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athanasia-ia · 3 years ago

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Friend of the Devil - self para 1/?

tw: mentions of vomit, and parental neglect and abuse (+ small mention of drug use)

Yoojin’s skin tasted like vanilla pudding and metal. Each time she brought her fingers to her mouth, her tongue circled around the nails, and then teeth gently bit into the cuticles, nibbling on the broken skin. Each time a piece of skin was cut off, she’d roll it around her mouth, chew on it between her front teeth and then, with all the grace of an abandoned, unloved, unrefined soul, she spat it out. There were some alleviating factors. For one, she was sitting in almost complete darkness, surrounded by strangers whose attention was undivided. Their eyes were glued to the stage, and they were mesmerized by the loud, vibrant performance of the Circus. And, two, Yoojin did not know anyone there - for the first time in a long while, she was at a place where no one knew her and she knew no one. There was no need to pretend, no need to hide, no need to care, and the fact was liberating.

Or, at least, it should have been liberating. Despite her best effort, however, she could not help but feel the hairs at the back of her neck rise each time someone moved too suddenly or coughed or yelled in excitement. She could not help her skin breaking into pins and needles each time a shadow reminded her of someone - anyone - she knew. She could not get rid of the nausea either, which had nested in the pit of her stomach from the moment she got on the bus. Yoojin had vomited on the bus, and then once more when she had alighted. Then, when she was finally seated among the audience, as the show began, she kept suppressing the need to throw up again. She kept telling herself that it was all fine, and yet, nothing was fine.

How could it be? She laid her hands on her lap and laced her fingers together, staring off at the stage. One act had just finished, and the audience burst into an ovation, cheering and clapping while the performers bowed, nearly all the way to the ground, expressing their supposedly undying gratitude. Yoojin thought the man in the center had a strange expression, something between appreciation and arrogance. The young girl whose hand he was holding looked as if she had been rolling a piece of lemon around her mouth - her eyes smiled, but her mouth was cramping and twitching in what Yoojin could only describe as a sign of hysterics.

Yoojin’s hands began to shake. Why was she there? Her attempt at giving herself a sense of normalcy - a charade, really, a weak attempt at living a life her parents should have given her - was tumbling down like a house of cards. Her parents...What would happen when she went back home? Just how mad would her father be? She had gone away all by herself, without telling a soul. But, she had been begging to see the circus. For months, since she’d seen they would be coming to Seoul, she had begged and begged, promised to be good (whatever that meant in her parents dictionary), and she had done fairly well in school as well. She had even gone as far as promising to get into a good university. What a foolish girl she was. When had they ever given her anything? They gave her a life, clothes and food, they said - and that should have sufficed.

Yoojin squeezed her hands into fists, biting down hard onto her bottom lip. Father would be mad, he really would. Mother, too. How long would she be grounded? Was he going to hit her again? Probably. Her stomach churned, sending upwards a shot of acid which she could now feel at the back of her throat and the root of her tongue. She swallowed as much saliva as she could, hoping the rising nausea would stop before she vomited all over herself and the people sitting in front of her.

For the next act, they were looking for a volunteer from the audience. Yoojin sat still, only moving her left hand to bite into the cuticles again. She tore one off and tasted blood. Countless arms went up in the air, children and adults alike asking to be picked as the light searched through the audience. Eventually it stopped and much to everyone’s dissatisfaction, it landed on Yoojin, causing the young girl to freeze.

She shook her head. Embarrassed, she looked down, letting long locks of ink black hair fall over her face, but once she was picked, they were not going to change their mind. The audience began to clap, cheering her on instead of the performers. Someone pushed some hair off her face and spoke to her in a gentle, albeit excited voice, saying she should give it a try. Allegedly, it was a once in a lifetime opportunity to be part of a circus act. But, Yoojin's entire life was a circus act, she thought. So, what was so special about it? Now that she thought of it, she never should have come here in the first place. Someone else nudged her shoulder, begrudging her for causing a scene and making the performers uncomfortable.

Eventually, God knew how, Yoojin had been forced to get up. Hands and arms moved and pushed her forward, and her legs worked against her. It appeared that her feet had acquired a will of their own and they moved onward, excited to be a part of something bigger, something greater. The rest of her body was as of yet stiff, and her heart was pounding in her head. Her hands were soaked in her own sweat, and she could feel beads of it rolling down the curve of her spine. The noises and the lights around her only made her sicker, but her feet pressed on until one of the performers helped her get onto the stage. As the act was prepared, and explained to the audience, Yoojin kept staring down at the floor, at her toes, at her filthy, worn out sneakers, wishing the ground would open and swallow her alive. In fact, if the end of the world happened right this very moment, she’d have run into the fiery embrace of Hell voluntarily, if it meant this whole charade would stop.

What if it were a nightmare? Yes, perhaps she was sleeping. This thought excited her, and she peeked through her hair, scanning the stage and the audience. They could have all been made up, nothing but a fantasy conjured by her wild, seventeen year old mind. But, she knew better. And she especially knew it was all real when she saw the box in which they were to place her. The view of the casket-like contraption immediately caused her heart to swell in pain, sending her mind into an abyss of old memories: the dilapidated closet in her grandparents’ house where she had been locked by her mother time and time again whenever she did anything remotely naughty.

The thought of being put in that box sent her into her own hysterics, which ebbed liked the works of a tide.

“No,” Yoojin tried to say, pulling her arm out from a performer who was gently nudging her to get closer. The smell of the closet was right there in her nose: the dust, the old clothes sprinkled with cheap perfume. She could hear the clapping of a moth’s wings as it, too, tried to escape the primitive prison. As the audience cheered and the performer kept trying to get her to stand closer to the box, Yoojin managed to utter a “No!”, “Let me go!” and “Leave me alone”, but they just wouldn’t stop. She did see a serious look of concern shared between two performers, and she thought she heard one of them say if they should maybe pick someone else, but it was too late.

Someone nudged Yoojin again and she pushed the woman as hard she could, down on the floor, yelling “LET ME GO!” The audience suddenly fell quiet, and the young girl who had been pushed yelped out in pain, rubbing the back of her head. She looked up at Yoojin. Her face held an expression of disdain and disbelief. She mouthed “What the Hell’s wrong with you?”

And the lights. The damn lights were on the stage, centered around Yoojin. Nearly blinded by their scorching intensity, she breathed out a half-scream and knelt down for a moment, wishing the world to stop spinning. If it could be swallowed by a black hole, or if the angels could horn their trumpets, or if the planet just exploded - she wished for all of that. Someone helped the other woman up and someone else placed a hand on Yoojin's shoulder, but she screamed out a "fuck off!" and got up. Somehow, she found strength to get up and run towards an exit. Any exit would do, as long as she lights would stop following her and the people would stop staring.

She never should have come. Her parents were right to not let her. She was not made for this world and its parade of colours and people. Regretful of this entire thing, terrified of what her parents would do when she came home after an entire day of absence, she rushed right out of the building, and made it just around the corner before she threw up whatever was left in her stomach. Her mouth tasted foul, of acid and cheap breakfast and something else which she could not quite define.

How was she supposed to go home now? Perhaps...Perhaps she did not have to. But, she pushed that thought away as fast as she could. She wiped her mouth and straightened her back. She closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them her eyes landed on a flier on the ground. She picked it up and flipped it over but, aside from strange symbols - was it a foreign language? some sort of alphabet? - there was nothing else on it. However, for whatever reason, she shoved the flier into her pocket and walked away. Maybe no one even realized I was gone, she thought. But, the late afternoon was already setting and her school must have called by now, informing her mother that Yoojin did not come to class.

She squeezed her hands into fists again and thought if she could just get high, the world would, at least slightly, become a more tolerable place.

#♛—reflections on the past;self para #IAWrite Challenge

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thefinerpoint · 7 years ago

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NaNoWriMo 2017 Toolkit

Over the years I have wanted to take part in NaNoWriMo but there were numerous reasons I wasn’t able to, one of the big ones being poor planning. This year however I am a bit more prepared and have a plan to take part in my first NaNoWriMo.

Obviously being a stationery addict an important part of NaNoWriMo is deciding what stationery items I will use to write my story. This kind of falls into the category of #preptober, where you use the month before NaNoWriMo (October) to plan your story so you are raring to go on the 1st November.

I have a small, but I think, good toolkit to help me through the challenge. I think writing out the full story using pen and paper will be tough so I will more than likely lean on my digital tools.

Analogue tools

I have created a mini bullet journal for NaNoWriMo where I have been noting down ideas on characters and plot. I have also included a word count tracker with the aim of staying focused and a calendar view to decide what to tackle when. I haven't planned out the full month, but the first ten days have a loose outline. This extremely important information is in my Baron Fig Black Box limited edition Vanguard notebook.

To write my bestselling novel I am using the latest Baron Fig Vanguard limited edition release, the School Set. The lined ruling is ideal and I like a slimmer notebook when you are writing for longer periods of time, less ledge ache. To actually write I will be using my Archer pencil that came with this limited edition release, the new Baron Fig Squire, The Insightful Spectre and my Lamy LX fountain pen inked up with Sailor Blue Black. Any editing I may do along the way will probably be done with my Artline Magenta pen so that it stands out on the page clearly.

Digital tools

I will be using my iPad to write using a markdown editor, either iAWriter or Ulysses. I also have my Apple keyboard to make typing that little bit easier.

Feeling nervous

I am already less than confidant that I will be able to call myself a NaNoWriMo finisher. I am sure my story will run out of steam, or I will, leaving me with part of a story. But I really wanted to take part this year and use the encouragement of the community to drive me on and get 1667 words down each day. It'll also be really nice to see some used, beat up, scribbled in notebooks, but that's the geek in me.

Wish me luck.

#NaNoWriMo #Writing #Notebooks #Baron Fig #Lamy LX

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