Okay, so this is an experiment based on people's comments. It might be complete rubbish, or it could be absolute brilliance. I have gone way out of my comfort zone to attempt it, but like the strange eerie feeling the tense gives. You'll be pleased, Hex, it's present tense, except 3rd, not 1st - I know, shoot me now - but I'm starting to feel the tone it gives matches a fantastical nightmare quite well. I just hope everyone else agrees.
You'll see soon enough that the setting has changed into a crazy interpretation of the same events twisted into a more dream-like state. Everything still happens, but now that it's fantastical, it gives me the opportunity to add some hints and some foreboding. I also had light switch on in my head in relation to something else I had been planning, so managed to fit it in here too. I think it all turned out quite the psychological thrill ride.
The narrator is a 17-year-old omniscient version of Kateryn in this scene. The lack of dialogue in some points is quite realistic in these situations, incase anyone was wondering about the points it mentions voice yet has no dialogue.
I know it's still pushing the word limit at 1361 words - even though I tried to cut out everything I could, it ended up bigger because of fantastical elements - so I'm not expecting a line-edit. Just overall comments if people feel inclined to give them, or if you want to tell me it's crap and I should go back to the old version and touch it up.
I'm not sure I've captured all the advice given me, but lets see if it just sounds good in theory, or actually works in practice:
* * *
Shouting and gunfire echo down the hall. A family runs from the Blackcoats chasing them, the mother pulling her daughter along by the hand, the girl trying so hard to keep up that her legs start to hurt. A toy bear dangles from the girl’s hand, tattered and well loved, its fur prickling her skin. Its right eye is missing. She wants to stop, but her father yells at her, his voice forceful, frightening.
The girl looks back, worried when her father’s voice isn’t as loud this time, and sees he has stopped and turned around. The walls swirl around him like a dark cloud born out of her imagination, strands of black smoke tearing away from the wall as if they are hands trying to reach for him. The girl panics, starts to cry, and her mother is forced to drag her along.
'Please, Daddy, don't leave us,' the girl says, but he doesn’t listen.
Her father raises his rifle. Sparks shower down around him from where a bullet hit the lamp overhead. The Blackcoats are closer to him now, their jaws open wide, fire escaping from within, and their eyes smouldering with an orange glow that matches the guns they hold.
Her mother pulls her through a set of double doors and they slam shut. She hears her father’s rifle fire, twice, but then a heavy grinding sound throbs in her ears. Her mother leads her through a forest, the branches of trees twisting as they reach for her, but every time they get close, her mother turns away. The trees cry in protest and the ground shakes whenever a branch comes to a stop.
With her chest freezing from shortness of breath, they stop, and only then does her mother let her go. They stand before a mountain that reaches all the way to the dark clouds above. The clouds flash, and thunder rumbles across the sky.
Her mother claws at the bushes and pulls them aside, revealing a cave hidden behind. She draws the girl close, and kneels before her. The girl feels her mother’s panting breath on her face, like a thousand tiny fingers dancing over her skin, and the beat of her heart races in time to the way her mother repeatedly squeezes the girl’s arms as she speaks.
‘Listen, Kateryn. No matter what you hear. No matter what happens. Don’t make a sound.’ She shakes the girl. ‘Not a sound. Promise me!’
‘I promise!’ the girl cries. The forest is darker now, the trees are closing in on her, and then her mother pushes her inside the cave. Turning back, the girl sees her mother let go of the bushes. ‘No, don’t you leave me too!’ she says when she realises her mother wouldn’t be following her.
‘Mother!’
The girl tries to peek through the bushes, but it is pitch black, just like the cave. The thunder is deafening in her ears, growing so loud it hurts, and she hugs the bear close to her, feeling its fur tickle her face like a spider web.
The thunder stops and she hears angry voices yelling, but she can't make out the words. Her mother’s determined voice answers them. The sound of gunfire cuts through the wall of bushes, and the girl screams and covers her ears. Her tears soak into the bear’s fur as it sticks to her skin, matted and scratchy. She tastes the coppery tang of blood in her mouth where she bit her tongue.
The noise stops, and a dreadful silence replaces it. Slowly, the girl lowers her hands and reaches for the bushes. She tries to move them aside but they don’t budge. She is trapped, and all alone, she realises.
Suddenly, light blinds her as the bushes are torn away. A dark shadow fills the cave entrance, a massive face peeks in, and glowing amber eyes fix on her. The monster’s mouth twists into a frightening smile.
‘So this is the child who will destroy the world,’ it says in a booming voice.
Its huge arm reaches for the girl and she starts to shuffle backwards, until her back touches the end of the cave. She swallows her scream, and the lump in her throat, then curls up into a ball, as if that might hide her from sight. The monster’s breathing is loud in her ears like the growl of a lion.
The light bursts into a thousand tiny snowflakes. The girl gasps and tenses as the world beyond the cave vanishes, the man too, and even the cave. She floats in a pure white nothingness, yet her eyes are drawn to the woman in its centre.
A scar runs through the woman's right eye. She smiles, her silver eye sparkling with sympathy. Her long, brown hair floats around her head as if she is underwater, and wings, covered in emerald feathers, hang from her back. She stretches her wings out, arches her back and the nothingness shatters apart, returning the girl to the cave in the middle of an earthquake.
The girl screams and buries her head in her lap. But slowly, the earthquake dies away and the girl glances out from between her knees. The monster is gone, the bright light is also gone. Another woman stands in view of the cave entrance, looking at the girl. She has blonde hair, and is dressed like she is going to war.
The woman turns away, as if she has forgotten the girl is even there, and leaves her; just like her mother had. The girl crawls from the cave and steps out onto the open plains of a field. The wind howls in her ears. A large wooden pillar rises up before her, a series of faces carved into it. She gasps when the bottom one is her own face staring back at her, looking sad and lost. A woman’s face is carved into the wood above her, but the woman looks to be in pain and suffering so much her eyes are pleading for release. The wood breaks into multiple pillars after that, twisting around each other until they reach a final face right at the top of the tall statue.
The girl’s breathe catches in her throat and she stumbles backwards, landing on her bottom. The monster’s face grins down at her, fires burning inside its eyes. Her hands sink into the damp ground and she looks down. The grass is stained red. She is surrounded by the bodies of those who’d chased her, their skin all red and black as if they’d died in a fire. Her eyes flutter from one to the next until she finds one familiar to her. She starts to cry as she crawls over to her mother and shakes her, saying. ‘Mamma… Mamma? Wake up.’
But her mother doesn’t wake.
In desperation, her cries grow into screams so loud her voice fractures the sky like a broken window and blood seeps through the cracks, flooding the area, and trying to drown her. She cries out for her mother.
‘Mamma!’ I screamed, and lurched upwards, reaching for the surface. I broke free from the ocean of blood, gasping for breath, struggled from the bed, and hastily crawled across the ground. Everywhere I looked, I saw red; covering the floor, my arms - my nightclothes.
It wasn’t real, I told myself, and squeezed my eyes shut. When I opened them again, the blood was gone – the room was how it should be. I wiped the sweat from my brow. That nightmare again. Every time, the same one. I rested my cheek against my knees and tucked them up against my chest. Fur tickled my palms. An illusion; I’d lost him. I couldn’t even remember when.
I’d lost all desire to curl back under the blankets with the feelings left behind by my nightmare still so close to the surface. My shift stuck to me, soaked with my sweat, making my skin itchy. I needed to get out of it, and get clean. There was one luxury I’d come to enjoy in Tūmau Ngiha; one luxury that would help wash away the bad memories.
*
Back to the drawing board?
