VampireLily's Vampire Journal

VampireLily's Journal

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The Rains: Say Goodbye to Flesh & Blood
16:56 May 06 2013
Times Read: 424

**Just a taste of a short story that i'm working on....**

Docturane: Let it be known that anyone leaving the care and safety of the Inner Society will be allowed to perish given the fact that they have the free will to choose their fate and took risks that have put their mortal body in distress. Individual persons must be aware that other individual persons within the safe realms of the Inner Society will not and cannot be expected to rescue any persons that choose to leave.

Ashe stood before the broken, skeletal phone pole in which the ‘Doctrine’ was precariously nailed up. He was figuring that the pole wasn’t good for much else with its dead, tentacle like wires hanging limply around its shattered head. Ashe, aptly named for the thick, unruly copse of white and silver hair that he was born with, absently scratched at his left hip and read it again. There was little else to do. He’d love to sit down in the dirt and eat but he needed to save his rations until he could at least find a habitable place to sleep.

“Good luck with that.” He said out loud and turned casually back towards the road ahead. It spawned out in all directions like the gnarly fingers of a crone, five smaller off-shoots from the same ill-fated hand. He thought immediately of that bit of prettiness his father used to repeat to him: Two roads diverged in a yellow wood….and sorry I could not travel both.

Only there was no longer any yellow wood, was there? Nor the underbrush which would follow later but he quite obviously had a choice…. five of them to be exact. He leaned against the phone pole and perused his options. The first, the one that was obviously the thumb, was ugly and stunted; a rutted mess that someone with an old wagon had unsuccessfully tried to navigate. One of the wheels had been abandoned in the sludge like a broken bit of fingernail. He counted that one out. He then floated his gaze towards the second road, the index finger. Ashe would have given this one serious consideration if not for the fact that what he had thought was a heaped up, nappy old coat left to rot at the base of the road had turned out, in actuality, to be a dead dog. He took that as an omen. That left him the middle finger, the ring finger and the pinky prospectively. Close your eyes and point his head said. Eenie, meenie, miney, moe his head said again. But then the bright blue spark of his gaze happened upon that one road, precisely in the middle. Not too muddy or worn, not exactly fresh either but it seemed to welcome company and better yet, there wasn’t a dead dog guarding it’s passage like some stiff-legged harbinger of doom. Ashe kept his ground long enough to cast one last suspicious glance towards the expired canine then dragging his pack up over one shoulder, moved forward.

The first leg of his odyssey led him past a variety of abandoned refuse. Assorted bits of this and that orphaned in various positions, either accidentally lost or tossed haphazardly aside. Most of it was various enclosures from food-stuff, a wrapper or bag or bit of plastic. Ashe paused momentarily to nudge a rectangular, lidded container with the edge of his toe. He bent from the waist, narrowing his eyes a bit to read: Glad. He snorted. “If that ain’t irony in a fuckin’ hand basket, then what is?” After deciding that it was at least sanitary enough to handle, he picked it up for closer inspection, peeling back the clear blue lid. Crumbs. His right wrist flicked downwards, emptying the container of its contents, a gentle rain of it dusting his worn boots. It would come in handy. He tucked it away in his pack and moved on.

Whenever he had a long bit of space to cover, he’d play little games with himself. Sometimes he’d recite things he could remember, his father reading to him or random murmurings about his mother: Her eyes were blue…. She liked daffodils…. Once she made me a birthday hat out of red felt and some cardinal feathers she had found outside…. She’d ride her bike as fast as she could then stick her legs straight out, laughing. And when she did, her ghost-blonde hair would whip back and slip against my face. This last thought halted him dead in his tracks. She might still be out there, somewhere in the world. And the world, for all it had become, was now very small. Still large enough to swallow up a ghost-blonde girl, he supposed. He tried to will himself forward, afraid that if he thought about it too long; his head would start to ache. He lifted his left hand absently, stroking his fingertips against his eyelids, sending her away. “You can’t mourn someone who isn’t dead.” He said firmly. “You’re not dead.” A brisk wind suddenly stirred the leaves, a hissing whisper that cut the air. Ashe acknowledged this with a simple nod of his head, the silvery white hair lifting momentarily off his forehead before sifting back against his lashes. Then he walked.

If traveling alone lends you anything, it certainly makes you a professor of observation. In the months since the last flooding, suspicion rose with the water- it wasn’t easy to find a place to settle, and if getting accepted in to a society was rough, trying to exit was even harder. The sprawls were few and far in between, making it increasingly difficult for any nomad to locate a safe place just to shelter or spend a few days of rest. Once in awhile you’d find a family unit still intact and they’d be willing to share lodging and food stuff with a road orphan. But they rarely were willing to let you leave peacefully. Reinforcements, after all, were a good thing to have.

He was just one mile into the trail when he came across the Doctrine again. Only this time there was a crudely scribbled message added beneath it:

The LORD lovs thos that help themselvz- Pray for ALL that is LAWST!

And then:

The Lord loves those who know how to spell! Pray for All the LANGUAGE lost!

And then:

JoJo luvz Mercy!

And beneath that:

Me TOO!

Ashe took a quick glance up the road, his hair dusting the bridge of his nose and then settling back in to his stance, observed the poster again. All he could do was stare and then, miraculously, for the first time in ages he started to laugh. It started off softly and then bellowed out, like a sheet on a clothesline once the wind catches it. He laughed until his eyes teared and his ribs ached. He laughed like it was the last time that he might. It wasn’t until he had lurched forward, slapping his hands against his knees with a great gasp of air that he noticed the second set of feet next to his own. He looked up in surprise, blue eyes wide and mouth slightly agape.

The girl was silently reading the Doctrine, chin tipped gently out as though she were looking down the bridge of her nose. A constellation of freckles lay strewn across the bridge of it, spilling gently against her cheeks where they crept up into her hairline before fading altogether. Her hair was made up of curled bits of sun bleached blondness which were randomly pinned about her head like an awkward crown. When she finally looked at him, her green eyes swept him up into her stare, absorbing him from head to boots.

“Hello, orphan.” The girl said and then hesitantly, offered him her smile. Ashe, who was dusty, hungry and yet somehow suddenly revived, felt a fist tighten in his chest and managed to smile back.

“Are you Mercy?” He asked

The girl tossed her head, losing a pin from her hair and setting a wayward curl off like a pop-gun. “No,” she laughed “I’m called Sprite.”

And so, she was.