The Good Die Young: Found

The pain is gone. I can hardly remember my life without it. I open my eyes to see that I’m still in the hospital room, a constant note ringing in the air. I look over to the source and see my family huddled around my body. Some of them look heartbroken, while others look happy, but all have tears in their eyes. A nurse that stands to the side of the crowd looks down at her watch and calls out, “Ryan Traverse, died Sunday, February 10, 2013, 9:41 A.M.” She then walks over and starts turning off the machinery attached to my body. No one around me takes notice of her.

I walk over to them, wishing there was some way I could console them, that I was better now. Some of them seem to understand, though, at least those who understood what pain I was in. They all knew that the cancer was extremely aggressive, and that I just didn’t have it in me to take any more of the pain that came with it.

I look over to the wall and see my reflection in the mirror there. I smile; I look like myself again. My hair’s back, I’m wearing real clothes (and good looking ones I might add), and I have my glasses. It’s quite the contrast to the pasty and bald body lying still on the bed.

Behind me appears a light out of nowhere. Voices from within the light call out to me, beckoning me to come. The sight of it fills my heart with a joy I’ve never felt. This is it; whatever happens now, all that I was no longer matters. I step into that light, and I’ll be at peace.

I walk toward it, but then I hear a voice louder than those from the light. I can’t tell where it comes from, but I can tell it’s a man’s voice. Full of kindness and compassion, it calls out to me. “Ryan,” it says.

“Hello?” I call out. “Who is that?”

“I’m over here,” the voice says, and this time I can tell it comes from the light. Then all of a sudden, a figure comes through, just barely enough for me to tell it’s a man. “Ryan, I come with a message,” the man says.

“What message?” I ask.

“There is something we ask you to do before you move on,” the voice said. “If you chose to decline, you may pass on and be at peace, but if you chose to accept, we would be grateful for your services once more.”

If the choice is mine, then the choice is obvious. “Of course I’ll help; I’ll do anything to help. What must I do?”

“A young girl named Chrissy needs your help,” the voice explained. “She’s lost and you are the only one that can show her the way back. Step into the light and you’ll be taken to where you will find her. Only she will be able to see you from now on.”

I nod and step toward the light, taking one last glance at my grieving family. I wish there was something I could do to tell them that I was fine. I wish I could heal their hearts of their sadness, but the light calls me toward it. One last act of good on Earth, and then I’ll be free. Maybe once I’m on the other side of that light, I’ll be able to reach out to them. There’s only one way forward, so I step inside the light.

All of a sudden I’m standing in a forest. I don’t recognize this place, but the pine trees make me think I’m in the northern regions. There’s snow on the ground, but I don’t feel cold. I look down at my feet, and see that I don’t even make footprints. The sun looks like it’ll set shortly, so I just pick a direction and walk.

It’s not long before I come across my mission. Sitting huddled against a tree is a young girl, maybe twelve or thirteen. She’s all bundled up, which is the first indication to me of how cold it really is. Her legs are pulled up to her chest, and she’s crying softly. She’s lost, by the looks of her, and for a while it looks.

She hasn’t noticed me, which makes me wonder if she would be able to see me. My family couldn’t see me before, but maybe something changed when I stepped through the light.

I take a step toward her, and all of a sudden I feel the snow. I still don’t feel the temperature of it, but I at least feel how physical it really is. It’s like all of a sudden I gain my weight back. The crunching snow startles the girl, causing her to look up and around herself, obviously terrified of some unknown creature. I take another step, crunching through the snow as if I had my body back, but again numb to the cold of it. She jumps up on her feet, and I see just how small she really is. Looks of her, she wouldn’t weigh a hundred pounds soaking wet.

“Hello?” she called out, shaking with cold and fear. “Is someone there?

I take two more steps and her eyes lock on me. I’m just standing there, smiling that she can actually see me. “Hello,” I say with a wave.

“Who are you?” she questions suspiciously. I guess I can understand her apprehension; she was alone in the woods and all of a sudden an older guy walks up to her as if nothing was wrong.

“My name’s Ryan,” I begin, “and I’m here to help you get out of here.”

She stares at me like she doesn’t believe I’m actually here. “You’re not from one of the search parties, are you.”

“No, Chrissy, but I’m here to help you get back.”

Her response wasn’t what I was expecting. “I don’t know where you came from,” she began, “but I’m not going back.”

That threw me back. “Why would you not want to go back?”

“It doesn’t involve you,” she spat at me. “Go back to... wherever you came from.”

She started walking away. I was appalled.

“You told me she was lost, not running away,” I say to no one in particular.

“That doesn’t mean she isn’t lost,” said the voice from the light. I flinched from the voice, not expecting anyone or anything to reply. “Stay with her.”

“Alright, I’ll try again,” I say out loud, and start following Chrissy.

We walk for several minutes. I keep my distance but keep her in sight. From her reaction last time, I guess she can only see me when I get within a certain distance from her, and for now I stay well out of her range. There seems to be no direction to her travel; she’s just walking in whatever direction she’s facing, and constantly changing it, almost as if to get as lost as possible in these woods.

At one point, just before sunset, she ducks in some brush as an actual search party comes in earshot. I hear frantic calls for Chrissy, but she doesn’t answer or show herself. I decide to check out the search party when it was at its closest to Chrissy’s position.

About fifteen people all with flashlights were crossing this area of forest about half a football field from Chrissy. Mostly men, but among them were two women, one maybe a few years older than Chrissy, and the other mid-thirties. Both were just bawling as they called for Chrissy. At one point the older fell to her knees crying. The teenager dropped to comfort her, and the whole group stopped moving.

“Mom, we’ll find her,” the teen said, wiping away her own tears. She was trying to be strong for her mother.

“What did I do wrong, Ariel,” the mother said. “How did I lose my baby?”

Ariel wrapped her arms around her to comfort her. “She’s out here somewhere, and no one here is going to stop looking until she’s safe at home. She’s just confused, ever since dad left.”

“If I hadn’t been judgmental, your father would’ve stayed, and Chrissy would’ve never...”

“Stop that,” Ariel yelled, getting her mother’s attention. “You did what you had to do, and Chrissy will one day understand that like I do. Don’t blame yourself for what was necessary.” She continued more gently, “We’ll find Chrissy, and we’ll work through this together.”

They hugged and I rejoined Chrissy.

“So you ran away,” I say behind her.

She was startled, which was my intention, and nearly gave herself away. Collecting herself, she said, “Why do you care?”

“I care because you’re hurting your own mother,” I say.

“She hurt me first, by divorcing my dad.”

“Both your mother and your sister really care for you,” I point out, “and they’re not going to stop looking until they find you.”

“Ariel was out there?” she asked curiously.

“Yes, your sister was part of that group.”

“She’s my half-sister, from my mother’s first marriage,” Chrissy said.

“Despite that, she’s out here with the rest of them.”

Chrissy starts walking away. When she gets a good distance, I say out loud “Why is she like this?”

The voice from the light answers back, “Like her sister said, she is confused.”

“Then what can I do to help her? She constantly rejects me?”

“Stay with her,” the voice repeats. “In time, she’ll listen to you. You can do this, Ryan. We wouldn’t have sent you if we didn’t think you were the one that could get through to her.”

“Alright,” I say calmly, “I’ll keep trying; I’ll stay with her.” At that I walk off after Chrissy.

In no time things took a turn for the worse. The weather really went downhill as a snow storm blew in after sunset. Chrissy was really struggling to get through it, but she powered forward as long as she could. I was numb to the cold wind, but I could see it was bad, and only getting worse by the minute.

At one point, Chrissy passed a cave big enough to hide from the storm in, but she couldn’t see it through the storm. I noticed it since I’m unaffected by the storm, and see that it would be a suitable shelter for the night for Chrissy. I have to get her to go into the cave.

“Chrissy!” I call out when I get close enough to her. “You passed a cave where you could ride out the storm! Follow me!”

“What?!” she called out through chattering teeth. “There’s no cave back there! I’ve been through these woods before, and there’s no cave!”

She tries continuing, but a gust of wind literally knocks her on her back. She struggles to get back up as the storm gets even worse. “This can’t last much longer!” she says.

“Chrissy, this is ridiculous! This storm is only getting worse, and if you stay out here, you will die!”

“Then I’ll die!” She cried out. “No one has ever given me a second thought! My dad left without ever saying goodbye! My mother moved on to her third husband in three months! My half-sister is always giving me lectures like I’m a child! I couldn’t ever do anything right for any of them! So maybe I’ll just die!”

All through that, I felt a coldness I’ve never felt before. It wasn’t from the storm, but from something else. It was as if another evil presence slid among the trees around us, eagerly watching us. I don’t know if Chrissy felt it, but I had to get her out of here soon.

As soon as I thought that, Chrissy collapsed out of exhaustion. “Chrissy?” I call as I kneel next to her. She doesn’t respond. I put a hand on her shoulder to find that I can touch her.

All of a sudden that dark presence feels closer. “Who’s there?” I call out, staying next to Chrissy to protect her.

“Step away from her,” said a new voice. It was seductive but cold. A dark veil appeared in front of us, and the only thing visible through it was a pair of great deep blue eyes. In a way, they were mesmerizingly beautiful, but there was just something off about them. “She’s made her choice, you heard her. She wants to die; she wants to leave this world for a better one. I’ll take care of her from here, young man.”

“No,” I answer back. “She doesn’t mean that.”

“I see her heart more than you do, young man,” said the thing from the veil. “It’s full of darkness and despair. This world has tortured her soul for so long, she deserves rest. Her heart of darkness has no place among the angels; I’m the only home she has left.”

“No,” I say, now standing up to the darkness. “She has a family, and she has a home. I may not know exactly who you are, but her home is not with you. Leave us alone.”

At that, I bend down and gently pick Chrissy up. I turn back toward where I saw the cave. Whatever that dark presence was, it didn’t follow us, but stayed where it was, chuckling to itself.

Chrissy doesn’t wake up until the next morning. The storm has blown over, and now snow just lightly falls. She looks around the small cave before looking up at me. I’m standing at the mouth of the cave, making sure that evil creature didn’t try to come again. “Where are we,” she asks groggily.

“Safe, I think,” I reply. I leave my post and sit next to her in the cave. “You almost died out there, you know.”

“Is that what was happening?” she asked. “It was dark and cold, and all I heard was this evil laughing. All I could see were giant... coils... like I was surrounded by this huge...” she couldn’t continue her description, but I could imagine what she saw. “I don’t want to go there,” she admitted.

“And you don’t have to,” I tell her, “because you still have a home here. Your mother and half-sister really love you, and they would do anything to protect you.”

She nodded and started to cry. “But how do I get back to them? I’m hopelessly lost.”

“What do you think I’m here for?” I ask jokingly. Luckily, I’ve remembered the path we took to get here from where we saw the search party yesterday. It only takes us a few minutes to get there, and from there we trace back the path that they took to a ranger’s station.

The minute Chrissy shows up there, the phones are ringing, calling the family, doctors, police officers and many others. I stay close to Chrissy the whole time as blankets are wrapped around her and warm drinks handed to her. Doctors come and look over her, police and rangers ask her questions, and finally her mother and half-sister come and never let go of her. The three girls are constantly crying and apologizing. I stay throughout the event as news stations begin sending vans to the location.

Chrissy is finally left alone for two minutes. I take the opportunity to sit next to her on a bench. “Thank you,” she whispers, “for everything.”

Over my shoulder I see the light that first appeared in the hospital. Its warm rays invited me in, signaling that my job was done. “It was my pleasure, but I have to go now.”

“Where?” she asked.

“Whatever comes after this,” I say.

“I’ll always remember you,” she says.

“And I’ll watch over you, always.”

At that, I stand up and walk toward the light. Before stepping in, I take one last look at Chrissy, and say, “I’ll see you soon enough again, I think,” and step inside the light.

Before I do, though, I catch Ariel’s eyes as she sits next to Chrissy. She smiles as me as if she could see me, too. There’s something about her that tells me she’s going to play a part of something great. This whole situation tells me that something big is on its way, something that will change this world forever.

3-27-2014

On March 27, 2013, at roughly 3:00 AM, I uploaded my book to Smashwords.com. Originally, I was disappointed that it was only an e-book, and I thought no one would see it. I have been surprised, though. A few months later, it was downloaded 50 times. When I started this blog, it had been downloaded maybe 70 times. That was back in October, and since then I've seen rapid growth. Today, one year after original publication, I've reached almost 200 downloads.

I'm so happy for this small celebration. I truly hope those of you who have read my book have enjoyed it. If I could thank you in person, I would.

On this bright Thursday morning, I'm still working on that sequel. It's coming slowly, and I wanted to share something on the anniversary of book 1. Circumstances have forced me to take on more with this book, including the cover art.

I'm no expert with photo-editing software, but I was able to finish the cover art for book two. So, without further adieu, here is the cover for my second book.

 The background effect was borrowed from http://wonderfl.net/c/ujiQ. Like I said, still a lot of work to do for the story, but it is coming. I hope you'll stay with me in this, and I'll have that book out as soon as I can.

It has been forever since I last posted about religion, and I like that. Maybe I'm growing a little, or maybe I'm reverting back to a previous stage in my life. Whichever, I'm tired of it. I'm not sick of it, just tired of it. I'm tired of trying to defend or justify what I believe, so I'm just not going to talk about it anymore. At least, not here.

There comes a time when a person reaches their threshold. That point when you cancel your subscription and stop buying into something. You aren't turning back, but you're saying to yourself, "Okay, I have what I need" or "I have what is necessary."

This is where I now stand. If you liked my religious posts, I'm sorry. I made this blog to originally be a writing blog, and I want to get it to that type of page. If you want my opinions, contact me directly, but I'm no longer going to bore those who don't with them here.

Angels and Shadows

            I wake up with a jolt and a scream. It’s a cold, muggy day and I find myself lying down in the middle of a cemetery. All there was before was a heavy darkness flooding in, and terrible pain. My heart is racing, and I pull my legs up to my chest and hold them there. I can’t help but sob, but I feel fine.

            But I’m not fine. I may not be in pain, but that’s only because I know I’m dead. I don’t even know how it happened. I just came here to visit a friend’s grave. But when I went to leave, I was pushed into an open grave, and I think I twisted my ankle when I landed. I was crying when all of a sudden a large pile of dirt just fell into the hole. I tried to dig out, but it was too heavy. I felt crushed from all sides, and I could barely move. The worst sensation I’ve ever felt.

            Now I’m just lying down next to the grave that turned out to be mine. I stop shaking enough to push myself into a sitting position, looking down on the pile of dirt covering my body. The realization hits me. I’ll never get the chance to graduate, to get married, or to have kids.

But is this it? What do I do now? There’s no light, no voice, nothing to beckon me on.

There is another girl, looking about my age. She’s walking along the next row of graves, humming something to herself, seemingly content, even happy. She’s in all black: black tight jeans, black boots, black jacket and top. What skin that shows is pale, but her long hair bright red.

She walks past without giving me a second thought. I instinctively call out to her. “Hello?”

She stops, turning as if startled. She suddenly looks at me with great interest. She can see and hear me, and I know that I’m dead, so that has to mean…

“So, you’re dead, too?” she asks. I nod slowly, indicating the filled grave. She relaxes, says, “Well, good luck to you,” and goes on her way.

She leaves, but I don’t know what to do. After a minute of her walking on, I figure that I have to do something, because nothing is happening with me kneeling at my own grave. I stand up, take a deep breath, and rush after her.

“Hey, wait!” I call out when I find her again. She turns back to look but doesn’t slow down. I speed up and walk beside her. “I’m Natalie. What’s your name?” I say, extending my hand.

“I’m Olivia,” she says, ignoring my hand. I awkwardly retract my arm before asking, “So…um…what happened to you?”

“I died, now leave me alone,” she replied tartly.

“But where are you going?”

At that, she grabbed my hair, punched me in the stomach with her other hand, then used both arms to throw me to the ground. I’m flat on my back, and stands over me, putting her foot on my shoulder to hold me down. “Don’t follow me,” she warned. She then continues on her way until she just vanishes.

“Wait!” I call out. I move to stand up, but before I’m fully on my feet I’m somewhere else. I’m in a house. It’s run down and abandoned. The walls are full of holes and graffiti. The floor is covered in all kinds of trash. Windows are smashed and boarded up, and the only light comes from the cracks and gaps in the rotting boards and door.

Despite the dim light, I see Olivia searching the next room, just as messy but nonetheless a kitchen, old cupboards on the walls and even a small table in the middle of the room. I can tell where a refrigerator and a dish washer once were, their spaces occupied by garbage. “What are you looking for?” I ask.

She stops her search enough to look at me, bewilderment and anger at once in her eyes. “How are you here? Why are you here?” she asks. I shrug in response to both. I have no idea how I followed her, I just did.

She didn’t like my answer, though. She grabbed my coat with both hands, yelling, spun me around, and shoved me through a door to the back yard. The door was closed, but I phased right through it, although I lose my balance on the three steps down and once again find myself flat on my back in the cold unkempt grass. I look back up in time to see her phase through the door after me, enraged more than ever. “I said don’t follow me! If I see you one more time, I’ll…”

“You’ll what?!” I yell back as I stand back up. “You’ll kill me? Sorry, you’re a little late for that!” I’ve had enough of this girl. “Just don’t bother; I’m out of here.”

I turn and leave, walking through the fence to an inhabited back yard. The dog in the yard starts barking, but I don’t care, I keep walking as the dog’s owners come out to see what the commotion is. They, of course, can’t see me, and I just ignore them as I phase through another fence.

This time, I come out the other side and am right behind Olivia. Bewildered, I turn back around to look at the fence behind me, which just so happens to be a nice, painted one compared to the piece of junk one I thought I just passed through. “What the heck?” I say out loud.

Olivia notices me, turns back on me and grabs my coat threateningly. “Why do you keep following me?”

Looking her straight in the eyes, I say, “I don’t know, and believe me, I don’t particularly choose to.”

She seems to consider my words for a minute before releasing me and turning back to the activity in the yard. It appears to be a birthday party. Little girls in fancy dresses sat at three little tables, each with a small cake, fancy tea pots and cups and little cookies.

“Doesn’t seem like your kind of party,” I remark to Olivia.

“Where is he?” she asks herself, ignoring my comment.

“Where is who?”

She ignores me and turns to walk in the house. For some reason, I follow her, phasing through the glass door after her. We’re standing in a kitchen laden with sweets and smells of a little girl’s birthday party, but no people; all of the mothers are in the backyard with the girls. Olivia has no interest in anything here, except for a sharp knife she pulls out of a drawer. With knife in hand, she moves on, searching the house for someone.

“Olivia, what are you doing?”

“Shut up!” she yells, spinning and thrusting the knife into my belly. At the last minute, though, I manage to get out of the way; even though we’re both dead, I don’t know what would happen if that knife hit me if she can hold it. She whiffs, stumbles, falls to the ground and the knife flies out of her hand. I use the opportunity to pin her down before she can recover.

“Olivia, what are you doing?” I repeat in her ear.

“I don’t have to tell you anything, now get off of me,” she growled back.

I get off of her, but as she stands up, I say, “Fine, don’t tell me; I probably won’t care anyway, but I’m not letting you hurt someone.”

“When did you become my mom?” she asked mockingly.

“No, it’s just…” I begin, “it’s just that I hurt someone very close to me while I was alive, and I think that that is the reason I am now dead.”

“Sorry, I don’t believe in karma,” Olivia replied dryly. “And this guy doesn’t deserve forgiveness.”

“So you’re going to kill him?”

“Only returning the favor,” Olivia said. At that, she left the room in search of whoever she was looking for.

I just stand where she left me, thinking about what she said. Was this guy she looking for a murderer? If so, does Olivia deserve the revenge she wants so much?

But why do I care? I don’t know this girl, or her problems. Who am I to tell her what she should do?

Yet I keep following her. Something is connecting us, and it keeps pulling us back together. Something isn’t letting us move on, at least not until we do what it wants.

“Olivia!” I call out through the house. Going into the other room, I immediately hear noise coming from under the floor. I head down there, phasing right through the door and down the stairs to a dark basement. Light comes from the dirty window, an exposed light bulb from the ceiling and the flickering video game from the television.

Sitting in front of the screen is a man, probably early twenties, and just disgusting. He looks as if he hasn’t moved in days; his clothes are wrinkled and stained, his hair is a tangled mess. Chip bags and energy drink cans litter the couch in front of him, yet he looks pasty and thin. His eyes are lifeless, staring at the screen for who knows how long.

Olivia just stood over him, shaking, pure hatred in her eyes, but almost statuesque. “What’s his name?” I ask.

She doesn’t take her eyes off of him as if he was going to disappear if she did. “His name is Dagon,” she answered through clenched teeth. “He’s a pimp, a drug dealer, and a murderer. The worst kind of person you could think of.” She looked around the couch and a table behind it for a second before producing a gun from underneath some trash. She examined the gun for a minute, determined it was loaded and leveled it at the back of the Dagon’s head; Dagon seem oblivious to what was going on.

The next few seconds felt like hours. I felt more lost than ever before. What should I do? If Olivia was right, and this man was everything she said he was, could I go on with the fact that I let her just murder him? Was this man just playing a video game really a monster? He had the gun right there for Olivia to find, but did that make him a killer?

I should go; I should stay. I should let her; I should stop her. I don’t know what to do.

Olivia hesitates. Her breathing becomes fast and shallow. Her hand is shaking, but never pointed away from her target.

A dark pressure builds in the room, like something coils around the basement. I feel squeezed, but at the same time colder than I have ever been. A thousand voices, real and then not real at the same time, whisper from the walls, the floor, the very air around us, and to some extent I hear it in my head. It repeats one thing, over and over again.

“Do it.”

It’s the creepiest thing I’ve ever heard. It becomes hard to breathe. I sit down and curl into a ball next to the couch, hugging myself. Nothing I do makes the cold go away. The evil in the room is almost tangible, as if there is another person (or something) in this room with us, that even Olivia and I can’t see. It continues to whisper its one message, but it ignores me. The message isn’t for me.

I look up at Olivia. She remains standing, the gun still pointed at Dagon’s head. The shadows seem to coalesce around her. Her hand and breath steady themselves as some sort of dark aura slithers closer to her. It coils around her, its snake-like head reaching her ear.

“Olivia?” I ask.

Olivia ignores me, but the serpentine aura flashes my way, showing bright yellow eyes of pure malice. I instinctually close my eyes and bury my head into my arms, hoping that whatever that is leaves me alone.

But then something else appears. I sense it immediately due to just how dramatically different it is from the darkness. From the ceiling comes a pinprick of light, and the soft sound of a song, like a bird’s, far away but not gone. Amongst the endless voices urging Olivia to do it, one voice, clear and strong, caring and warm, says one thing one time.

“Stop her…”

And just like it appeared it disappeared, but it took my fear and apprehensions with it. In one motion, I stand up, bust through the shadows surrounding Olivia, and ram her in the side just as she pulled the trigger. She missed Dagon, hitting the television in front of him, but the blast right next to his ear causes him to drop his controller and scream loudly. My momentum pushes me and Olivia right through the wall, the last thing I hear is a frustrated hiss.

We’ve somehow teleported again; we passed through the wall but came crashing back into the cemetery where we met. My ghostly adrenaline is gone, and I just lay on top of Olivia, panting, suddenly very exhausted.

Olivia, on the other hand, is absolutely furious. She shoves me off of her, screaming her head off in anger.

“WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT!!!” she yelled and cried at the same time, tears rolling out of her infuriated eyes.

“You weren’t in your right mind,” I try to explain. “That wasn’t you back there.”

“I DON’T CARE!!” she said, now crying more than yelling. “He did this to me,” she wept, indicating herself. She never looked smaller than she did right there, head falling into her hands and shoulders heaving with her sadness. For the first time, I genuinely feel sorry for her. She raised her head enough to say, “He did this to me, and I did nothing!”

She goes back to crying, but remains where she is. What drive she had was gone. I scoot over closer and wrap my arms around her to console her. She doesn’t fight it, but continues to cry in my shoulder. We sit in silence like this, alone, no voices of any kind.

Then all of a sudden, a light appears only a few feet from where we sit. Both of us freeze and look up at it. It had no discernible source, cast no shadows, and drowned out every other source of light, even though we were outside. It was warm and inviting, and soft voices came from within it, calling out to us by name.

“Do you hear that?” I ask.

“Hear what?” Olivia replied, confused and scared. “What is that?”

“I don’t know,” I answer. I stand up and start to walk toward it, knowing that that is what it wanted. I stop, though, and turn around to Olivia, who was still sitting there, looking up at me with sadness in her eyes.

I reach out to her. “C’mon, Olivia, its fine.”

“No, it’s not,” she replies. “I don’t deserve it.”

“You didn’t do anything,” I tell her. “Let’s go; it’s for both of us, I just know it.”

“But, what about…?” she began.

“Don’t worry about him,” I insist. “Don’t let him keep you from moving on anymore.”

She hesitates only for another second before taking my hand. “Thanks, Natalie,” she whispers. Then the light engulfs us both and all is good forever.

The Good Die Young: Ashes

It has come to my attention that I have a series of short stories that I have failed to upload. These are a bit dark, and were meant to be openers for a book idea that has been abandoned and scrapped for pieces. It was based on ideas I no longer believe in, and now exists in no other place than my memories, as I told no one of its existence. But, I kept these for some reason, and here's the first one, called Ashes. Hope you enjoy!

Drake Files: Chapter Six

Chapter six of the Drake Files. Still working on everything else, just figured I hadn't posted anything in a while, so here's a little treat. This chapter is a little big, and reveals a major plot point for the story. I hope you enjoy!

Drake Files: Chapter Five

Another agent walks into our interrogation room and hands me a file. “Karishma Morgan,” I read as I open the file on her. The first thing is a picture. Dark skin, dark eyes and long black hair with a single blue streak on the left side. Twenty two years old and a recent graduate of George Washington University, same as her father and Drake’s parents. “Impressive young woman,” I comment blankly, hiding the fact that I’m actually very impressed. The CIA would pay handsomely for a young woman of this caliber.

“I met her when I was ten,” Drake explains fondly. “She prefers to go by Kari, by the way. She was sixteen or seventeen at the time, and it was at the one meeting of our parents’ college group that I actually went to. There were no other kids, so she was kind of the babysitter. At the time, she was just an annoying teenager; now she’s one of the smartest people I know. Other than my parents, there’s no one else in the world I trust as much as her.”

“You sound pretty close,” I point out as I flip through her file some more, skimming over most of it.

“You could say that,” Drake admits.
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February Recap and Looking Forward to March

February has been a big month for me. Exciting events and developments throughout the whole month, and I'm sorry to not have posted any at the time, but I was busy. So I thought a small recap would suffice.

The first big thing to happen in February I did post about, because it was the best thing that happened in my opinion. The completion of my second book was a relief, but was only a step towards publication, albeit a big step. Still working on editing, and I still have to finish a cover art (attempting to make it alone), but still proud of myself.

I started teacher observations, which is a necessary step toward becoming a teacher. Spending time at the local high school has really been an experience. For the last few weeks I've just been an observer, but starting after Spring Break I'm participating more in the classroom. It's weird to be in a high school setting, taking notes as a student, but what I'm focusing on is not the teacher's lesson but the teacher. Also, those kids got me sick last week; high schools will forever be cesspools for germs.

This last month, I attended an event called Passion in Houston with ten other friends. It was an amazing experience and lots of fun. It was a great worship event, and I came back to Odessa feeling rejuvenated. Feeling 25,000 people and all their love for the world is something I'm not going to forget, and I hope I have the opportunity to go again. Plus, it gave me Valentines Day plans, so I wasn't alone on a holiday.

So that was February, and I'm looking forward to March. I'm going home for Spring Break, and I'm always excited to be back in my hometown. As I mentioned earlier, I have plans to be more involved in the high school here in Odessa, so I have some planning to do. Over Spring Break, I plan to do most if not all of the editing I need to do for my book, and then I can focus on a cover art. Exciting things to come, I'm sure.