Well this Feels Good

I have been working on 'Sleepless' for a good portion of the day. It feels really good to get back to my creative writing. I can't believe how long I just let it sit. I now have a good 17 pages of manuscript where I believe I only used to have 5. I sit here now wanting to get back to it. SO to make a short story even shorter here is a part from chapter 1 it is a flashback memory scene, it has what leads to the memory and what pulls the main character out of the memory. Tell me what you think, transition are I think my worst but then I criticize myself too much.


As we walked I began to think of what had started this all for me; two days ago I had been home visiting with my family and now by no choice but my own I was in a dark desert cave. So much had happened that first day back home, so much had changed.
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“Emma!” my sister cried as I walked through the door. “I can’t believe it you home for the whole summer, I missed you so much. I have so much to tell you. We have so much to catch up on.
“Hey Emily, I know we have much to talk about but can I at least put my stuff up and get something to eat first please.” I said with a sigh.
“Of course, take your time we have three months together before you leave again.” She hugged me, she was so happy to see me, as I was to see her.
It had been a long year, because of this summer the seniors had not been able to come home during Christmas so it had been a full year since I had seen my family, well other then my baby brother and fellow 24 Collin I had seen him at school, but my parents and Em I had not been allowed to see for a full year and it sucked. It was weird that Em was the only non-24 in the family but she had been born two years before the explosion and therefore was not a child of the aftermath. I was turning nineteen in three weeks and still had a year left at Banner Academy, Collin was fifteen and had four years left. But Emily was twenty-one and had one more year of college but normal college, not where Collin and I were heading, Banner University, the next step toward the future for the 24’s.
There was a knock on my door and I knew it was Emily. “Come in.” I said with another sigh, I wanted some time alone but I knew I wouldn’t get that till later when Emily and my parents pretended to go to bed. Collin and I were expected to keep our studies up, jut quietly so we didn’t “wake” anyone, like they were asleep, Emily would be reading for fun or watching TV and my parents well I tried not to think of what they did at night.
“Hey Emma, how was your year?” she asked in a shy voice I knew she could tell I wasn’t up to talking yet so she was starting off slow trying to get me to talk first so she could tell me about her fun times at college without feeling so bad.
“You know, same old same old, nothing different, ask again next summer and it might be different with all the being prepared for Banner U and what not.” I tried to keep the sarcasm out of my voice but I don’t think it worked.
“Emma I know you are having a hard time with all this but look you get to be home all summer and Collin still has to go back in two weeks. You know it will get better at BU I’m sure you will get more freedom there…”she trailed off. No one knew what BU was going to be like my class would be the first attending. “You know I pretty sure college is suppose to be a choice, I’m sure you could go somewhere else if you didn’t want to go to Banner U.” she said with hope.
“I wish it was a choice but what am I going to do at a normal University even if I went to Harvard or Yale or some other school like that I would be bored and ahead of everyone. This next year is the equivalent to the second year at a normal University.” I had no hope of going anywhere but Banner U and everyone knew it.
“Well I’m still sure you will have fun.” Emily was trying to be helpful but we all knew that Collin and I were different and therefore had a different path.
Emily was only a year older then the last group of ‘normal’ children so she knew that normal schools were fading out and being replaced by more Banner Academy’s as where the University’s. It was a sad thing but no one really saw it that way. Everyone said that the 24’s were the future and since an antidote to what caused the whole mess is unlikely to be found we really were the future.
It was weird Emily wasn’t old enough when it happened to remember sleep but she remembers dreaming. She misses it greatly, I think the dreams she remembers is what gives her the hope she has. We talked until she had to go fake being asleep. It was then that I went to my room to study.
I turned the TV on for background noise but the story caught my eye so I turned it up to hear… “Tonight on the midnight news a recap of Emma Stone’s life, for the first time in sixteen years Emma will be away from Banner Academy for three months. Tomorrow an interview with Emma to see how she is handling the time away from the place she has known as home for so long…” the stupid story irritated me so I turned off the TV and found a good station on the radio to listen to instead.
After about a half hour of music the announcer came on I figured he was just going to say what songs were coming up but instead he said something that caught my attention. “Tonight’s songs are all dedicated to the many people that disappeared twenty years ago, they are all missed and it remains a mystery today what happened to them…” the music began after that and it got me thinking, what if I disappeared. I’m so sick of all the attention, can I just vanish. My plan was hatched and I sought to try.
I left that night at about 1am. I ran as fast as I could until I was out of the LA city limits. Then I shifted between running walking and sprinting east towards the Arizona desert the darkest place in the country, no one would ever think to look for me there, I would be safe and able to vanish from the world of the sleepless and 24’s.
“Emma?” I heard Leo call my name and was jerked out of the memory. I could see light ahead so we must have made it into the cave.
©2009 Megan Hubby