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wanda-zerouly · 2 years

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3/5/23 Warm-up

It is a strange feeling to experience wind inside, even stranger is to experience it underground. I wrapped my arm around myself as the train flew on by. I wasn’t here for any specific purpose, rather it felt comfortable to remain here. Something moved in my heart as I watched the crowd filter in and out of the passing trains, a tide of people with all so many faces. Not once have I recognized a single one, each of them as strange to me as I am to them. My eyes kept drifting, a wanderer through the environment laid in front of it. They flitted to the walls, the tracks, the patterned tile, and on individual people. I couldn’t say whether I kept shivering due to the cold or the palpable feeling of finding comfort in loneliness.

I cupped my hands around my mouth, trying to recover them from the cold stiffness I had let them remain in. A shuddering feeling of entrapment washed over me as I questioned why I was here. Shouldn’t I be a productive member of society? Shouldn’t I be doing something? I could be doing anything other than this, and yet I can’t leave. My eyes start to burn and a squeezing tightness forms around my throat. Why the fuck am I here? What can’t I do anything fucking productive? And stop cursing damnit! I lower my hands back down and hang my head down. Why? Why? Why? Why am I so stupid? This is all my fault, it is all my damn fault.

I pushed away from the wall I was resting against. I feel so tired. I want to just fall, lay face down and remain there. I take a deep breath and try to organize the stampeding thoughts in my head. I should just go home, Roger is there. Let’s go home and cuddle Roger, that sounds nice. Yeah, let’s go home and kiss my sweet little boy.

I take one step, only step at a time. It took me 15 steps to reach the stairwell. Come on, that wasn't so hard. We just got to climb those steps and we will be home soon. I stare up at the stairwell and I wonder how I even got down here. The steps are so daunting from down here. To climb so high and among so many people and noises, and weird ass lighting. No Yes NoYes, fine. I take the first step and the next and the next and th…

As I emerge onto the street I stop for a second to lift my gaze to the sky. Why in the world does the sky have to be so gray and gross? It makes one feel sad just glancing at it. I hope it rains, for that is the only good that can come from these cluttered skies.

I lean against the rising winds and keep my head down as I trudge towards my apartment. My steps feel lighter, less exhausting as I let my mind wonder about how Roger will greet me. Will he scratch at the door or bump his forehead against it? Will he rub up against my leg and purr softly? I can’t want to just scoop him up and nuzzle my face into his soft orange fur. I hope that he didn’t miss me too much. It doesn’t take that long before I stand in the shadow of my apartment complex. It rises so tall I cannot see the faint outline of sun through the cloud despite it being almost noon. I can feel myself swallow as I start to consider the mass of stairs I will have to climb. The elevator is out this week and I duly miss it.

I shiver as the winds pick up again and I place my hand on the painted metal railing of the stairs. The white paint has been chipping away for years now, so much so that my hand feels like it is gliding on sandpaper as it guides me up the stairs. One floor, two floors, three floors, four floors, and I’m almost home.

I furiously tug on the handle to the door leading to my floor. What if they locked it? What if it is stuck for good? Can anyone please help me? Why isn’t this working? LET ME IN, YOU DAMNED DOOR. I nearly fall backwards as the door squeals open. My forceful step backward to keep me from falling down the stairs, echoes throughout the structure, like striking a chime. I wonder to myself if this embarrassment was worth living. It wasn’t, but it’s too late to die now.

I sigh and step through the doorway trying not to let the door slam behind me. I pinch at the webbing between my fore finger and my thumb, trying to remember where to step on the creaky floor of this hallway. One in the middle. Two to the left. One on the right. Don’t get close to 419’s door. Step over the frayed line. One in the middle. Two to the left. One to the right. Stand away from my door and open it fast. I got this, no one will know that I was here. Come on so simply, one in the middle, two….. I repeat these steps in my head as I creep down the hallway. I feel woozy as my emotions get stuck between the rushing sense of fear as I try to not make a single sound and the unmovable sense of relief from seeing my apartment door only 10 feet further.

The feeling of panic soon fades as I come to stare at the number plate on my door and I feel an indescribable urge to brush my fingers up against it. I take a deep breath and prepare to rush though so that no sound of squealing hinge can be heard. I glance down at my feet to make sure they won’t push on the spot just right before my door that sounds like the screams of the damned. I push my key into the lock and turn it. I listen closely to hear the patter of tiny footsteps rushing to the door and Roger’s little beeps. I rush through the door, trying to neither hit Roger with the door nor slam it shut. I’ve made it home.

Roger starts to rub his face on my pant leg and soon collapses over my shoe. I lean down to caress his sweet little head. He beeps at me before standing up and running over to my bed on the other side of the room. He wants me to come lay down with him. I take off my shoes, my coat, and somehow even my worries as I walk over. I cuddle up to Roger and try not to cry. What could I have done to deserve such a sweet baby? I love you so much. Thank you for being my friend.

#cat #creative writing #short story #depressing #anxiety #cat story #city #story prompt #quick write #ginger cat #cute animals #writeblr #writers #writers on tumblr #women writers

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wanda-zerouly · 4 years

Photo

This is a poem I wrote a couple years ago. I may not have had siblings in my youth but I had friends, so I hope I caught the right vibe. (btw sorry for the quality of this image, I am new at this)

#my writing #poem #snow #war #siblings #spilled poem #creative writing #it's cold outside #can't I just stay cuddled in my blanket #fetch me a hot chocolate

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wanda-zerouly · 4 years

Quote

When a house is both hungry and awake, every room becomes a mouth

Control, Anatomy, and the Legacy of the Haunted House

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mexs39y0Imw

#haunted house #fear #what happens to a house unlived in?#Am I a house?

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wanda-zerouly · 4 years

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They Die, We Feast

It was the first quake that sealed this meadow to decay into its grey palette. I remember it well, though its fires did not grasp at our Jade Meadow. It was that two-legger’s reaction that held me so firm in memory. She was a strange two-legger, always talking. She was alone most days, running her fingers over the scar she had once carved into my bark as she paced by. Her words, though never listened too, were bittersweet. Like how I talk about my sweet oak. Her words then were of panic and acceptance, an apology to me. I take care to remember that female two-legger well, for my roots still wrap around her bones.

There were many quakes after that. Though very few created fires that devoured the boughs of those less lucky of us. My sweet Oak and child were very unlucky. It was the 4th quake, the most jarring of quakes we had faced since then. Its heart landed far from our crested meadow, but its fire spread over from the two-legger’s borrows. You can still see the burned remains, whether that be the untouchable stones or their horrible inventions. I assume that it was one of their cursed creations that brought us to this state of decay.

I still quake at the sight of seeing my only existent loved ones, turning to ash. Seeing the fire dance around as a ritual of its feast. This sight forces me to curse the name of our Mother’s killers, even in memory of that sorrowful two-legger. If those cursed beasts were still breathing, I would tell you to fear them, with a trembling that could shake me from the soil and bring you a new feast. Though that quake was not yet the final fire, that brought our Mother of Life to her knees.

There was hope for in that war, our Mother was not the first to succumb to this world’s collapse. The two-leggers were strange, they were so eager to kill their own kind with their stomachs full. I had only seen one of their rumored battles, but I am unsure if they got that red. You could hear their running steps from a mile away. The two walls closing in on the open field of our forest. Their bodies shattered apart as they amassed forward, their sap soaking into the ground. I saw them fall, each and every last breath held and forgotten. Their fiery sap painted the grass with crimson and their remains grey. Never had I seen so much red, even in some of the most vibrant of Autumns. The grass was on fire, rain no matter how acidic, couldn't drown that memory away.

That female two-legger was there, calling out in battle, but for loss. I remember the horrible smell and taste of iron as she bleed red, thin sap as she held her hand on my scar, saying the same bittersweet words, “ᛁ'ᛗ ᚲᛟᛗᛁᚾᚷ, ᛃᚢᛋᛏ ᚤᛟᚢ ᚹᚨᛁᛏ. ᚹᛖ'ᛚᛚ ᛒᛟᛏᚺ ᛒᛖ ᛁᚾ ᚺᛖᚨᚡᛖᚾ ᛋᛟᛟᚾ.”

The final quake happened days after, lighting life in invisible fire and mutating everything that grew after. Creating the colossal beetles and the spiders with two-leggers’s hands for feet, that trample you to the ground. This was the final wound, final blow, that sent this meadow to dust and the rest of this forgotten forest to its grave. For being such suicidal creatures, the two-leggers were surely crafty. Turning the once life-bringing rain to death’s little pebbles in such deceitful ways. I never said this to frighten you. I hope you can now understand my bubbling hatred. Why I still stand two hundred year after the last fires? I stand for I have lived too much and loved much more. I love you, saplings.

Oh, I am sorry Holly, what was your question again?

pg. 3

#my writing #post apocalypse #tree #nuclear #short story #creative writing #war #sad #funny

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wanda-zerouly · 4 years

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They Die, We Feast

Soon, the rock fell away and I was rooted here. Back then, this forest of your birth used to be as green as the sky is grey. There were more trees in this forest then there were branches on your weak stems, saplings. Though with so many trees only two did I ever care about. One of which was the elder when I was like you, thin and starving to grow. They were the Grand Spuce of our Jade Meadow. Though to you, this “meadow” has predictably taken on the look of the sky, proud in its sterility and cracked with cold. Even as I reach my third hundredth ring, I am still never as strong as they were. The tip of their crown reached up in the clouds and drank them wholeheartedly. They creaked as they spoke, slowly and melodic. A lullaby, sending the birds asleep and silence to spread. They raised me as I do to you. I still miss them.

They were the first to leave me. Their twigs and boughs wrapped around black worms held up by shaved corpses. These worms seemed to be protected by the two-legger, for those whose arms intersect with them, are mangled down. That is the true evil of the two-leggers, expect our Mother to bend to their will and chop us down for it. So much wisdom lost, because of cursed two-legger smite. I still remember the soft vibrations of the moving rock pressed against their bark. The cries of war made by the two-leggers, “ᛏᛁᛗᛒᛖᚱ!”. Lastly, the sickening thump as their bark hit the grass and their arms waved still in the wind. I will miss them, along with the other one they raised.

That other one was the only tree that kept me company, after Grand Spuce’s death. They were a stunning oak, with pristine bark and a tendency to dance when no wind was present. Their words were always so light, like a bird trying to fly with its claws still wrapped around one of your twigs. Though you wouldn’t know what a bird was, saplings. Like a mutant beetle, taking off, allowing you to surface again. They, always, somehow, made me want to sway with them.

I miss those days, despite our mentor being gone, there was an undeniable buzz in the air. Some of which being the bees, in the dawn of summer, excited by the new life they helped plant. In the space in between the bees and the newly planted seeds, quips and jabbs appeared between the oak and I. What else could you do as a new parent?

I could tell you how our relationship grew as we watched our seedling, but you already know the end of that story. They died. Their death is the one that gives me strength to save you, for you are not mine. I can never be yours even after my fall and you have had your feast. Such needy things you are, cannibalistic and scarred. Yet, I stand for I have seen and felt much, too much.

pg. 2

#my writing #post apocalypse #tree #nuclear #short story #creative writing #new author

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wanda-zerouly · 4 years

Text

They Die, We Feast

I am old, I creak in the wind. I have seen the fall of the two-leggers, with their gray skies and rumbling killers. I have learned the true meaning of, “Death will come for those who don’t respect our Mother.” I know you well young ones, you wish for my own death, for the feast my mushroom covered corpse will be. But, you should fear my demise. I have survived the ashen laden sky and the earthquakes of the two-leggers. I am the one who protects you from the still burning rain. The sun may no longer be hidden from our arms, but there are still things you must learn from the past. What will you ask, hmm? What secrets do you desire, my sprouts?

No, Sprout Aspen, spiders were not that big before the winter of the two-leggers and they certainly didn’t have hands like the two-leggers. Any other questions? Sapling Douglas?

Now, you have a question Holly. You are such an intuitive young one. Now I was hatched far away from here in a patch of mediocre soil. The forest of my birth only had young-ins, no elder to hold my hand like you do today. As a young energetic sprout, I confidently followed rules set by the two-leggers. So I stayed in those cages of rows and columns of that rotted field, yonder to the east. I didn’t yet know how evil those two-leggers could be. I had just gotten my tenth ring, when I was wrenched from the dirt.

Oh Mother, you could never understand how painful it was having your root chopped and being moved from soil to soil. Hearing the echoing screams of your sibling, slowly falling away. The snapping of fibrous roots as the dirt falls away and being placed into a clump of soil so saturated, you feel like you are going to drown, in both the water and the minerals. Being trapped inside by this strange, translucent, flexible, unbreakable rock. But, this was only the beginning, only a week of the years of suffering that I faced. You see the weakening of my crown and wriggle of excitement, but I may only suffer more pain, for I will not die. At least not for you, I have lived and loved too much for that.

pg. 1

#my writing #post apocalyptic #tree #nuclear #short story #creative writing #new author #complete but not fully posted #first-person #sad #funny

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