Dark and Grey

So I started with something really heavy... I can't just jump straight to comic relief after that, I have to transition. So here's another kind of heavy piece.
A little longer, took me a bit longer to write, and it's soaked in metaphor. It was rejected for Tattoo in 9th grade, but I still kind of like it.
SOAKED IN METAPHOR so pay attention.

The air above me was brown and dusty. Wind tossed pieces of paper crossed my vision. The black clouds roiled and stormed.

My eyes were open. What had happened?

It occurred to me how strange and alien everything, even the most simple of things, was seeming to me. My eyes were open, what an anomaly! The clouds were black, impossible!

Nothing seemed real, nothing seemed possible.

After five minutes, I realized I was flat on my back. I was lying down on some hard surface. The texture didn't tell me if I was lying on a table, on concrete road, on a mattress.

I sat up slowly. Or, at least, I tried, and instead what I did was some sort of convulsive seizure that ended up with me lying on my side instead.

I was on road, concrete road, but it was so dirty and mud-packed that the only way I knew that it was concrete was that the area I was lying in was clear of dirt, like a blast radius. The road wound and disappeared in the distance, twisting and sometimes splitting up and going in two directions but every new section was smaller than the one I was lying on.

I felt dizzy, disoriented. I touched the road, and I couldn't feel it. My body wasn't numb, there was no pins and needles sensations, but I felt nothing, not the road, nor the wind. I didn't even feel a pull of gravity, that I knew was there because I was anchored to the ground, but I felt nothing.

My head began to feel heavy and swollen. My ears were ringing, and I could hear no wind. Nothing was real, my vision was blurring. Panic and fear crashed over me that felt like a bucket of acid just splashed in my stomach.

I was sitting up, and had no memory of tensing muscles or prickling dirt in my hair. My head lolled and I tried to stand up, and instead I fell to my knees. No sound, no pain, just that I couldn't do it.

I heaved a breath, and stood up at last. The breath of air brought no relief, and I began to feel that I was drowning.

Standing up, I tried to look around and take in my surroundings, but everything was blurred and fuzzy at the edges, and turning my head made it ache and feel heavier.

I spread out my hands and turned the palms toward me. They were splintered and cut, blood was oozing out of several injuries, but I didn't feel anything. It didn't belong to me, it wasn't possible, not real, not real.

I raised my eyes and saw a small clearing with greenish brown smudges on the ground. Grass, maybe, but my vision was clouded and the panic and acid splash marred my senses.

It came to me that I should try to get to that clearing. The road I was on, it wasn't real, and that grass was real. Get to the grass, this road is dangerous.

Hair whipped around my face, but it was bleached of color and I didn't feel the touch of wind. My muscles were stiffening, and I forced a leg forward, trying to move.

It worked, I lurched forward, but every step brought another bucket of poison splash and the ringing in my ears increased until my head felt like it was filled with screams.

My knees gave, and I fell to the ground again. I saw the concrete coming and nails pierced my face, but I felt nothing still. I began to crawl, on hands and knees, and wondered how long the concrete road lasted. I coughed, and gasped, but it did nothing and it had no reason to because I was just a wisp, a ghost, a breath of wind struggling to survive but there was no reason to survive because I was so insignificant. Acid, pain, nails, blackness nibbling at my vision, dizzy, not real, but I kept going.

I placed my hand forward and felt the dry grass there. I was almost there! But my head was full of screams and weighed so much and the world began to lurch as much I had been a few moments ago.

Grass in one hand, then another, then my left knee was touching it and my other knee was and then I was entirely off the road and on the grass. I felt no sense of accomplishment, and the world became black and I pitched head-first into the grass. I didn't feel anything when I fell, and I sunk into nothingness.

Light, gray, black, clouds. It was a dream.

I was tumbling and fighting and falling down a deep dark hole.

Fighting whom? I didn't know. I was fighting something terrible, fighting something horrifying, something no one else dared to fight, something that couldn't be defeated.

Live! Live! Live! I was screaming, but the thing didn't care and it didn't matter to anyone that I was screaming. No one but me. The sound of my voice heartened me, and I faced the darkness I was falling to.

You can't change me, I told it. You can't get me, you can't swallow me because I will still be there and alive and fighting, even if no one knows except me and you.

Even if it doesn't matter to anyone, anyone except me.

I faced the end with my fists raised and ready.

I fell, hit the bottom, and awoke.

Prickly dried grass all around me, a field of grass. I could feel the grass.

There was no color, the clouds and sky were still gray and black and brown, the grass was still colorless, but I could feel and hear and everything was real again.

There was blood on the grass, and blood on my face. Pain on my face, but I felt it and that made it okay. I could feel it. I felt the gravity beneath me, and I felt and heard the wind that ruffled the grass and my hair. There was no blur to my vision, no cloud and no acid feeling of fear and panic.

I sat up, and then winced. My face hurt a lot more than I thought initially. I touched my cheek and my finger came away dark red. My entire hand was red, and there were wood splinters in it.

I looked behind me, and gave a start.

The road was still behind me, but it was a lot farther away than I thought I had crawled. It was dark and dirty, but there seemed to be a haze between it and me. The road looked warped and menacing. I shivered and turned my back on it.

There was nothing else here. There was colorless grass and hills, but there were no trees, no bushes, and everything was black and white and gray. Except the sky. The sky was brown and cloudy and dark, and if I strained my eyes I thought I could see strange things moving in the clouds, things with color and light and purposes.

I stood up and began to walk.

For reasons I didn't know, I walked straight downhill, never once turning to a hill where I could walk back up. I felt an aversion to high places and kept going down and down.

It got colder, and the wind became stronger and heavier. I shivered again and rubbed my shoulders. The white-hot pain on my face and hands faded to a dull ache, but I was leaving dark stains on my shoulders from my palms.

I tripped on a rock. I fell face forward, and went rolling down the hill. Faster and faster, I was yelling for help, but I kept falling down.

I was yelling, but no one was coming, there was just the sounds of me falling down, the scuffling noises and the wind rustling noises. No one was here but me, I realized. I was alone. I could only help myself.

I stopped yelling and dug my heels into the ground. I kept sliding, but I was slowing down now and it wasn't as painful. I grasped at the dirt, it slowed me down all the way and I stopped at last.

For a moment, I stayed there gasping and catching my breath. My face hurt even more and I saw some blood drip off my chin and onto my chest.

Before long, I noticed how far I had fallen down. It was almost an eighth of a mile, and it kept going. I couldn't see the bottom.

Where was the bottom? What was down there? I wondered, then decided to go look. The hill was so steep, I wouldn't be able to get back up at all, I reasoned.

Slowly, I began to make my way down the hill.

It was quite steep but I could not see what was at the bottom still. I carefully crouched down so it was easier to keep my balance and crept down the hill. The grass grew shorter and shorter and eventually stopped growing altogether, and it was much harder to keep my balance on the loose dirt.

I was moving slowly, creeping down, yet somehow I lost my balance and tumbled forward for a second time, falling down further and picking up speed.

Not again! I dug my heels in again and the wounds on my hands reopened and blood poured out. I gritted my teeth and shrieked, not as a call for help, but a way to release some of the adrenaline and fear in me. I turned my back and tried to grab something, but there was nothing to grab.

I began clawing uselessly at the dirt. I was falling further, further, and the hills around me were closing and I was walled in, trapped. I didn't look behind me but I realized what I was falling into as the ground beneath me cut off and I was now dangling on the edge of a pit.

Not a pit, a crater. A crater so deep that I couldn't see the bottom. It seemed like it had just been grabbed and scooped up out of the earth.

Panic. I did not want to fall. I could not fall in there! Adrenaline rushed through me and I pulled myself up and out.

I crouched at the edge, but something made me look behind myself and into the crater.

I stopped and stared, mesmerized. I saw something. I shouldn't have been able to see anything, but my eyes could make out pictures in the blackness.

I saw my whole life. My parents looked at me with disdain and scorn. My friends laughed at me and shunned me, and they weren't my friends any more. Teachers and other people looked at me too, and they spoke politely and nicely, but I could see their feelings behind their eyes and they hated me for who I was and what I was. I did something horrible. My parents began to hate me too, and they didn't try to disguise it, they didn't try to hide their despise for me. My peers detested me, and they pushed me out, they pushed me out of their island of humanity and into the bottomless sea of despair.

I fought it. I tried to swim, tried to grab the island again and haul myself back up, they stomped on my hands and laughed. Don't you come up here, they said, you belong in that sea there.

My hands began to bleed and my fingers were mangled pieces of twisted flesh, and their feet crushed the bones and still I clawed at the shore, trying, trying, trying to survive before realizing that it didn't matter, that nothing mattered, and that I was just an ant, a nothing that no one cared about.

That was me, falling down into the ocean. That's what this crater was, and I saw the ocean rising up out of it like a geyser, only the geyser was a geyser of tangible blackness.

I screamed, broke out of the hallucination, and scrambled up the hill. I saw the blackness oozing and bubbling and it still hadn't spilled out of the crater, but I knew that when it did it would crash up the hills like a volcano and swallow me whole. And no one would know, because there was nobody here and nobody would care about a person who drowned in the night.

I climbed the hill, higher and higher and yet not fast enough. I could see the darkness like tar, even though my eyes were turned upwards I knew what the blackness was doing, it was so close to the top, so close...

I heard a noise behind me and the volcano roared, and the darkness erupted from the crater.

I had climbed so high, but the tar was climbing the hill faster and it rushed towards me eagerly. I screamed again and scrambled up the hill, going fast, fast, but it was not fast enough.

At last, oh at last, my bleeding hands found grass. I heaved myself upwards and without pausing I ran for the highest hill, the topmost mountain.

I felt the road, even though it was so far away, I felt the road as I felt the wind on my face, and it was pressing on my head and on my body. Pressing on my mind, and I felt less sane and desperate.

The hill. The hills, the highest hills. I could go to the highest hills and escape.

I climbed and climbed and the blackness was still coming. I paused and looked back up. My heart sank. The hill I was climbing was so huge, so high. I knew I couldn't climb it as fast as I needed to escape the blackness.

Why should I? I wondered. If no one cares that I am gone, they don't notice me now while I am in danger, why should I save myself if no one notices, no one cares? Why should I save myself if it matters to no one?

I looked down, and as the answer came to me I felt a tear drip out of my eye and fall into the grass.

I would save myself, because it mattered to me. Me, not to anyone else.

I began to climb the hill in earnest, not pausing anymore to look behind me. I crawled on my hands and knees, as I had on the road, and I felt the acid splashing into my stomach that was fear and panic, but I didn't pay it any attention so it didn't stop me.

I neared the top of the hill. I knew that it would save me, when I got to the top, but my heart quickened. I wondered what form that salvation would be.

The slope began to subside, and I eagerly pulled myself to the top.

Nothing.

My eyes were wide as I scanned the hilltop. Nothing! Grass, waving in the slight breeze, dirt, but nothing else, nothing else! I had been so sure I would be able to escape here!

I wasn't saved. I wasn't going to survive. I was going to be devoured in the blackness, and there was nothing I could do.

Just because, I stood up and walked forward to stand on the very top. I could see the whole world from the top of that hill. I could see the crater I just climbed out of, and I could see the road. I could see how it split up many times but the main road ran around me in a perfect circle. The split paths did not lead anywhere except to more split paths that met up again with the main road. The dark tar was rushing up the hill, splashing all over everywhere.

There was no salvation. The world was colorless, black and white, just grass and nothing else of importance.

Wait.

I remembered colors. I remembered something I had seen recently that was not black, it was not gray and it was not white.

I looked up, and looked at the sky.

I could see past the clouds now. Those brown and black clouds had parted, just at the spot where I was standing on the highest hill, and I could see colors and light and shapes and suns.

Suns and love and stars and hope.

I was desperate before, but now my mind was clear and sharp and I felt like my purpose now, once hazy and meaningless, was shining and meaningful, a diamond where clouds had been. I looked down at the blackness tar, and I saw it struggling, madly trying to get to me.

I realized that nothing was real. Nothing was ever what it seemed. Anything that was possible I could do.

I needed no stairs to get to the light.

I flew.

I lifted my arms and I was flying to the light, leaving the blackness and gray and the menacing road behind and I was embracing the future with hope and diamond purpose.

Rwanda Injustice

Rose Hannaford

Back in 10th grade, we did a unit on the Rwandan genocide. It was one of the few times I cried unabashedly in class. I wrote it after school in a rush of fiery, tear-soaked passion. This is basically what I hoped could have been done during the crisis. It took me an hour and a half of constant typing.

“All right, I’ve had enough!” The voice rose above the tumult of the President’s speech, and he paused, confused. “This bullshit has gone on LONG ENOUGH!”

The crowd of White House managers parted for a disgruntled and furious-looking old man. His brow and wrinkles told the crowd of his age; the scar that ran down his right cheek and onto his neck, and the medals pinned halfheartedly to his jacket told them of his veterancy.

His shoulders were square as he marched up the opening, faster than any of them would have guessed, and he shoved the President off to the side as he commandeered the microphone. The old soldier - General, the crowd realized, with the insignia on those medals - waved off the security that rushed to the President’s aid. “Clear off! I’m not here to hurt Mr. Clinton. I’m here to save him a damn lot of trouble in the long run.”

The security slowed, and instead of rushing to the soldier, they rushed instead to the fallen President. As they helped him up, the soldier began speaking into the microphone.

“I’ve listened to all the blathering,” he snapped, “all the bureaucratic nonsense about money problems, all the risk it might take to send anyone to Rwanda to help. I’ve listened to the UN dither on how to name the situation that’s going on down there, whether it’s genocide or whether it’s just a situation. I’m damned tired of it all, and I hope that you are all too. While we mill about, wondering what to do, what, if anything, we should do, I’ve decided that if the President himself doesn’t know how to act, and I do, then it’s my cue.” He glared at them all. “There are things that are needed to be done in Rwanda, and I will get them done!”

The crowd was dead silent. All eyes pressed upon his face, flicking occasionally down to the medal pinned to his vest. No move nor sound was made to contradict him nor to affirm him. They were waiting for his next move.

So, apparently, was he. “Well?” he barked. “What are you all waiting for?”

“Orders, General Pertinan,” someone said as they stepped forward. The crowd’s eyes - and the cameras - zoomed in on this man’s face. It was a UN ambassador, black-haired with a Mediterranean complexion, familiar with the general as evidenced by the ease of which he spoke.

“Orders,” the general breathed, and a new light came into his eyes. He was no longer blindly angry. He was stern, cunning, crafty, ready to build an attack plan. “Very well. I’ll give you your orders.”

“You!” his hand thrashed out at someone in the crowd - “You are from the committees discussing the tanks, correct? Whether or not to send them in, who’s to pay for what? Tell the committee to send the tanks in, and I will pay for them personally. I will pay for transport, men, arms, whatever needs be paid for. I have the money. Cost is no object, though if you people get greedy, I’ll be after your guts. Go! We must have the signatures all signed by tomorrow morning! Hours cost lives.”

As the woman scurried off, he shoved another finger at someone in the crowd. “There are three brave men still in Rwanda, trying to help the situation, but only one of them is an American. Remedy that. Communicate with aid worker Carl Wilkins. We have heard that he is trying to smuggle innocent Rwandans out of the country. Contact him and tell him that he has all the help he needs, and give it to him. Helicopters, airplanes, a speedboat for across any lakes - hell, I don’t know Rwandan geography - whatever he needs, supply it.”

“How will we justify this in the UN, sir?” the person he indicated called out.

“Justify it?” he bellowed. “Guns are shooting and people are dying. If that’s not good enough justification, I’ll have words with them myself.

“You!” he shouted. “There’s an African troop working to smuggle Rwandans out through a hotel - name was Mbau, was it? Help him out. Send him 100 to 200 troops to start with - discreetly. Don’t let the people who’re doing the shooting find out where his base is. Once those troops are settled in, open up a - discreet - communications line so we can send whatever he needs.

“I don’t want to throw out the possibility of negotiations, still, though that’s been clearly disastrous so far,” he said grudgingly. “I want someone to open up conversation with the new Prime Minister. I’ve heard he might even have a heart these days - according to our reliable Carl Wilkins, he allowed the aid worker to save a bunch of orphans who were surrounded by the machete-carrying killers. Start with him. Get our best negotiators out there, and move from there. If anyone criticizes, tell them we are opening diplomatic relations. We wouldn’t even be lying”

As someone ran off to fulfill those orders, he turned his head slightly. “Now for our best officer. Ever since the situation has started, there’s been a phenomenally persistent peacekeeper from the UN who has been begging for help. Send Romeo Daullaire some troops - start with five thousand, give him whatever he asks for. He won’t get greedy. Put him in charge of the entire situation, even. He’s damn competent, listen well to him.

“Now, as for the ones doing the shooting, well, we need to do something about them. No force, not yet, except for defense. You! Military commander - oh, another General. Listen well, then. Open battle will not help us here - we will not be directly responsible for killings yet. We are already indirectly responsible,” he added with a glare at the President, off the stage. “but there’s nothing we can do about that now. The UN won’t let us use force, so we won’t. We won’t give these attackers a minute of peace, either. You have good scouts? Reconnaissance men? Scout out the enemy camps and harass them. Take or spoil their food, any mounts, put down traps - no lethal ones, just irritating - do your best with their weapons, make noises to keep them from sleeping, whatever you can to stop or slow them while negotiations are going on and innocents are evacuated.”

It was a mark of the respect the old veteran commandeered among the military men that the general he spoke to looked not at all abashed by being instructed by someone of equal rank. He nodded and marched out of the room.

There was a pause as the old general considered what he had forgotten. “Medical supplies!” he bellowed. “Out of the appalling numbers of dead we have been receiving, there must be more than three times that number wounded! Begin search parties, look in places the attackers have hit. The scout teams can also tell us where they’re about to hit, if they can figure it out, so do what you can for those places. Help anyone left alive, set up medical tents, best equipment! Red Cross has some doctors, don’t they?” When someone in the crowd nodded, he barked, “send them! Your best doctors!”

“The international community won’t stand for this,” the President said in the back. He had no microphone, but everyone heard him nonetheless. Up until now, the only voice in the room had been the old general’s. “We have not agreed to do anything as of yet.”

“Exactly!” the old man roared. “Why do you think I am here? I don’t care what the international community will stand for! There is only one international subject I am interested in, and that is Rwanda. Will you label me a traitor? Well, I label you one as well! I am a traitor to the United States, fine. But you, mister president, are a traitor to Rwanda. All of those who have failed to act are traitors to Rwanda! Those who have argued idly back and forth about whether the killings that are going on are genocide, which we know it is, those who have ordered reporters specifically not to use that word, are traitors! The Belgian leaders who were too cowardly to pull out their troops without America doing the same are traitors! The leaders of the UN are traitors - except for the Nigerian ambassador,” he added, “that one’s a good one. We are all traitors here! Hundreds of thousands have died already, and we sit in our countries twiddling our thumbs! What is it you are waiting for? For the dead to jump up and yell, ‘Gotcha! It was all a just a joke!’? For the killers to put down their weapons and say they’re sorry? For someone else to do something for the Rwandans? You are not acting like proud countries, you are acting like a classroom full of nervous teenagers! What is this foolish UN for? To look good on a badge? The UN was made to stop these things from happening! You are obligated to help, by basic humanity if you listen, by law if you must. Oh, how evil fair-weather friends are. We offer fake friendship, but leave in the midst of trouble when it appears we are in danger… then, when it’s all over, offer fake apologies to the multitudes of tortured, mutilated humans, those we proclaimed equal, that all men are created equal… Where’s your equality when thousands are slaughtered, eh? Where’s your goddamned equality? Oh, and if terrorists were to attack America, would the Africans come to our aid? Equal aid, one and all? Or would they come and rescue only the black people, acting as we have? Or would they do nothing, because our inability to act has bled the continent dry of empathy for our blind, bloated, pathetic existence?!”

There was a ringing, stunned silence at the end of the general’s speech. No one dared to answer. All were looking at the floor ashamed.

“America the beautiful,” the general said, full of bitterness. “Oh, America. There is nothing beautiful about what we have been doing now. What good does spacious skies and amber waves of grain do for the indifferent consciences in our hearts? What would the purple mountain majesties think of us now, eh, if they could speak? If God shed his grace on thee… I have not seen it in this crisis. I am ashamed of America. I am appalled of America. I have spent sixty-five years living in it, twenty years fighting for it, and now in barely a month has it shown just what appreciation it has for those years.” He shook his head, tears now brimming in his eyes. “There is nothing we can do to atone for this. I weep for those who cry in agony and I join those who shake their fist at us for our inactivity. We have all caused it. We all deserve it.”

The general stared at the crowd as everyone bowed their heads, then stepped off the podium and walked away slowly.

So Now

So I've pretty much wasted this blog on meaningless stuff... I haven't been on in, what, a year? And all I have to show for it are three posts about bluh.
I have another (private) blog going with some friends about some stories, and I figured I'd do that with this blog too. I have some stories I want shared.
Goin through my google Docs and will post the ones I find from the past. The first one might actually be... a little heavy... but I still want to get it out there.
Thank yaaa