Cain's legacy
Finished The Ghost. Seriously, everyone, go read! It was amazingly good--not that great writing, but the plot was so gripping it didn't matter. Anyone have any book recs? I am going to try and use this as a way to get back into reading. I think I'll start with John Green books.
I had this Primary School reunion thing on Sunday. That was pretty horrible. I do not know these people any more. They're all the total opposites of me--popular, hate school, they all smoke, drink, and go out and have sex with randoms. And me...I don't really do that. At all. They found it incredibly hard to comprehend that I didn't go out, and that I didn't drink. "Are you even a teenager?!"
It was awkward, and I felt weird and baby-ish and like I was back in Primary school: miserable and bullied. But it was good to see some people I haven't seen in years-- Janice, my best friend from back then, even though we're heaps different now. She was really sweet. And Taija was nice too. And Jacob. *sigh*. I seem to stuff up everything concerning him. I think he thinks I hate him now. Quite the opposite, in fact.
And all tonight I've been working on my English short story, which I completely forgot was due tomorrow. I'll post it bellow if anyone wants to read it (and offer suggestions for improvement, cause it's pretty terrible). I hate how much pressure is put on me to do something fantastic when it comes to creative writing. It's horrid.
‘You’re born, you live, and you die. There are no do-overs, no second chances to make things right if you frak ‘em up the first time. Not in this life, anyway.’
Battlestar Galactica plays softly in the background, on the ancient TV above her workstation. (He always liked the show, where she never had the taste for it. Yet now she can’t keep her eyes from it.) The lab is dark, deserted except for her. Shaw’s words ring through her mind, as she slides the blade teasingly over her skin in imitation of the woman on the TV. It doesn’t break the skin, but if she were to push just a little bit harder... It is that rush of danger that everyone craves; that delicate balance between excitement and pain: standing on the tip of the knife, so easy to fall either way. Death is such an intriguing thing. One would not be human, had they not considered what it would feel like. (Or perhaps it is merely her, having been presented with death, had become fascinated by the prospect of it). The metal of the scalpel glitters silver in the dark as she holds it up, the tip so very sharp-and deadly, if used correctly. She knows all too well the power hidden in the delicate instrument.
For the scalpel certainly is hers, in the same way a gun belongs to a soldier, or an axe to a woodchopper. She had felt an affinity with it since she first held one in her hand, and she has since learned to wield it in such a way that none could ever doubt this is her craft: her calling, one might say.
She remembers her first introduction to the scalpel. Ninth grade, and her teacher had brought out a box. Mrs Hadey, that was her name, and it was she who had first made her see the elegance of such an object. ‘The scalpel is not just an instrument there for your convenience,’ Hadey had said, ‘it becomes a part of you, a part of your work. It is an extension of your arm, of your body, of you. You control the scalpel, but do not force it. Let it become you, and you will know its power.’
Of course, she hadn’t paid any attention, then. Had a giggle with her friends about the crazy old lady trying to teach them science, and promptly forgot about the whole thing. Used the scalpel as everyone else did: just an instrument, there to do what she wanted, just as Hadey had said they would.
It wasn’t until uni, in her first year biology course. There, frustrated and angry at her inability to produce the results she wanted, her high school teacher’s words had come back to her-stored away in some half-forgotten part of her brain. ‘It is an extension of your arm...Let it becomes you and you will know its power.’ She remembers picking it up, inspecting it, turning it over and over in her palm. She does the same now. The metal is cool, calculating almost. But there is a beauty to it, too, in the way that it shimmers in the distant lights from the street outside, and the thin, streamlined body. It was then, as she’d held it in her hand, that she’d fallen in love with the scalpel, in a way that she’d never fallen for something before, and hasn’t since. Things like boyfriends (oh, but if only), and television shows and clothes, they change with time. But the scalpel, it’s stayed beside her all these years. A trusted friend in a sea of enemies (a sea she has created for herself, she must remember-there is no one else to blame but her).
Again, she runs the blade over her arm. She is toeing the line now. It’s the feeling again-the lure of risk, of what waits on the other side. (Of who). This time, she gives in, just to feel the rush. She adds the slightest of pressure to her stroke, and there’s a blooming red mark on her wrist. She feels nothing. Funny, she thinks with practiced detachment as she inspects her wound, how different this is to the first time she’d been hurt by the scalpel-then it had been an accident, a slip of her wrist and a deep cut on her opposite hand. She’d cried, just a bit, as she’d mopped at the blood; such a brilliant, startling red. The red colour stands out now: against her pale skin, and in stark contrast to the pale silver of her aggressor.
(His death, she should have foreseen. His death, she should have been prepared for. His death, she should have prevented.)
(She did not. She was not. She could not.)
She thinks, further back still, to the stories read to her in primary school. Dreamtime stories, of how the world as we know it came to be. How the Birds Got Their Colour, a favourite of hers, and it seems apt to her current situation. Because of the Dove’s pain, the bird’s got colour. Through pain, comes colour; comes life, and vibrancy, and happiness. One must persevere through hard times, in order to emerge triumphant on the other side. (Is she triumphant? Has she won? How is she to know when she’s come through the dark?)
She watches the blood trickle down her arm a moment more, then reaches for a tissue to wipe it away. ‘Like I said,’ Shaw says on the TV above her, ‘you make your choices, and you live with them. And in the end you are those choices.’ She thinks fleetingly on everything she’s done, on every choice, good or bad, she’s ever made which has led her to where she is now: here, in this room, with the scalpel and the old TV. Above her, Shaw closes her knife. She places the scalpel on the table. As Shaw says, you make your choices. She’s made hers.
(‘There is nothing you could have done to save him’)
I had this Primary School reunion thing on Sunday. That was pretty horrible. I do not know these people any more. They're all the total opposites of me--popular, hate school, they all smoke, drink, and go out and have sex with randoms. And me...I don't really do that. At all. They found it incredibly hard to comprehend that I didn't go out, and that I didn't drink. "Are you even a teenager?!"
It was awkward, and I felt weird and baby-ish and like I was back in Primary school: miserable and bullied. But it was good to see some people I haven't seen in years-- Janice, my best friend from back then, even though we're heaps different now. She was really sweet. And Taija was nice too. And Jacob. *sigh*. I seem to stuff up everything concerning him. I think he thinks I hate him now. Quite the opposite, in fact.
And all tonight I've been working on my English short story, which I completely forgot was due tomorrow. I'll post it bellow if anyone wants to read it (and offer suggestions for improvement, cause it's pretty terrible). I hate how much pressure is put on me to do something fantastic when it comes to creative writing. It's horrid.
‘You’re born, you live, and you die. There are no do-overs, no second chances to make things right if you frak ‘em up the first time. Not in this life, anyway.’
Battlestar Galactica plays softly in the background, on the ancient TV above her workstation. (He always liked the show, where she never had the taste for it. Yet now she can’t keep her eyes from it.) The lab is dark, deserted except for her. Shaw’s words ring through her mind, as she slides the blade teasingly over her skin in imitation of the woman on the TV. It doesn’t break the skin, but if she were to push just a little bit harder... It is that rush of danger that everyone craves; that delicate balance between excitement and pain: standing on the tip of the knife, so easy to fall either way. Death is such an intriguing thing. One would not be human, had they not considered what it would feel like. (Or perhaps it is merely her, having been presented with death, had become fascinated by the prospect of it). The metal of the scalpel glitters silver in the dark as she holds it up, the tip so very sharp-and deadly, if used correctly. She knows all too well the power hidden in the delicate instrument.
For the scalpel certainly is hers, in the same way a gun belongs to a soldier, or an axe to a woodchopper. She had felt an affinity with it since she first held one in her hand, and she has since learned to wield it in such a way that none could ever doubt this is her craft: her calling, one might say.
She remembers her first introduction to the scalpel. Ninth grade, and her teacher had brought out a box. Mrs Hadey, that was her name, and it was she who had first made her see the elegance of such an object. ‘The scalpel is not just an instrument there for your convenience,’ Hadey had said, ‘it becomes a part of you, a part of your work. It is an extension of your arm, of your body, of you. You control the scalpel, but do not force it. Let it become you, and you will know its power.’
Of course, she hadn’t paid any attention, then. Had a giggle with her friends about the crazy old lady trying to teach them science, and promptly forgot about the whole thing. Used the scalpel as everyone else did: just an instrument, there to do what she wanted, just as Hadey had said they would.
It wasn’t until uni, in her first year biology course. There, frustrated and angry at her inability to produce the results she wanted, her high school teacher’s words had come back to her-stored away in some half-forgotten part of her brain. ‘It is an extension of your arm...Let it becomes you and you will know its power.’ She remembers picking it up, inspecting it, turning it over and over in her palm. She does the same now. The metal is cool, calculating almost. But there is a beauty to it, too, in the way that it shimmers in the distant lights from the street outside, and the thin, streamlined body. It was then, as she’d held it in her hand, that she’d fallen in love with the scalpel, in a way that she’d never fallen for something before, and hasn’t since. Things like boyfriends (oh, but if only), and television shows and clothes, they change with time. But the scalpel, it’s stayed beside her all these years. A trusted friend in a sea of enemies (a sea she has created for herself, she must remember-there is no one else to blame but her).
Again, she runs the blade over her arm. She is toeing the line now. It’s the feeling again-the lure of risk, of what waits on the other side. (Of who). This time, she gives in, just to feel the rush. She adds the slightest of pressure to her stroke, and there’s a blooming red mark on her wrist. She feels nothing. Funny, she thinks with practiced detachment as she inspects her wound, how different this is to the first time she’d been hurt by the scalpel-then it had been an accident, a slip of her wrist and a deep cut on her opposite hand. She’d cried, just a bit, as she’d mopped at the blood; such a brilliant, startling red. The red colour stands out now: against her pale skin, and in stark contrast to the pale silver of her aggressor.
(His death, she should have foreseen. His death, she should have been prepared for. His death, she should have prevented.)
(She did not. She was not. She could not.)
She thinks, further back still, to the stories read to her in primary school. Dreamtime stories, of how the world as we know it came to be. How the Birds Got Their Colour, a favourite of hers, and it seems apt to her current situation. Because of the Dove’s pain, the bird’s got colour. Through pain, comes colour; comes life, and vibrancy, and happiness. One must persevere through hard times, in order to emerge triumphant on the other side. (Is she triumphant? Has she won? How is she to know when she’s come through the dark?)
She watches the blood trickle down her arm a moment more, then reaches for a tissue to wipe it away. ‘Like I said,’ Shaw says on the TV above her, ‘you make your choices, and you live with them. And in the end you are those choices.’ She thinks fleetingly on everything she’s done, on every choice, good or bad, she’s ever made which has led her to where she is now: here, in this room, with the scalpel and the old TV. Above her, Shaw closes her knife. She places the scalpel on the table. As Shaw says, you make your choices. She’s made hers.
(‘There is nothing you could have done to save him’)