#seriously i’ve had this draft sitting partially completed in my drive for like a YEAR AND A HALF and it’s not even that long

[camgoloud]

i’m going to finish this Thing i’ve been writing over this long weekend. i’m going to do it. this is me manifesting and also holding myself accountable. if i don’t reblog this post by end of day monday informing you all that it’s done i want you to find some real and tangible way to punish me for it

[westywrites]

Story with Gods - Chap 4

FIRST - PREVIOUS - NEXT

Though I have been mostly talking about A Mind of Static, this WIP still exists too, so I figured I could pull from it for my post this week (two days late because of work, but better than never). Apologies in advance for the roughness of this chapter, as per always, it’s the first draft so perspectives and other things are a bit whacky. 

This will make more sense if you’ve read chapters one, two, and three. In this chapter, Dani is introduced! @whollyart @ratracechronicler @concealeddarkness13  thought you may appreciate this. 

Excerpt:  She shuddered and focused instead on the beat of their footsteps on the tiles. A rhythmic tapping that echoed but remained constant as they walked through the maze of identical halls. A thrumming like the heartbeat that played in her chest, confirming that against all logic she was alive. She looked to Sophia and noticed that there were no signs that she had been starved, she looked just like she had on that first day so long ago. Actually, not just like she had, there was something different about Sophia now, something about her seemed suddenly surreal.

"Olive!" Sophia scrambled across the floor to her friend. Olivia groaned as Sophia fell into hysterics.

"What's going on?" Olivia sat up slowly, looking around the room. "Where are the others?"

"Oh, it's a miracle." Sophia smiled through the tears running down her face. "You're alive again." She hugged Olivia only to be pushed away.

"Where are the others? What happened?" Olivia's green eyes were wide.

"They're all dead." Sophia was still laughing slightly and crying as she said it. "I died, and they died, and you died but then I wasn't dead, and now you're not dead, and we're both alive, and Bob was right, and we'll get out of here, and it'll be ok."

"Are you ok Soph?" Olivia put a hand on Sophia's shoulder.

Sophia stopped laughing. "Bob was right. Bob was right, oh no he was right and if he's right..." She started mumbling under her breath.

"Who the hell is Bob?" Olivia shook Sophia, but she was zoned out in a broken cycle of mumbling.

"I am,” Bob said cheerily over the speaker. "Very nice to see you're awake. If you could calm Sophia down, I'll explain everything in a minute." The microphone clicked off.

"Sophia, just breathe. Are you alright?" Olivia pulled Sophia's chin up to force eye contact. "Is there anything I can do?" Olivia was under the belief that her friend was suffering a mental breakdown of some kind. Though she was partially correct, she certainly didn't know the full story.

"You know what?" Sophia seemed to look through Olivia. "I'm not ok, not really. How could I be ok when everything I know is wrong?" She laughed again. "Hell, I'm not even human."

Olivia took a shaky breath in. "Soph, you sound crazy. I don't know what happened but..."

"That's right. You don't know what happened. What we are. But you will." Sophia grimaced. "And you'll see, you'll be in the same position as me."

"You're freaking me out." Olivia pushed away and stood up. "Tell me what's going on,” she demanded.

"If you insist, kid." Bob launched into his scripted explanation. Sophia cringed every time he said the word god, and she felt sorrow seeing Olivia's disbelief. After he had finished Olivia started to laugh. She looked between Sophia and the speaker like they were playing some big joke on her. After a minute she looked back to Sophia and fell silent.

"You guys aren't kidding?" Olivia could see the seriousness in Sophia's eyes. A lump grew in her throat, and something inside of her knew it was the truth. She fell quickly to a seated position and rubbed her hands across her face. Numb and confused she sat in silence as Sophia just stared from a few feet away.

"I've called a truck to take you," Bob announced eventually. "I'm not sure you can both go together though. This truck is kind of a special cases only sort of thing."

"Oh, we're going together." Olivia looked up at the speaker. "And there's no way you're stopping us." The tangle of her thick wavy hair and her sharp green eyes made her appear wild and dangerous. Even Sophia was afraid, it was as if Olivia's anger sucked all the moisture out of the air. The only response from Bob was the click of the mic. "That guy's an asshole." Olivia huffed.

"He's actually pretty nice, a little geeky but nice,” Sophia replied softly.

"He says we're gonna fight for his side in a war he's told us nothing about." Olivia raised an eyebrow. "I'd call that an asshole." The passion in Olivia's eyes cast beauty over her face.

"He thinks his side is the right side though if you thought you were fighting someone horrible, pretty sure you'd be like that too." Sophia realized as she said this that she didn't really know, her and Olivia had only known each other for around a month. It had felt like so much longer.

"Well, I'd be an asshole then too." Olivia scooted closer to Sophia. "I'm not fighting anyone until I know both sides completely and objectively."

"I'm just not going to fight anyone at all." Sophia shrugged. "All that injury and death and hatred aren't worth much. Especially considering the fact that it's all pretty easily fixed if people would just sit down and talk to each other and stop being jerks."

"You sound like a hippy." Olivia's laugh was gentle and kind, Sophia was grateful that she would have Olivia by her side for everything that was about to happen. The two girls leaned into each other, small and afraid. They held each other, clinging to the only thing that felt real in the face of their uncertain future. Sophia hummed gently and quietly, repeating a meaningless series of notes that Olivia would echo every so often.

A voice came over the speaker, it wasn't Bob this time but some woman. "The truck has arrived, please present yourself at the door and Robert will lead you out."

"Jeez, that sounded cold." Sophia did a mock shiver as she stood up, deciding once more to make as much light as she could in their dark circumstances. "Wonder what's got her all upset?" Olivia just shrugged in response and looked at the door. Her eyes were wide, and Sophia knew she was afraid. Sophia whispered futile positivities like a mantra and Olivia could almost believe her when she said, "Look, we're here together, we're going together. We have each other, and we'll be alright."

"I know, it's just..." Instead of finishing her sentence Olivia just shook her head and stood slowly. They grabbed hands and headed to the door. It opened slowly, and a small man was on the other side.

"Hi there! Glad to finally meet you in person." He was a geeky looking man with glasses and clothes that seemed to come from the 1970s. He outstretched a hand to Sophia, who shook it awkwardly.

"You must be Bob," she said. "It's a pleasure to finally have a face to the name." She made a face at how formal and stiff she sounded. Bob laughed slightly and lead them out the door opposite the room they had left.

They wound their way through white tiled hall after white tiled hall. They walked in deafening silence and Olivia could only think of hospitals, morgues, places of death. She shuddered and focused instead on the beat of their footsteps on the tiles. A rhythmic tapping that echoed but remained constant as they walked through the maze of identical halls. A thrumming like the heartbeat that played in her chest, confirming that against all logic she was alive. She looked to Sophia and noticed that there were no signs that she had been starved, she looked just like she had on that first day so long ago. Actually, not just like she had, there was something different about Sophia now, something about her seemed suddenly surreal. Olivia shook her head and focused again on counting footsteps. Finally, they came to a set of double doors that swung open into a driveway, like one of those loading bays behind grocery stores. The truck waited for them there, though Olivia would've called it a van. It was one of those square UPS-style trucks but painted completely grey. The back was open and empty except for benches along the three walls.

"Is there any way I could sit up front? Sitting sideways or backwards like that makes me motion sick," Olivia asked and cursed that her voice was so timid compared to normal.

"Suck it up,” said a man in a black uniform and helmet that covered his face. It was like he had appeared out of thin air. He pushed into her back with the butt of a gun and ushered both girls onto the truck. There were six people dressed like that who followed them and sat around the benches. Each one held a gun. Olivia and Sophia looked at each other wide-eyed and did everything they said in fearful silence.

They drove for hours, no one spoke, and the soldiers seemed to never move. The only time someone spoke was when one of the soldiers told Sophia to stop bouncing her leg. After some time the truck slowed and they made several turns in quick succession before backing into somewhere and stopping. The back doors were flung open, and two more soldiers climbed in, they were dragging another girl behind them who was kicking and fighting to get away. Once the doors closed the girl surrendered and started examining Olivia and Sophia with her eyes. She looked like she had been through hell, she was thin and her skin, though dark as night, had a deathly shade. Her nearly black eyes were sunken, and she had the bags of someone who hadn't slept in years.

"My name is Dani." She nodded solemnly. "I guess we're in this shitfest together."

"I'm Sophia, and this is Olivia." Sophia forced a slight smile. Dani seemed unafraid of the soldiers and talked consistently for the rest of the drive. Olivia replied rarely, but Sophia was a glad participant in the conversation. Dani told them that she was from Fort Wayne, Indiana, though technically she was born in Egypt, she seemed proud not to be fully American. She had been forcibly volunteered by a teacher at her school to participate in some personality test thing with a bunch of other students. That night she was kidnapped and supposedly murdered. She ended up waking up a few days later in a strange place, was told some "crazy bullshit" and loaded onto the truck the next day.

"It's not crazy though," Sophia said after she finished explaining their own story. "We know for sure we were dead and now we're not. There's no logical way to explain it."

"Dude there's no way we're some super powerful immortal beings that can change the course of a war we didn't even know was happening." Dani shrugged. "Like no offence but I just met you, and I can tell that you're both just ordinary teenage girls like me. We're not some movie plot, that shit doesn't happen in real life."

"No one ever said we were immortal or even all that powerful." Sophia leaned towards Dani.

"Really? 'Cause they sure as hell told me." Dani leaned away. "Besides do you think they'd assign eight soldiers to a trio of teenagers if they didn't think we're important? They're all nuts and have chosen us as the target of their insanity."

"What do you mean they told you? What did they tell you?" Sophia was intrigued by the new information.

"They told me that they found two others who were really powerful as well, I assume that's you two, and it implies that I'm powerful or whatever." She shrugged again. "And when I said something about dying before I go with them they said that would be a feat because apparently, we're powerful enough to be immortal. Like never-die-ever-no-matter-what immortal."

"I'd rather die," Olivia mumbled, Sophia flashed her a concerned look.

"That's against the natural order of things. Everything has to die eventually." Sophia furrowed her brow. "If there are beings that don't die those beings would likely go insane."

"You know nothing." One of the soldiers laughed. "It's so bizarre that some believe that children like you could change our world when you are here debating and denying fact."

"Have you ever considered that maybe it's not fact but only delusion?" Dani hissed at him.

"I fought and died a human soldier in the First World War." The soldier took off his helmet, he was a young man no older than thirty. "I was nineteen at the time, and now I age slowly. Over a hundred years have passed since my death." He pulled his helmet back on. "There is no delusion."

"You could just be lying." Dani's voice wavered. Something inside her, inside each of the girls, knew that the soldier told the truth. Every bit of truth was like a punch in the stomach. They knew that their lives would never be the same and they were afraid.