Post by Michael on Dec 28, 2008 17:06:32 GMT -5
Any critique is welcome. Just note that the size of the chapters makes for a pretty rough read. For critique, you don't have to copy the whole thing. Just copy what you are telling me about.
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Another branch smacked Ellie in the face. She kept running, wiping the blood and blond hair off of her brown eyes.
Come on, Ellie. You have to do this.
Behind her, she heard it. She didn’t see it, she didn’t even think about looking back if it slowed her down, but she heard it. Its lights were on, exposing her every move. Its engine was growling, less like a machine and more like some kind of beast. She heard its shredder going, sucking in the branch that had just smacked her not three seconds ago, and turning it into powder.
It was closer.
She got a vicious reminder of this as a tree came down on her right and nearly hit her. She knew it wouldn’t be a huge problem for it, because it could mean that she would have to go straight, letting it get even closer. She took a quick left, knowing that its treads would force it to go straight rather than follow her. It howled in agony, wondering what to do about this latest move from its prey. In the meantime, it went straight, sawing up the long fallen tree.
Ellie squatted, taking a rest from her long run. Her body wasn’t built for this kind of thing. She panted hard, Her lungs burning, making it impossible for her to hear anything else. Which meant that she couldn’t hear the distant tree-sawing stop, nor the engine getting closer. Her only warning was the sudden lighting of everything around her. She stopped panting, and started running again, fear alone fueling her muscles.
It growled loudly, happy that it was now reunited with its prey. Ellie was less happy. She felt her muscles aching, her lungs aching, and everything else aching. She knew she couldn’t keep this going for much longer. To make matters worse, there were no tree trunks or logs to slow it down. It was just leaves and greenery For a good distance in every direction.
It came closer still, and she could feel the air made by the spinning saws. She could hear the whistling of the spinning shredder blades. In an act of desperation, she shifted. Her whole body turned a shade of dark green, and that camouflaged her to some degree. Not perfectly, of course, but good enough to avoid the sharp eyes of the thing behind her. Then, she took a quick right turn and ran off to the side. It kept going straight, not following her. She turned and looked back to see its square, red taillights moving away.
Then they stopped. It must have realized it wasn’t chasing anything anymore. It backed up, backtracking itself to look for signs of its lost prey. Ellie saw this happening, and started continuing the way she had turned to go. Up ahead, she saw a grove of something. It looked like bamboo. Hurrying, she ran towards it.
The lights turned onto her again. Ellie ran faster, and leaped into the bamboo grove. Even though she was only a couple feet in, she laid down and camouflaged herself against the mud, her body changing color until it perfectly mimicked the ground below her.
Maybe, just maybe, the hard, thick bamboo stems would keep that thing out.
Looking back the way she had come, she saw the two, high-up headlights getting closer and closer. Then, they were on top of her. The shredder blades tore into her arm, and kept coming across her.
She’d been wrong. Now, she’d pay for it.
And all she could do was scream.
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Ellie sat up in bed, screaming. She sat up so fast that the whacked her head against the ceiling, and fell back onto her bed. She was doused in sweat. The image of the blood-covered shredder blades and the headlights of the bulldozer-sized machine attached to them was still burned into her retinas. She rubbed her eyes to try and get it out. After a couple minutes, it started to fade.
Ellie checked her forehead, putting a hand against it to make sure she hadn’t killed herself. She winced at the pain, but didn’t feel any blood. She relaxed a little. All she’d need was an ice pack or something.
“You OK up there?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Ellie replied. Getting off the bed, she saw her friend and editor Jessica on the bunk below her. Her dark red hair was frizzy as always, and her green eyes responded to Ellie’s gaze with concern.
“You don’t look like it. You look something like a car hit ya.” Her voice dripped with a southern accent.
“It’s fine, really.” By this point, Ellie was on the floor and getting dressed. She pulled on a plain green shirt and some blue jeans.
Jess watched her, as if looking for some sign of a concussion. “Well, whatever,” She said, satisfied. “Either way, you should see the doctor.” Jess snuggled back into her blankets without waiting for a reply.
Ellie wasn’t planning to give one, either. She slipped on a pair of sandals and walked out the door into the salty sea air that surrounded her boat.
The night was clear and cold. The stars filled the sky, until you couldn’t see any black space whatsoever. There were billions. There were a couple constellations she could pick out; the Big Dipper just barely above the horizon, the Summer Triangle almost overhead; but everything else was lost in the mess of luminescent dots that covered the sky.
Ellie stopped to admire the scenery for a bit, then the throbbing in her head reminded her why she came out in the first place. She walked toward the front of her private yacht.
Yes, private yacht. Big, 60-foot, sail-powered, home-for-six private yacht. Ellie never even bought a house with the money she’d earned from her job. She’d just saved up for the dark blue Sunrise Patriot, hired a crew, and started touring the world. That was right after her second husband and her eighth novel. Right now, she was sleeping in the spare bedroom because she’d offered her latest boyfriend a spot on her trans-world trip. Of course, he’d wanted to go with his best friend, and she couldn’t refuse, so now there was only room for her in the spare bedroom with her editor.
Ellie pondered this as she walked across the 40-foot deck all by memory. Absolutely nothing changed on this ship. Minus the guy in a sleeping bag lying on the deck because there weren’t enough free bedrooms.
“Ow! What was that for?!”
Ellie looked down. In her lack of mind, she had accidentally stepped on her boyfriend’s best friend Mitch.
“Oh, sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
“Whatever. Don’t let it happen again.”
Ellie calmly walked around him, listening to him mutter something about the lack of consideration of the super-rich. Ellie was muttering silently about how much of a jerk this guy was. If her boyfriend wasn’t such a nice guy, she would have dumped him ages ago just because of his friend.
Ellie opened the door at the front that led down to the crew’s living station. Everything here was just for the crew. The infirmary was also here. Right past Aaron's room.
Aaron was the biggest and most stubborn pebble in her shoe. He was a total jerk, usually drunk, and always hitting on Ellie. The only reason he was around was because he was one of the best sailors there was. Period. There was absolutely no one else with his credentials.
Or his blood-alcohol level, for that matter.
Ellie crept up to his room, and set her ear on the door. Nothing. No noise whatsoever. Knowing Aaron, he was probably too hung over to even remember that he was on a boat. Nonetheless, she crept past his room with a silence that surprised her a little. Upon making it, she turned right and opened the white door across from Aaron’s room that led to the infirmary.
The stark white room and bright lights hurt her eyes, and she had to stand there for a while to let her eyes adjust from the dim hallway. When they did adjust, she saw that there was no one there. Once again, Megan had gone to bed without notifying the next shift. Ellie made a mental note to change nurses as soon as they arrived in Miami, but decided against it and erased the mental note. People could take care of themselves on here.
She walked over to the freezer that held all the ice packs and medicine. Taking one and putting it against her head, she sat in the bed so it wouldn’t fall off. “God, that feels good,” she thought, relaxing from the lack of throbbing that had plagued her head since she hit it. As she sat there for the next half-hour, she thought about her dream.
Five times in the past week. All in a row. Over the week, they had gotten longer and more lifelike. The first time, she’d gotten crushed by the tree, and it was in light and dark. The next time, she got chopped up when she ran out of breath. And so on, until this time, when she got killed in the bamboo grove. But it had always been the same exact thing chasing her, the same exact jungle, and the same exact position.
And this had been so lifelike! She had almost actually felt the adrenaline going through her system, and getting smacked, and all that. The first one had been just lit shapes moving around, then black and white, then watercolor-ish, then an 80s movie, and finally this. Where she could smell and hear and feel everything.
She had just been speculating what the next one would be like when she noticed that her forehead felt fine. Satisfied, she replaced the melting ice pack and walked back towards the door.
She paused at the mirror on the door to fix her shoulder-length blond hair so it wasn’t covering her face. Her dark blue eyes became revealed, along with the other half of her pale skin. Walking out the door and down the hall, she was suddenly grabbed from behind and pulled into a room.
She quickly brought her fist up and nailed someone in the face. The grip loosened off her, and she heard them crumple onto the ground. Ellie whirled around to face a black-haired, brown-eyed man lying on the floor.
“Jesus, Aaron! The next time you do that, you’re fired!”
“You won’t fire me,” he replied, grabbing a tequila from his TV stand without even bothering to get up. “Do, and you capsize in ten day.” He took a long draft from his tequila, still lying on his back and ignoring the blood coming from his nose. After his long sip, he added, “You never find someone like me.”
Ellie shot back soon after. “Sure I can,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “All I have to do is go to a bar and see who stinks the most.”
“You little…” He said, getting up. He was barely on his feet when he collapsed forward and fell flat on his face. During the whole time, the tequila never spilled, like his reflexes protected whatever alcohol he was holding at the time.
“Pathetic,” Ellie said, giving him one last gift from her foot before spinning and strolling out of the room. Aaron tried to crawl after her, but she just shut it on his face and smiled as he yelped with surprise and pain.
Ellie walked back down the hall, interrupted again by the brown-haired, cow-eyed Megan. Megan was her waitress, nurse, and her best non-job friend. Her hair wasn’t in the usual long braid, but that was probably because she’d been sleeping. Right now, it went in front of her thin-square, brown-rimmed glasses, and she shook her head to get it out of the way after she came out the door.
“Are you okay? I heard yelling.” Megan’s questions were out before she was even halfway out the door. When she took in the full extent of the situation, she added, “Holy crap, what happened to your head? Was that Aaron again? What did..?”
Ellie cut her off by raising a hand. Megan could be a blabbermouth sometimes. “Everything’s fine. Don’t freak out. You get hurt when you do.” Ellie gestured to her forehead.
Megan began to look a little calmer. “Oh, okay. I guess I’ll just…go back to bed then.” Megan didn’t even wait for a reply, and just went into her room. Ellie stood there for a moment, wondering about her subconscious cover-up. She had hidden her strange dreams from everyone. Not even her boyfriend knew what got into her head late at night. She wondered if she should tell all. She forced that thought from her head and went back out onto the deck.
Carefully avoiding the man sleeping on the deck, Ellie walked along to her room and opened the door. Until she realized she wasn’t tired anymore. She probably wouldn’t sleep, and just keep Jess from going under, too. So she decided to try writing a little. She grabbed her laptop and a longsleeve and went onto the rear deck.
She sat down at that annoying little tea table by the helm that she never used. Right now, it was perfect. She turned on her Macbook after setting it on the table, opened up her latest romance novel, and started typing by starlight.
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Chapter 1:Starlight
Another branch smacked Ellie in the face. She kept running, wiping the blood and blond hair off of her brown eyes.
Come on, Ellie. You have to do this.
Behind her, she heard it. She didn’t see it, she didn’t even think about looking back if it slowed her down, but she heard it. Its lights were on, exposing her every move. Its engine was growling, less like a machine and more like some kind of beast. She heard its shredder going, sucking in the branch that had just smacked her not three seconds ago, and turning it into powder.
It was closer.
She got a vicious reminder of this as a tree came down on her right and nearly hit her. She knew it wouldn’t be a huge problem for it, because it could mean that she would have to go straight, letting it get even closer. She took a quick left, knowing that its treads would force it to go straight rather than follow her. It howled in agony, wondering what to do about this latest move from its prey. In the meantime, it went straight, sawing up the long fallen tree.
Ellie squatted, taking a rest from her long run. Her body wasn’t built for this kind of thing. She panted hard, Her lungs burning, making it impossible for her to hear anything else. Which meant that she couldn’t hear the distant tree-sawing stop, nor the engine getting closer. Her only warning was the sudden lighting of everything around her. She stopped panting, and started running again, fear alone fueling her muscles.
It growled loudly, happy that it was now reunited with its prey. Ellie was less happy. She felt her muscles aching, her lungs aching, and everything else aching. She knew she couldn’t keep this going for much longer. To make matters worse, there were no tree trunks or logs to slow it down. It was just leaves and greenery For a good distance in every direction.
It came closer still, and she could feel the air made by the spinning saws. She could hear the whistling of the spinning shredder blades. In an act of desperation, she shifted. Her whole body turned a shade of dark green, and that camouflaged her to some degree. Not perfectly, of course, but good enough to avoid the sharp eyes of the thing behind her. Then, she took a quick right turn and ran off to the side. It kept going straight, not following her. She turned and looked back to see its square, red taillights moving away.
Then they stopped. It must have realized it wasn’t chasing anything anymore. It backed up, backtracking itself to look for signs of its lost prey. Ellie saw this happening, and started continuing the way she had turned to go. Up ahead, she saw a grove of something. It looked like bamboo. Hurrying, she ran towards it.
The lights turned onto her again. Ellie ran faster, and leaped into the bamboo grove. Even though she was only a couple feet in, she laid down and camouflaged herself against the mud, her body changing color until it perfectly mimicked the ground below her.
Maybe, just maybe, the hard, thick bamboo stems would keep that thing out.
Looking back the way she had come, she saw the two, high-up headlights getting closer and closer. Then, they were on top of her. The shredder blades tore into her arm, and kept coming across her.
She’d been wrong. Now, she’d pay for it.
And all she could do was scream.
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Ellie sat up in bed, screaming. She sat up so fast that the whacked her head against the ceiling, and fell back onto her bed. She was doused in sweat. The image of the blood-covered shredder blades and the headlights of the bulldozer-sized machine attached to them was still burned into her retinas. She rubbed her eyes to try and get it out. After a couple minutes, it started to fade.
Ellie checked her forehead, putting a hand against it to make sure she hadn’t killed herself. She winced at the pain, but didn’t feel any blood. She relaxed a little. All she’d need was an ice pack or something.
“You OK up there?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Ellie replied. Getting off the bed, she saw her friend and editor Jessica on the bunk below her. Her dark red hair was frizzy as always, and her green eyes responded to Ellie’s gaze with concern.
“You don’t look like it. You look something like a car hit ya.” Her voice dripped with a southern accent.
“It’s fine, really.” By this point, Ellie was on the floor and getting dressed. She pulled on a plain green shirt and some blue jeans.
Jess watched her, as if looking for some sign of a concussion. “Well, whatever,” She said, satisfied. “Either way, you should see the doctor.” Jess snuggled back into her blankets without waiting for a reply.
Ellie wasn’t planning to give one, either. She slipped on a pair of sandals and walked out the door into the salty sea air that surrounded her boat.
The night was clear and cold. The stars filled the sky, until you couldn’t see any black space whatsoever. There were billions. There were a couple constellations she could pick out; the Big Dipper just barely above the horizon, the Summer Triangle almost overhead; but everything else was lost in the mess of luminescent dots that covered the sky.
Ellie stopped to admire the scenery for a bit, then the throbbing in her head reminded her why she came out in the first place. She walked toward the front of her private yacht.
Yes, private yacht. Big, 60-foot, sail-powered, home-for-six private yacht. Ellie never even bought a house with the money she’d earned from her job. She’d just saved up for the dark blue Sunrise Patriot, hired a crew, and started touring the world. That was right after her second husband and her eighth novel. Right now, she was sleeping in the spare bedroom because she’d offered her latest boyfriend a spot on her trans-world trip. Of course, he’d wanted to go with his best friend, and she couldn’t refuse, so now there was only room for her in the spare bedroom with her editor.
Ellie pondered this as she walked across the 40-foot deck all by memory. Absolutely nothing changed on this ship. Minus the guy in a sleeping bag lying on the deck because there weren’t enough free bedrooms.
“Ow! What was that for?!”
Ellie looked down. In her lack of mind, she had accidentally stepped on her boyfriend’s best friend Mitch.
“Oh, sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
“Whatever. Don’t let it happen again.”
Ellie calmly walked around him, listening to him mutter something about the lack of consideration of the super-rich. Ellie was muttering silently about how much of a jerk this guy was. If her boyfriend wasn’t such a nice guy, she would have dumped him ages ago just because of his friend.
Ellie opened the door at the front that led down to the crew’s living station. Everything here was just for the crew. The infirmary was also here. Right past Aaron's room.
Aaron was the biggest and most stubborn pebble in her shoe. He was a total jerk, usually drunk, and always hitting on Ellie. The only reason he was around was because he was one of the best sailors there was. Period. There was absolutely no one else with his credentials.
Or his blood-alcohol level, for that matter.
Ellie crept up to his room, and set her ear on the door. Nothing. No noise whatsoever. Knowing Aaron, he was probably too hung over to even remember that he was on a boat. Nonetheless, she crept past his room with a silence that surprised her a little. Upon making it, she turned right and opened the white door across from Aaron’s room that led to the infirmary.
The stark white room and bright lights hurt her eyes, and she had to stand there for a while to let her eyes adjust from the dim hallway. When they did adjust, she saw that there was no one there. Once again, Megan had gone to bed without notifying the next shift. Ellie made a mental note to change nurses as soon as they arrived in Miami, but decided against it and erased the mental note. People could take care of themselves on here.
She walked over to the freezer that held all the ice packs and medicine. Taking one and putting it against her head, she sat in the bed so it wouldn’t fall off. “God, that feels good,” she thought, relaxing from the lack of throbbing that had plagued her head since she hit it. As she sat there for the next half-hour, she thought about her dream.
Five times in the past week. All in a row. Over the week, they had gotten longer and more lifelike. The first time, she’d gotten crushed by the tree, and it was in light and dark. The next time, she got chopped up when she ran out of breath. And so on, until this time, when she got killed in the bamboo grove. But it had always been the same exact thing chasing her, the same exact jungle, and the same exact position.
And this had been so lifelike! She had almost actually felt the adrenaline going through her system, and getting smacked, and all that. The first one had been just lit shapes moving around, then black and white, then watercolor-ish, then an 80s movie, and finally this. Where she could smell and hear and feel everything.
She had just been speculating what the next one would be like when she noticed that her forehead felt fine. Satisfied, she replaced the melting ice pack and walked back towards the door.
She paused at the mirror on the door to fix her shoulder-length blond hair so it wasn’t covering her face. Her dark blue eyes became revealed, along with the other half of her pale skin. Walking out the door and down the hall, she was suddenly grabbed from behind and pulled into a room.
She quickly brought her fist up and nailed someone in the face. The grip loosened off her, and she heard them crumple onto the ground. Ellie whirled around to face a black-haired, brown-eyed man lying on the floor.
“Jesus, Aaron! The next time you do that, you’re fired!”
“You won’t fire me,” he replied, grabbing a tequila from his TV stand without even bothering to get up. “Do, and you capsize in ten day.” He took a long draft from his tequila, still lying on his back and ignoring the blood coming from his nose. After his long sip, he added, “You never find someone like me.”
Ellie shot back soon after. “Sure I can,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “All I have to do is go to a bar and see who stinks the most.”
“You little…” He said, getting up. He was barely on his feet when he collapsed forward and fell flat on his face. During the whole time, the tequila never spilled, like his reflexes protected whatever alcohol he was holding at the time.
“Pathetic,” Ellie said, giving him one last gift from her foot before spinning and strolling out of the room. Aaron tried to crawl after her, but she just shut it on his face and smiled as he yelped with surprise and pain.
Ellie walked back down the hall, interrupted again by the brown-haired, cow-eyed Megan. Megan was her waitress, nurse, and her best non-job friend. Her hair wasn’t in the usual long braid, but that was probably because she’d been sleeping. Right now, it went in front of her thin-square, brown-rimmed glasses, and she shook her head to get it out of the way after she came out the door.
“Are you okay? I heard yelling.” Megan’s questions were out before she was even halfway out the door. When she took in the full extent of the situation, she added, “Holy crap, what happened to your head? Was that Aaron again? What did..?”
Ellie cut her off by raising a hand. Megan could be a blabbermouth sometimes. “Everything’s fine. Don’t freak out. You get hurt when you do.” Ellie gestured to her forehead.
Megan began to look a little calmer. “Oh, okay. I guess I’ll just…go back to bed then.” Megan didn’t even wait for a reply, and just went into her room. Ellie stood there for a moment, wondering about her subconscious cover-up. She had hidden her strange dreams from everyone. Not even her boyfriend knew what got into her head late at night. She wondered if she should tell all. She forced that thought from her head and went back out onto the deck.
Carefully avoiding the man sleeping on the deck, Ellie walked along to her room and opened the door. Until she realized she wasn’t tired anymore. She probably wouldn’t sleep, and just keep Jess from going under, too. So she decided to try writing a little. She grabbed her laptop and a longsleeve and went onto the rear deck.
She sat down at that annoying little tea table by the helm that she never used. Right now, it was perfect. She turned on her Macbook after setting it on the table, opened up her latest romance novel, and started typing by starlight.
