Post by Shadowless on Oct 20, 2008 2:51:20 GMT
My AS Level English Language coursework. Well, half of it. I also made some bookmarks. It's pretty long, sorry.
Whispers
The quiet morning sunlight drifted lazily across my face making my hair shine and my skin glow gently. The first sunbeams reached my eyes and my eyelids began to twitch and flutter as I awoke. My eyes opened fully and I smiled for a second before I saw my clock. Swearing, I quickly leapt up out of bed. I showered and dressed in twenty minutes and shoved an elastic band into my jet hair before I slammed through the door. Some days I wish I had a car.
I walked into work with my fingertips pressed against my temples, slightly out of breath. I have three colleagues. The newest of the three paid me no more attention than a nervous glance. One graced me with a sneer. Her name is Anna and though she cannot quite place just why she finds me so annoying she loathes me with a passion. For one thing she thinks I look strange. Though my hair is black as ravens and my eyes are the green of darkened forests my skin is strangely pale and unlike Anna I refuse to force it into submitting to an early old age at the tanning booths. She sees both this and my refusal to buy a car as a way of making myself appear more moral than everyone else. Sadly, my real reason for not getting a car is merely that I have a tendency to faint.
My third colleague, Emily, looked at me with friendly concern. I smiled at this and smiled even more when I noticed her checking the immaculate polish on my nails. I grinned at her and walked over to my desk, rearranging the tiny bottles of nail polish just for something to do.
“No need for that - you aren’t going to be painting nails just yet.”
As well as applying designs to the nails to anyone who asks we also offer a piercing service. I’m the only one who pierces anyone as I’m the only one with the training. Also, the others are somewhat squeamish about the idea of puncturing someone’s flesh. I’m not; if anything I prefer it to painting nails. No grotesque reasoning, just that to pierce someone I go upstairs where there are significantly less people.
If you are looking for the secret or eccentricity that as a main character and narrator I undoubtedly hide I’m afraid it is not that large groups of people scare me.
I grinned at Emily but my grin faded somewhat when I realised that she didn’t seem quite as cheery today as she usually was. Emily has a near constant smile which I have only seen her lose twice. First, when she had an affair with a man named Philip. Second when she had left her husband. Neither of these had been her fault. Her husband was a truly terrible monster. He used fists and worse and she had every right to leave him. The affair had been with someone almost as bad. She had been drunk I and even suspect that she may have been drugged and just not have known that part. Philip had asked her why she stayed with her husband and full of sadness and bad judgement she had thought that night she could get away. Wrong, of course. The two were best friends and were both of the same breed of monster and both had hated her less when she left them than when she was with them, which is saying something. After the affair the two friends had stopped talking to each other. Which, of course, they both saw as Emily’s fault. Shame really – they had been made for each other, Philip and Ian.
I walked upstairs to where the girl was waiting. She wanted her navel pierced and was looking very apprehensive. I gave her a reassuring smile as I began to prepare the equipment. I heard nervous chattering but knew that if I were to turn around the girl’s lips would be still, except for maybe a slight tremble due to worry. I held the needle and then I heard raised voices downstairs. Professionally, I continued to act as though everything was fine. No one about to be pierced wants to see a look of worry on the face of the person with the needle. Still, I tried to keep my ears peeled, though this concentration was quickly broken. I heard something far stranger. A breath detached from body, a hint of speech unrecognisable…
We do not think in whispers and our thoughts are often overlapped and frantic. Our thoughts need no air to breathe. No longer paying attention to the voices downstairs or the girl in the room I shivered and tried unsuccessfully to block out the strange voice. As it grew more intense in its hushed way I used the only way out that I knew.
I don’t usually hear voices like that. I have maybe twice before but usually the only thoughts I hear are those that are connected to people. Sometimes I hear too many and the stress of so many thoughts that are not even my own racing through my head makes me faint. It’s the only way I can shut them up. I can increase my power to any degree and find out anything I want but if it decides to grow in magnitude of its own accord I can’t block out any thoughts it gives me.
I awoke to Anna’s face sneering down at me and to Emily sitting on the floor beside me. I pulled my hands back to sit up but instantly felt pain shoot through my palm. As I had fallen the needle had imbedded itself into my skin. Wincing, I stood up then pulled it out with ease. A droplet of blood blossomed instantly and a thin thread made its way down my wrist. I heard someone ask me if I was alright but didn’t answer aloud as it was only Stephen. I quickly bandaged my small wound but then I realised that our customer had gone. I apologised to Emily who found her voice and told me that it was all fine.
She insisted that I was to take the day off. I found myself eating chocolate cake in a café, feeling somewhat guilty.
Not your fault. Be happy, you have a day off. Cake looks good, eat it without guilt. Stephen instructed.
Stephen is my partner and I love him with an intensity that scares me sometimes, if it’s that sort of day. I know almost everything about him but if he was a movie star and had appeared in all of my favourite films I would not recognise him. I don’t know where he lives or what he looks like. All I know is that he is like me only far more powerful. Once, when I had far too many thoughts running through my mind and my brain felt as though it was burning and dying, I heard his thoughts. He knew I had been in his mind. He can project his own thoughts as well as hide them and, like me, is telepathic. Some days such as today I want to be with him more than anything I can think of and cannot understand why he won’t tell me where he is. Still, most of the time I know I’m not meant to understand him. He is flawed like quartz, flawed in a way which serves only to emphasise and increase his qualities. Flaws in quartz can create sparkles and rainbows. In Stephen they create a somewhat quirky nature and make me love him.
I was finishing my cake when I saw Emily again, arguing with her ex-husband. She seemed distraught though he seemed nothing but angry. He walked off furious.
The ghost-breath again.
This time I was not afraid. I was quite sure that it was a ghost. For one thing it would explain why it was disembodied. For another the first time I had heard anything like this had been in a graveyard. I had made out some words. They were words of terror and lack of understanding. I shall not repeat them. I tried desperately to tune in to the thoughts of the ghost but they did not have enough substance. It didn’t help that the spirit was continually moving away from me. I followed it.
I got half way across the town before it disappeared entirely. I felt a strange sense of dread. Perhaps when I find myself picking up the thoughts of too many people some of them are put into my subconscious as there simply is not enough room. Perhaps I remember every last thought no matter how trivial and it is stored deep in my unconscious mind to be brought up vaguely in times of need. Perhaps I am just lucky. Whatever the reason I sometimes know that something is wrong though there is no logical way that I could know. This was one of those times.
At home the feeling was still with me. I tried to shake it off with loud music and unnecessary chores, then with mindless television programmes. Instead of calming my thoughts grew more frantic. The feeling grew stronger, painfully so. My thoughts consumed me and I barely noticed the world around me. My mobile beeped at me furiously but I was barely conscious, barely awake. I hated almost knowing what was wrong perhaps more than I hated the fact that I knew something was wrong. To have no clue why I felt this way made my head feel like it could explode. Taking advantage of my weakness it seemed, my telepathy increased. So many thoughts. I felt the now familiar burning sensation; felt Stephen desperately trying to project his own thoughts in a way that would stop the pain. I closed my eyes as though that would allow me close my mind. Most thoughts were similar. Apart from the occasional word from Stephen I couldn’t make anything out properly. Not until I heard an emotion that nobody I had come into contact with before had truly felt. The hatred deep enough to kill. I tried to connect – to find out who the thought belonged to. I couldn’t though. I felt too dizzy and the thought I was trying to connect to sickened me.
“Murder... I whispered, confused.
I fainted in my chair.
When I awoke my thoughts were far clearer. I walked first towards my phone to see who had called me. Before attempting to find out about mysterious things it is best to find out the simple things. The ghost was back before I reached the phone. I could hear its words now. It was laughing at me cruelly. I looked at the phone and saw the name on the phone. Emily. Still, I didn’t understand, not until I saw the newspaper. It was a local so the story had made front page. Philip had got himself killed by getting far too drunk then driving into the side of a supermarket with force. And now I realised; he was trying to ensure someone else died.
I ran all of the way to Emily’s house. The door was not locked. I stormed in to see her husband – knife in hand. There was no blood on the knife, he was about to commit the act. Still near the doorway I screamed. The sound was deafening and terrible. He turned towards me. He had momentarily been shocked into forgetting about Emily. I did not stop screaming though I don’t know where I found the air. He came at me, the knife arcing down towards me in a crescent. I stepped back and thrust my hands forward. The knife caught me between my middle and index fingers, making blood instantly spurt. It only stopped when it reached bone and left behind a crimson gash deep enough to create the illusion that these blood red fingers were longer than the others. I had stopped screaming and had backed into the road crying. Filled with rage he came at me. The knife swung to my face.
But we were standing in the street now and not everyone has powers that prevent them from driving. A lorry raced towards us, hit him. Hit us both.
Standing there alone in the chaos I understood the bewildered pain of the ghost in the graveyard. Death is strange. I could not hear the thoughts of others so much. I could hear some thoughts from Stephen but they were not so strong. He knew there was something badly wrong. In despair, with a hand that was not real placed upon the untouched face of my corpse, I listened to his thoughts. He did not tell me where he was but somehow I knew nevertheless. I saw Emily and though she could not see me, not this part of me, it looked as though she stared straight at me.
Sorry I told her, knowing she did not hear. I disappeared and went to Stephen.
The room was so bright. His face had the calmness that belonged not to the serene but to those unaware of the world in which they stay. It would have disturbed me if I had not known he knew far more about the world than many others. I understood him at last just as he knew what the terrible thing that had happened to me actually was. His thoughts cried – his face stayed dry. I kissed him without being able to feel my lips on his. Did not matter. This non existent kiss was as real to him as a kiss I could have given him when alive would have been. He stopped crying and instructed me to. Without real tears as a product of my dismay I had not realised the state of myself and my current thoughts. I smiled and looked at him fondly.
I studied his face for the first time and we talked into the night in the way only we could. As the light shone onto his peaceful face and onto the empty space that I occupied I could hear the world waking up if I listened. I could hear the thoughts of others buzzing around; could know every detail about people who had no way of knowing I existed. The thought should have made me mourn and weep.
But my hand was in Stephen’s and he had found peace.
Whispers
The quiet morning sunlight drifted lazily across my face making my hair shine and my skin glow gently. The first sunbeams reached my eyes and my eyelids began to twitch and flutter as I awoke. My eyes opened fully and I smiled for a second before I saw my clock. Swearing, I quickly leapt up out of bed. I showered and dressed in twenty minutes and shoved an elastic band into my jet hair before I slammed through the door. Some days I wish I had a car.
I walked into work with my fingertips pressed against my temples, slightly out of breath. I have three colleagues. The newest of the three paid me no more attention than a nervous glance. One graced me with a sneer. Her name is Anna and though she cannot quite place just why she finds me so annoying she loathes me with a passion. For one thing she thinks I look strange. Though my hair is black as ravens and my eyes are the green of darkened forests my skin is strangely pale and unlike Anna I refuse to force it into submitting to an early old age at the tanning booths. She sees both this and my refusal to buy a car as a way of making myself appear more moral than everyone else. Sadly, my real reason for not getting a car is merely that I have a tendency to faint.
My third colleague, Emily, looked at me with friendly concern. I smiled at this and smiled even more when I noticed her checking the immaculate polish on my nails. I grinned at her and walked over to my desk, rearranging the tiny bottles of nail polish just for something to do.
“No need for that - you aren’t going to be painting nails just yet.”
As well as applying designs to the nails to anyone who asks we also offer a piercing service. I’m the only one who pierces anyone as I’m the only one with the training. Also, the others are somewhat squeamish about the idea of puncturing someone’s flesh. I’m not; if anything I prefer it to painting nails. No grotesque reasoning, just that to pierce someone I go upstairs where there are significantly less people.
If you are looking for the secret or eccentricity that as a main character and narrator I undoubtedly hide I’m afraid it is not that large groups of people scare me.
I grinned at Emily but my grin faded somewhat when I realised that she didn’t seem quite as cheery today as she usually was. Emily has a near constant smile which I have only seen her lose twice. First, when she had an affair with a man named Philip. Second when she had left her husband. Neither of these had been her fault. Her husband was a truly terrible monster. He used fists and worse and she had every right to leave him. The affair had been with someone almost as bad. She had been drunk I and even suspect that she may have been drugged and just not have known that part. Philip had asked her why she stayed with her husband and full of sadness and bad judgement she had thought that night she could get away. Wrong, of course. The two were best friends and were both of the same breed of monster and both had hated her less when she left them than when she was with them, which is saying something. After the affair the two friends had stopped talking to each other. Which, of course, they both saw as Emily’s fault. Shame really – they had been made for each other, Philip and Ian.
I walked upstairs to where the girl was waiting. She wanted her navel pierced and was looking very apprehensive. I gave her a reassuring smile as I began to prepare the equipment. I heard nervous chattering but knew that if I were to turn around the girl’s lips would be still, except for maybe a slight tremble due to worry. I held the needle and then I heard raised voices downstairs. Professionally, I continued to act as though everything was fine. No one about to be pierced wants to see a look of worry on the face of the person with the needle. Still, I tried to keep my ears peeled, though this concentration was quickly broken. I heard something far stranger. A breath detached from body, a hint of speech unrecognisable…
We do not think in whispers and our thoughts are often overlapped and frantic. Our thoughts need no air to breathe. No longer paying attention to the voices downstairs or the girl in the room I shivered and tried unsuccessfully to block out the strange voice. As it grew more intense in its hushed way I used the only way out that I knew.
I don’t usually hear voices like that. I have maybe twice before but usually the only thoughts I hear are those that are connected to people. Sometimes I hear too many and the stress of so many thoughts that are not even my own racing through my head makes me faint. It’s the only way I can shut them up. I can increase my power to any degree and find out anything I want but if it decides to grow in magnitude of its own accord I can’t block out any thoughts it gives me.
I awoke to Anna’s face sneering down at me and to Emily sitting on the floor beside me. I pulled my hands back to sit up but instantly felt pain shoot through my palm. As I had fallen the needle had imbedded itself into my skin. Wincing, I stood up then pulled it out with ease. A droplet of blood blossomed instantly and a thin thread made its way down my wrist. I heard someone ask me if I was alright but didn’t answer aloud as it was only Stephen. I quickly bandaged my small wound but then I realised that our customer had gone. I apologised to Emily who found her voice and told me that it was all fine.
She insisted that I was to take the day off. I found myself eating chocolate cake in a café, feeling somewhat guilty.
Not your fault. Be happy, you have a day off. Cake looks good, eat it without guilt. Stephen instructed.
Stephen is my partner and I love him with an intensity that scares me sometimes, if it’s that sort of day. I know almost everything about him but if he was a movie star and had appeared in all of my favourite films I would not recognise him. I don’t know where he lives or what he looks like. All I know is that he is like me only far more powerful. Once, when I had far too many thoughts running through my mind and my brain felt as though it was burning and dying, I heard his thoughts. He knew I had been in his mind. He can project his own thoughts as well as hide them and, like me, is telepathic. Some days such as today I want to be with him more than anything I can think of and cannot understand why he won’t tell me where he is. Still, most of the time I know I’m not meant to understand him. He is flawed like quartz, flawed in a way which serves only to emphasise and increase his qualities. Flaws in quartz can create sparkles and rainbows. In Stephen they create a somewhat quirky nature and make me love him.
I was finishing my cake when I saw Emily again, arguing with her ex-husband. She seemed distraught though he seemed nothing but angry. He walked off furious.
The ghost-breath again.
This time I was not afraid. I was quite sure that it was a ghost. For one thing it would explain why it was disembodied. For another the first time I had heard anything like this had been in a graveyard. I had made out some words. They were words of terror and lack of understanding. I shall not repeat them. I tried desperately to tune in to the thoughts of the ghost but they did not have enough substance. It didn’t help that the spirit was continually moving away from me. I followed it.
I got half way across the town before it disappeared entirely. I felt a strange sense of dread. Perhaps when I find myself picking up the thoughts of too many people some of them are put into my subconscious as there simply is not enough room. Perhaps I remember every last thought no matter how trivial and it is stored deep in my unconscious mind to be brought up vaguely in times of need. Perhaps I am just lucky. Whatever the reason I sometimes know that something is wrong though there is no logical way that I could know. This was one of those times.
At home the feeling was still with me. I tried to shake it off with loud music and unnecessary chores, then with mindless television programmes. Instead of calming my thoughts grew more frantic. The feeling grew stronger, painfully so. My thoughts consumed me and I barely noticed the world around me. My mobile beeped at me furiously but I was barely conscious, barely awake. I hated almost knowing what was wrong perhaps more than I hated the fact that I knew something was wrong. To have no clue why I felt this way made my head feel like it could explode. Taking advantage of my weakness it seemed, my telepathy increased. So many thoughts. I felt the now familiar burning sensation; felt Stephen desperately trying to project his own thoughts in a way that would stop the pain. I closed my eyes as though that would allow me close my mind. Most thoughts were similar. Apart from the occasional word from Stephen I couldn’t make anything out properly. Not until I heard an emotion that nobody I had come into contact with before had truly felt. The hatred deep enough to kill. I tried to connect – to find out who the thought belonged to. I couldn’t though. I felt too dizzy and the thought I was trying to connect to sickened me.
“Murder... I whispered, confused.
I fainted in my chair.
When I awoke my thoughts were far clearer. I walked first towards my phone to see who had called me. Before attempting to find out about mysterious things it is best to find out the simple things. The ghost was back before I reached the phone. I could hear its words now. It was laughing at me cruelly. I looked at the phone and saw the name on the phone. Emily. Still, I didn’t understand, not until I saw the newspaper. It was a local so the story had made front page. Philip had got himself killed by getting far too drunk then driving into the side of a supermarket with force. And now I realised; he was trying to ensure someone else died.
I ran all of the way to Emily’s house. The door was not locked. I stormed in to see her husband – knife in hand. There was no blood on the knife, he was about to commit the act. Still near the doorway I screamed. The sound was deafening and terrible. He turned towards me. He had momentarily been shocked into forgetting about Emily. I did not stop screaming though I don’t know where I found the air. He came at me, the knife arcing down towards me in a crescent. I stepped back and thrust my hands forward. The knife caught me between my middle and index fingers, making blood instantly spurt. It only stopped when it reached bone and left behind a crimson gash deep enough to create the illusion that these blood red fingers were longer than the others. I had stopped screaming and had backed into the road crying. Filled with rage he came at me. The knife swung to my face.
But we were standing in the street now and not everyone has powers that prevent them from driving. A lorry raced towards us, hit him. Hit us both.
Standing there alone in the chaos I understood the bewildered pain of the ghost in the graveyard. Death is strange. I could not hear the thoughts of others so much. I could hear some thoughts from Stephen but they were not so strong. He knew there was something badly wrong. In despair, with a hand that was not real placed upon the untouched face of my corpse, I listened to his thoughts. He did not tell me where he was but somehow I knew nevertheless. I saw Emily and though she could not see me, not this part of me, it looked as though she stared straight at me.
Sorry I told her, knowing she did not hear. I disappeared and went to Stephen.
The room was so bright. His face had the calmness that belonged not to the serene but to those unaware of the world in which they stay. It would have disturbed me if I had not known he knew far more about the world than many others. I understood him at last just as he knew what the terrible thing that had happened to me actually was. His thoughts cried – his face stayed dry. I kissed him without being able to feel my lips on his. Did not matter. This non existent kiss was as real to him as a kiss I could have given him when alive would have been. He stopped crying and instructed me to. Without real tears as a product of my dismay I had not realised the state of myself and my current thoughts. I smiled and looked at him fondly.
I studied his face for the first time and we talked into the night in the way only we could. As the light shone onto his peaceful face and onto the empty space that I occupied I could hear the world waking up if I listened. I could hear the thoughts of others buzzing around; could know every detail about people who had no way of knowing I existed. The thought should have made me mourn and weep.
But my hand was in Stephen’s and he had found peace.