Chapter 1 - Untitled

Annie rubbed her hand up and down her arms and face to be sure that she was palpable. It was a silly habit but to her it was not so silly. She listened to every sound she heard and savored every sight. She now had life and she was not about to give it up for anything or anyone, it was hers now. She opened the book in front of her, which read physic. She could not read English or any language for that matter but it was granted to her from the former keeper of her body the knowledge of 15 years of math reading and science . It was theft but she knew it was impossible to survive with out the act. The pages were treacherous to read and she stumbled over every word trying to translate every word to something she could understand.
This was almost her third year of life since she had rose from the deeps of the mind in witch she had been trapped in for so long that it was a curse and a blessing to see the sky.
“What am I going to do with this life� she asked herself holding her arms tightly so they wouldn’t leave her at any time. “I’m in the body that appease seventeen and I can only remember back 3 years. I have a year and a half of high school left then I am out of this house and in to college as far away as I can get so I can be a real person, not a mimic.� She stared deeply at the pages barely understanding what they said but socking it up any ways. “What kind of career should I shoot for?�
Finally giving up at the attempt of learning something she couldn’t understand, Annie raised her hand up in to the air studying it so that she might remember or just know. Half was hidden in the shadow, of the dark room she spent hours in, the other half was pale with green veins showing through the skin.
“ I like to write but what can I do with that but just sell my little stories I doubt humans can understand what I a … something has to say. They all seem so narrow minded in the questions of black and white proclaiming that evil is bad and good is forever. Whatever they want to think is entirely up to them and not for me to chose.� She brought her hand back down to her arm so that she could hold it. “Why am I ?�
Closing her book she got up and walked to the other side of the room to lean on the wall and rest in its company . It was lonely this life she had with few or no one to talk to about her confusion and the intelligence she seemed to acquire with the taint of apathy that poisoned her Heartless soul. Finding no company in the wall she walked to the window and clawed at the glass reaching for the stars she could not reach at the moment . It was dark out and the sky almost smiled down at her through the barrier of elements. She could almost hear the wind blow but it was just the air conditioner turning on to cool the house.
Her room was cold, always if she could help it, and her bed was lined with a number of blankets. She hated being cold or lonely but had learned to love it. And through the thoughts she had trudged in the past 3 years she had quickly become a manic depressant filled with guilt she had not earned and slowly she discarded the gilt and with it discarded her bits of emotions. Slowly turning in a person who may be dicribed as an elf or fairy or childish demon jumping with a queer glee and talking to other spirits like the wind and earth when humans weren’t watching . Something allways spilled inside her giving way to so unseen knowledge she could never pine down. Sadly she left her dark room in a slow pace to the bath room picking up her clothes and towel along the way.
After closing the bathroom door she stared deeply at herself in the mirror looking for something to jump out and catch her eye. Waiting for the answer that would never come, waiting for the friend that would never show, waiting for anything.
“I look so human, it’s disgraceful to look at my body.� She turned away not strong enough to wait any longer.
The shower was warm on her icy feeling body. Accidentally she almost inhaled the liquid in her trance . Coughing and spiting up the chlorinated water. Until the call of some crooked human voice awoke her she leaned against the wall in the false rain. Most human voices were like that, harsh and bland sounding, human expectations were insane. She could not use her most relaxed voice that had almost been forgotten out of the habit of changing it. It was queer and childish as if she were a child , which she was. Pulling her clothing on she thought of t what her next trial at a story would be. What gerne, what style, what message? How would she be sure it felt right…?
After she brushed her teeth she returned to her room the walls were a pale off white, the bed diplayed vividly an old red paint upon its metal. With her pale hand she turned off the light and climbed into bed. Leaning over she adjusted her clock and alarm setting the music on sleep. Leaning the other way she daydreamed until she fell asleep.

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At the sound of the alarm clock Annie awoke from her dream and rose from her bed to face another day. After an hour of getting ready for school, she was out the door in to the free air. Free to speak with the spirits like the wind and the grass and the birds.
“Good morning spirits. How was your night? I sleept well tonight compared to other nights. I wonder if anything new will apear today in some vision of mine or in the dister balance of energy around me. Oh there’s a human coming I should be silent. Sorry.�
A boy passed her on the other side of the road; but she did not dare speak to the world if any human was around. What might come if one discovered her?
Walking slower than him she soon got a good distance from him. She took a deep breath, she loved the smell of Earth air unless it was polluted in to a stench. The sound of the calling birds filled her head, “What a beautiful sound how can they take this for granet?� Soon she was at the bus stop and silent again. Her face was not as straight as it might have been if she were in the house, she almost smiled, but she was tired. Soon a bulky yellow vehicle was coming down the grey road toward the teenage children, at which time they crossed the street in a lose herd type formation, Annie trailing at the end to keep her distance. Along with the fume smell the bus stalled to a stop in front of them and they boarded it. Annie found an empty seat to sit in by herself and practically curled up against the window closing her eyes for a cat nap. She awoke to the jerk of the bus as it stopped. Gathering her things, she was the last to get off the bus. First she went to her locker to put away things she didn’t need and to acquire thing she would be using in her first class. Next she used the restroom and then escorted her self to the library thumbing through assorted books until school started.
School had its ups and downs that day as it did every day. In what felt like a week, the school day was done and she was headed home again on the bus.
The sun beat down upon her fair skin as she walked from the bus stop to the house she live in. But she walked slowly to enjoy the wind and the sound of birds and the lack of human voices. Passing a park as she walked she stop in her path and turned in to it going to the swing the one thing she almost loved to do whenever she got the chance. What ever love really was she could not be sure but it must have been something like how she felt when the acceleration on her body caused by the swinging motions made her call out strange words with meaning even she was unsure of. So laying her school thing s and glasses on the cement she climbed in to the swing and began to rock it back and forth till she was high in the air. “what an escape this is no one to hold me down, just me and all the spirits. Speacking of which how is this day, how was the weather today, Did any thing good happen? Probebly not.� Annie spoke to herself quietly. After a few minutes she slowed her rocking till the swing almost stopped at which point she jumped to the ground. Picked up her things she and walked the rest of the way to the house in thoughtful silence.

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The keys of the computer felt fragile under her fingers as they typed violently at the keys to get the words she needed on the screen. She would continue hours on end working at her computer or surfing the internet in search of the insperational idea starters. She didn’t work on just one idea at a time she worked at different gerns to keep her mind interested in what she was typing. It was not simply a hobby to her it was a chance to escape in to the world of which she felt relaxed and someday other people would follow her words in to that same world she placed before them. For the moment she was working on a work based in the magic girl gerne, fun to read with the lest blood and gore of those she wrote. Finding her choices of music utterly annoying she turned the radio off to listen to the silence accompanied by the tapping of the keys in what seemed forever till a voice called. “Marie.� The name she had stolen, the one she dispized. “Marie come here.�
“Coming.� She called back typing still as she stood up and turned until she could no longer reach the keys. Down the hall and in to the kitchen where the real Marie’s mother stood. “Look at this� she pointed at the T.V. where they were aresting some kids for having ridelin. Annie wondered what ever made the women so interested in calling everyone in the house to see what the idiots in the world were doing. Blowing up this, getting arrested for that, the whole planet was insane with the frenzy of things its inhabitancy did. Annie thought on it a moment shifting the idea, it was the humans that were in to this frenzy. Not the squirrels, not the gazelles, not the elephants, just the humans. Of cource the idea of acquiring knowledge through force and treat and even the endangerment of others had intrigued her as a child, as it still often did she was not as crude or open about it as these weaklings who’s’ society imprisoned her scared sole.








She walked back to her little haven disappointed that she had been disturbed from her work.
She sat at her computer and stard deeply in to the screen, “What do I type now there is nothing on my mind at this time.� She took a breath. “Where did the ideas go to, they were here a moment ago.�
She did her home work as best she could, ate the food set on the table, typed the other lines she could, and prepared for bed. Something was missing though she could feel it but as allways it was near imposible to tell what it was. At almost twelve she finally set herself down falling asleep rather quickly. Her sleep however was not so peacful but filled with the visions of invisible darkness and the changing feelings of others. She knew the darkness was coming and no one else could see it or none that she knew so.
She awoke in the midle of some strange adventure with a start. Even as she was in waking hours she could feel the dream courcing through her body even more than blood through her veins. “Oh, so this is life. Life is pain always the knowing pain. I gave up the place of no pain and no feeling for this, to steal this reality. Am I, am I just a thieving illusion. But I can feel, almost, now. Do I really want to feel or do I only want to live. I want no love love is distruction and eternal pain. No, it is only an obsticale to deepen my punishment, my imprisonment, what ever it is for.
“Well it is time I arise. The day awaits me…the five always the number five but-� she quickly arose to meet the day and its never dieing rutine.
After all the normal morning rutines and the bus ride she stood in the library looking out the window to a small grassy area containing a few trees the ari conditioner or whatever it was and bars on all the windows but the ones she was at. The sun was rising so it was not as vright as it might have been had it been noon. Annie stared out the window noticing that there was a wall on every side of the yard but one which had a bared fence. “What kind of prison is this?� she wipered as she touched the glass, “What kind of prison is this body?� She weaved a path through the tables and in to the fiction section of the library. So far there were two novels she had read out of this school, one on vampires and the other on a unicorn. Both seed to hve given her the illusion of real emotions, she liked that, but that was all they were illusions.
The bell rang and she left for pysics. They were doing a lab as they usually did, but these labs were beginning to lose her attention. She began to drift thinking of how her first few days were young foolish but cruel and crafty.
She had to snap herself back to the lab so she wouldn’t get in trouble. She could not however much she tried understand the math these days she was losing the sharp touch at every boring day brought her cloer to some kind of collapse. Not quit so, but more in phases she would understand everything one week and be clueless the next.
It was like that until lunch time, she walked out in to the breezeway that lead to the eating area. The wind was so gentle she could not help standing there just one moment. “You are so kind to me wind. Are you being friendly to me or are you just another illusion to trick me?� The only reply she received was the gentle breeze of the wind and a browned leaf, which fell at her feet. Not knowing what that meant she smiled up at the sky and turn to walk to the eating area.
For lunch, she often stood in the hall close to both the library and the bathroom, convenient for her except when something was going on in the cafeteria where she rarely went. Annie noticed the extremely boring repetition taste of her lunch always the same, but her fault for she made it. She watched the people in the hall with curiosity as she had, in the few months she had been there, learn to recognize certain people who were there quit often. Two girls who both dressed in black, one mainly in dresses and always with her hair down one mainly in pants, shirts and two pony tails, seemed as though they might be best friends. There were others a girl short, but not quiet plump wore more colors. Annie had seen many boys pass through some she knew from class others she did not know at all.
With her lunch finished she threw away the remaining trash whispering “look up� to the bees who so often flew there. She relived her self in the ladies room and after washing her hands proceded to the library. Saing as she ented and signing in she often noticed a boy with shoulder length hair speaking to the librarian. Annie had learn that he liked Japan which was one of her strong interests.
The library was her haven until the bell rang in ten minutes. She took her time browsing the shelves of books and when she returned to her class to continue with the repititios rutine though she often njoyed her english and writing classes.
It was a pep rally day that Friday and that gave her the chosice of the pep rally or 30 minutes in the library.
“What should I look up this day? Japan? Demons? Vampires? Writing, drawing, or should I wok on my story?�
She wanderd diving in and out of differrent subjects, untill it was time to return to the house she lived in.

She dove in to a frenzy of typing at her computer which stoped asfter a few minites when the flow of words no longer came. “I geuss I better start that in fernal home work.�


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Late saturdaynight Annie pulled out the old diary she had stated when she became a traitor. It had been half a year siince she wrote in it the last entery explaining that she no longed needed it or the memoris of her past. She read through the first couple of enteries and she realized something terrible, “Trhee days after I left them I became an entierly different person, that is when I lost all my dignity I be came so child like that was the day Hope was born and I began to deteriorate. What would I be like if I never left…I might be dead. My dreams worned me not to trust them. yet still I miss having a trainer to teach me. How disobidient I was back then.� She gazed out the window in to the little patch of sky she could see. “So blue and dark and beautifull. ‘If every star must allways shine then which star is truly mine’ I wonder what that realy means. So Truth is the truth and Hope is a desire that never realy existed just another ilution.�


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Annie returned to her room in an iner fit of fury from the actions she’d encountered earlier that day. “Thoughs pathetic humans, children really I must say, how dare they speak like that about me. I was kind to every degree possible and they laughed, laughed at my curiosity. I was polite, I begged the forgiveness of my presence to anyone it annoyed and they dare insult my honor.� Annie took a moment to breathe as her anger let down. “Well maybe one ‘excuse me’ is enough from now on. Mabye I soulden’t try to hide my dignity, maybe I should be more assertive with my goals… what ever they are.


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BUZZ The alarm clock rang as it did every morning, even on Saturdays like today. The sun was bright even in the early winter morning the boy of the residents had gone to camp so no one would awake until nine or ten. After a short breakfast of cereal, Annie started the computer to the Internet and look up the information she could. After some time, she leaned back in the chair to ponder. “That dream…so real…that place, that city I almost always see it and yet I have never seen it in my waking hours, though I myself don’t really know which hours I am awake, and when I am asleep always so fake always so real. But still always that place, that hill, the church, the number – oh it loaded I can hear the music now.�

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New years eve came and with the ending of those last few weeks Annie had matured and was prepared for another year of life on Earth amongst humans. She looked out the window, that cloudy night, with no stars to see and she reflected on the past few years and every thing that had happened. “I rarly speack to the spirites any more. I wonder if that is bad. I have regained my dignity and that means I may escape manic-depretion. But am I ready to move on, am I ready to� she swollod as she tried to utter the words, “grow… grow up?� Tears came to her eyes as she thought, “How will I move forward?� She stared in to the clouds looking for some answer “It will never come. I, must search myself for the answers. I…I want to learn to trust my powers. They are the only things I could ever trust.� “If only I could understand them.� Annie joked with her self.
Annie sat a long time puzzling over the different symbols in her dreams; the dove, the alligator, along with they owners the two twin-like girls, the whole city and the diffirent places in it, five…
“They are all out there.� she said “�

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