whatever happens to me.  This isn’t your fault.

Her thoughts became less coherent.  Her vision went fuzzy.  She struggled to breathe as her body made one last desperate attempt to stay alive.  All in vain.

Darkness descended on her like a curtain closing on the final act of a deranged play. 

FSF: Dreaming of Paradise

It's time once again for Five Sentence Fiction!  The word Lillie provided for this week is PARADISE.  This word leaves lots of possibilities!

For those of you who haven't read previous installments of my ongoing story, you can find the entire story on this PAGE.

Unchained

Chapter 23: Dreaming of Paradise

Nara sat in the cockpit of her modest little ship, aware that out in the dark depths of space, surrounded by a virtual vacuum devoid of life, that she now found herself occupying her place in life with two other women from entirely different backgrounds.  In the end they all had different goals, different dreams, though Nara’s was the only one who had no chance of seeing her greatest aspirations fulfilled.

Image courtesy of CNaene
 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

She thought back longingly to her dead world and the childhood she spent climbing the purple limbs of the Burya trees, and tossing glittering blue stones into the crystalline waterfall behind her house.  Paradise would be to resurrect her world so she could walk beneath the orange sky, with her friend Ylana at her side, so she could share the beauty of it with someone she cared about.

Of course, even if that were a possibility, Ylana would still have her own world to attend to, and to fight for, so Nara understood that she had to file away her own fantasies and focus on the only purpose she had left.


Go to Dressed to Conquer

National Wormhole Day

The National Wormhole Day Bloghop is made possible by Stephen Tremp, Laura Eno, and L.G. Smith (gotta love having an L.G. involved!).  This hop was designed as a celebration of Albert Einstein's birthday, and I agree this is a most worthy thing to celebrate!

Here are the details!

What would you do or where would you go if you could traverse a wormhole through space or time just once? One safe round trip passage. Would you go back in time and talk some sense into a younger you? Go five years into the future and bring back the Wall Street Journal? See just how the heck the Great Pyramids of Giza were really built? View what the other side of the universe looks like? Kill Hitler?

This is another quick and easy Blog Hop. Since we are all busy, take a moment to tell the world a few moments, and in 100 words more or less, what you would do if you had a two-way ticket to traverse a wormhole. This is my way of getting people excited about all the amazing stuff on the horizon that we as a race are on the cusp of discovering!

Image courtesy of Idea go / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

While it would be amazing to go back in time and witness history firsthand, I think I'd have to choose a journey into the future.  It would be tempting to grab the lottery numbers for next week's drawing, but I'd probably travel about a hundred years into the future.  I want to see where the human race is heading. Do we actually kick our space program into gear and start exploring?  (If we haven't, I may have to kick some butt while I'm at it.)  Are we on our way to remedying injustice, prejudice, and poverty?

Where would you go?

I'll Build Me a Palace

Today I thought I'd write a poem inspired by a word.  The word I selected was PALACE.  I hope you enjoy what I wrote!

I’ll Build Me a Palace

Give me a chance, and I’ll

build me a palace of dreams

where all things are possible

and nothing is quite as it seems.

Image courtesy of sattva
 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Give me the time, and I’ll

build me a palace of lights

where shadows are banished

and wrongs turned into rights.

Give me the love, and I’ll

build me a palace of stars

where discoveries abound

and hatred leaves no scars.

Please give me a chance.

Give yourself permission.

Everyone needs to know

they can improve their position.

Express Yourself: Game Shows/Reality Shows

It's time for the Express Yourself Weekly Meme.  This meme is hosted by the wonderful Jackie @ Bouquet of Books and Dani @ Entertaining Interests.

If you could be on any game show or reality show, which would you choose and why?

I don't watch too many game shows, but I know that I'd have to pick Jeopardy or Wheel of Fortune if I had a chance to compete.  I love trivia, and I love word games.  Jeopardy might make me feel dumb in places, but I think it would make me proud to win.  Not that I necessarily think I could.  It would just be awesome to do so.

The only reality shows I watch are on Food Network, and I know for certain that I don't have the skills necessary to compete on that level.  I think it would be fun to decorate a cake competitively, even though my own cakes prepared at home look abysmal.

Here's an example of my cake decorating prowess.

This is a cake I made for friends too.  Now, in my defense, my cakes usually turn out much better than this.  The cake was falling apart, making the process of applying the icing nearly impossible.  However, having created this travesty, I know I will never be the equal of a professional cake decorator.  I must learn to live with that.

Sulking in Snow

I've lived in Iowa my entire life, so you'd think I'd be used to all the wonderfully annoying winter weather we get here.  I'm not, though.  I expect it, but I don't like the way winter storms seem to be following one after the other this year. We're digging out just in time to get more.  Grrr.

Sorry, I had to help my husband get the car out of a bunch of snow today so he could get to work.  Our house doesn't have a driveway, so we have to park on the side of the street.  Therefore the car gets easily buried by plows and things.

Maybe that's why my muse has me wanting to write about sunny, warm things. Well, things that aren't at all winter related, anyway.  The topics I write about might not always be happy, but there will be sun involved in my fiction this week!

How does weather influence your writing?

The Weekend Philosopher: Identities Formed

Identities are tricky things.  Set yourself the task of telling someone who you are.  I dare you.  It isn't so easy.

In this scene from Babylon 5, a mysterious man named Sebastian asks Delenn who she is.  She gives her name, her title, a job description.  None of these answers are deemed acceptable.  While these answers may be useful for someone who needs to know about you, they don't truly touch on who we are.

In answering the question of who we are, it helps to consider all the factors that make us who we are.  When someone asks us the question "Who are you?" they usually want to know your name, or maybe the names of relatives or friends so they have some idea of how you fit in to the social fabric of the world.  They may say a lot about your background that helped to influence your development as a person, but no one can claim to know you through this information alone.  These things are not you.  After all, when someone steals your identity and uses it to spend your hard earned money, they haven't actually stolen who you are, though they may have influenced who you will become by impacting the way you trust people and interact with them.

I am of the opinion that part of who we are is a function of biology and the way our brains develop before we're even born.  This belief is enforced by having my own children.  I can say that my two boys started out with distinct personalities. Jude was the loud, high-maintenance child, and Lyle was the laid-back child. These character traits were visible from birth and inform the way they each react to given situations.  Some aspects of our person are an integral part of us and cannot be changed.

Even so, we learn from the environment in which we are raised.  Nurture plays as significant a role as nature.  That's why I get frustrated by the nature vs. nurture argument.  I think they work together and it would be silly to disregard one entirely in favor of the other.  

Our parents work to instill a given set of values in us.  Even parents who are abusive and neglectful instill values in their kids, though those values may ultimately be more harmful than anything else.  From a young age, we learn to trust authority (or not to), we learn how to interact with others, we learn not to steal or lie.  It's no accident that most people end up with the same religious beliefs and honoring the same traditions as their parents.  Our culture directs our growth and development in very real ways.  

This is why societal attitudes as a whole toward things like race and sexual orientation change rather slowly.  There is a distinctly generational way in which these perceptions change, because those who are raised with one set of values find it difficult to shake them, or may find it undesirable to do so.  To alter the way you look at the world is to, in some way, alter who you are in relation to the world.  This can be a distinctly uncomfortable proposition to face.


John Dewey said, "The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action."

Not only are we formed by the people around us, we are also formed by the choices we make.  When something goes wrong, we can choose to give up, or we can choose to look on the bright side.  We choose which career path to follow. Maybe we pursue a childhood passion that was ignited by an inspiring teacher. Maybe we follow in our parents' footsteps.  Or maybe we choose a path other than what our families want for us as a kind of rebellion.  Or maybe we choose a safe path, leaving behind the things we truly want to do.  We make these choices due to a multitude of factors we may not recognize.  Our choices have power, but they are not made in a vacuum.

To show you what I mean, say a child is raised in a family of criminals.  They have an unstable home life growing up and their parents are in and out of jail.  It might seem easy for them to assume the values of their parents and follow the same path.  But maybe they want something different.  Maybe they make the choice to have something different.  They may follow a different path, but their choice is influenced by the pain of their childhood.  Or maybe their personal disposition, which they've had their whole lives, makes them yearn for something different.

I like to say that we're in constant dialogue with our environment.  It speaks to us, and we respond with our actions.  We change our world, and we change it back.  Nothing remains exactly the same.

Sorting out the factors that make us who we are can be quite difficult and confusing.  How have the events and people in your life helped make you who you are today?  Which influence do you think is the most powerful in determining who a person becomes?

Lastly, I wanted to share this powerful video.  It's a little over twelve minutes long, but it's worth the time.  I was bullied as a kid, and though I try not to let that fact get me down, I can still feel the effects of it.  Remember, the way you treat others has the power to affect their reality in ways you may not imagine.  I would encourage people to be a positive factor in a person's life rather than a negative one.