What was different here? I knew something had changed, but I couldn’t tell what. Maybe it had to do with that strange incident earlier in the day. We were going about our business, as we do every day and every night, and all of a sudden we were all propelled into pandemonium. Nobody knew what had happened, but sisters were turning on each other, attacking and tearing off appendages left and right. Our larvae and pupae, normally kept secreted away in the brood chambers, were being hoisted out and tossed about as though they were pieces of refuse, while actual trash was being thrown into the clean areas of the nest, spreading potentially harmful bacteria. Deep down we knew that all of this was wrong, but none of us could stop ourselves from performing these terrible deeds. After a few minutes, whatever had caused us to go crazy seemed to disappear, and we went back to work, quickly and efficiently cleaning up the mess that we had created. I went to bring a bit of food to the queen. In the back of the queen’s chamber, several workers were hauling out a dead body; some unfortunate soul, I guessed. I approached the queen. Somehow, she seemed different, but she smelled the same as always. She took the food eagerly, and as I bounded away to the rest of my duties, I couldn’t help but feel a little uneasy about the whole thing.
Let's assess my life. My term paper outline is almost done, though not close enough to being done to be long out of my mind. I've taken the PSATs and probably did relatively well on them; I took my drivers (how does one apostrophize this?) test and passed. I even have people with whom to eat lunch and people with whom to hang out on my frees, the most impressive--and cherished--feat of all. But sometimes it's hard to look at the world like this, sometimes homework seems like a deep abyss where if I move up one step, I fall back two. Sometimes I worry that I am a flat (as opposed to well-rounded) student and even getting good PSAT and eventually SAT scores won't propel me into college, if I even manage to pull myself together enough to research colleges to begin with. Most of all, when I am lying in bed so tired I can't sleep, I worry about my friends. What would happen if they suddenly hated me? According to my pessimistic lying-in-bed brain, it will happen any day now. I can't see why, but then again, asserts my mind, I have a rather low emotional intelligence, so I couldn't be expected to understand anyway. Oh well. At least in this moment, I know that I'm not such a hopeless person as all that. At least right now, I am happy and secure in my opinion of myself.
The girl glides past, looping around to put down the items she's carrying in her arms. I hear sounds of movement, a quick zzzzz, pause, zzzzz. Then she comes back around, as she does every morning, and pauses in front of my home. Her soft, thick voice is loud in my ears as she undoes the clamps that hold down the roof. Then her huge hand reaches down, down, down into my home. I am under attack! My instincts kick in, and I bolt to the other side of my home, freezing to assess the threat from this new angle. Her hand — or is it a claw? — grasps my food dish and lifts it out of my home. I hear the scraping sound as she roots in the jug for my food, and the plink-plink sound of the pellets hitting the bowl. Then the food dish is looming over my head again, and I run for cover. Once again, she only picks up my water dish, making her way over to the sink and rinsing it before filling it with water again. Then she lowers it into my home, says one more thing, and closes me in again. Then she goes back to the place where she put her items down, picks up something heavy, and moves back around and past me toward the long tunnel beyond. She will be back much, much later.
It is our last regular season game and we are playing Waynflete, a class C team that we should easily beat. It has not been so easy, however, and despite our best efforts we are only leading by one. It is a game that I have long awaited, not so much because of our opponent, but because it signals the beginning of playoffs. It signals that I have made it through the season without re-tearing my ACL and this game gives me hope that it won't happen again. I noticed before the game even began that the Waynflete goalie was wearing the same brace as me; it's funny how often I notice this now and the bond I feel when I recognize that someone else, just like me, has gone through it all. But then, deep into the second half while racing for a through ball, my leg buckles and I go down. I hit the soft grass with a thud and immediately try to stand. My leg won't let me and I fall back, and with my body goes all hope. I limp off the field, head down, knee throbbing. I barely know what happened but it doesn't matter, that one terrifying moment engulfs me and I can't shake it. From the bench, I stare at the goalie and wonder if tomorrow, next week or even months from now she too will go down feel her stomach drop and a lump rise in her throat as she fails to stand up.
Julianna, I love the voice in this piece. Because both of you have shared this experience, I like how you use your own experience and apply it to this other girl. You show the pain you felt through her accident, as well as the fear of tearing you ACL again very well. You also capture the intensity of the moment, and I felt like I was there and holding my breath. Nice work, and don’t get hurt!
I couldn’t quite feel the floor underneath me. My big toe skimmed the rug as I tried to push myself through the air. I tried to run toward my friend. The girl whose eyes were full of sadness. I could feel deep in my stomach that I was the only one who could understand her despair even though I was not sure what it was. I just needed to got close enough to reach out and touch her arm. The touch of one finger lightly on her arm would make her realize my presence. In that moment she would see me I knew she would understand that we shared a common despair. A common emptiness. But she did not know that she was not alone in her small world. She looked down into eyes that would transport her into a world where she not be alone. I moved my legs frantically to try to reach her more quickly. She was all I could see, my vision closed in around her and her glowing outline was all I could see as the tunnel slowly closed in around her and she was gone. I was left trying to run frantically towards a goal that was neither attainable or actually there. But I kept running, it was all I knew how to do.
I am being chased. I am sure of it. I must hide. I must get away. I must get ready to attack. I sprint around the kitchen table, up the stairs, and into my favorite room, my claws clenched into the carpet. I crouch down low beneath the bed, using the messy blankets to cover my location. The anticipation is too much and my tail is beginning to flop all over the place, like the time the fish jumped out of its tank, unfortunately, it was saved. I start practicing my attack on everything I see, a crumples raincoat on the floor, or a mysterious speck beneath the chair. My opponent is getting closer, and my eyes are focused. The bed above me creaks beneath its weight. A large creature lowers itself from the edge of the bed. This is it. Wiggling my hindquarters with adrenaline, I pounce, grabbing it by the…toes? It will take a lot of purring to make up for this one.
Emily, I really like this! It's really easily relatable, and I enjoyed reading it. It made me think of my cats. My favorite line is the last one; I think it's an excellent way to end the piece. It pulls everything together, because it clarifies what animal you are talking about, as well as adds some humor. The perspective also works really well; I definitely get a sense of what it's like to be your cat. Well done!
The heat came in the night. Sliding through the crack underneath the door, clinging to the walls as it carried itself up the stairs and into her room where it rested on her skin and woke her in a hot sweat. Although, it wasn't the only force at work in disturbing her sleep. The nightmare shared a good deal of the blame and her shivered, kicking the covers off her bed and sat upright as the last images of her dream fluttered up from her memory. A hooded figure in black whose feet didn’t touch the ground. A mouth, a gaping hole that was darker and deeper than the shadows. Coming straight towards her. For her. Her heart still knocked at her chest, the racking beat a reminder of the terror even though her dream had long been chased away. Even so, she knew for a fact she would not be able to sleep tonight. Any time she closed her eyes, that gaping face threatened to surface and become real again. So, she pulled on her robe, grabbed a pair of slippers and sneaked out the back door, her feet leading her in the steady darkness. She smiled, happy to know that her body knew to take her to her clearing before her mind could even follow along. It was the one place where her mind could be at rest, in between the swaying trees and the tall grass. When she sat in the clearing, even when it was dark, the shadows never seemed to touch her.
What was different here? I knew something had changed, but I couldn’t tell what. Maybe it had to do with that strange incident earlier in the day. We were going about our business, as we do every day and every night, and all of a sudden we were all propelled into pandemonium. Nobody knew what had happened, but sisters were turning on each other, attacking and tearing off appendages left and right. Our larvae and pupae, normally kept secreted away in the brood chambers, were being hoisted out and tossed about as though they were pieces of refuse, while actual trash was being thrown into the clean areas of the nest, spreading potentially harmful bacteria. Deep down we knew that all of this was wrong, but none of us could stop ourselves from performing these terrible deeds. After a few minutes, whatever had caused us to go crazy seemed to disappear, and we went back to work, quickly and efficiently cleaning up the mess that we had created. I went to bring a bit of food to the queen. In the back of the queen’s chamber, several workers were hauling out a dead body; some unfortunate soul, I guessed. I approached the queen. Somehow, she seemed different, but she smelled the same as always. She took the food eagerly, and as I bounded away to the rest of my duties, I couldn’t help but feel a little uneasy about the whole thing.
ReplyDeleteLet's assess my life. My term paper outline is almost done, though not close enough to being done to be long out of my mind. I've taken the PSATs and probably did relatively well on them; I took my drivers (how does one apostrophize this?) test and passed. I even have people with whom to eat lunch and people with whom to hang out on my frees, the most impressive--and cherished--feat of all.
ReplyDeleteBut sometimes it's hard to look at the world like this, sometimes homework seems like a deep abyss where if I move up one step, I fall back two. Sometimes I worry that I am a flat (as opposed to well-rounded) student and even getting good PSAT and eventually SAT scores won't propel me into college, if I even manage to pull myself together enough to research colleges to begin with. Most of all, when I am lying in bed so tired I can't sleep, I worry about my friends. What would happen if they suddenly hated me? According to my pessimistic lying-in-bed brain, it will happen any day now. I can't see why, but then again, asserts my mind, I have a rather low emotional intelligence, so I couldn't be expected to understand anyway.
Oh well. At least in this moment, I know that I'm not such a hopeless person as all that. At least right now, I am happy and secure in my opinion of myself.
The girl glides past, looping around to put down the items she's carrying in her arms. I hear sounds of movement, a quick zzzzz, pause, zzzzz. Then she comes back around, as she does every morning, and pauses in front of my home. Her soft, thick voice is loud in my ears as she undoes the clamps that hold down the roof. Then her huge hand reaches down, down, down into my home. I am under attack! My instincts kick in, and I bolt to the other side of my home, freezing to assess the threat from this new angle. Her hand — or is it a claw? — grasps my food dish and lifts it out of my home. I hear the scraping sound as she roots in the jug for my food, and the plink-plink sound of the pellets hitting the bowl. Then the food dish is looming over my head again, and I run for cover. Once again, she only picks up my water dish, making her way over to the sink and rinsing it before filling it with water again. Then she lowers it into my home, says one more thing, and closes me in again. Then she goes back to the place where she put her items down, picks up something heavy, and moves back around and past me toward the long tunnel beyond. She will be back much, much later.
ReplyDeleteIt is our last regular season game and we are playing Waynflete, a class C team that we should easily beat. It has not been so easy, however, and despite our best efforts we are only leading by one. It is a game that I have long awaited, not so much because of our opponent, but because it signals the beginning of playoffs. It signals that I have made it through the season without re-tearing my ACL and this game gives me hope that it won't happen again. I noticed before the game even began that the Waynflete goalie was wearing the same brace as me; it's funny how often I notice this now and the bond I feel when I recognize that someone else, just like me, has gone through it all. But then, deep into the second half while racing for a through ball, my leg buckles and I go down. I hit the soft grass with a thud and immediately try to stand. My leg won't let me and I fall back, and with my body goes all hope. I limp off the field, head down, knee throbbing. I barely know what happened but it doesn't matter, that one terrifying moment engulfs me and I can't shake it. From the bench, I stare at the goalie and wonder if tomorrow, next week or even months from now she too will go down feel her stomach drop and a lump rise in her throat as she fails to stand up.
ReplyDeleteJulianna, I love the voice in this piece. Because both of you have shared this experience, I like how you use your own experience and apply it to this other girl. You show the pain you felt through her accident, as well as the fear of tearing you ACL again very well. You also capture the intensity of the moment, and I felt like I was there and holding my breath. Nice work, and don’t get hurt!
DeleteI couldn’t quite feel the floor underneath me. My big toe skimmed the rug as I tried to push myself through the air. I tried to run toward my friend. The girl whose eyes were full of sadness. I could feel deep in my stomach that I was the only one who could understand her despair even though I was not sure what it was. I just needed to got close enough to reach out and touch her arm. The touch of one finger lightly on her arm would make her realize my presence. In that moment she would see me I knew she would understand that we shared a common despair. A common emptiness. But she did not know that she was not alone in her small world. She looked down into eyes that would transport her into a world where she not be alone. I moved my legs frantically to try to reach her more quickly. She was all I could see, my vision closed in around her and her glowing outline was all I could see as the tunnel slowly closed in around her and she was gone. I was left trying to run frantically towards a goal that was neither attainable or actually there. But I kept running, it was all I knew how to do.
ReplyDeleteI am being chased. I am sure of it. I must hide. I must get away. I must get ready to attack. I sprint around the kitchen table, up the stairs, and into my favorite room, my claws clenched into the carpet. I crouch down low beneath the bed, using the messy blankets to cover my location. The anticipation is too much and my tail is beginning to flop all over the place, like the time the fish jumped out of its tank, unfortunately, it was saved. I start practicing my attack on everything I see, a crumples raincoat on the floor, or a mysterious speck beneath the chair. My opponent is getting closer, and my eyes are focused. The bed above me creaks beneath its weight. A large creature lowers itself from the edge of the bed. This is it. Wiggling my hindquarters with adrenaline, I pounce, grabbing it by the…toes? It will take a lot of purring to make up for this one.
ReplyDeleteEmily, I really like this! It's really easily relatable, and I enjoyed reading it. It made me think of my cats. My favorite line is the last one; I think it's an excellent way to end the piece. It pulls everything together, because it clarifies what animal you are talking about, as well as adds some humor. The perspective also works really well; I definitely get a sense of what it's like to be your cat. Well done!
DeleteThe heat came in the night. Sliding through the crack underneath the door, clinging to the walls as it carried itself up the stairs and into her room where it rested on her skin and woke her in a hot sweat. Although, it wasn't the only force at work in disturbing her sleep. The nightmare shared a good deal of the blame and her shivered, kicking the covers off her bed and sat upright as the last images of her dream fluttered up from her memory. A hooded figure in black whose feet didn’t touch the ground. A mouth, a gaping hole that was darker and deeper than the shadows. Coming straight towards her. For her. Her heart still knocked at her chest, the racking beat a reminder of the terror even though her dream had long been chased away. Even so, she knew for a fact she would not be able to sleep tonight. Any time she closed her eyes, that gaping face threatened to surface and become real again. So, she pulled on her robe, grabbed a pair of slippers and sneaked out the back door, her feet leading her in the steady darkness. She smiled, happy to know that her body knew to take her to her clearing before her mind could even follow along. It was the one place where her mind could be at rest, in between the swaying trees and the tall grass. When she sat in the clearing, even when it was dark, the shadows never seemed to touch her.
ReplyDelete