Chapter one: A slow beginning

The first chapter of my novel ... it is extremely rough and still a WIP

 

Prologue:  A rather precarious beginning

 

“Sometimes the only way to run away from something is to face it.”

        - Danen Wercks, Geminian Historian  

 

            Kaila glared at the bars of light as they scrolled up the glow of her computer screen. The sentences lay exposed to the critical aura of the flickering fluorescent light. Strains of Bach in her headphones fought valiantly to drown out the blare of her roommate’s N*S*Y*N*C* which was loud enough to cause small ripples to roll across her cup of peach green tea. The smell of perfume and hairspray drenched the air with its acidic feel. The sheer force of the roommate’s presence slammed into the glass walls Kaila used to protect her story. Kaila was not an entirely solitary person but sometimes there was such a thing as too much company. If her laptop did not require an electrical outlet and an internet connection she would most likely never be in her room. Her room mate was a lovely person and a good friend, but Kaila could barely tolerate her own voice in her head when she was writing.

            Kaila stretched out her body as much as she could; which at 5’ tall was not all that much. Kaila had often been called a leprechaun for many years for her red hair and green eyes combined with a freckled, lanky body. She looked to be the ideal Irish girl, although without a trademark sunburn.  

            The cursor faded in and out of existence impatiently it reminded Kaila sharply that she had hardly written a paragraph. Her computer “Plato” was an impertinent creature, no he was a pompous a*s, and he fit his name well. The nickname for her laptop was a holdover from a cheeky comment she had made in her Ethics class her freshman year. He was almost as critical as she was. Slowly she pushed the flippant text down the page. It was a slow process and the document fought valiantly against her attempts but eventually she cleared her first page break. The first battle won if only by a small margin Kaila set out to conquer page two. She directed her fingers like a general to his soldiers. Her story slowly emerged as more than a few squiggly lines on a page. She could smell the flowers that surrounded the main character and feel the cold kiss of night air on her skin as he waited in a dark alley on Magnolia St.  She was finally getting on a roll and making a dent in the colossus that was the second page when her walls were shattered by the Star Wars theme as her phone spun around screaming. Kaila groped blindly for the silly device, not taking her eyes off the wide white territory of her enemy.

“Hello” the dim buzzing of the interference in the signal filled the vacant silence on the other side of the line.

“Hey, are you coming to D&D tonight?” Kaila’s friend Zoe’s voice chased away the awkward buzzing.

“Yeah what time are we meeting?” Kaila glanced at the clock in the corner of her screen. Was it almost nine already?

“In 10 minutes, I figured you would need to be reminded” 

“Thanks Zoe I’ll be right over in a couple of minutes.” There was kind of a popping noise and the line was eerily silent. Kaila sighed and saved her meager product of the past three hours. She closed her laptop and gathered her character sheets, pencils, dice and her mandatory supply of caffeine and snack foods. Grabbing her keys and humming the theme to “Firefly” she made her way to the lounge in one of the larger residence halls. When she arrived the rest of the group was setting up their own personal areas around the table, barricaded with energy drinks and notebooks with snacks spread everywhere. Kaila walked over and plopped herself over on the couch next to Zoe and arranged her supplies for the night. She laid out three newly sharpened pencils in parallel lines to her notebook, a small semblance of order that would last for all of five minutes once the campaign picked up. The Dungeon Master walked in without ceremony and set down his notebook and with little ado the battle began. A long and bloody onslaught ate up the hours of a late Saturday night and well until Sunday morning. They were trapped in an alleyway of an old abandoned town and were being pounded by wave after wave of dark creatures from every nightmare imaginable. Kaila’s character, a cleric was a fun and interesting point of view on the situation arguing playfully with a flirtatious bard and a little bit of good natured lecturing and teasing a rather short Halfling Kaila was really enjoying the retreat into the mythical world. The small details that were slowly revealed as they traveled were just enough to drive her crazy wanting to know what came next. Around 3:30 AM the Dungeon Master lowered his head in exhaustion and called the evening to a close. Kaila lounged into the couch that she had been sitting on the edge of throughout the fight. Finally she could relax a few of the members of the party lingered over some unfinished energy drinks while the rest sought the comfort of their beds.

Zoe took out a small book.

“Hey have you guys read this? The Survivors Guide to the Zombacalypse?”

Groans filled the small chamber they had been playing in.

“Zoe, come on of course we have read that, that is zombie lit 101.” Kaila sighed, she and her friends enjoyed discussing the likelihood of different forms of apocalypse like the Zombacalypse or the Robocalypse (hostile takeovers by Zombies or Robots respectively) however the joke did get a little weary sometimes.

Zoe sulked a little in her area of the couch, Kaila hoped she knew that she did not intend to be mean, the subject was just exhausted.

“Kaila, how was talking with your ex?” Zoe piped up suddenly. Zoe was a wonderfully bubbly person who bounced back rather quickly.

“It was glorious I was reminded exactly why I believe we should just go with the Amazonian model of society and just break every man’s legs and desert them on an island that we only visit when we want sex.”

Robin, one of their friends and one of the leading authorities on the Zombacalypse had been scribbling in his notebook and mulling over the dregs of a gummy worm infested energy drink. Now he looked up.

“You realize I’m still here right?”

“Yes, I was not intending to include you in that statement, you have a girlfriend and are in an entirely different sect of the male species”

He looked at her, waiting to decide if she was just PMSing or if this was more serious.

“Well I still am a male and rather resent that remark”

Kaila winced, she had not intended to insult him, she was just being stupid.

“I am not trying to offend you but I am not entirely a fan of the male species right now”

That was true enough; it did not take a writer or a psychology major to figure that much out.

 “Would you really want to live in a world full of girls? Men at least stab you in the front” He nodded his head in a suggestive manner “And you love it that way.” Even in entirely unfriendly situations his seedy sense of humor shone through.

“Robin please tell me that you didn’t mean that the way I think you did” Zoe piped up from the corner of the couch she was cringing in.

“What other way could he have meant it? Robin I am sorry to rant at you right now, I am admittedly rather bitter on this subject” Like she really needed to state the obvious.

“A*****e encounter?”  He asked, like there was really another answer.

“Big time, my last relationship convinced me he loved me, took my virginity, didn’t call me for a month and half because he was too chicken s**t to tell me he had a girlfriend.”

Robin closed his eyes for a moment to digest the sheer amount of bitterness and bile that had been piled on top of him without cause.  

“Ok, so a double a*****e”

“Yeah pretty much,” Kaila looked at the cell phone she had been fidgeting with, looking for a reasonable excuse.

“It’s almost four, I should go to bed I‘m acting bitchier than if I were drunk. I am sorry to have ranted at you” with that Kaila made a less than organized retreat.

The cold did some good when she walked outside; the small closet they had been playing D&D in had been stifling. Her face was still red and her sun burnt arms were covered in goose bumps. She practically jogged back to her dorm. She thrust her key in the lock and threw herself on the couch in the dark living room. She curled up with one of the pillows and just let soundless tears slide down her face.

There is only so much crying the one can really do before they get tired of it and begin to think of something else, presently Kaila came to that brink and was able to stop crying. She sat up and looked up from the pillow she had been suffocating. Her roommates were all gone for the weekend by now so she had this section of the dorm to herself, deciding that she could not sit in the dark for the whole night she reached up to the light switch above the couch. The light helped a little, she could at least imagine that it could chase away everything that was making her feel this way. Kaila surveyed the messy lounge room they referred to as a living room. There were two couches, a 60” TV and a lot of empty soda cans. The blankets that covered the heinous fabric of the couches were wrinkled and full of trash and crumbs. She rolled her eyes; she has meant to clean that week but had gotten distracted, pretty easy to do considering how much she hated to clean. But the current state of the room would not serve her purposes for tonight. She gathered up the wrappers and food cans and turned over the blankets on the couches. It was not a thorough job but it would do. She hooked up her roommate’s CD player and put in a worship album, closing her eyes she sang as loudly as she could off key. Moping was not what she needed, she needed to worship and think about something infinitely better than what had been occupying her mind. When she felt as if she could sing no more she grabbed one of her favorite books “The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe” By C.S. Lewis and ran off to the cold climate of Narnia. She flipped through the worn pages as her music played softly in the background. She had been reading this series of books since she was in the sixth grade. The beauty of a world that did not have the same cares as the corrupt place that she called home was so enticing that she never could put the books down. She had read other books about other worlds like Narnia. But not even Neverland could compare she like reading about other worlds but they were not the same. Maybe it was the Christian theology still very much present in the “Chronicles of Narnia” or maybe it was simply that she had encountered Narnia first. This series held a wonder for her that was never dimmed, even when she had read them hundreds of times before. Kaila used to dream about Aslan coming and taking her away, but that was silly to hope now. Only innocent children got to go away from the world. Kaila was reflected too much of this world to ever leave it. That thought sat at the surface of her mind, although she tried to push it back it still just sat there. Finally Kaila slammed the book shut. She looked up for the first time in hours and saw the first pink rays of light sliding through the blinds. She decided that it was beyond time to go to sleep. So she turned off the lights, closed the curtains in her room tightly against the morning and crawled into her bed.

She woke at the entirely indecent hour of eleven in the morning to the sound of her phone ringing the “Star Wars” theme again fumbling without opening her eyes Kaila seized the horridly loud creature and answered it.

“Hello?” Kaila mumbled, hoping that she at least sounded like she was speaking English.

“Kaila, did I wake you up? I’m sorry; it’s just the days half gone and I wanted to ask you a question.”  Kaila silenced a groan as she rolled onto her back her mother did this every weekend. She seemed to expect Kaila to keep to the same schedule she had in High School.

“Its fine Mom, what did you want to ask?”  It had only been 4 hours since she had gone to sleep, Kaila wasn’t exactly thinking clearly

“Well your father and I were wondering if we should come up for your birthday.”

Kaila groaned, she had already answered this question more than a few times.

“Mom I told you I have finals for the whole week I will be studying. I don’t have time to have a Birthday during finals week. You know I will be home later in the week.”

This was the third Sunday in a row her mother had asked this. Kaila’s mother was actually not the one pushing to come up that weekend, her father was but he was usually driving during that time of day so he asked her mother to call.

“I know, your father just feels bad that we won’t be with you on your birthday” Kaila rolled her eyes, her father had a lot of complexes about attention and gifts that tended to make life a little less than easy.

“I will be fine, I will have all my friends up here to celebrate with and Jac and I are planning on sharing our birthday parties again, like we have been since we became friends”

“Kaila I know that and you know that I am asking so your father can be sure that you don’t feel neglected. You know he’s funny about that.”

Kaila hated how right her mother could be sometimes.

“I know mom, I’m just making sure you know to tell him that I will be fine.”

Kaila sat up in bed, it was too late to go back to sleep now, she was awake for the day.

“I’m sorry for waking you sweetie, I’ll let you go back to sleep. I love you” Kaila winced, her mom felt guilty now, meaning that she would feel bad for the rest of the day. Not knowing what else to say she mumbled. “I love you too mom”

Kaila got up and took a nice, long shower. That helped banish the leftovers of her grogginess and kill another half hour of daylight.  Kaila got dressed while listening to some old Bob Segar tunes, grabbed her keys and walked over to the cafeteria for a late brunch. Humming “Old Time Rock and Roll” she contemplated where she had left off on writing the night before. Her character was left in the dark about a murder plot against him that he thought was against another person so he was trying to write a feature on it for his local paper.

              The idea sounded even worse in her head than on the paper but she would make it work, she had to it had been too long since she had written anything of great consequence. Her teachers were beginning to hound her, fearing that she did not have the motivation to be a full time writer. Everyone in her life had spelled out an exact timeline for her if she hoped to be a writer but not a single one of those timelines took inspiration into account. They had all read things like Steven Kings “Memoirs on Writing” and believed that she should be churning out twenty pages a day whether they were good or not. It may have worked for King to leave a legacy of verbose, uninspired junk. But Kaila aspired to something more than just churning out lifeless bestsellers being read because it’s the “it” thing to do. Is artistry really dead in this world? Because it sure seems like it is.

           Once she made it to the cafeteria she grabbed a few things to go and rushed out hoping to get some actual progress before she had to do homework. She was walking around a corner with her plain bagel and strawberry cream cheese when she slammed into a rather odd obstacle in her path. Her breakfast went flying and she fell backwards.

“Bloody hell, I’m sorry I wasn’t paying attention” Where had she been looking? It was most definitely not at the path she was walking.

“It’s ok I wasn’t looking either” Kaila looked up to see Robin, covered in strawberry cream cheese and looking rather dazed.

Of all the people she could have walked into it had to be him and it had to be so awkwardly and obviously. Kaila looked down at her feet ashamed; she really was not ready to face him after the rant she had shoved down his throat the night before.

“Hey,” Wow, could she sound any more like a schoolgirl with a crush?

“Hello” He looked like nothing had happened, probably a good thing. But considering that she didn’t really know him in the least that didn’t mean a lot.

     “I’ve got to go, see you later.”  For the second time in less than 24 hours she practically ran away from a less than pleasant situation.  

 If there are 2,300 students going to a University at any given time and there is only one that you are avoiding the odds that you will run into that particular person are 1:1. Not by any law of logic or probability but merely by the very nature of existence, that is of course irony. Kaila was not entirely avoiding Robin, merely dodging the reminder that she had made such a fool of herself.

        Unfortunately over the course of three days, this only made her see him more often and remember even more how frightfully embarrassed she was. She needed a new plan desperately. Pacing her room she was frightened to leave, even though she knew it was extremely unlikely she would run into him just by leaving her room for a moment. While the figures added up to being entirely improbable; the likelihood was still there and that is all that it takes for such events to happen. What could possibly make her feel less like a babbling idiot around him, she didn’t even have a crush on the guy, and being afraid to run into him was very much putting a damper on her daily activities. She tried to think objectively what she would have a character do in a similar situation and then realized that she would never have thought up such a twisted situation for any of her characters. As if fiction could be this frustrating! Deciding that the only thing she could really do was apologize Kaila tried to fabricate a plot that would be the least awkward way to accomplish this. The one quite obvious piece of the solution was that there was no way she could do so in person. This required tact and a level of emotional sincerity that she could never achieve in person. She walked over to her desk and grabbed her finest stationary, a legal pad and a five cent envelope from a box she had bought so she could write home Kaila grabbed one of her favorite writing pens and carefully scratched out.

“Robin,

              I am sorry that I was so mean to you on Saturday night. I had no right to take my insignificant and childish feelings out on you and I feel entirely embarrassed about the way I acted. The conversation last night was the third in a series of silly catalysts that day that had set me off and I am sorry that you caught the brunt of the reaction. This is in no way an excuse merely an explanation because I truly hope that you do not think of me as a man-hating b***h. I may be a b***h but I promise it is normally not in that volume. I feel really terrible for what I said to you and I hope that you can forgive me for being a silly girl.

Thank you for understanding.

                 -Kaila”

                           Kaila looked over the short missive, it would not receive any Pulitzer prizes but it served its purpose. She sealed the envelope and took it to his room. Hoping he was in class she slipped it under his door and walked away.      

                         ______

4 years later                 

                        Kaila looked in the mirror and straightened the revolting blue hat she had to wear for graduation. It looked better now but nothing could keep those things from looking entirely ridiculous. She looked at the clock and reluctantly pulled on the stiff polyester gown. The fabric was so cheap on the silly thing it would bake everyone at the ceremony. Kaila swore that the gowns had to be entirely manufactured to look terrible on every possible body type. Kaila was not self conscious about her body very often but the blue of the gown clashed terribly with her fiery hair and made her look like a bleached scarecrow in a baggy dress. Well there was nothing she could do, she just had to grin and bear it and hope that she didn’t have to look at the pictures too often.

She set her book on top of her suitcase and hurried out the door, she was about to get out of this place, this most certainly was something didn’t want to be late to. Kaila walked down the stairs outside her apartment to meet her friends waiting out by the car.

“Hey Kaila hurry up, we don’t want to be late to graduation” Kaila laughed and crawled in the back seat of Zoe’s Toyota Corolla. There were already 3 other girls crammed into the tiny thing. Zoe cranked up the stereo and they sang all the way through their last drive to school.  

            Kaila shook herself out of her driving induced flashback she had been on the road for nearly two hours and was nearly to her destination. It had been four months since her graduation and she was searching for a place that she could live for a while, until she got a book or two off the ground at least. Kaila had discovered that there was no way she could live at home, her family constantly asked when she was going to get a “real” job and did not respect the sanctity of a closed door. Even when she got a job they hounded her constantly. She had tried to make it work until she finished at least one book but her family wouldn’t drop it.  On top of that her younger sister was still in high school and had friends over constantly. She needed a place that she could really be alone and have some peace and quiet to write, but also a place that she could afford just by working part time; she didn’t want anything interfering with her writing. She had found a proofreading job with a local publishing company that would let her work from home. Now she just needed to find a home. Much more easily said than done, she combed the personal adds word by smeared newsprint word. Two weeks of sifting through adds selling TVs, cars, stereos and the occasional coded love note were taking their toll. If she saw one more request for hot trannie love she was likely to burst at the seams. One day she saw a rather strange advertisement in the classifieds.

                                    “WANTED: Housemate, quiet, no kids or pets. Inquire at 2811 Laurelhurst Drive, Oakley”

Intrigued by the add., she decided to check it out. Her mother had read the add and declared.

“I don’t like the look of it, there’s no rent estimate, no phone number and it’s out in the backyard of bum-f**k Egypt. It’s a sure recipe for a serial killer movie” Kaila should have known better than to ask her mother’s opinion, she just wanted Kaila to stay nearby. So Kaila grabbed a few CD’s and packed a lunch for the day.  Now, she was two hours away from home and could see the small, almost invisible sign “Laurelhurst Drive” poking out of the blackberry bushes on the roadside. She flicked on her turn signal and looked around at the secluded privacy of the little road out in the middle of nothing for all directions. It had been nearly an hour since she had seen any towns or real road signs. Kaila drove on through the lovely countryside. Everything was so perfect; it was all wild all around. The raw beauty of this landscape was nothing like the city she had grown up in or the larger one she went to school in. All she could see around her were trees and what were either large hills or small mountains. The leaves were just turning a perfect autumn red and the colors were so lively that Kaila wished she had brought her camera; it was so beautiful that she was disappointed when she saw the small, homemade sign for 2811. The driveway was gravel and it sloped gently up towards a large Victorian style house, Kaila’s jaw dropped. The place was enormous; there was no way that she could afford to pay the rent here. The house was of a deep red brick with white trim, it had balconies and even two turrets that looked almost like a castle. Kaila fell in love with it immediately. She knew that this would be a perfect place to write. With all of the extra space in the house she could ensure quiet and with so much room she could find a small place to be entirely alone with herself to write. If only but there was no way that she could afford it. When she made it to the top of the driveway she started her way around the circular driveway to leave when a rather frazzled old woman in a deep red housecoat stormed out the front door and across the wraparound porch, with an old shotgun.

            Kaila almost screamed but the sound caught in her throat.  The woman looked seriously deranged; she stepped out in front of Kaila’s car and leveled her gun straight at Kaila’s chest. Kaila slammed the brakes in fear. The woman made a slashing motion across her neck that Kaila took to mean cut the engine; at least she hoped that’s what the woman meant. Kaila pulled the transmission into park and turned the key.

“Put your hands up and step out of the car young lady” the woman snapped.

Kaila unbuckled her seatbelt carefully and tried to move as slowly as she could, sudden movements didn’t feel like good idea in this situation. She stepped out like she had just crashed her car after a high speed chase. The old woman looked her over and demanded.

“What are you doing on my property?” Kaila wasn’t sure if it was the woman’s frizzy hair or garish housecoat that convinced her more but she was terrified.

“Please ma’am I read your add in the paper and I was checking it out, but when I saw this place I knew I couldn’t afford the rent so I was turning around so as not to bother you” She hoped that trying to make herself sound concerned would help her case. She looked at the woman who just rolled her eyes and looked annoyed. But at least she lowered the gun.

“There is no rent I just need someone to live here to make my daughter shut up and stop worrying that I live alone. The position is still open if you like, provided you can promise to stay out of my way and allow me to pretend that you do not exist.”

No Rent? No way was this place way too perfect for someone to make an offer like that

There had to be a catch somewhere, things like this don’t just happen, not even in books.

“Forgive me for asking ma’am but what’s the catch?” Kaila hoped that the woman wouldn’t take offense; she still had a gun after all.

 “Good to see you don’t trust blindly. You might actually make it some day. The offer is real, the only catch is that you have to live with me and stay the hell away from me as much as possible. I have a specific daily routine and you don’t fit into it. Am
I clear young lady?” The lady stared Kaila down, perhaps hoping she would turn the offer down?

 Kaila looked around the yard; there was old wooden gate with a cross on it that was nearly swallowed entirely by lilac bushes. The flower beds were huge and still had a few lingering perennials. There was an ancient looking stone fountain with a stylized lion theme that made Kaila want to look at it all day. She almost cried at the thought of actually being able to live here. The house and the grounds were so beautiful that Kaila just couldn’t pass it up.

“When can I move in?” She hoped she didn’t sound overly eager. The old woman looked at her skeptically and chuckled.

“Right to the point, I like that. What’s your name girl?”  The lady’s face softened slightly.

“My name is Kaila ma’am. May I ask yours?” Maybe the old bird wouldn’t be too bad to live with 

My name is Catherine St. Claire. What do you do for a living girl?”

“Well I work part time as an editor but I am an aspiring novelist.” Kaila prayed fervently that the woman would still take her seriously.

“My husband was a literary analyst in his old age; I don’t think he would forgive me if I didn’t let you move in.”

Once again Kaila had to check to see that her jaw was still attached. She was really going to be living in this house.

Reviews

[Cope Hayden]

Ok, you need to work on your time consistency. Sometimes the story is saturday and then it is sunday and then it is saturday again. Try putting some some spaces between your paragraphs, they are hard to read when they are all bunched up like they are. Prologues are supposed to give a hint to the suspense/mystery/hook of the story. I would strongly suggest saving this account of a young student's life for another time, after you have given the reader a reason to be reading. You show a talent in writing but you should learn to use more commas. I think maybe you should start the prologue off with "�WANTED: Housemate, quiet, no kids or pets. Inquire at 2811 Laurelhurst Drive, Oakley� Intrigued by the add., she decided to check it out. Her mother had read the add and declared. " And put everything you wrote after that in. I am anxious to see exactly where you are going with this story.

[Kristin Brecoe]

wow. i havent quite finished it yet, but i wanted to leave a start of a review now.

i really enjoyed it. everything was strong and likeable. you have some minor punctuation and word errors.

your a fantastic writer, and ill be a faithful [as long as i got time] reader of this story.

-kristin