Nero Calore: A Story

EH, hallo there. NEW STORY. 

Premise: Bailey Hendricks goes to live with her grandmother for the summer. She's poor, so she doesn't have much to do, except take lots of walks and read. But she gets in trouble for trespassing on an estate she thought was abandoned, and can't have the legal stain on her record if she wants to get into college. So, the family who caught her, agrees to a deal. If she will work in their garden for the summer, they won't press charges, and even pay for her tuition if she does a good job. 

Obviously, she takes it. 

But the family is by no means normal, and is actually involved in an international crime syndicate. It's not a thriller, and the family is actually on 'holiday', so it's not about the crime thing, but the effects of the crime thing. The whole family is totally screwed up.

Carlo: head of the family, wife is dead, killed in action. His vice is a sick curiosity. The only reason he hired Bailey instead of pressing charges was because he was curious about her, and the way 'normal' act. He's using her for his own sick, psychological pleasure, and exposes her intentionally to some weird shit that goes on in their family. (It's all purely psychological, no violence to her or rape).

Regina: the eldest of the children, and so she should be the 'next in line' to the throne, but isn't, because she isn't really a member of the family, as her mother (who was married to Carlo) had Regina through an affair. Carlo took her into the family etc, and Regina is the most capable, but everyone knows that she's not a real 'heir'. So Regina's a little bitter. She hates Bailey because her father is so curious about her, always giving her attention, however sick it is, and Regina wants her father to love her too.

Chase: Chase is the real 'heir' to the throne, even though he isn't the eldest. He is very apathetic to everything, and really couldn't give a damn about whatever position he might inherit. He's not suited to the buisness, but his father thinks it's funny, and Chase just can't be bothered to put too much thought into it. He ends up falling in love with Bailey, because she's so innocent. When Chase was eight, he saw his mother die. As a result, he's kind of frozen. Bailey takes him back to that time, and makes him feel alive. But it's really an unhealthy attachment, because he's getting the love he never got from his mother from her, and that is a very selfish kind of love. In a child, it's totally healthy, but in a seventeen year old boy, it's not. 

Bruno: The youngest of the family, and a very bitter person. When it comes to the family hierarchy, he and Regina are 'tied', and Chase is way far above him. So he resents Chase, because he stands to inherit Bruno's ultimate goal (and doesn't even care), and he looks down on Regina, because he believes that she is beneath him. But he's periodically reminded that he's just as low down there as she is, but wants to believe that he isn't. He holds onto his anger and channels it into ambition, always trying to get his father's attention through accomplishments, something which Carlo could care less about, because that isn't how he determines worth. Still, Bruno tries. He likes Bailey, but only as a tool. Bruno knows that Chase is in love with her, and hopes that she will lure him away from the position he stands to inherit, and then there would be the possibility that Bruno could get it. 

See what I mean? The whole thing is a psychological analysis, and I just want to get it out there. I haven't started writing it on my computer yet, but I'll do that soon. It's gonna be chock full of juicy bits that are a treat to write. So let's see if I actually do, eh? 

Fireworks.

I press my fingers gently against my closed lids, because the makeup remover left a film that stings. Funny yellow lights spiral in my darkened view.

I've always been struck by these little sparkles.

Are they angry I have taken away their view of the world, or just happy to see me?

They are always moving, in disjointed and unusual shapes that I can't quite ever really see. Some huger than others, and some unmoving and dark.

But they're always there, the tiny little fireworks that are more magic than science. The little lights that remind me, hey, it's okay, you see light much better when it's dark anyways. 

Thanks, little guys.

I'm happy to see you too.

Metaphor

I don't know....

===========

I closed my eyes an imagined the rain clouds above me. I pictured the drops I could hear just beginning to fall, I visualized the churning blackness above, and I did not open my eyes.
Something about storms seemed beautiful to me.
After the light had blinded you and the crashes had deafened you, what was there to do but feel?
With some sick masochistic urge, I wanted to stand in the rain and get a cold. I wanted to curl up on the floor with a blanket and exist in my sickness. I wanted to forget reality. I wanted the delusions. I wanted the burn.
I was tormented.
Nightmares, daydreams, any kind of normal delusion wouldn’t do, and they hadn’t done.
I wanted total removal. I wanted a fever that removed me from myself and killed off the sickness with the heat.
I wanted a crucible.
I wanted the courage to burn the letter and move on.
I wanted to forget that she ever existed.
But I did not want to die. I was just stubborn like that.

Teacher

He doesn't understand me at all.

For him, love was something that just always left. 

Life ceased to be about love for him because he never knew how, because he never had it to begin with, because it left him. 

Because he was incapable of feeling love. 

I heard of a child who had two blind parents. They had a son, and everyone thought he was blind too. But, later in life, he did learn how to use his eyes.

They'd only thought he was blind because his parents never gave him a reason to see.

I don't blame the parents, what could be helped? And I don't blame the boy, he couldn't help it either. He never knew any better.

So I don't blame him. 

He doesn't know any better either.

 

But it hurts me to be around him, it hurts to watch the life gone from his eyes and it hurts me that it was him who taught me that love is not unconditional. 

That is why I will never be the one to teach him how to feel. 

I will sacrifice my own eyesight if I try to teach the blind man to see. 

I will sacrifice my own heart if I try to teach a miser how to love.

The fact remains that I will not, cannot, give up my own happiness for his. 

And though I know it wasn't his fault, the fact remains that he has not earned my love, and so he can never truly have it.

I regret for someone who cannot feel remorse.

I cry for someone who cannot feel.

I lament circumstances beyond anyone's control.

But I cannot teach him. I cannot teach him. 

The Bridge

I will tell you a tale of two builders,

and the events that came to pass

when they tried to both build build bridges

on a pane of broken glass.

There were two at the beginning, 

Far and wide, and young and old,

And the tale that I am spinning

Is woven fine- but not of gold.

As deep as it is shallow, 

as wide as it has width

It exemplifies pride and callow,

the tale of Henry Charles and Smith.

Famous, revered across the land,

The builders did their weighty work

They were rivals owned by one man, 

A man named Douglas Kirk

And he was kindly and well meaning,

with a fatherly kind of air,

though his work was good as far as seeming,

he knew not what happened there. 

For resentment truly is, a shifty kind of craft

You see it in the bright light

Just slip right through the cracks,

And all the while you think,

"There's not a spec of dust around,

you could eat right off the floor, 

and you could swallow it all down!"

When really you're all standing,

on a shaky bit of land,

and the resentment you are handling,

you forget is in your hand.

But Douglas Kirk unfortunately,

continued towards his doom,

How sad that he could not see

the weavings spun across his loom.

"So build me a bridge!" he said,

"Clasp hands and make your peace!

You'll start at opposite sides of the gap,

and meet right in between!"

And so he ordered, making the rivals a pair,

Thinking softly how he'd triumph

on the team that they now shared. 

Henry Charles the second, 

the first man in disaccord

knew the call of money beckoned,

into his hand he wanted it poured.

And he was starting on the right, 

in a land called Sarafee, 

with forty seven days and nights

to meet the go-between,

Where Smith the fourth would come right up,

starting across the gorge,

from the noble land of Smarlyup, 

where metals were often poured. 

So here you have it, reader,

you're informed, and you must see,

the plight of a man from Smarlyup

and the state of Sarafee.

But no more on how they fare,

now they row with oars of steel,

dashing madly across the air,

standing proud upon the keel.

Twenty days in, a man would stop to ask,

Eyes tight, and lips that smugly pursed,

"Mr. Kirk, what this week has come to pass?

Who has reached across the canyon first?"

And Mr. Kirk smiled, 

with eyes that held no doubt

"Fear not dear boy, 

no mortal flaw will root my system out."

"Together," he declared,

"they will bridge the rift,

and when the final beam is paired,

it will end their petty tiff."

How could he know,

just then as he sat waiting,

that a bit of sabotage,

Mr. Smith was undertaking. 

For the other morn,

just as he took his wake,

Smith had stoutly sworn,

that Charles had slammed his final stake

And having angrily erupted, 

he charged right down the line,

where the beams hung unconstructed, 

to shout "Have you yet passed mine?"

But he was met with quiet,

a dubious dark foreboding thing

but he heard a yes in it,

with a darkened evening ring

"I'm ruined!" he cries,

throwing down his fists

and he knows not he believes in lies,

"I will not stand for this!"

So with a grin as dark as black

and an explosive in his grasp

to the base he straps the pack,

he doesn't dare look back.

BOOM as the bridge gives way,

crumbling to the ground,

and coming into work next day,

madness, Charles had found.

Charles is mad, and angry too,

fuming from his wounded pride,

and realizing what he will do,

"I'll blow his bridge up too!"

And so he runs, clutching his guns,

across the narrow path,

and pushes the trigger,

the explosion is bigger,

he knows better than to look back.

"Outrageous!" out Smith shouts,

his temper now provoked,

"Why, I'll blow his whole structure out!

Then let him come to gloat!"

But now the gorge is deeper,

the bombs had enlarged,

and the great drop is steeper,

how will they complete the charge?

"No matter," says smith,

"I'm more focused on this!

Let me try to destroy it all now!"

And with eyes set on high,

they think not to ask why,

the dangerous game had consumed,

and as the missiles were lit,

so grew the rift,

and surely the builders were doomed.

Mr.Kirk, now informed,

leaned back in his chair with forlorn,

"How did this happen, how did it occur?

I thought only to bring them as one! 

Now they've blown it all up, what a mess to pick up,

and the system I brought led us down."

And he sighed and he moaned, 

but he could only condone,

for it was too late for him to stop now.

While back at the ridge there was madness afoot,

as the canyon was swallowed in flame,

the sky was dark with ashes and soot

and the builders were consumed in their game

Twisted, they'd become,

just shells of the people they'd been.

But not so different from some

than people today that I've seen.

These builders were mad, and I'll give them that,

consumed by a hatred that churned.

and as they culminated their petty spat,

there's a lesson they've taught to be learned.

You might hate your neighbor, you might hate him a lot,

but please, think before you leap.

Because even if he has fired the first shot,

it's you who has sowed what you reap.

The Expatriate: Chapter One: DIFFERENT

Mandy slammed the door to the lair with a deafening crack. 

Louis looked up disinterestedly. 

"Kindly don't destroy our secret base." he muttered, not looking up from his papers. His slate colored hair fell into his face and he didn't bother to brush it away. 

"Shut it Louis." Mandy snarled, throwing herself down at the couch with a discontented snarl.

"Did someone get stuck with the bitch pin again?" Louis sneered as he fumbled for a new piece of paper, his current sheet filled up with his nearly illegible scrawl.

"I said can it." Mandy snarled again. Her black curls fell angrily in her face, even though she'd used her classic get up of three red hair clips to keep the most her unruly bangs at bay, the better part of her hair was just like Mandy. 

Un-freaking-stoppable when she wanted to get her way. 

Juliet rounded the corner, her petite frame half dancing half walking, a habit she'd picked up at the finishing school she'd attended for six years. That girl was pretty damn finished the way Louis saw it. 

Seven hours a day of dancing, ettiquette and old world french lessons gave her the perfect education befitting a nobleman's daughter- a perfect education she completely threw out the window when she ran away and joined a rebel cat thief cell. 

Yup. Finished as finished could get.

"You look really pissed off." she sang as she sauntered in, slipping a new set of files onto my desk before pirouetting neatly into a leap and landing gracefully on the couch. Her neat red bob stayed perfectly intact and her grey eyes were pensive and sparkling. 

Mandy muttered something about dramatics.

"I'm with you Jules. I bet she didn't get in." Louis chuckled. He had told Mandy it was a lost cause, trying to get in, but she had stubbornly insisted on trying. 

"Damnit!" she crowed. "What's the point of being an anarchist cell if we can't just cause a little mayhem!" 

"Mandy, we're not an anarchist cell." Juliet repmrimanded. "We're a group of citizens concerned with the unconstitutional direction the city has taken." 

"Whatever Juliet, spew your polite diplomatics to Brennan. Where the hell is he anyway?" she muttered mutinously. Juliet rolled her eyes, unfazed as always. 

Mandy talked a big talk, but she really did care for Juliet like the little sister she was to all of them, Louis and everyone else in the Crue knew it.

"I think he's just coming in." Louis remarked absently as he reached for the new reports- a set on border patrols. "Nice, where'd we get these?" 

Juliet turned primly in her seat and smirked. 

"I flirted them out of an old guy." she stated proudly. 

"That's my girl!" boomed Brennan, thumping into the room. His dark skin gleamed in the light and his blue eyes stared us down keenly. Juliet lept up from her chair and ran at him, arms outstretched. He twirled her around easily as Mandy rolled her eyes again. 

"Someone gag me." she muttered.  

"Hey man, how was the trip?" Louis inquired mildly, still not looking up. Years of living with the chaotic bunch had given the group's resident genius plenty of time to hone the gift of multitasking down to a science, an art even. 

He could solve a cipher in the dark, while Juliet and Brennan played Extreme Jenga with couch cushions, and as Mandy rocked out to heavy metal on the speakers. 

He didn't even want to get started on what he'd had to do while running away from the police. 

Avery strolled lazily into the room, a lolling grin on his light features. He held his fist out for Brennan to pound before striding over to Louis and offering the same fist, which he denied, just like always. 

Louis liked to think he excluded himself from Brennan and Avery's bizarre ritual, but, in doing so, he became a part of it, as traditions often begin. 

Fist, fist, denial. 

Brothers somehow. 

Avery, the well dressed little prick that he was, twiddled his fedora for a moment before lifting it gingerly off his head and tossing it blithely at Mandy, who caught it without flinching. His toffee colored hair, now free, fell in a loose mop over his eyes, just like Brennan and Louis wore their hair. 

"So, Mandy, didja get in?" Taunted Avery, obviously sure she hadn't.

"No. The bastards said something about the exibhit not being open for another three months." she seethed. Juliet tossed her head from side to side as she sat on Brennan's shoulders. She would have hit the low ceiling if she hadn't been so short.

"We'll get in, don't worry, we'll get that damn diamond." Avery promised. 

"Are you sure about that?" Louis said loudly. Everyone groaned.

"BEEP BEEP BEEP!" called Mandy, finally sitting up from the couch. "Cynical genius report coming in."

"Are you going to rain on our parade?" Juliet said sadly. Louis blew a long breath upwards at his shaggy bangs. Brennan shushed her quietly as he helped her to swing lithely down. 

"Hit us with it Louie." snarked Avery.

"Don't be a dick." Louis snapped, shuffling his papers. Juliet trotted over and took the papers in his hands, sitting down on the piano bench as she tried to decipher his handwriting. 

She was, oddly enough, the only one capable of deciphering his notes, as she'd been reading cursive for six years of her twelve, and Louis's was not the worse she'd had to translate.

"The diamond is suspended from a what?" she shrieked. Mandy groaned and fell back down on the couch. 

"Thirty feet above the ground from a solid glass window by steel cables and a metal base. If we break the window it's suspended from, the diamond will fall, triggering the motion sensors on the floor below." Louis listed. 

"You were wrong, Juliet, the cables you saw weren't for a chandelier, they were to hold the diamond." He continued.  More groans. 

"And, to make matters worse, security is tight, and you know they'll have the King's signature to go ahead and use electric currents set to kill, not stun. Not like that's illegal or anything." he muttered sarcastically.

"You forget," growled Brennan, "nothing's illegal for the King's favorite five." 

He was using his favorite 'I-strongly-suggest-mutiny-now' voice. Juliet grinned broadly, amused at his train of thought. 

"When are we going to steal the thing?" she demanded, her singsong voice just barely hinting at a whine.

"When construction is at it's peak," Louis replied promptly. "they'll be the most distracted." 

Avery scratched his head, and frowned.

"How do we get in?" he asked. Now it was Louis's turn to frown. 

"I'm working on that one." He sighed. All eyes turned to Mandy, who looked up and raised an eyebrow at us. 

"What?" she said flatly.

"You do sometimes come up with, I don't know, some stroke of pure genius so random and out of the blue that it's possibly drug induced. Can't you do that now?" Brennan said. Mandy looked right at Louis and smiled.

"Hey, it always takes prompting from the real genius over there, I'm merely a sarcastic little rebel with an anarchist agenda and no real sense of direction or common sense without his stellar planning." 

"For the last time Mandy! We are NOT an anarchist cell!" Juliet groaned loudly. Brennan clapped her on the back.

"This coming from a twelve year old who could take out a full grown man with a few strategically placed kicks and a mission to steal a priceless diamond as a statement about worker's rights?" he said skeptically. Juliet shrugged.

"I'm no anarchist, I'm just... different." she concluded.

Yup, Louis thought, just different. 

They didn't think of themselves as traitors to the city, just different kids who went their own way.

Kids whose own way just so happened to be stealing priceless diamonds from rich museums owned by powerful kings. 

Sure, that kind of different.

Snow Princess

Somewhere, it is snowing, and a little girl sits waiting.

She looks up and out the window, the fluffy down blanket surrounds her and puffs up about her feet and ankles, sitting cross legged on the down. 

Her shining hair falls neatly to her shoulders, and she is in perfect order. 

She's been sitting there, on the fluffy down blanket in the little room with the windows. It is warm, and the muted gray light seeps in through lace curtains. 

She is waiting. 

Waiting for what, she doesn't know.

Surely, she thinks, all this snow must be coming down for something. I shall wait to discover what it is. 

And she knows that the snow, the falling flakes that dance, are not putting on a show for nothing. They do not swirl and dance around like icy ballerinas on tiny unique shoes for nothing or no one. 

Is it for me? She wonders as she gazes past the flakes and into the deep blackness of the forest surrounding the cottage. 

No, she realizes, I am very small compared to them, them and all the creatures and animals out there. The snow is not for me. 

But who, she wonders, who is worthy of the twirls and leaps, of the flights of fancy, of the white frozen whims?

She can't begin to imagine. 

So she sits, staring out, past the flakes, past the forests and into the deepest, blackest parts of the woods that no one but the pure at heart can see. 

There, she decides, there he lives. All alone. With big eyes and an indigo coat with claws made of icicles and ears made of fern fronds. Beautiful and lonely. 

Her father, armful of wood in tow, trudges forward through the blanketing white, leaving gaping black holes on the snow faerie's stage. 

The girl leaps to her feet and presses her nose against the window, astonished. 

She hadn't contemplated the idea that the beautiful scene before her was fleeting as it was, that human boots could leave such grave indents on the settling of the world. 

She opens her window, and the sound of the snow falling is subtle, mysterious, magic. 

Her father is inside.

She sticks her nose out and breathes in the scent of new snow, of blanket grass and the long sleep. 

It was beautiful, she maintains, but now the beast is very lonely, for the snow faeries will not want to fall on gaping ground.

Pushing the lace curtains aside and standing tip toe, she looks deep into the forest, summons up the most magical words she can think of.

"I'm sorry, magical snow faeries and Mr. Lonely Beast. I'm sorry."