heehee... a new story... run and hide, everyone!!!

He’d always resented his name. It wasn’t the sort of name a singer had. Staeven Etnom was an apple-seller, maybe an organ grinder, but not a singer. How he’d ended up with a talent for singing was beyond him. He sat, brooding about this, on the curb of the street, watching the wheels roll by him. 
Wheels fascinated Staeven, and from his spot on the curb he could see stroller wheels and automobile wheels and buggy wheels and tractor wheels, vending cart wheels and bicycle wheels and motorcycle wheels and rollerblade wheels. Wheels were comfortable and easy, not difficult to understand - all they required was matter to roll on and an axle to hold them in place. 
A snatch of song rolled into Staeven’s head on one of those wheels. “And the dark wind blows ‘cross the plain...night’s sanctuary is down on its knees, again you will find me, in pain...” Realizing what he had just sung made Staeven shake his head remorsefully. It was a scrap of the poem that his mother had written; in fact, the last one that had curled out behind her pen. 
Clouds blew in overhead, challenging the sunlight to a duel. A clutter of leaves blew down the street like the vampires, calling to Staeven to raise his head. And so he did, looking up to realize that the street was now deserted. There were no longer any wheels, no simple little circlets to keep him company. Staeven shivered, recollecting the similar experience his mother had had prior to...
He cut off his train of thought. Nobody in their right mind wanted to think about such a heinous exigency befalling the reason for their existence. 
Staeven suddenly had an urge to go home, something brought on by the sudden rise in humidity despite the chill of the air. Under the iron-cast canopy of the clouds, one little man in one large city hurried home, coat collar up, hands in pockets, acknowledged only by the single, cryptic watcher stepping out from behind the column in front of the citadel. 


3 Months Later

It was a dark tavern, to be sure, but what else could be expected of a place on this side of town, at this time of night? A fireplace of embers glowed alongside the bar, casting an eerie sanguine glow over the wooden stools. Two gruff-looking men sat across from each other in a booth to the left, each with what used to be a pint of ale sitting across from them. 
Staeven trudged up to the bar, feeling intimidated. Lithe didn’t always stand up well to burly. 
A busty blonde in a low-cut, lace-rimmed dress the color of absinthe turned around, wiping her hands on a towel and batting eyes like nighttime floodwaters. “Well, wha’ll i’ be, Jerry?” 
Staeven looked around, a little disturbed that he hadn’t seen this Jerry fellow come up behind him. Then it dawned on him, a cymbal crash echoing through an empty apartment building. “Who, me?” 
The blonde nodded once, slowly, raising an eyebrow at him. 
Embarrassed, Staeven sat down on the stool in front of her, looking at his hands. When she cleared her throat daintily, he looked up to find that more bare skin than most men have on their entire bodies was staring him in the face. Going beet-red, Staeven mumbled his order for a cup of tea. 
The blonde flashed bright white teeth and turned away to fix his drink. Staeven closed his eyes, startled by his own idiocy. When he opened them, he found that he may as well have not. The pitch blackness encompassed him, ensorcelled him, ensnared him. The flit of tune passed through his head, as it had begun to do with alarming frequency: “The crops in the fields all have withered, and the dark wind blows ‘cross the plain...”
Shaking his head, Staeven blinked again, opening his eyes to find the blonde woman again, looking oddly at him. “Your tea, Jerry,” she said, hesitation laced through her voice. 
Thanking her, Staeven raised the tankard of brew to his lips, only to have his treacherous, shaky hands spill it over the front of his tunic. The waitress, stifling a smile, turned away, then turned back with a towel. “I’ve seen drinkin’ problems, darlin’, bu’ tha’ jus’ beats all.” 
Baring his teeth in a sarcastic grin, Staeven mopped himself up with the somewhat grungy towel. One of the two men in the booth pulled out a long cigar; the other man lit the end from across the table. 
The blonde returned. “Here,” she said, sliding another tankard across the bar to him. “From th’ look on y’face, I figured y’might need somethin’ a li’l... stronger.” She turned around again, revealing another large expanse of bared skin. She looked over her shoulder, studying him from the corner of her eye. “And if y’need any...” she turned around to face him, “Comfortin’...” she leaned over the counter, elbows folded to assert her breasts to the fullest, “I’ll jus’ be upstairs.” 
She walked off, the little door that provided separation from the space behind the bar to the space in front of it swinging shut behind her. Staeven couldn’t help noticing how nicely her hips rolled beneath the tautness of her dress. The awkward silence that Staeven had found himself trapped in was shattered by the clanging of the bell above the door. 
Staeven looked up to see a hassled-looking brunette careening through the door, across the floor of the pub, and through the little entry portal. She skidded to a halt right in front of Staeven. An elf, he noticed; the pointed ears gave it away. At any rate, she was either elf or vampiress, although she didn’t appear to possess any of the natural grace of the elves, nor the seductive, catlike elegance of their bloodlicking kindred. 
“You’ll wan’ a’drink tha’ afore i’ gits warm,” she said aloud, and it took Staeven a few moments to realize that she was speaking to him. He picked up his glass, looked at it nervously, swilled it around, then downed the whole thing. Almost instantaneously, though it could have been his imagination, he could feel the alcohol numbing his nerves, making the synapses in his head more gummy. 
“‘Ang on, then! I know ‘oo you is!” she winked at him knowingly. He raised his eyebrows at her. “Y’re gettin’ quoite famous-like, up in th’ eelectric par’ o’ th’ ci’y,” she whispered, leaning in close. Staeven was glad that she, at least, was wearing something sensible: a sort of smock draped over a kimono, both black, arguing with her shocking-blue lacquered fingernails. 
One of the men in the booth got up and left. As he did so, his former companion raised his tankard in the air, calling, “Lyza!” The brunette, apparently Lyza, quickly filled another tankard with mulled mead, then walked with it over to the man. “Wot toime d’ y’ ge’ off t’nite, m’dear?” 
She cocked an eyebrow at him. “Too laite f’th’ loikes o’you t’be stayin’ up, Mat,” she told him, then walked back to the bar with Mat’s empty glass. 
Mat fixed Staeven with an odd sort of stare, sipping at his mead. Staeven, uncomfortable beneath this gaze, paid for the tea that he’d wanted and the whiskey the blonde barmaid had given him, then left a tip for Lyza that made her brown eyes grow as big as dinner plates, and left. 


6 Days Later

He’d always hated public performance. Even when he’d just been a teenager, not so long ago, Staeven had had trouble singing and strumming his guitar with the case out in front of him for money, on the sidewalk of the same street with the curb that he’d sat on a few months before, when he’d first seen the watcher. 
He could see that dark figure even now, not too far away from where he sat on the stage. A few hundred people and one guitar separated the two of them, but they were the only ones in here, really. 
The drummer came in with a cymbal roll; quiet at first, then growing like a tumor until it encompassed the entire hall. The stand-up bass player, Chalie, hit his notes - it was time for Staeven to come in. The song was about a girl who worked in a dark bar, saving up money until she could leave the city that has oppressed her for her entire life. Staeven, signaling to Chalie and Darla, the drummer, to hold up for a minute, stood up to address the crowd. 
“I’d like to make a dedication,” he said, his theater voice rolling from his throat like milk with honey, “to a Miss Lyza Partesuom from the Lower East Side, who inspired me to write this song.” There were cheers from the audience; a few, it seemed, had been to Lyza’s tavern, and knew who she was. Staeven found himself wishing that Lyza herself were present, though it appeared not to be so. 
With that, Staeven ripped out a guitar solo, ending with the cues from the song they usually played before the barmaid one. Darla churned out an amazing cymbal roll, Chalie came in right on time, and Staeven joined on schedule, playing for three measures before coming in with the vocals. 
“Tucked away behind the counter, in the gloom below the floor, taking tips as you take orders; this won’t be forevermore...”


Later That Night

Toryl Brendton woke up, shivering, sweat streaming down her face like tears of unremembered evil. Scrambling out of bed, she clicked on the lamp and glanced at her alarm clock. One o’clock in the morning, same as yesterday. She yawned. The nightmares were keeping her awake. She rubbed her eyes; she would get no more sleep this night. 
She unconsciously massaged her numb wrists. She hardly noticed the desensitized feeling anymore. They occurred every morning. 
Once the blood had returned to her hands, she picked up her notebook, grabbed her inkwell and quill, then scrawled a bit of a note to herself, for later review. 

I am deteriorating. I can feel it. The pillars that once supported me crumble and decay; an old elephant shot down by poachers, only to be found lacking in ivory. All I truly have left is my writing, the words written in blood drawn from my spilling veins. 
These veins were torn in the dream, the repeating dream that came again last night. I lay on the table, convicted of the crime. They slit my forearms and tore out the veins, ripping my skin as the blood vessels separated from my body. 
I have not slept for days. I scrawl, tired, barely able to copy the words that dart like hummingbirds through my mind. I no longer have anything to live for. I am alone. 
I walk down the hallway, absorbed in this death that I am living. The people part like the Red Sea as I walk through them. Their faces are blurred, and the paint that made them into the illusion of real runs down as the color makes contact with my tears. 
I am not here by my own will. I am not here by the will of anybody else. Therefore I am not here at all. My life is forfeit; my life is void. The coupon that I could have used to buy one and get one free expired years ago. There is no reason left. The feelings are gone. 
All but the fear. 

Toryl read back over what she had written, slightly unnerved. Trying to make it better, she grasped the quill once again, this time to write a poem. She closed her eyes and opened her mind, letting the words flow on their own. 

The darkness falls on the valley;
The darkness falls with the rain. 
Come all, darkness fall, it’s an ebony ball;
Come all, to humanity’s bane. 

She shook her head. She was off-kilter tonight, that was all. 

bwahaha!!! my creature!!! it's called a splishslosh... wahoo, what an original name!

 they live everywhere where there's moisture, from seweres to sinks, to showers to lavatories. they resemble small blue spiders with 52 legs and a single body segment. the legs resemble eyelashes and completely surround the body, which also serves as a single, marble-blue eye. the pupil of the eye resembles that of a cat and is jetblack. the splishslosh eats water rats up to 200 times its size and makes a clicking sound somewhat like the aliens in Signs. 

mwahahaha!!! a random snatch of story with potential (methinks)

 He had been gone for three whole years. As he stalked up the front steps of the house that he had owned in his former life, he

and that's it. 

okay, so i'm working on this piece, right? i suppose it's a potential novel, but who really knows? anyway, i've been working on it for about a week, it's four chapters long thus far, with an introduction and prologue, and i've written up this synopsis...

Kaevan, a young man, was sold by his family to a nation of slavers when he was a child. Now, separated from his homeland of Odlar for twelve years, Kaevan is a bitter, hard-hearted teenager who has no real idea why he was given. 
The first slave ever to escape the Assenav, Kaevan returns across the sea to take revenge on his old life. He meets up with an old cohort in crime and the two plan to team up, though both have grown up in different lifestyles. Cael has lived the sheltered life of an ascetic, Kaevan the harsh life of an emotion-driven slave. 
While visiting Cael at the Wizard’s Hall, Kaevan is discovered by visiting Adepts of the Daear to have the magical ability to travel the Abyss of Time and navigate the River at the bottom. Kaevan is the first being ever to be found that had not possessed the ability at birth, but acquired it during his time of slavery. Unaware that he had this ability; Kaevan is taken in for study. 
Naturally, Kaevan is unwilling to leave his plots for revenge just hanging there. So the Daear kidnap him, enabling them to study him in the privacy of their underground fortress, Raead. The location of Raead is more difficult to discover than the workings of human emotions. However, Cael and S’del, Kaevan’s Assenav princess lover, must set out to find their friend and rescue him. 
Kaevan, in the meantime, acquaints himself with the River of Time and begins intense physical and mental training to become an Adept of the Daear, though this means that he will not be allowed to live a normal life amongst the people of Odlar. His physical instructor, an ex-military woman named Ailcia, takes a liking to Kaevan, working him harder than all the rest during the day and backing him into corners at night. Slowly, steadily, she makes Kaevan forget all about S’del. 
Cael and S’del, meanwhile, draw ever-closer to the Raead, following odd half-clues that come to S’del in dreams. Cael, being a half-trained wizard gone absent without leave from the Hall, is being hunted, traced by his magic. However, he sends out beams of thought in an attempt to find Kaevan. 
S’del discovers that she loves Cael in a way she never loved Kaevan. She begins to doubt that Kaevan ever held anything more than lust toward her. Cael intrigues her, however, and she falls in love with his loyalty, perseverance, cunning, strength, sense of insignificance, and insecurity. Slowly but steadily, she comes to hate Kaevan with a passion, loathing his dark side and his lust for blood. 
On the other hand, Cael, who has been surrounded by nothing but males for the twelve years since he joined the ranks of the Wizards-in-Training in the Hall, finds himself unable to tear his eyes from S’del: her liquid brown eyes, raven black hair, and olive complexion. He finds himself looking at her whenever he thinks she won’t notice. Because of his lack of exposure, and the fact that she has been a willing lover - of his best and only friend - for the last three years, Cael is terrified of approaching her with his feelings. 
Meanwhile, back at the Raead, a sadistic Adept named Nayr Eiriar begins creating problems for Kaevan, who begins to search for Nayr’s motive while becoming more deeply involved with Ailcia. Kaevan discovers Nayr’s “bachelor attraction” when Nayr backs him into a corner. Nayr, perceiving Kaevan’s empiricism, banishes Kaevan to the Dungeons of the Raead to be put through pain until his mind breaks. Kaevan tries to shield himself from the pain with magic and ends up using so much magic and so many curses that he summons the Accursed, entirely by accident. 
The Accursed, thankful for their release from their prison at the bottom of the River of Time, release him, willing to allow him to join their ranks and become immortal, preserved forever outside the River, with his life force bound to it. There is one condition: he must kill his best friend, directly, in an act of first-degree murder. Kaevan sets out to kill Cael. 
S’del and Cael traipse onward, trying to locate the unlocatable Raead. One night, they are sitting by a lake, lost, desperate. Both admit their passion for the other and are indulging it when Kaevan creeps up on them from behind. 
Seeing S’del in Cael’s arms, Kaevan becomes mad with jealousy and uses magic to smother his best friend. Cael, rather than have his blood on his best friend’s hands, takes S’del’s cast-aside dagger and plunges it into his heart. 
Realizing what has happened, yet unsure of Kaevan’s state of mind, S’del removes the dagger from Cael’s heart and throws his body across a log. She stabs herself. With her last moments, she shoves the log into the lake and throws her own body over it. They both drift off, bare, on the log. They plunge out of the lake via a river and over a waterfall. 
Discovering what he has done, Kaevan draws the Mark of the Daear on the beach, enters the River of Time, and tries to bring them back to life. Trying to prevent himself from killing his friends, he kills his future self. Kaevan is annihilated, erased from history, never existed. 

Epilogue: Cael becomes a traveling wizard and goes to Assenav, where he meets and falls in love with S’del. They elope together to the remote woodlands of Odlar, to the very shores of the lake where they once died. 

well, that's sorta how it goes... does it suck?
peace,
*~sebhar~* drunken traveling bard of wrath

heehee... first diary entry!!! wahoo for me!!! ok, some writing... written when my friends and I were writing poetry back and forth during a fight, as you might gather...

I am sorry, dear friends, but you have changed, too. 
I no longer feel I should hang out with you. 
For one who would take what a friend should recieve
Deserves not that friend, so I've come to believe. 
When friend fears her friend, there is no reply. 
When friend loses friend, she need not ask why,
For the answer is clear. It is plain to see
That you no longer wish to hang around me. 

I won't twist and shout, nor deny what you said. 
I won't cry the tears, but hold them 'til you're dead. 
I just what you to think about what I have written. 
My feelings are no harmless calico kitten,
But a monster, once living under my bed
Now emerged, to bring tidings of that which I dread. 
You were kind once, and I was the same,
But we are caught up in that unending game. 
And I never thought it would happen to us. 
We biked, we swam, had fun on the bus,
Do you remember all the inside jokes? 
We took pictures and had laughs... now I hang by a rope. 
It's a short, clique-y rope that I will not climb,
For the relief at the top is not so sublime
As the friends that will come along down the road. 
There, no one envies, nor does power corrode. 

I could not have said this the right way with prose. 
Our new-shattered friendship quite clearly shows
That if there is nothing here that will make things change
Off of this rope, I may have to hang.