Grueberfest '06: R5 - "As I Sat Sadly By Her Side" (792 hits)
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Rating: 2 on 22 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by kaos-king (antius777) (View user info) at 2006-11-01 10:51:17 EST
As I sat sadly by her side there on the road, my guts slowly leaking out onto the street, I couldn't help but sigh. My sight was weakening but I could still make out the brilliant blue of her irises and the tears that spilled freely from her eyes. She said something to me, but I couldn't hear it over my own failing heart beat. I did my best to smile for her and give her hand a feeble squeeze.
I'm sorry, I should probably start at the beginning, shouldn't I?
There's a phrase that's whispered cryptically all over this planet. Under the cover of the music of a German discotheque, hidden beneath the stone walls of a castle in Scotland. Spoken in the shaman's hut somewhere in Mozambique, found in a monk's advice high in the temples of Tibet. It can be heard in the back rooms of an occult shop in Philadelphia and the remnants still found scrawled in blood on the walls in a Mayan temple.
It is a message, a proclamation, a prayer. Sometimes a thousand years old, sometimes just uttered. It may be in many languages, but it always translates to the same thing - "You Better Run To The City Of Refuge."
I came to know these words, came to speak them as my mantra. I broke the laws of man and the laws 'not of man' to understand. I did it all for her, and I would do it again without doubt or hesitation.
My little sister, Angie, was my whole world. Times when despair should have taken over me, I carried on for her. She was the one bit of light I had in this world, the one reason I had to keep going. I had made it my duty early on to protect her, to keep her safe and happy. To keep the evils of this life that had tortured me away from her.
Of course, I failed. I was only three years older than Angie and the Devil so loves to torment the young. Our father had left shortly after Angie was born and our mother, a vicious and bitter woman, often took up with whatever man would have her. How many times I threw myself between my sister and a fury of fists, I don't remember. Usually I would bear the volume of these assaults, but occasionally I would be beaten too badly and my mother would get some hits in on Angie. Even worse, when the men took to joining in on the attacks. Sometimes I fought back, just to claim their attention away from my sister, but for the most part, I merely took the abuse.
Things grew worse as we got older. Our mother mostly ignored me, but seemed to have a particular venomous streak for Angie. Perhaps it was because age and the bottle were quickly consuming what paltry looks the woman had, and in my sister, she saw the youth and vitality she had squandered. Perhaps it was also because as Angie grew into a young woman, it was hard not to notice the lecherous glances mother's men would make in Angie's direction.
Then one day school let out and Angie was not as the usual spot where we met to walk home. Growing concerned, I went back to the office to inquire about my sister, only to learn that our mother had picked her up shortly after school had begun that day. I raced home, terrified by this turn of events.
Making it back to the squalor apartment that we lived in, I flung open the door to see a gathering of men in the living room. My fear increasing, I shoved past them and their cries of outrage. To my sister's room I went, and when my stricken gaze found her inside... that was when I heard my mother say "Get him."
Fists rained down upon me, and as I fell, feet found me just as vulnerable. Beaten, and thought defeated, I was dragged back into the living room where through the haze I could hear their laughs. So enveloped in their fantasies of violating my sister, so embolden by the punishment they had given me, they let me crawl away, probably thinking I was off to die in misery.
I made it to the room that my mother shared with her current man. Refusing to let myself rest, I dragged myself to the closet where he kept a revolver that he had before threatened Angie and I with. I pulled the gun from the box and peered at it. Through some luck of fate, although I was horribly broken, my right hand was still functional. I propped myself up against the filthy bed, every part of me screaming out in agony, and I limped back out into the hallway.
I shot two of them before the others even realized what was going on. I managed to catch another one in the back as he was fleeing. Part of me regrets not killing the rest, but then I would not of had enough bullets. Not enough bullets for the man who stumbled out of my sister's room, his pants still comically around his legs, or for our mother. Our mother, who had whored out her own daughter because of her rage, because of her hate. Our mother, who came around the corner of the bedroom, her face a mask of disbelief before I pulled the trigger and made her face no more.
My strength all but exhausted, I fell to the floor. I was not done, I had to see my sister, my Angie. I pulled my way into her room, inch by inch, my nails digging into the thin carpet. Finally, by her bedside, I gathered the last last of my will into a prayer, hoping she was still alive. Hoisting myself up, I looked upon the ruins of my sister and let out a sob. My weakness elicited a flutter from her eyelids and her hand moved to find mine. Grasping it, I gave the best I could, a grip that I hoped would transfer all of my love to her in some way. Then I blacked out.
I can only assume the it was the gunshots that brought the police. The scene at the apartment, although horrific, must have been obvious. When I awoke in the hospital, I was assured that everything would be okay, that all manner of authorities were looking into the case. Despite my pleas to see my sister, I was told that I must rest, that she was fine and healing in another room.
My body was badly injured, but my will remained strong for Angie. However, I came to find out that with my dear sister, it was the opposite. Her physical form had mended, but it was her very soul that was broken. They had transferred her to a psychiatric hospital on the edge of town before I had been well enough to see her. I demanded to visit, to at least call, but it seemed Angie was not speaking and my body still too fragile to travel.
Then, a week before I was to be released, my sister disappeared.
The psychiatric hospital was in chaos, they had never lost a patient before. The police, fearing reprisal from one of the johns, hosted an extensive hunt for her. I searched for Angie day and night until the point of collapse, and when I would fall, it would be with tears. I would weep for my failure to protect her.
The only clue, dubious as it was, was a sentence she had scribbled with crayon over and over again on a pad of construction paper the day before she vanished. No one could make any sense of it, and it was quickly dismissed by all the educated and logical people who were in charge of tracking down my sister. However, something about it stuck with me, something about it let me know it had meaning.
"You Better Run To The City Of Refuge."
Angie and I had both been frequent patron of the local library, finding we could escape our troubles in this world by soaring through the imaginative worlds found in books. She had always been the far more fantastical of the two of us, preferring the tales of knights and dragons to my spies and conspiracies. I fumbled through all of the books that she had gone through, seeking any hint. Strangely, as I was going through her backlog, I discovered that she had also taken out books on the occult, something she had kept secret from me. Neither Angie or I had ever been religious, but this knowledge disturbed me, not for the subject matter, but because I had not known.
Her readings in the super natural had been a odd assortment, most likely due to the miss-matched collection at the library. I emmersed myself in astral projection and invocations, chi and aethyrs, alchemy and ancient gods. Yet none of it gave me a clue to where Angie might have fled, none of mentioning this "City Of Refuge." But I felt in my heart that the answer lay in this direction.
And so I left. I left the confines of my Cleveland suburb where Angie and I had grown up and went out to find someone who could tell me more. What little of school I had left meant nothing, the same for what could be laughingly called our extended family. The police had all but given up and the hospital had paid off their insurance premiums. It was up to me.
The next few years are a bit of a blur. The very fact that I was never arrested lent me credence to my mission, for indeed, the amount and severity of my crimes escalated in the pursuit of knowledge. I stole and I murdered to gain the next step, to get to the next answer. I cut a path across all of North America, even traveling to Europe on a few occasions and to Africa once. I was never stopped, never questioned, and my legend grew among the occult circles. Tales of a young man who sought his missing sister, a young man who had the Devil's blessing, a young man with hope but without a prayer.
I had learned many things in those years, not all pertaining to my sister's disappearance. I had discovered the hidden world right below the surface of the glossy, saccharine existence that the majority of humanity bumbled through. Secret truths and long lost wonders that were kept from the herd, both for their protection and the keeper's. Ignorance and arrogance played such a large part in the waking world, the magnificent dreams of slumbering divinity so close.
I had pieced together enough about this "City Of Refuge" to lead me to Vancouver. Here I would find a man to guide me to this fabled village, however I needed to. My sister's retreat did not exist on any map, for it did not exist entirely in this world. It was a home for the lost and the fallen, the last stop before oblivion. Here in this City lay the remains of gods long ago once worshiped but now forgotten, monsters proven to be nothing but the things of fairy tales and humans who felt their place in the outer world were no longer welcomed. From what I had gathered from those I had bribed, threatened, or outright dispatched, one only had to believe enough that they belonged to travel to its gates. Angie, her heart and soul shattered, and undoubtedly been seduced by such an appeal.
The man in Vancouver's name was Marcuse and after breaking into his home, I found him in his small study, almost as if he were waiting for me. Never one for games, I simply spelled out my intentions to him, briefly explaining my altruistic reasons. Without much in the way of emotions, he told me that such a journey was possible, but the ramifications were not in my favor. He said to force one's self into the City was to invite the worst. Raising the gun I had brought to his head, I demanded he show me the way. Marcuse gestured to the open books on his desk, proving my earlier assumption correct, saying that everything I would need was present. The years searching for Angie had made me not only cold, but proficient in the ways of the occult. A quick glance over the pages confirmed his statement along with telling me I needed the blood of a mage.
Without hesitation, I shot Marcuse in the head. Looking back, I realize that he smiled right before he died. I suppose he felt as if he had played his role well.
Following the directions in the arcane books exactly, I drew a circle of salt and anointed my head with the blood of Marcuse. Speaking words rarely heard in this realm, I lit the body on fire. I waited the appropriate time and when the flames turned green, I stepped into them, feeling not a searing heat, but a tingling far from natural. The blaze consumed my form as I stood in the charring remains of Marcuse and soon, to any who would have walked into that study, the room found itself empty.
The green light abandoned me and I looked around. Behind me and to my sides there lay nothing but barren wasteland, but before me rose a amalgamation of structures unlike anything on Earth. A vast landscape built of every material known to man (and quite probably some not) it held architecture culled from all epochs of human civilization. Baroque churches of alabaster stone stood next to pagodas made entirely of steel. Pyramids, that seemed to be carved out of a stained red wood, cast their shadows on ranch-style houses which sat next to a colony of mud huts.
And there, not yards in front of me, stood open gates; the sign above them announcing in bold wrought iron letters - "The City Of Refuge"
Having finally found this place after so much time, the promise of rejoining my sister so close at hand, I almost fell to my knees there and wept. But, as my eyes took in the magnitude of the City before me, I realized I still had much to accomplish. I had not counted on the size of this place, I confess I don't know what I expected. But I had spent years and miles to get here so the prospect of one single location, no matter how bizarre, did not much sway me.
Perhaps I thought my entry into the City would go unnoticed, that the stealth and sometimes cruelty I had possessed on Earth would work to my advantage here. That was not the case, as I had taken only a few paces through the gate when a congregation of beings appeared to confront me. I had prepared for this eventuality, but regardless, I was still held in momentary awe by some of those who had come forth. There were strict humans among them, others with hints of the unnatural such as wings or tails. Others were beyond description and defied the most basic of senses.
I stood there in a stance that was neither passive nor aggressive, running the speech through my head that I had rehearsed. Before I could say a word of it, a man in robes with the image of trees stenciled onto them stepped forward. He identified himself as "Cernunnos" and in a stern voice, demanded to know why I had come. I began to explain about my sister, about Angie, but I was cut off by an Asian woman whose hair was on fire. She said I had defiled the City, violated their sanctuary, that I was a devastator.
Growing angry, I said that I denied nothing. That I had done things that perhaps they found criminal, but it had all been in search of my sister. Had they not stolen her away from me I would have never had to resort to these things.
A man with three faces where one should have been spoke up. He said he knew of my pain and that, indeed, he knew Angie. He said Angie had been crippled by her grief, a wretched soul, who had learned the slightest bit of secrets in the outer world. She had been broken and a small piece, seeking some comfort, had enough strength to find the answers in herself. She had discovered the words that all of those assembled had, "You Better Run To The City Of Refuge," and here she had come. Spirited away by her own belief to a place that she could heal.
I didn't know how much of this to believe and how much of it was a lie concocted to ease the rage in me. What this being said went along with all that I had gathered about this place. Yet, I couldn't fathom Angie leaving me, my sister coming to this place without a hope of rescue. Had she not left me a message all those years ago in the psychiatric hospital? She had wanted me to find her and bring her back, and I plainly told my accusers this.
A whisper went up among those who stood before me, agitated and argumentative. They seemed to be discussing some course of action, many of them coming to a disagreement on the matter. I cared little for their politics, only that I find my sister and lead her way from this place.
Finally, a hush spread over them and they parted to allow a figure through. The soft swish of crimson robes announced her arrival, her long dark hair now done in braids. But those brilliant blue eyes, the ones that were now so troubled and full of sorrow, they had matched mine since her birth. I felt my knees begin to buckle there in the road leading into the City Of Refuge as I saw my sister Angie for the first time in years.
As I was about to fall, she was there, embracing me. Tears exploded from my eyes and murmured my love to her over and over again. She asked me, sobbing, what I was doing there in the City. To find her, to save her, to be with her. "Why did she leave?" I asked, "Why didn't she let me help?"
Angie replied that it had been all too much. That she had found such happiness in her dreams, in her fantasies, that she couldn't take the horror of what lie in the real world anymore. That she had been looking for a way out for so long, somewhere they both could go. But then, but then... mother's betrayal.
"And you," she said looking into my eyes. She went on to say how she realized I had sacrificed my whole life for her, given up any dreams of my own for her. It wasn't fair to me, that I had to have my own life. She had come to the City Of Refuge and left me behind so that I could go forth and never have to worry about poor, fragile Angie anymore. The message she had left behind at the hospital had been a goodbye, a reassurance of her well-being if I had been so inclined to investigate, not a plea for help. The City Of Refuge was a place of healing and its walls would protect her forever. I was to be free of my burden of her.
Clutching the sides of her face, I begged her to leave with me, to return to Earth and start over in a brand new life. She spoke of all my crimes in a trembling voice, of all the damage I had done. I wept, saying that I would do them all again and more to have her with me.
"I know," she sobbed, her face filled with grief as I felt the blade slice across my lower abdomen.
I tried to step back but it was too late. The stroke had been neat, the edge exquisitely sharp. My innards spilled out of me onto the ground in a steaming, bloody mess. Angie and I both stared at my displaced insides in astonishment for a full moment before I collapsed. Then she was there, cradling my head with her tears wetting the side of my face.
She whispered apologies and love, pledges of devotion and atonement. Struggling to speak, I told it that none of that mattered. She was my sister, my world, my bit of light. I would forgive her anything and I understood. As I died, I asked her if she was safe, if she was happy. Through her sobs, Angie choked out a "yes."
And with that single word, I was able to die happy.
The man with three faces where one should have been, he is a recorder of memories. From my cooling body, he was able to retrieve the events that lead up to my death and preserve them. The tale of my misdeeds lives on, both as a warning to those who would transgress against the City Of Refuge as I did and as a testament to the love a brother had for his sister.
A more fitting epitaph, I can not conceive of...
User Reviews
Submitted by Yes (user info) at 2006-11-03 18:54:53 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Not bad.
Submitted by Stagger_Lee (user info) at 2006-11-01 23:43:43 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I played As I Sat Sadly By Her Side while I read this. If I give someone a song title I usually listen to it when I read their story.
Smiley face.
Submitted by Orgasmatron (user info) at 2006-11-01 23:41:03 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Additionally, I've been listening to the version of "Mad World" from the Donnie Darko soundtrack pretty much on loop since 11. It made for some fantastic background music for this story.
Submitted by Orgasmatron (user info) at 2006-11-01 23:34:41 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
You've seriously outdone yourself here. I dare say you should see how elastic this story is, because it deserves to be stretched and spread across many, many pages. The human element overshadows the supernatural element, and that's the way it should be. If I don't care for the characters, how should I care for what they're doing?
And you, damn you, made me care.
Submitted by kaos-king (user info) at 2006-11-01 23:13:47 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Gina... that was the most honest and thorough critique I've ever received on one of my pieces.
You made some good critical stances and had some wonderful ideas.
Thank You.
Submitted by gina (user info) at 2006-11-01 22:25:26 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I'll not break your streak, but I really didn't like this. There was never anything for us to discover as a reader, you spoon fed us everything. Granted you do it in a very capable, documentary sort of way, but there was no thrill for me, no tension or pacing. For instance, your paragraph right at the beginning:
My little sister, Angie, was my whole world. Times when despair should have taken over me, I carried on for her. She was the one bit of light I had in this world, the one reason I had to keep going. I had made it my duty early on to protect her, to keep her safe and happy. To keep the evils of this life that had tortured me away from her.
You didn't need to say any of that: you could have SHOWN us, then we get to discover it for ourselves instead of being lectured to. And this:
Our father had left shortly after Angie was born and our mother, a vicious and bitter woman, often took up with whatever man would have her
is really just a terrible sentence. "a vicious and bitter woman"? You have such great descriptives at times and then you say "a vicious and bitter woman" which is quite possibly the most trite thing ever. This whole beginning just reads like a summary.
"Making it back to the squalor apartment that we lived in" "Squalor" can't modify a noun. No big deal, probably a type-o, maybe you meant "squalid."
I know, I know, blah blah blah, but I just want to point out two more things. Later, you say:
Angie and I had both been frequent patron of the local library, finding we could escape our troubles in this world by soaring through the imaginative worlds found in books. She had always been the far more fantastical of the two of us, preferring the tales of knights and dragons to my spies and conspiracies.
This is another example of you spoon feeding us exposition. But moreover, I think it is a huge missed opportunity: you could have started this thing, after the opening hook and the "I should start at the beginning" thing, in a library. In the library, you could have SHOWN (as opposed to described) how much you cared for Angie (perhaps by tenderly finding her a book, or helping her sound out a word, or, as is more your style, fighting off a bully) which would have fixed my first point (about discovering your devotion to her,) and would have given us as a reader something to discover. In that first scene at the library, we as readers would have gone, "Oh, he loves his sister, he would do anything for her." Then at this point, you could merely go back to the library to search for clues and it would have made sense, without you having to say "Angie and I had both been frequent patrons of the local library." I'm not saying it's perfect, I'm just trying to prove a point, that it's more fun for me to learn stuff on my own instead of being narrated to.
My last point is that the end is completely without irony. Forget for a moment that I didn't really understand why he was killed in the City of Refuge (which was a nicely executed suprise by the way,) but I kept thinking that he would wake up back in the "squalor apartment" having realised that the whole thing was a fantasy, and that he hadn't in fact found his sister but had actually seen her die at the hands of her rapists, and the whole story was his fantasy of rescue. He was still a kid, and was lying next to her, dreaming of saving her and dying happy. Again, I'm not saying this is a better ending than yours, it just has some irony, something for us to discover, an "a ha!" moment.
I guess it's all about pacing and order of revelation. In "The Sixth Sense," the only thing that made that movie worth watching was the twist that made us want to go back and watch the whole thing again. In "The Matrix," even when Morpheus tells us what the matrix is, he doesn't REALLY tell us, we have to sort of figure it out. I guess I just felt like you told us too much.
g
Submitted by HotWillie (user info) at 2006-11-01 22:00:07 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Tie.
Submitted by EatMeCompletely (user info) at 2006-11-01 17:24:17 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
As I have come to expect from you. Awesomeness.
Submitted by Amontillado (user info) at 2006-11-01 15:51:36 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Crystle (user info) at 2006-11-01 12:59:07 (#)
Ranking: 2
*speechless*
Submitted by Crystle (user info) at 2006-11-01 12:59:07 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
*speechless*
Submitted by Brdn_Nkd (user info) at 2006-11-01 12:12:31 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Sacrilicious (user info) at 2006-11-01 11:58:35 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I
FUCKING
LOVED
THIS.
There was some minor proofreading stuff (leave it to me, right?), but you mentioned you were busy and it's all forgiveable. There are a few points where I wonder if you would have elaborated, given more time, but they did not detract from the story- only left me wanting more. I had such sympathy for your characters in such a short time. This was really a stellar entry.
This could be a novel. I would read the hell out of it.
Submitted by Bob_Dole (user info) at 2006-11-01 11:49:55 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Wow. Thats, thats just... wow.
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2006-11-01 11:33:01 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
whoa
Submitted by inion_de_trua (user info) at 2006-11-01 11:24:08 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
wonderful.
Submitted by DrogoRoch (user info) at 2006-11-01 11:22:05 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Damn fine, a pleasure to read stuff like this.
Submitted by hour_man (user info) at 2006-11-01 11:13:26 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by JoeyG (user info) at 2006-11-01 11:10:50 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
You are both really good writers, shame one of you has to lose this thing.
Submitted by St_Jimmy (user info) at 2006-11-01 11:09:17 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Awesome! Simply, freakin' awesome!
Very well done sir!
Submitted by Stagger_Lee (user info) at 2006-11-01 11:06:09 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Nah, mate, my entry is rubbish. Congrats.
Submitted by JMG114 (user info) at 2006-11-01 10:56:35 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
This was fantastic. I'm glad you posted it anyway.
Submitted by kaos-king (user info) at 2006-11-01 10:55:31 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
My most sincere apologies to Stagger_Lee and Orgasmatron.
Hell, everybody...
Not only did I have the most wretched time trying to finish this, but Real Life actually stepped in these last few days and played havoc on my quality creative time. I missed the deadline, and as far as I'm concerned, Stagger has won this contest. I simply wanted to post this tale, especially after it troubled me so badly.