Rising Star
Backstage, she was a sweet and outgoing young girl. Behind the scenes, she had a happy life with her family and friends. Everyone loved her.
But when the lights came on, she was suddenly a different person.
The world around her changed. Before a watching crowd, she would transform into any character she wished. One night, she was that adorable little girl dancing in the chorus line; another, the diva singing her heart out in the spotlight. She could take on any role from a timid teenager to a fiery vaudevillian chanteuse, and always put every bit of her soul into her act. She stood a cut above the rest, never failing to charm her audience and draw them into her world.
And still, everyone loved her.
The way she spoke, the way she sang, the way she danced captivated every person who couldn’t take their eyes off her, following her every move executed with impeccable grace and confidence. No matter what part she played, her heart and soul always shone through, and after each performance, the truth became ever clearer to the world watching in awe from off the stage…
That sweet and outgoing young girl was a rising star.
Happy Birthday to my incredibly talented baby sister and favorite actress! You’re a wonderful performer, and I wish you all the best in everything you do. I know you’ll make it big someday! Keep reaching for the stars! I love you!
Titanium Sky
“Cela? Cela, you’re up.”
The illusion of darkness was broken as a pair of amber eyes opened to look up at the silhouette towering over them.
“Celandine, did you hear me?”
As her eyes adjusted to the light, the young woman saw the face of her friend – a well-built man with bushy hair – looking down at her in concern.
“I heard you, Lee…”
“It’s your turn. You don’t wanna keep ’em waiting…”
Celandine didn’t move right away, sitting with her back to the wall as she looked around at the dozen other people in the room. From the flaky old man crouching in the shadows to the mousy girl flitting in and out of the light every few minutes, each face had a story to tell. But it was always the same story.
“I can’t…”
“You don’t have a choice!”
The two friends turned simultaneously to see who had spoken. A tall, slender woman emerged from the shade, eyes gleaming almost menacingly in the light.
“You have to do this, Cela”, she said softly, ” for all of us. Remember their promise…”
“I don’t believe them, Psi!” Celandine rose to her feet to level with the approaching woman. “They were never gonna set us free! We’re just animals to them! They like controlling us, keeping us for display! They’re all liars!”
“You won’t know that until you finish the task you were trained for!” The taller woman turned to the young man beside her. “Leonidas, help me out.”
“Psipsina’s right; if you don’t go through with this tonight, they might never let us go. Please, just get up there…”
“And let all those people stare at me like the freak I’m supposed to be?!”
As she shouted these words, the young woman thrust her right arm out to the side. Still her greatest desire for the last five years remained unfulfilled, for where she wished she could be seeing smooth bare flesh, there were nothing but brown feathers.
“I’m not normal!” Celandine continued tearfully. “None of us are! You think Lee wanted to be born part-lion? And you, Psi? I don’t remember you ever saying you love having pointed ears and a cat’s tail! I’m sick of these wings that were never meant for me! I hate being a Hybrid! I wanna be human!”
“Ungrateful child!” All eyes now turned to the elderly man in the corner, who rose to his feet and stepped into the light as he glared at the avian woman through livid reptilian eyes. “You dare defy the humans’ will? You’re a product of years of refined biotechnology, a marvel of genetic engineering! They made you the superior being that you are; you owe them the chance to proudly display their work to the world! Now get out there and fulfill your purpose, siren!”
Celandine felt a tear slide down her cheek as she looked up at the saurian man now standing a foot from her face. “Siren” was one of the derogatory terms that inevitably came with having a humanoid body with the wings of a bird. “Harpy” was even worse, but fortunately, not as common. Noticing his friend’s despondency, Leonidas offered her a kind smile and reached out to gently stroke her feathered arm.
“Don’t worry, Cela”, he whispered. “You’re not a freak; everyone else will see that. Now get out there and make ’em wish they were Hybrids. After tonight, you’ll be free.”
The young woman gazed fondly into her friend’s yellow eyes, then timidly dropped her gaze to his torso. His standard-issue jumpsuit did little to hide the superhuman muscle of his Spartan-esque physique, and she had always admired the dark human-like skin on his powerful arms. After a minute’s hesitation, she reluctantly nodded.
“All right, I’ll do it… for you.”
Though her lips spoke the words as if addressing the entire group, her eyes deemed the promise exclusive to her dearest friend. With her head held high in newfound determination, Celandine strode past the others toward the plasma screen on the opposite wall, which was currently showing her test subject profile. Upon stepping into the cylindrical chamber beside it, she was immediately scanned from head to toe by the same invasive laser that had verified all her peers before her. Then the lift slowly rose into the opening ceiling, until the next thing she knew, she was staring through the glass at a sea of white coats and curious faces. As the chamber door opened onto a stage, an amplified voice echoed through the enormous hall.
“And finally, Specimen Omega of the Fusion Project: the Avian.”
The Hybrid slowly stepped out of the chamber to approach the transparent barrier near the edge of the stage. The moment she reached her mark, the spectacled man at the lectern to her far left spoke into the microphone again, his voice booming through the speakers. By now she knew every cue of the speech by heart, and followed her routine with mechanical precision: spreading her feathered arms to first display her wings from the front, then turning to show the back; demonstrating her agility through the obstacle course erected on the platform; and showing off her flight capabilities by gliding between the perches placed on either end of the enclosed portion of the stage. She fulfilled her purpose, exactly the way she’d been trained.
Throughout her demonstration, the spokesman’s words echoed hollowly in Celandine’s ears, the same words she’d been hearing for the past half-decade. “Fusion”… “splicing”… “Hybrids”… “spy units”… “future of military operations”… None of them meant anything to her. She was just going through the motions, waiting for a promise that might never be fulfilled. As she returned to her mark, she gazed out at the multitude of eyes staring back at her in awe, scanning the audience one last time before she would be called back into the lower deck.
Then two things happened in quick succession: she noticed the control panel window high on the back wall, and a second later, a grinding noise from above drew the attention of the entire room. The enclosure roof had gotten stuck while being replaced after the flight demonstration, leaving an opening to the bright ceiling. Suddenly, the Hybrid knew what she had to do. It was now or never…
Celandine spread her wings and took off with the speed of a falcon. By the time anyone realized what was happening, she was halfway across the hall, flying over the panicking crowd toward the controls that would grant freedom to her and her friends. Her focus was unfaltering; she barely heard the alarms going off, and she didn’t see the uniformed men charging past the fleeing scientists…
But she did feel the sharp pain of 100,000 volts coursing through her body at once. Stunned in midair, she crashed into the window at high speed, shattering the glass as she fell onto the controls that triggered the opening of the Hybrid deck and the doors leading out of the symposium hall. Weakened by the collision, the avian then plummeted the several feet to the ground, some of the large glass shards falling after her only seconds before she hit the floor…
A great roar resounded over the screams of the crowd, driving the humans out the doors at twice their initial speed. The dazed Celandine noticed the pairs of black boots near her head retreating with the stun gun probes in tow, then the silhouettes of several wild-looking figures barreling toward her up the aisle as a familiar voice called her name…
“Cela!”
The young woman felt her upper body being lifted into a pair of strong lionlike arms. Only then did she notice the rather sizable shard of glass jutting out of her abdomen, as well as the red stain spreading on the floor beneath her. Still numb with shock, she looked faintly up into the yellow eyes that were gazing anxiously back into her amber ones.
“Cela”, Leonidas whispered, “what did you do?”
And then the young man saw something he hadn’t seen in years: a smile forming on his best friend’s lips. While the rest of the Hybrids chased the humans back during their escape, Celandine found comfort in her friend’s embrace, now gazing past him into the bright lights of the metallic ceiling to which, for one minute, she had been close enough to touch.
“I told you I’d do it…” she breathed, “for you. You were right. Thank you, Lee…”
The noises around her were beginning to fade. Leonidas’s face was becoming blurred. She couldn’t feel his tears on her lacerated face, and she barely heard the three words he was uttering to her now. But Celandine was content, for gone with everything else was the life of imprisonment and helplessness she had known for too long, and as the silver skies above her slowly grew dark, her smile never faltered in the light of the truth…
She was free.
This story was my entry for the Dark Futures Contest recently held by Writer’s Carnival in collaboration with Dark Futures e-Zine. The rule was to write a science fiction or horror story, 1500 words or less, that was themed around a gathering of people. The theme I chose for my sci-fi story was a symposium for genetic engineering, the main characters being human-animal Hybrid test subjects. With the contest now over and the winners’ stories already published on the DF website, I decided to share my (slightly edited) piece here on my blog for others to read. Enjoy!
Special thanks to Writer’s Carnival and Dark Futures for hosting the contest, and congratulations to the winners!
Tones of Ivory
My love,
My life,
My music.
What would I do,
Who would I be,
How could I live
Without you?
I remember when I first saw you.
Your dark and light tones contrasting
Were a vision of perfect beauty.
The first time I heard your voice,
Singing sweet melodious notes,
You moved me to tears.
The first time I ever touched you,
I felt a spark like an electric wire,
And I knew I was finally whole.
Do you remember our song,
The first melody we played together?
It was sweet and gentle,
But there was passion in every note.
With every stroke,
A spark would ignite.
With every chord,
The fire in me grew.
With every measure,
I felt more alive,
And I know I felt life in you too.
For years you’ve enchanted me
With your spell.
Like a siren’s song
To a weary traveler,
Your sound has bewitched me
And lured me away
From the desolate banks
Of monotony
To ivory shores
Streaked with ebony
And singing of eternal bliss.
I could do nothing;
I would be no one;
I couldn’t live
Without you.
My music,
My life,
My love.
Pianoforte.
Life Through The Lens
Her world was normal. She had a loving family, great friends, a good school and a happy home. Her days were filled with the the average musings of any young girl trying to find her place in the world. She had a normal life. But she didn’t know how much more exciting that life could be.
Until the day she picked up a digital camera and discovered her gift for making films.
Suddenly, the world had become her playground. Now she had control over everything around her. She could make people do and say whatever she wanted. She could tell her younger sister to act silly, fall down, make a fool of herself, and know she would actually want to. She could ask her older sister for favors and have them done her way. She could channel her wit into hilarious scripts that would entertain others and bring smiles to the faces of the people she loved. She had discovered the power to turn the world upside down. She was an artist.
She loves the world. She loves her family, her friends, her days at school and at home. She loves her life.
Sometimes it’s all just more exciting through the lens, for behind the camera is the brave young woman she always wanted to be.
Happy Birthday to my incredible sister and favorite filmmaker! Best of luck to you in all your future endeavors. Keep making those awesome movies! I love you!
A Hundred Faces
She was so beautiful.
The moment I saw her, I couldn’t stop staring. Something about her was calling me, urging me to move closer, and I saw her moving toward me too. Soon, we were face to face. I smiled at her. She smiled back.
Then something else caught my eye, and we both turned to look. Another face, just as beautiful. How could all these lovely eyes be looking at someone as plain as me? Again, I walked to the alluring new arrival, as she did to me. Perhaps she was a little prettier than the first…
More faces appeared around the corner, all of them calling me forth. Some were like the first two, but many were different. Some were hiding, no doubt shy like me. Some stood in the light like regal beings waiting for attention, my attention. Some were slim, some were wide. Some were tall as giants, some were short as dwarves, and others still had the most unusual curves. But they were all beautiful.
Soon, I was lost in their world. Around every corner, another face waited to greet me with a smile. They made me laugh, a lovely sound that echoed through the still halls of their mysterious land, a sound I hadn’t heard since before my broken heart told me I was plain and made me believe I could never be as beautiful as these hundred faces watching me now. They were laughing with me, telling me a different story. Maybe my heart was wrong.
And then I was at the edge of their world, where one last face, the most beautiful of all, was waiting to see me off. Above her head was a sign, telling me I was now leaving their “House”. I spared one last look into her lovely dark eyes, and in a single step, I was back in the outside world of people and noise and fun of all sorts. Fun that I could finally join in once again.
I looked back into the house I had left, but I couldn’t see that beautiful face anymore. She was gone. They were all gone. They were never there.
But my smile remained. I didn’t need them anymore.
I held my head high and walked away to the pier. Alone.
This story was my entry for the Carnival Style Contest recently held by Writer’s Carnival. The rule was to write any piece as long as it was carnival-themed in some way, so I chose to write a story set in a house of mirrors. With the contest now over and the winners already announced, I decided to share my piece here on my blog for others to read. Enjoy!
Special thanks to Writer’s Carnival for hosting the contest! It was a lot of fun!
Diamond in the Rough
A little lump of coal
Is plain to any eye.
A star amid a million
Can be lost within in the sky.
Any loyal loving dog
Seems the same as all the rest.
And a man within a crowd
Needs to prove that he’s the best.
But place enormous pressure
On that little lump of coal,
And you’ll see that it will change,
Soon to play a different role.
No two stars are quite the same,
Each unique, a special one.
Some are small and burn out quickly,
Some are brighter than the sun.
The dog that seems so common
Proves a true and caring friend.
Through the greatest trials in life,
He’ll stick by you to the end.
So a man of endless value
Is a star in every way.
As a husband and a father,
He proves loyal every day.
Try to break him; he’ll survive,
And you’ll see when times are tough
That the man you thought was plain
Is a diamond in the rough.
Happy Father’s Day to my amazing dad! Thank you so much for everything you do for me; it means the world. You’ll always be a hero in my eyes, and one of my greatest role models. I’m so lucky to have you as a father.
God bless you always! I love you, Dad!
One Mistake
I never saw the spider.
I kept telling them on the way to the hospital: I opened the door just for a second to let the cat out, and then I went back to the living room.
I never saw that spider sneaking in.
Yet here we were two hours later, listening to the doctor tell us that my sister was going to be fine. A minor allergic reaction, nothing to worry about. But good news now wasn’t going to keep my parents from looking at me funny for weeks, and it wasn’t going to stop this story from coming up at every Christmas family gathering for years to come. Now my baby sister was going to be arachnophobic for the rest of her life, and I would never be able to open another door without looking straight at my feet first.
All because of one mistake.
That I never even saw.
Leap of Triumph
(What If? Exercise: Read the description here.)
I can hear the crowd cheering, applauding madly as the contenders before us finally complete their round. The competition is fierce today. Why shouldn’t it be? This is the Grand Prix after all, and only the best come to compete.
A cloud shifts in the sky, allowing the sun to shine brightly over the course. Some might say it’s a sign of good luck, but I choose not to believe in such things; we’ll do well because we’ve trained weeks for this, and if we win, it’ll be because of all our dedication and teamwork alone.
The judges have finished announcing their scores, and our opponents now come striding in, passing us by without a glance. I notice Belle shifting slightly in place; if I didn’t know better, I’d say she was nervous. But maybe that’s just me.
“All right”, I breathe with as much confidence as I can muster while the announcers call our names next. “Let’s do this.”
With a click of my tongue, Belle and I stride proudly out into the course. The audience follows our progress as we make our way to the starting point, and the judges fall silent as we position ourselves, ready for the signal. All eyes are on us. It’s now or never.
A few seconds pass… then the bell chimes. Time to ride.
I click my tongue once more and coax Belle forward with a firm squeeze of my legs. Obediently she begins to move in a walk, then a trot, and finally a canter. No surprises; this horse and I have been working together for years, and by now we know each other’s every intent. With the sun gleaming in her chestnut coat and the warm summer breeze flowing visibly through her light mane, I start to feel the rush of riding that is always so familiar but never gets old. There’s no question; this is where I belong.
The first jump approaches. Four feet. We can make that, I think with assurance, and I know Belle can sense it in me. As the fence grows in our line of vision, I shift into the two-point position, ready to cue the horse for the leap. Just a few feet now; she knows what to do from here. In a single fluid motion, Belle and I dip together as one, and her strong hind legs push against the ground to send us both sailing through the air and over the fence. This is by far the best part of show jumping: that brief second in every leap when both horse and rider are flying together, defying gravity like a great two-headed mythical beast. Then gravity wins, and Belle’s legs touch the ground again. As we clear the jump, I lean back slightly to allow for a smooth landing. The fence’s planks remain untouched after the leap. No penalty incurred.
With another 15 obstacles to clear, the course is far from over, but so far so good. The horse continues forward, and now I tilt the reins and lean with her to steer her toward the next jump. Another four-foot-high vertical awaits us, this time with poles. Not a problem; Belle clears it with the same effortlessness as before. I can feel the pride and triumph rising in my heart now. We can win this competition, I just know it.
The clock keeps running as we continue through the course. Verticals, oxers, liverpools – none of them are too great a challenge for my Belle and me. Expertly we turn as one past the cleared obstacles and hurtle straight toward the next fences in the sequence. One, two, three jumps in a row. Combinations have never been a weakness in our routine. Almost every fence cleared, and not a single plank or pole overturned. We’re almost there. Just one more jump to go.
But the final jump is a triple bar.
Of all the show jumping obstacles Belle and I have ever practiced with, the triple bar has always been the most difficult for us to clear. Roughly every three attempts we make to jump it, one try will result in the third bar being knocked off the fence. Whether this is because of a difficulty Belle has to leap completely over such a wide ascending spread or an error in timing and control on my part, it’s hard to say. In any case, this means that there’s about a 33% chance we won’t completely clear this jump now without incurring a fault. Can we make it this time?
I decide I have to trust my horse. Deep down, I know she wants that blue ribbon just as much as I do, and she’s going to do everything in her power to help bring it home for us. No matter what, we’re in this together.
The last jump approaches…
Once again, I ready myself in the two-point position, guiding Belle straight toward the center of the triple bar. Five feet away from the fence, I squeeze her sides just a little with my legs. The horse dips, my body moving with her, and she kicks off from the ground in the takeoff.
Suddenly, everything seems to be happening in slow motion. In the flight of the jump, I’m now aware of several things at once: the breeze on my neck, the steady stretching motion of the horse’s legs, the racing pace of my own heartbeat. The high poles of the fence almost seem to slide beneath us as we soar fluently above them. There’s one… There’s two…
And at the very last pole, I swear I can just sense Belle’s final surge of determination take over. In that one split second, I feel her shift her back legs the tiniest fraction upward, and suddenly I know the pole won’t be dislodged from its post as her hooves barely shave by it…
Never in my life has a jump landing felt so triumphant. I can’t even hear the crowd cheering anymore; the rushing sound of my heart almost leaping out of my chest is too overwhelming. I spare a glance at the clock, which stops after we cross the final line of the course. Two seconds under the time limit. Unbelievable; we did it!
The audience is going wild. We were far from the favorite team to win, yet here we stand, being presented with a $10,000 prize and a first place blue ribbon. I may be the one getting most of the glory, but I’ll always know who the real champion is. Could I have asked for a better show jumping horse than my Belle?
This short story is based on What If? Exercise 9: “Taking Risks”. The idea is to write a detailed first-person story depicting an event that you will likely never experience firsthand in real life. The objective of this is to step outside the limits of “write what you know” and practice writing what you can only imagine, an important skill that every fiction writer should learn.
The subject I chose for this piece is a certain sporting event that I’ve always enjoyed watching during the Olympics, but that I’m sure I would never be able to try myself. Though it took a fair amount of research to write the story as accurately as possible, I had fun imagining myself in the narrator’s place. I hope you enjoy what I’ve written. Thanks for reading!
Breaking Blocks
(What If? Exercise: Read the description here.)
I sat at my desk, typing away at my computer, trying to break through my writer’s block as I wrote about anything and everything that came to mind, hoping some random idea would blossom into a story, when I happened to glance over at a pile of books sitting nearby, on top of which sat a book from my childhood, The Cat in the Hat, a book I had recently found sitting quietly on one of the room’s many shelves, a book I had loved as a little girl, and suddenly I found myself thinking back on the simpler days of my life, when six-foot cats wearing tall striped hats and pet fish who could talk made perfect sense to me, when stories about boys who had crazy adventures in magical chocolate factories and young children learning the craft of magic were much more appealing to me than the average everyday life, a normal life where I was just a shy girl trying to hide from the scary kids at school by making herself as inconspicuous as possible, while still longing for a day when she would be recognized as a great storyteller with a gift for touching people’s lives with her unique voice in writing, a day when people everywhere would know her name and celebrate her beautiful stories about fantastic adventures and worlds where anything was possible, worlds that existed only in her mind but that could hopefully live on in the imaginations of many young readers, perhaps some of whom would choose to pursue their own talents in the arts and continue to color the world with their own voices, making the world a much brighter place… and then I looked back at my computer screen and smiled, realizing that I didn’t need to worry so much about finding a perfect idea to shape into a perfect piece, that ideas were anywhere and everywhere, and as long as I had my own storytelling voice, I didn’t need to produce a great novel to be heard, for I could just as easily write a simple short piece about an ambitious writer’s long train of thought and her hopeful journeys breaking blocks.
Yes, I realize this piece is only one sentence long, and I can assure you that it’s completely intentional. This story is based on What If? Exercise 90: “The Journey of the Long Sentence”. The goal is to write a short short story that, as mentioned above, is a single sentence in length. The objective of this exercise is to understand how we can shape our writing in a similar manner that our minds function, building a linear order for an observation that often consists of many overlapping aspects.
The story I ended up creating was almost completely improvised; I started with a single idea and just ran with it, typing without pausing while I let my mind continuously fill in the lines of the story. Though I know the end result isn’t perfect, I can honestly say it was a lot of fun to write, and I encourage you to try it yourself. Who knows what brilliant stories might be lurking in the back of your mind?
The Dragon Within
Deep in the cavern it sleeps,
Silent as the shadows,
Still as the earth.
And as it lies in rest,
The land is at peace
And all is well.
But at the turn of the moon,
The creature awakens
And chaos reigns once more.
It emerges from its lair,
Eyes gleaming, teeth bared,
And emits a mighty roar
That shakes the earth
And the souls of men alike.
And a fearful whisper sweeps
Across the land,
“Beware the beast…”
Claws unsheathed,
It rampages through the world,
Slashing out at all
Who would cross its path,
Tearing through flesh
And spilling the blood
Of the innocent.
At the slightest provocation,
It rears its great head
And shrieks a piercing cry
That shatters many ears
And fractures many hearts.
It twists its body
To constrict its victims,
Forcing out their breath
Until they’re gasping for air,
Then leaves them broken
In its wake.
Yet when the moon turns away
The creature retreats.
Docile once more,
It succumbs to the control
Of its one true master
And withdraws into its lair
To sleep again.
The master sets about
Repairing the damage,
Healing the wounds
Of the injured
And fixing what the monster
Left broken.
Peace settles on the land,
And all is well again.
But the master never rests,
And stands ever ready,
For as everyone knows,
At the next turn of the moon,
The dragon will rise again.
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The Wolfe's (Writing) Den by J.C. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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