My Solid Attempts at Good Literature

[PhoenixStarr]

 

Criticism welcomed if constructive.

 

Much love and affection.

 

 

Dust

 

 

Dear whoever you are,

 

I do hope someone finds this, that it does not die with me, because, more and more, I find it to be my duty to inform those of you who remain ignorant of the goings on in this school.  Perhaps it is not a burden, but a privilege, to be the first to go.

 

I was skipping class, this morning, again.  It has become an awful habit.  I own numerous forged hall passes, so rather then having to go through the trouble of sneaking off campus, I could merely wander the halls by myself.

 

How lonely a school can feel when everyone is sequestered away in their classrooms, mindlessly devoted to the brain-washing that goes on within.  I am too clever.  They are as lemmings.  They will do what they are told.  I refuse.  Yet somehow I feel the need to save them.

 

I had just stepped around the corner to avoid a wandering administrator when I heard a scream, from somewhere within the library.  Looking in the window, and seeing it seemingly vacant, I stepped inside.

 

The lights flickered out, and I was left standing in semi-darkness.  "Hello?" I inquired.

 

Surprisingly enough, an answer came, but not the one I expected. A dark specter rose up from the floor.  It scanned me with glowing eyes and smiled, a gaping red gash reminiscent of the Joker's grin.  I stepped back in alarm, backing into the check-out counter.  

 

The thing bore down on me.  I saw my life flash before my eyes.  My heart nearly gave out due to pure terror before it even got within a foot of me.

 

And then it dissipated, batted away into smoke by a silver hand reaching through it; a hand that laid its finger lightly over my heart. It pulsed along with my heartbeat. As it touched me, cold flooded my body, as if I had just taken a plunge off a boat into the iciness of the Bearing Strait.

 

I gasped and looks up at the creature to whom the hand belonged.

 

It looked like a woman.  A faceless woman made entirely of quicksilver.  Fluid and beautiful and astonishingly alluring.  She was staring at me, I could tell, even though she had no eyes.

 

"From dust to dust," she said.  But she didn't say.  Not with a voice.  Not the normal way.  Her words resonated within my skull, a foreign presence in my thoughts.

 

"Come with me," she requested gently.  She laid her hand flat on my chest and the library vanished. 

 

We stood in a crowded hallway.  Students rushing off to class.  Chatting, checking the time, smiling, laughing, texting.  They parted as they came upon us, avoiding us, but seemingly not noticing us.  As though it were an completely unconscious maneuver.

 

I blinked.

 

Each student now had a number above their head, glowing red.  1665.  22.  5.  567.  

 

I looked at the creature, who's hand still lay on my chest.  "What do they mean?"

 

"It's the order," she said.  "From dust they were made, and to dust they shall return."

 

I looked down at my hand.  In my ring, I could see a distorted reflection of my face.  A glowing one floated above my head.  First.

 

"I don't understand," I told the creature. 

 

"You don't need to."

 

The hand withdrew, and I knelt on the floor of an empty classroom.  No desks.  No posters.  No whiteboard.  No door.  No window.

 

I began to relax as I noticed that there were no others, no strange beasts.  I was alone.

 

Then I noticed the walls bearing down on me.  The walls.  The ceiling.  The floor.  All coming closer together.  As I write this, they still are.  There's not much space left.

 

I am number one.  I am the first to go.  I don't know to what.  Whether I will die.  Or disappear.  Or be kidnapped by aliens.  Or whether someone slipped me a drug.  Or this is all a dream.  I just wanted to send a warning, to all those with numbers greater than one.

 

Be warned.

 

There it is!  That voice again!

 

"From dust t

Edited August 5, 2012 by PhoenixStarr

[AngelicDemise]

Wow.. That was very good. o.o

[Dauntingale]

That is really good and there are so few mistakes, but I'll note them anyway. I'm probably more of an amateur than most here, but I'm just trying to help. You know?

 

so rather then having to go through the trouble of sneaking off campus

 

Then should be than.

 

Yet somehow I feel the need to save them.

 

Comma after yet and after somehow.

 

I gasped and looks up at the creature

 

Looks should be looked.

 

Gosh, your vocabulary and plot development surpasses mine. These were just careless, minor errors anyway. You also have some unnecessary commas, but I could tell you wanted to write it that way, so I ignored that.

 

Again, it's really good.

[PhoenixStarr]

Actually, every typo and grammatical error in there was made on purpose. Think about it, if you were about to die (or thought you were going to, I leave that up to you, the reader) would you concern yourself with grammar?

[PhoenixStarr]

Ah, those lovely little stories that I'll probably never finish

 

"Hey."

 

"Hi," she smiled shyly, looking up at me through her lashes as she came closer.  Her mind may have been extraordinary, but when it came to fraternising with gentlemen, girls were all the same.  Her lashes were clumped on the inside corners of her eyes, visible as the streetlight reflected off the glitter in her mascara.  I was surprised she hadn't noticed it, or, if she had, that she hadn't rectified it.  I opened the door for her and she she made herself comfortable in the passenger seat.  

 

I climbed in on the other side.  She fastened her seatbelt. I didn't.  

 

"Having a good day?" I asked as I pulled out of the driveway.  I adored my mustang.  Handled like a dream.

 

"You tell me," her lips curled in a slight smile that I caught as I turned my head to check the blind spot.

 

"Hmm...let me see.  It's a Saturday, so both your parents are home.  Same old argument?"

 

"Of course."

 

"You could crash that Porsche.  Then they couldn't fight about it," I tapped the wheel impatiently with the tips of my fingers as I waited for the light to turn green.  I often wondered if I ran a red light in the dark whether or not red-green colourblindness would be a legitimate excuse.  Probably wouldn't hold up in court.

 

"Okay, number one, they'd kill me.  Number two, they'd just shift their focus to something else.  The Porsche's not the problem, they are."

 

"True, worth a try though, isn't it?"

 

"No, it's not," her previous shy, smitten tone had slipped into irritation.  I glanced over, pretending to check my mirror.  The smile had melted too.  Delicate subject.

 

"Did I tell you about the ghosts Nate and I saw yesterday?"

 

"No," the tone brightened slightly.

 

"Well, we were over by Harrison's Creek, you know, by the school?"

 

"Uh-huh," she reached to turn down the radio.  Good sign.

 

"We were midnight fishing."

 

"Fishing?" a slight condescending derision crept into her voice.  Uh-oh.  "Can you even catch anything there?"

 

"It's not the catching that matters, it's the experience," even as the words left my mouth, I knew it was the wrong thing to say.  I sounded so stupid, like an old man.

 

She giggled.

 

"Anyways," I turned a corner too fast, tires screeching against the pavement.  She winced.  I slowed down.  "It was midnight, and you know how the cemetery's back there in the woods?  The beat up Indian one from the 1700's or whatever?"

 

"Yeah, of course I do."

 

"We thought we heard a noise, a sort of 'OoooOooOooO.'"

 

"No," she said incredulous.  She laid her hand on mine on the gearshift.  I smiled.  

 

"Dead serious.  So we go over to investigate, right?  And we see this silver thing rise out of the ground."

 

"You're joking."

 

"I just said I was dead serious, didn't I?"

 

"I thought you were just making a pun."

 

"No.  Puns are for kids."

 

"I like puns."

 

I shook it off.  "It's a woman, almost as gorgeous as you, luv."

 

"So not very pretty then?"

 

He growled in his throat.  He hated when girls did that.  "Exponentially beautiful.  And we went over, and we talked to her.  She had a voice like silver.  It sang and soothed, rose and fell like the song of a wind-chime.  She told us about life and dying and the world beyond."

 

"How could she tell you about the world beyond if she's here?" I couldn't see in the dark, but I was sure that there was a mischievous, amused sparkle in her eyes.  She didn't believe me.

 

"She's a ghost.  All ghosts know about the afterlife, because they had to pick whether to go there or come back here as a half-living creature of the night.  It's a known fact."

 

"Mmhmm."

 

I was struck with sudden impulse and made an overagressive u-turn at the earliest available opportunity.

 

"You were going the right way," she commented.

 

"I changed my mind.  We're going to Harrison's Creek."

 

"You'd go back after seeing that thing?" I glanced over at her as she raised an eyebrow questioningly.

 

"She's not a thing, she's a person, a dead person, but still a person, and she was nice.  Not evil or flesh-eating or anything."

 

"All right," she sighed, leaning back against the seat.  

 

Silence reigned until we arrived and abandoned the car.  I didn't bother locking it.

 

"You're not going to lock you're car?" she said in surprise.

 

"Ghosts can't drive," I replied with a grin, tucking my keys in my back pocket.  "Come on, follow me."

 

I set off into the trees, picking my way down the narrow, twisting, steeply sloping path.  I glanced back at her when I could no longer hear her breath.  She was nearly a hundred feet behind.  I glanced at her footwear.  "Heels make poor hiking boots."

 

"Shut up.  I was expecting the nice restaurant you promised, not Harrison's Creek," she whined.

 

"Do you want to see the ghost or not?"

 

"I want to see the ghost," she sighed resignedly.

 

"Hurry up, or we'll miss her," I glanced up at the sky through the overhanging pine boughs.  A wispy cloud floated across the moon.  "Come on."