It’s day 21! Yay! Well, 20, but technically the 21st, since it’s about past 1 AM and I shouldn’t be sleeptyping. Well, the excerpt is finally up. I’m not particularly thrilled with it, but I do like the tone-shift it gave me for the novel’s current direction. So, with a salute to my current word count. (I’m on track enough to skip the days I’ll have papers n’ stuff due), yay me! 😛
So on a happy note, here is my long-awaited excerpt, which, technically should be all in italics, as they are Irisa’s thoughts, but I figured it’d be a bit tricky on the eyes, so image the nice, curvy slants on the letters, okay? And yes, current word count is all the way down at the bottom of the post. ^_^
Author’s Note: This is Christian Fantasy, but it does not mean it is a”happy-fluffy-go-lucky” kind of story. If that is what you are expecting, please find something else to read. This is an opening snippet from the main character, Irisa’s mind, in the beginning of the story. She is locked inside a room and thinking about her life. Thank you for reading! 🙂
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When a writer stops writing, do they go mad straightaway or does it dribble off day by day? I have always been terrified to know the answer to that question. Perhaps that is why I cannot stand to have my hands sitting idle. I think my head would explode if I were ever to stop writing.
I like to write about people. I like to give them names so I can remember their faces. I always have trouble remembering faces, but I never forget a name. My mind must be like a strainer, only the names stay inside and everything else trickles through.
Empty faces. Meaningless names. Sometimes I think I will go mad, even if my hands are busy moving. I cannot shake the memories of faceless people with such names. It would be the very worst thing in the universe to be nameless.
At least, that’s what I think.
Though the one I work for is nameless by choice, my heart calls him Julius, so Julius he is. I cannot function if I do not name him. But I do not think that he appreciates my heart-name and yet I do not care either. He has told me that is not his name, but I pretend to be deaf. I act as if I cannot hear him, because if I did, I might hurt him.
That would not be good, yes?
One of these days, I will know his name and when I do, I’ll use it to finish his book. I will finish his book with words he will never forget. I will make him hurt for the lives he has taken and the ones he will continue to take, lest he be dead when I alter his life.
If he is, I think I just might call it back.
What kind of a monster does that make me?
He thinks I am stupid and that I am neither counting nor keeping track. But I am. I have worked for this monster for nearly fifty-years of the centuries I have to my name.
I am nowhere near half as dense as he wishes I was.
I am nowhere near as harmless. I am so dangerous I could scare myself if I tried. It pains me to see a man such as him in a position where he can freely abuse the power that is bestowed upon him because of his social rank. It bothers me in many ways, but yet I stay here and do as I am told.
Sometimes I think I am more of a monster than he is. But the options I have to take are not ones that I would. They are not options that anyone should take. Yet, I still consider them. Perhaps it is part of the darkness I must carry.
Perhaps it is just another sliver of my heart crumbling away.
There is no justification for what I do, but still, I find myself thinking and wishing that there was. That there is. That instead of these four white walls closing in on me, that I could have something better ahead of me.
But I am only dreaming or rather, as close to dreaming as I can get. I haven’t slept in centuries, I don’t expect to anymore, but it troubles people, so I pretend to rest for a time by lying on the floor and closing my eyes.
They always assume I am sleeping.
I always laugh when they do.
But the floor is cold tonight, I am not as inhuman as they treat me. I would prefer at least a warm bed or pool of water. I miss the outdoors and I miss the scent of rain. I wish there weren’t any scents or smells at all. Everything is the same. I’m sick of color. I’m sick of sound. I hate breathing.
How can someone hate breathing?
Doesn’t that mean I’d be dead? That I ought to die if I don’t want to live? No, I am a liar, I don’t want to die. I have too many things I want to do before I die.
I want to make Julius squirm.
Yes, that is one thing I want to do before I die.
Now I wish could bathe in bleach.
Something, anything to rid me of the stench of blood. It is so thick in the air that I breathe it in my every waking moment. Perhaps that’s why I can’t stand anything today. Maybe that’s why I wish I was dead.
But I can’t die, can I?
I’m alive, but stuck inside myself, a walking, living prison that I cannot ever escape. I will live and I will die inside myself. How strange.
Outside must be a marvelous place.
One day I shall be free of this prison. Both of my body and these blank walls.
Julius will pay for this.
I am tired after all. I am sick of all of these games and empty threats. No one can run from me. No one can touch me.
Not if I don’t want them to.
I am tired.
So very tired.
(c) Sara Harricharan
Word count :81346