"We have forgotten how to be good guests-- how to walk lightly on the Earth as its other creatures do."

~ Barbara Mary Ward

Vienna, Austria

May 14th, 2005

"Thank you, Mercy." The ageing man responded to the nurse. The falter in his voice had still not recovered from the peculiar events of the previous month. What had brought around the unexpected transformation in the great and proud Mr Aldrich Hunter was unknown to most. How could such an arrogant, power-hungry beast be so humbled over a few mysterious days? But everyone knew it had something to do with Nixie. Phoenix Landskein. His bombshell of a second wife. Unlike Mr Hunter and his son, she never returned to the mainframe, and no one knew where she was.

Neo Hunter took the chair on the other end of the fine dining. The table was older than the portrait of the Mona Lisa, spanning nine feet and carved with fine, intricate details from head to toe. The delicacies were not abundant enough to cure the hunger of an entire state anymore. Only what was required was served, and nothing went to waste. Neo ensured that was the case, and no one had any objections to raise. Perhaps it all had to do with the generational transfer of authority from father to son, most people believed.

But Neo Hunter knew better. Neo Hunter knew firsthand what had brought around the radical transformations in the Hunter household. It had everything to do with Mrs Phoenix Landskein, his enigmatic stepmother.

Sighișoara, Romania

April 9th, 2005

That bitch. Neo Hunter rolled down the haystacks piled so high atop one another. How could she? Neo always knew Phoenix Landskein was up to something, but everyone refused to believe him. But with hands tied against a coir rope and rashes of his allergy presenting themselves on his pale skin, Neo knew that was his best chance to prove his suspicions right before everyone. Phoenix Landskein was a gold-digger bitch.

Vision yet to be stable, Neo raised himself to stand, gaining support from his elbows and knees. The whole world spun around him, dizziness almost throwing him into another long daze. But Neo was desperate not to lose consciousness once again-- he slammed himself against the wall in the hopes of steadying his composure, his head held tight between his arms to squish some sense into him. Neo felt his throat ache and his entire frame sweating, leaving his body devoid of moisture. He needed water. Lots of it. Quick breaths. Long breaths.

The barn doors opened with a rasp to reveal before him a courtyard left unchecked for years prior. Ferns and rust had reclaimed all the fences and adornments once white and lustrous. Hints of a winding path leading to an old estate hid beneath the extensive flora consuming whatever men built over its natural state. The tall stone manor at the end of the road-- made almost entirely of stone and iron-- was all too familiar for Neo Hunter. It was his childhood home.

July 1986

The nights were the hardest. So were the days, but the newfound solace of jabbering strangers at school offered Neo an odd comfort. Was there a name for the fear of dinners? But it wasn't the food that scared him. It was what came with it. The people. His family. Every time he heard his name being hollered from downstairs, every step he took towards the dining room-- it all took an act of courage.

Gripping silences. Heaviness in the air. Neo often attempted to not let his cutlery touch the dishes, to not produce the slightest noise so that his parents wouldn't notice his presence. He only left the table once his mom disappeared into the kitchen and his dad to the porch.

But some days, even his silence could not save the tumults which were to befall. Sometimes, it was a hair in the soup, sometimes a tad amount of extra salt in the bacon. But his father's outrage always shook the entire cabin to the core.

Neo never looked at his father when that happened. He looked at his mom. How her eyes were shut, and a lonesome tear caressed her folds. How her palms clutched the dress she was wearing. Before long, when his father disappeared into another room, Gaia always asked Neo to go to his room. And there, he would sleep to the muffled cries of his mother in the place of lullabies, pillows tight against his eyes and ears to tuck himself into dreams where everything was alright.

April 9th, 2005

The rashes grew bigger and redder with the passage of every minute. Unable to find anything sharp and steady, Neo headed to their old kitchen, hoping to find something to free himself. But it was empty. Hollow. The fire and aura had long settled into smoke and filth. That was when he heard a cry from the floor above. Father. Rushing atop the stairs, Neo shouldered open the doors to their old bedroom.

"Finally. You're awake." Phoenix Landskein was a woman of stature, or at least she possessed the charm of someone alike. There she stood, at 5"7', holding what seemed to be a leash made of the creepers from the grounds-- stains of red embellishing the light green of the stem. His father lay on his chest atop the busted cot, his bare back adorned with streaks of blood as he struggled to flee his chains. His restraints were not coir, but cold iron, leaving him zero chance of escaping the onslaught.

Phoenix walked up to Neo, stopping only a few inches away. Neo wanted to back up, but the notion of her kicking him down from the foyer persuaded him to keep his ground. The whip safe in her right hand, Phoenix stared right into his soul-- her green eyes threatening to claw out his deepest fears. In the end, a smile. She took his arms and twined her palms around the coir ropes, only for the yarns to magically untangle themselves, freeing him from its clutch. She passed the leash to his hands, whispering to his ear, "Careful."

As Phoenix strolled down the stairs, Neo ran to his father to help him escape. He needed something to break the chains apart, and soon upon his search, he found all the utensils from their old kitchen on the bedside table, spread neatly on a wet towel. And while picking up the hammer, Neo noticed how his rashes had faded into his skin, no longer inducing an allergic reaction.

But before he could carry his father out somewhere safe, Neo felt the temperature rising around him. Fire. He walked faster only to nearly slip over the stairs, losing the clutch over his father. His rather plump figure tumbled down the stairs, and for a moment, Neo was afraid he had marked the end of his father's life. But the day had other intentions, not a life being lost, though the stone-cold manor collapsed in on itself, leaving no reminiscence of the world Neo once knew.

Vienna, Austria

May 14th, 2005

Putting his father to sleep and piling a heavy blanket atop his fragile frame, Neo walked out of his bedroom to the cold verandah. Phoenix Landskein was never found after that day. Even the most capable investigation teams couldn't gather a clue as to where she was. And the non-cooperative silence of the father and son only led to more and more suspicions and never a proper answer.

But whenever Neo brought around a change in his father's allocation of wealth for the better, the trees and animals seemed to bow before him. The sun seemed to shine brighter on the days' Neo had felt his best. And on the days when Neo felt despair, the clouds taught him to let his tears fall. And whenever he reminisced about his mother, he felt the air tug him into a warm embrace. The leash no longer had the stains of blood, but it bloomed and flowered in the courtyard of their home.

Neo knew what had happened to the Hunter household. It had everything to do with Mrs Phoenix Landskein.

#####

I struggled with writer's block for a long while in between, and I'm sure a lot of people out there has the same issue. I'd never been much of a pantser and had always leaned to more plotting tendencies, and thus reading upon and listening to a lot of storytelling theory and experimenting with a lot of techniques, I'm figuring out an outline to help me with the task. It's not rigid, it's arbitrary, it's constantly changing, and it helps me gain more insight into the stories I want to write, and helps me explore what all I could incorporate into them. And I thought this could be somewhat helpful for someone out there too (: So, I'm sharing the outline I used to write this story here, and... hope it helps!

Outline: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1l0Rc2EuvqCKDFnmw-Z6wv5yXSWdZTDa9aqVUS51F28o/edit?usp=sharing

*****

Shoutout

[cuz it feels like a wholesome thing to do (: Also, these will be some of Prose's best, so keep an eye on them (:]

The Evil Series by @Danceinsilence

The Evil Series by @Danceinsilence feels like an episodic thriller with its division into separate books and parts. Featuring a team of cops with the primary focus on a divorced female law enforcement officer and single mother (with the most adorable son), Janis Baker, this series really justifies its title throughout its course... Trust me, no matter how humane a person you think you are, you'd root for some of these characters to suffer the most-brutish-deaths possible... The evil is constantly on the rise and the saviors are on a never-ending effort to keep the streets clean. Sacrifices, serial killers, assassins-- An over-arching threat, loved ones to protect-- this series will not give you a break! Do check it out!

*****

Instagram: (Um, I'll edit that in later...)

Am I a good person, or am I trying to be? Is there any difference between the two? Or am I, after all, a bad person?

At the end of every chapter, it is for you to judge. Forget everything you think you know about me. I need your judgement to be objective and free of any bias from the assumptions you might hold. I want you to discover who I truly am. And thus, I want to try and understand myself and what I'm hiding from. Let's begin.

The experiences I will reveal throughout these chapters are mostly specific to my life and is not, in any manner, generalized. But I hope I can leave enough ambiguity to these posts so that you can meanwhile judge yourself to some extent. Why judge? Because we are fundamentally judgmental creatures. Because no matter how perceiving we believe we have turned over the years, our judging mindset rarely fades into inexistence; so does every stigmatic belief we are born with.

For the first chapter, I assumed it would be best to provide you, the reader, with details you can cross-check from my profile. Because at the end of the day, every little thing we do, every little thought we bare-- it all invariably points to who we truly are. (Also, good liars always build their version of the truth on a foundation of lies.) I had enough reason to suspect my protagonists over the years did the same. I discovered that I hid within their hearts a piece of my soul. A fine quality in a writer would be to lose all consciousness of self when creating a character, but one of my fatal flaws was always being a self-absorbed narcissist, no matter how many steps I took to alter myself.

The Dark Alley featured an unnamed protagonist who upheld his newfound love for a girl he had befriended above all his friends, who he considered muppets to his threads. From being alone with no connections, he finds friends who, he believes, are tolerable. The teenage protagonist adds and subtracts these muppets according to his will to find a suitable social circle. In addition, he values himself for having something special from the so-called nerds who lacked the social skills he comparatively had in abundance. And even so, when I narrated the story from his perspective, a part of myself rooted for this unbearable egomaniac, which led me to convince the readers to do the same.

The Constrained Journey featured an irritable toddler gathering her courage to leave her loving parents, all because they neglected her compulsion to be bought a bicycle. And yet again, I narrated the story from her perspective, almost justifying her actions, only to leave the readers with a conclusion with barely any change in her personality but only in her immediate needs. In the Needs & Wants Theory of Character Design, I deprived every protagonist of mine of meeting their actual need. In fact, I left them devoid of even realizing a transformation is essential to their character arcs-- as any person who neglects to confront their necessary evils would.

And in A Day in the Life of a Kleptomaniac, yet another unnamed young protagonist with recurrent stealing tendencies gets away with their acts of mischief. And subconsciously, I rooted for him to be safe, and I inflicted the same evil will on the ones who read the tale.

In The Mysterious Lady, Susan, an obnoxious and overly curious teenager, is gifted with the power of invisibility, and she uses it solely for her personal desires, including beating up a fellow student she hates and stealing from a roadside store. Only towards the end, when she is faced with an individual, much more in the lack of self-control, does she finally have an opportunity to learn what she could have done with her powers. But instead, she regrets being at the wrong place at the wrong time and is only affected by her fear of death.

In Out of Love, we meet Harry, an ageing widower and retired advocate, in the last proceedings of adopting a child. Towards the end, he realizes the child he was about to adopt was his granddaughter. But no details whatsoever were revealed on how the adorable grandfather loses touch with his daughter, so much so that he is unaware that he even has a granddaughter. And the fact that he is in no condition to raise a child is emphasized countless times in the story, and even being aware of it, Harry decides to proceed with the adoption. He places his want to cure his loneliness over the need for his granddaughter to be raised by someone capable of handling the pressure.

David McKenzie was an outright criminal and a brutal assassin, fuelled only by the instructions he received from the higher-ups and his perfectionistic love for his field of work, and later vengeance. 'Vampires are Made' featured a protagonist who never recovered from a regret so early on in his life and thus drowned himself in the ocean of his fears and regrets. Andromeda featured a protagonist who never returned to her normalcy after her parents died in an accident, only to be solaced at the magical return of her deceased mother.

'Has Anyone Seen Jo?' featured an arrogant guardian angel who boasts of his superiority and devoted purpose and regards any mortal being as inconsequential and worthless in the grand scheme of God. Sabrina was narrated as a helpless woman in the clutches of a carnal society when nothing, in reality, substantiated that there was nothing to incriminate her with.

Something Wrong featured a bold female law enforcement officer who is unable to put her mind at ease after receiving a call which she was unsure whether a prank or not, only to leap into action regardless of the consequences when massive protests challenge the very State because she was selfishly unwilling to live with more regrets after the death of her supportive mother. And Blaue Augen attempted to humanize the actions of the most notorious, wretched dictator of all time, only to end with a malicious sneer, once again denoting nothing has changed throughout the story.

There, a myriad of flawed characters shying away from their actual needs only to meet their immediate wants-- or even worse, gain zero insight from the tainted events that held enough power to transform their lives. There, individuals with unique strengths and sometimes a strong awareness about themselves neglect the need to confront the necessary evils in the voyage of life.

There is no objective good or bad. But when a character realizes their flaws and attempts to act on them, it forms a positive arc. And when a character doesn't even realise their needs or refuses to redeem themselves, it leads to a negative arc. Is it not possible for us to choose the journey we would traverse in our lives?

But it is far easier to identify the needs and wants of a character built within the bounds of a story scape. On the contrary, our lives are multi-dimensional, and our personalities multi-faceted-- a tapestry of intertwining elements forming intricate yet delicate patterns, hard to untangle.

So what is that you want? What is it that you need? Are you like one of my questionable protagonists, shying away from the life you're meant to explore? It sure would be impossible to comprehend every last thread woven into the fabric of our personality, but does that mean we should never attempt to understand what makes us who we are? In a life bounded within the chains of time, finite, isn't it one of the best explorations we could go on? To go on an adventure exclusive to ourselves which might even answer the much larger-in-scale questions of free will, fate, purpose and belief?

At the end of every chapter, it is for you to judge. Forget everything you think you know about yourself. I need your judgement to be objective and free of any bias from the assumptions you might hold. I want you to discover who you truly are. And thus, I want to try and understand myself and what I'm hiding from.

So are you a good person, or are you trying to be? Is there any difference between the two? Or are you, after all, a bad person?

#####

1400 words, exact (: Hey everyone, um, lemme know what you think about the post! I know this one feels a bit distorted. I was unable to convert the post to exactly what I had in mind, so... And also, with the upcoming chapters, I'll try to be more general instead of being this specific, and try and present the underlying ideas in a better manner too (:

Also, check out Controlling Madness by @booklover_2020! It has this almost-dystopian world featuring a bunch of very intriguing characters with their own agendas, and everyone seems to hold so much depth! Action, mystery, family ties, secret agencies, military control, prison systems, insiders-- it has everything required for the making of a good thriller! Do check that out! Love y'all <3 <3

You

Me

Talk

Love

Him

Her

Together

Lost

Forever

Darkness

Broken

Shattered

Walls

Alone

It's over

Forgive me

The End

She was the most beautiful I had ever lain my eyes on

She was the sun, the moon, the stars, and the rain

She was lacking in my past, idolized in my present

How could I knew she would become my future pain?

I hum her name, I hear her voice

I think of our games, of the special days

I still feel the same, nothing has changed

How could I knew you wouldn't stay?

I'd always wondered how it would feel to kill myself.

The morning sun recreated the bars of the windows on my bed, imprisoning me in a cage of shadows. I grabbed the sheets where the dark lines fell, seeing if I could pull them apart, and off to my liberation. But I couldn't even grasp them, as if they never existed. But I knew. I knew how the cage bound me in chains-- disguised as a blanket of warmth and comfort. Disguised as a tapestry of blood and kinship.

"Morning, sweetheart." He entered my room again, dawning his pretence costume of a saviour in the streets. People looked at him like a hero, but I knew who he was beneath all the medals and the stars. I knew the creepy ogre lurking beneath his malicious sneer. I knew the grotesque fantasies hiding underneath his firm assurances. I knew. I knew.

His filthy palms were on my neck. I baulked away from his disgusting frame, his foul stench. I knew I shouldn't have-- he was about to leave, and I could have been in peace till the night fell, but no. Today was different.

Frustrated sigh-- removing the metal watch and holster from his undeserving outfit-- he stood with his back against me. The silhouette of his stocky frame enclosed within the same bars that held me-- but he stood mighty, while I, an incomprehensible heap of slender patterns. But today was different.

I stood upon my bed, my shadow growing vast behind me. The bars could only then reach my knees, but they surrounded him-- a beast prepared for the kill. I bent down, seizing the holster without his notice. Bore the cold piece of metal on my skinny arms. Turn around, sweetheart.

The sheets would have to be washed. The floors would have to be wiped. The walls would have to be painted. But the house was cleansed of its dirt more than ever-- it no longer sheltered within an aberration, one the world didn't need.

I exited the bed and onto the floor. The bars could not hold me anymore.

Blood squished under my bare feet. I walked out the front doors and onto my liberation.

I'd always wondered how it would feel to be alive.

#fiction

404 an error found

like all the roads before

I'm hitting the ground

when tired:

how do you run?

patch up the hurt

like all the times before

give up on being first

when lost:

how do you return?

en route 303

202

101

to zero

404 can not be found

i torched the highway

it's the ground

whereupon I now can stand

en route 303

a new road, another try

on and on it goes

times fly

i can't find the road for me

maybe some dreams aren't meant to be

To whoever this may concern,

Life is short. And if I had continued lingering on my unsatisfactory, perpetual workdays and the weekends, which passed me by like a meteor, far in the night skies, quick and barely perceivable, I'm afraid I might transform into some lost spirit post my death, haunting old houses and creepy, dark woods. And I don't plan on being a nuisance after my death, which would only contribute to my mumbling paternal grandfather's distasteful prediction that I would be a massive waste of time and effort, given a chance. Also, I would be eternally grateful if you could hold back your irritable impulses to retrieve and establish me back into my mundane, tiresome, unimaginative life that I used to charter. Because if my calculations are not altered by any unexpected factors I forgot to consider, I will return on my own accord in around a year. Until then, I would be finally leading a life that I love and should have lived in this mortal, transient experience of being yet another human on this little blue planet, potentially insignificant in the grand scheme of the universe and everything in it. Thank you for reading and your patience-- see you in a year, hopefully not.

Hanging by a thread,

Hope Tulow

Sunday morn, skies that mourned,

wrinkled blankets, undone laundry,

notes that piled, lectures paused,

plates and bowls, last night meals.

Seasons changes, fall and rains,

falling apart, piece by piece.

Save me, please, screamed to the skies,

begged and hurt, lone in a crowd.

Deep inside, something changed,

life felt different, so did I.

What once was, what now is,

what would be, all blurred in one.

Barely human, days all same,

can't be machine, feelings clawed.

Bewitched in a maze, no way out,

dark that stayed, lights that frayed.

Would I leave, this game of hurt,

or would I stay, forever and frail?

Shall I try, when all things fail,

or just let go, as fate may plead?

But I will wake, to another day,

for dawn may break, and the sun may rise,

birds may sing, and the rains may pour,

nights may fall, and the cold may creep.

I will wake to another day.

some might say i'm imitating you

what else is there for me to do

when i love your voice and the way that you talk

i'm a mirror, a chameleon, this is what i do

i don't have dimples, such a bright smile

i wouldn't act like such a child

but i love your spirit, your guts, and your laughter

i'm a mirror, a chameleon, at least for a while

trying to find the me i am destined to be

someone who won't be rattled at the slightest disharmony

i want to be the girl sparking life

not this awful version i have to call me

i don't want to be you

just a little bit more like you