Excerpts
Author: PyreHere is an archive of all of my novel exerpts I periodically post for you to critique.
Aug. 27 2009
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”I lay down staring directly up at the ceiling, which was uncomfortably close on the top bunk. The noises and creaks of Pryderi’s house seemed to grow more obnoxiously loud with every passing moment, along with the noisy snoring of Stub, who I had made sleep on the floor due to his now deathly apparent weight. Crap. Houl had kept me up past my sleeping window.
I leaned down over the bed. Stub quietly lifted an eyelid. As soon as he saw me peering down, even if not directly at him, he instantly hopped up on his haunches, despite his obvious sleepiness, and started panting and smiling intensely. I tried my absolute hardest to ignore him.
I said to Houl in a hushed voice, “Tell me, then, where are you from?” It was time to pester him with the same questions when he trying to sleep.
“I already told you,” he said, his voice muffled underneath the covers of his bed.
“No, but where exactly? Nearby? What’s your story? What did you have to go through?”
“Allow me to answer all of those questions in one simple word,” he said in a snippy, sarcastic tone. “Go to sleep.”
“That was three words. A phrase, if you will,” I teased. I heard him growl in frustration, his head now buried in his pillow. “Oh come on, now, tell me,” I begged. No answer. I tried asking him several other ways, but to no avail. Either he had fallen asleep in just a few minutes, or, more likely, he was ignoring me. And by god he was good at it, too. How come I hadn’t thought of such an ingenious solution? I could keep pestering him until he finally snapped, but that would probably just wake the whole house. And, knowing Annabeth for the short time I did, it was only safe to assume that most Nevii were easily angered.
After lying wakefully for long enough, I began to consider that maybe it was just the poor quality of the top bunk that was keeping me up. It was stuffed with hay or grasses of some sorts, and a little too generously, making it unpleasantly hard with multiple sharp points. For the first time, I had the urge to claw it open and drain some, only until I realized that I was human. It seemed that ever race in Valamoore had claws. Lucky them. Narida’s were even retractable. So, I had no choice but to lie in vain the rest of the night until sleep found me and carried me off.
Oh, dreams. Often times they don’t even happen, sometimes they predict the future (at least, that’s where I think de ja vu comes from), sometimes they’re fun, and sometimes they’re just plain scarring. My dream that night could be placed somewhere in the latter category. It was another dream of back home. If what I saw when the train crashed was real, then how high could the situation have escalated? Who knew how many things were leaking into my (or…our) plane of Earth and planets, and, even worse, what was happening to my Mom? And Cindy? And my friends? Sorrow, horror, maybe even death, probably respectively. It was probably these haunting questions that spawned the abomination of a dream I had.
The beginning consisted of horrific visions of Mom lying at home in despair, the couch she was sprawled across soaked and seared from an endless stream of blazing hot tears, and her face contorted into a hideous expression. Believe me, as long as you live, there is nothing more painful to see then a loved one in remorse…especially for the loss of you. Even if you know it’s just a dream, there is an undeniable stench of sorrow that seeps up inside you, seeded from a sick combination of empathy and guilt.
None of this was made any better when the dream proceeded to melt away into a vision of the entire town being burnt to ashes by frenzied thorncrowns. The fire was wet with the stench of blood and soaked with fear. Fueling it all was the manic ravings of the goblins and the horrible deeds I myself committed to bring the terror and destruction to my home and the homes of others.
Eventually, the fire consumed even my vision and burnt away, revealing the scene of who else but Kali desperately bicycling away from the bonfire of screams that was once Silverwood. As she pedaled at adrenaline speeds, her face contorted in horror, her hair lifted off her shoulders with the howling wing funneling beneath them. I was left to watch as she collided with a skinny, five-foot-tall figure in robes, which howled unhumanly. The screech did nothing but call five others to her as she lay helpless on the ground. They were all Gar, bandits of some sort, searching desperately for food and an escape from the horrors they had to go through in an unfamiliar world. And then…they beat her. They beat and cut the life out of her screaming, injured body. But now it wasn’t Kali they were doing this to, but Cindy. (Isn’t it wonderful how dreams swap people for others seamlessly, without warning?)
There isn’t anything that fuels nightmares the most like guilt and stress. And nightmares lead to sleep deprivation, and sleep deprivation leads to an equally horrible next day.
My next day began with an early wakeup call. Hardly before the crack of noon, even. It seemed, though, that the only person who hated it more than me was Houl, who buried his head underneath his covers and threw a fit whenever somebody touched him or any-thing that subsequently made contact with his bed. Stub, however, could never have been more excited for a wakeup call, and he ran around in circles as excited as ever, and reali-zing that he could not pounce on me, he started yapping and yapping and occasionally squealing for me to get down for the top bunk so that he could. This made it all the harder to get out of bed.
Gregor poked his head in through the door. “Guys,” he said, “come on. We need to get going!”
“Aw, really?” I whined sarcastically whilst stretching, “I was looking forward to settling down and spending a few weeks here in this horrid bed.”
“Try sharing one with my sister. She thinks the whole bed belongs to her, and won’t be told otherwise.”
“I’m sure Annabeth would say the same thing about you,” I told him, sitting up now. “Speaking of her, do you think you could get her to fetch me my fresh, new clothes that we bought yesterday?”
“She’s gone. In fact, us three are the only ones in the house.”
…