Prompt: the song/music video for Wasteland by Against The Current
Your mind was drowsy, as if you’d just woken up; but rationally you knew it couldn’t be true. You were standing between trees, fully clothed, and as you looked down you were even wearing your ring, which you always took off before going to sleep. You were surrounded by trees higher than you could ever have imagined them to be, standing tall and swaying softly in the wind. You couldn’t see the sky clearly, and your eyes must have deceived you, as it almost seemed like the sky had turned a purple colour. Carefully, you placed a foot ahead on the stony path, crawling between the trees. You were standing in something that had once obviously been a beautiful cultivated garden; but now, it was a wasteland. The bench standing a few feet away had turned green, leaves replaced the timber, and the path you were standing on was barely recognisable as such. Nature had completely taken over, and you felt like an intruder. The garden was still beautiful; but it was the kind of beautiful that felt like it wasn’t made for eyes to see. Involuntarily, you shivered, and you found yourself almost calling out, before realizing that you had to be alone in the complete silence. Carefully, you followed the path, trying not to make a sound. The garden was unnaturally quiet; you could see the wind rustling between the leaves, but you couldn’t hear it. It was unnerving, and you found yourself wondering once more how you had ended up here. It was ridiculous, and you knew it, but you pinched yourself in the arm, once and then again, trying to see if you were dreaming. You weren’t. Deep down, you had known that; but you had had the slightest hope that maybe you were. You kept following the path, although it became increasingly harder to do so; the trees grew closer to each other and the stone was more often replaced by soft patches of grass. Going back wasn’t an option; you knew that in your bones. So you kept moving on, marvelling at the exquisite flowers that suddenly started to appear behind you. You tried to ignore how the grass didn’t bend at all beneath your weight, or how you felt the wind blowing harder, but the world was still utterly silent. You tried to ignore your worries, but as you moved on, you became scared. Suddenly, you stood still for a moment; as if you were listening for something in the silence. But you couldn’t stand still for long, because the wind was pushing you to move on, and you were tumbling over your own feet, trying to recover your pace. You quickly glanced over your shoulder, only to see that the path was disappearing behind you; everywhere you looked, tall and broad trees stood, branches tangled. You were surrounded. You knew thunder was rolling, lightning struck a tree not too far away, but the only sound you could hear was your own breathing, speeding up as you desperately tried to find a way out. A way out beneath the trees that were creeping up on you, the branches that felt like they were going to strangle you. You kept trying to find a way out, but you didn’t succeed.
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First off: I'm so sorry, it's been forever since my last update. I didn't want to post my last creative writing assignments before they'd been graded, because you have to upload them to check for plagiarism, and I was too busy finishing my essays to write new stuff. But I handed in the last essay today, and got my final grades for creative writing back, so here you go.
Prompt: There was no real prompt, but there are references in the story to the book/film Perks of Being a Wallflower, and to All Time Low songs. Graduation left us with a fuzzy feeling. We were invincible, victorious. It felt like our whole life had been moving towards this point: graduating high school. Life had never been better. We had a whole summer to enjoy with our friends, and anything could happen. Charlie was the last to turn 18, a few weeks before graduation, which meant that now all of us could drink and drive. Not simultaneously, obviously. But now that we could all enjoy the bittersweet taste of alcohol, all celebratory parties that followed would be even better. The first party, the night of graduation, was at Jessie’s. Jessie had always been the uncrowned queen of our year, so her party was a big happening. I’m certain that it was the only party in our high school period where everyone showed up, and when I say everyone; I literally mean everyone. That included the always-silent Oliver, who had probably never been out of his house past 5pm. It included John, whom we had all suspected of setting off the fire alarm last year and the stink bomb in the canteen a few weeks back. Almost everyone had been a suspect in the eyes of Mrs Winston, who never could enjoy a joke, but not John. John was great at fooling the teachers; and Mrs Winston always lovingly called him “her little student”. If only she had known. It also included the valedictorian of our year, Melissa. I was positive that she’d never been to a party before; she was always studying. But that night, Melissa probably drank more than any of us. That was a lot; because it was the only party that I can only partially remember. It suffices to say that we were all completely wasted; and it was a good thing that Jessie’s parents had left the house for the night. I’d never know if it was out of generosity, or if Jessie had just forced them. She seemed like the girl who could. Nevertheless, I pitied her parents, who had to clean up our mess the next morning, and shoo the drunken teenagers out of their front garden. Or perhaps they had a cleaning lady to do that for them. They seemed like the kind of parents who’d smile nostalgically at the mess, but not clean it themselves. It was the start of a great summer. We’d battled the monster called high school, and we’d won; from here, it could only become better, right? None of us had fully realized that after the summer, our lives would change drastically; we just enjoyed the summer high. I like to say that I had the time of my life with my friends that summer. Charlie kept teasing me, saying how it was a miracle that I had passed. It was, perhaps, a little bit. I was always too distracted; I preferred imagining things, writing. School just wasn’t a priority. Charlie didn’t understand; he loved the science classes. Patrick did though. The two of us, we were the creative ones. But I wasn’t talented; I just preferred writing above most other things. Patrick, on the other hand, was the real talent amongst the five of us. He’d make these colourful, abstract paintings, and then write music based on them. He’d put his painting on top of the piano and play for us; and I could somehow always hear the connection between the canvas and the sounds. It was marvellous. Summer progressed slowly but surely, and with that came the realization that in a few weeks, we’d move out; start new lives, laugh at our past with new friends. We didn’t mention it, but somehow we found ourselves visiting each other more frequently. We would stay until past midnight at Elle’s, because she had a pool in her garden. We’d find ourselves drinking another ice coffee at Starbucks; because Charlie worked there. We’d spent the afternoons in the forest behind Sam’s house, bringing beers and crisps, and Patrick would bring his guitar. We all hosted parties; not only our little group, but everyone from our year. None of them were as big as Jessie’s though, that first night. I wasn’t home much that summer. I often stayed the night at Elle’s or Sam’s place, never feeling like making the long trip home. I was the only one without a car; and even if we often weren’t sober enough to drive, it was something that I missed that summer. I was too stubborn to ask the others to drive me home, especially since I was the only one that didn’t live in town. My house wasn’t even on the outskirts, but in the nobody’s land between our town and the next one. I’d have loved the luxury of a car; but instead, I had to make my way over to my friends by bike. My parents were usually at work; they never had the ability to drop me off, so I was left biking through the flat countryside towards town. When I think about it, it was a little strange that we never held parties at my place. I had no neighbours for miles, and my parents were never home, so my house should have been the default setting for all of our summer parties. But for some reason, we never ended up at my house, not even when I proposed it. There was always a better place to go. Gradually, we started cancelling our meetings because there were so many other things to do. There were college applications that needed the last finishing touch, dorms that needed to be found and furniture that needed to be bought. Slowly we realized that our summer was coming to its undeniable, impending end. The shadow of that thought suddenly loomed over us. It was probably about three weeks before the end of summer that we spent another night at Elle’s. The two of us were lying on our backs, still in bikinis, in the moist grass. We had splashed around, and there was no dry area to be found around the pool, but we didn’t mind. The boys were still joking around, pushing each other under water. “It’s weird, that we’ll never see each other again after this summer.” “That’s not how it has to go. We can still see each other.” “Maybe, but that’s the way it will go.” “Why? We’ll all be back home for the holidays, right? We can hang out, like we do now.” “But we’ll have new lives.” “That doesn’t mean we have to forget the old ones. Besides, it’s only a two-hour drive between our universities. We can visit each other on the weekends.” “You don’t have a car, remember?” If I didn’t know Elle better, I’d say her tone was almost angry. But she probably didn’t mean it that way, so I ignored it. “But you do, and so do Charlie, Sam and Patrick.” Even if we had all picked different universities, or colleges in the case of Charlie and Patrick, we weren’t that far away from each other. It could have been so much worse. “How hard is it to understand that we’ll have new lives? We’re not going to drive over to your place every weekend.” “That’s not what I meant, Elle” I muttered. “I’m just saying that our friendship doesn’t have to be over.” Elle didn’t respond. I’d left that night, preferring to spend an hour cycling home in the dark than spending the night at Elle’s, as I had intended. After our conversation, the boys had joined us; cheerful, not having heard us over their laughter. I’d gone home shortly after that, feigning a headache. I’d left my laughing, tipsy friends behind, and for once, I didn’t mind. I wasn’t even angry at Elle; just disappointed. I thought of us as a very close group, bonded over shared differences, and deep down I had believed that moving away wouldn’t tear us apart. Maybe, I’d been wrong. After that night, there was always someone missing at our meet-ups. Often, it would be Elle. Just as often, it would be me. I briefly talked to her, as we ran into each other at Starbucks. She told me that she hadn’t meant it that way; she’d been drunk, and she told me that she feared college life as much as she loved getting away from this same old town. I told her it was fine, but I didn’t show up at Sam’s the next afternoon. Instead, I sat at home, surrounded by my favourite books and my journal, trying to describe how I felt. So it happened that our last weekend at home had suddenly arrived. We were all moving away on Sunday, so on Friday-night, we met at Sam’s for what would be the last time this summer. We’d all brought large, bulky bags, filled with booze and marshmallows. Sam, always the inventive one, had already lit a campfire in the woods, sticks and hamburgers lying beside it. We sat in silence, enjoying our beers and listening to the crackling of the fire. It was illegal, of course, but none of us really cared that night. We drank, we ate slightly burned hamburgers, and got to the point where we drank our beer with smores. We laughed, like we had laughed at Jessie’s. Louder than we had laughed in math class, when Patrick had made another hilarious doodle of our teacher. We had more fun than that time when Charlie crashed into Katie at gym class, because he had had a crush on her for the entire year, and he ruined all his chances by ruining her hair, as they fell down into the muddy field. I felt nostalgic; without knowing why. It wasn’t over yet; I still firmly believed that it didn’t have to be. Elle made out with Charlie that night. We’d all seen it coming, no matter how tough Charlie pretended to be. Patrick wrapped an arm around me, when Charlie and Elle had disappeared behind a tree, and Sam was taking a leak. “I’ll miss you, you know.” “I’ll miss you too. But this isn’t like the end of it. We’ll be home for the holidays, and we can come see each other in weekends. It’s not like you’ll be at the other end of the world. “You mean that we will come see you” Patrick corrected me, in the same voice he used with the juniors he helped with math. “Since you don’t have a car.” “You act like that’s a problem.” “No, I suppose not” he said, but then Sam returned, and Patrick changed the subject. After a while, Elle and Charlie returned, and I could see Elle’s lipstick on Charlie’s lips in the glow of the fire. “We both liked each other for a long time” Elle announced, as soon as they sat down again. She didn’t need to; we all knew that. “But we’re not going to act upon it. College starts next week, we’ll have a new life, and we’ll have forgotten each other within weeks. But for now, I want to toast, and then Charlie and I are going to find a bed.” I frowned at her statement, and when I raised my bottle to toast our new lives, it was only half-heartedly. |
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February 2017
About meWelcome to my blog! This is where I post my stories, occasionally accompanied by personal thoughts. I always post short stories, as I keep the longer ones for myself. My stories are often based on songs. I listen to music a lot (mostly pop punk / punk rock), and often get inspired by melodies, lyrics, or music videos. |