Lora Marlow - Born 1950. Is 25. Blond hair, blue eyes, tan. Abbie’s aunt and one of her only living relatives. She is a nurse at Benson Berkeley Memorial.
Abbie Marlow - Born 1963. Is 12, and 32. Brown hair, brown eyes, tan. Wears glasses. Lora’s niece. She is in seventh grade and doesn’t like it when Lora goes to work at Berkeley Manor taking care of Wentworth Berkeley.
Wentworth Berkeley - Born 1902. Is 73. White hair, blue eyes. Grandfather of Adam and Nicole. And old, ill man whom Lora has been sent to care for.
Adam Berkeley - Born 1968. Is 7, and 27. Blond hair, green eyes, pale. Grandson of Wentworth Berkeley. He is a genius. While Lora is staying with them he falls in love with her.
Nicole Berkeley - Born 1972. Is 3, and 23. Brown hair, green eyes, pale. Granddaughter of Wentworth Berkeley. Younger sister of Adam, and first test subject.
Berkeley Manor
Written the summer of 1996
Age 11
Laura [If you hadn’t already you will soon learn I am very inconsistent about the spellings of my characters names.] Marlow walked down the crowded hall of the hospital to the nurses station.
“Hello Ms. Marlow,” said a deep stern voice behind her. She turned around to see the angry face of Marla Dane.
“Hi, Miss Dane,” she said in a nervous voice. “What brings you down here to the children’s floor?” [Maybe the fact that she works there?] As if I didn’t already know? she thought bitterly.
“I think you could use a different background to be in all day, instead of this dreary hospital,” Miss Dane said sternly. She was a forty-one year old woman who was as stern as stern could be. [Obviously since it’s the only adjective that describes her.] In fact all her hare was already gray from stress. And her dark grey eyes matched the color perfectly.
“I don’t understand,” Laura said in a quiet voice.
“You know the mansion on top of the hill that overlooks the ocean?” [This has bad Gothic Romance written all over it.]
“Yes. That’s the old Creton place.” [Holy hotpants, Batman! This wasn’t even originally called Berkeley Manor! Creton definitely sound creepy but I like Berkeley better since, you know, that’s what I thought the name of this story was for the past 10+ years.]
“Yes. Benson Creton [Wentworth Berkeley…] owns the place. He is very ill right now, and he needs a personal assistant. And I thought--”
“You thought I would do it,” she finished the sentence for her.
“Why, yes, I was chosen to do it, but I can’t.” [So you pawn it off on the young ones Miss Dane!] “I have to go to England for my sister Margaret’s wedding.” She paused for a few moments. “So will you do it.”
“Sure,” Laura said. This is the opportunity of a lifetime, she thought.
“You will be going there tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. Is that clear?”
“Yes Miss Dane.”
“You will be staying there to assist him, and to tend to his grandchildren. Nicole and Mathew.” [Holy fuck! Adam wasn’t even Adam. Mathew? I am in shock right now people.] “Nicole is only 2, so she will be there all the time. But Mathew is 6 and has been skipped to third grade. So he will be leaving for school at 8:45. But sure to remember that the bus picks him up and that if he is sick, you must alert the school immediatly. All right.” [Shouldn’t you have told her all this before she agreed?]
“Yes.”
“Are you sure you can handle it?”
“Yes.”
“Alright, good. Remember to be on time.”
“Yes, Miss Dane.”
* * * * * *
When Laura got home she found her twelve year old neice--Abbie--waiting in the dining room with a meal.
“Abbie, you cooked dinner,” she said worriedly. “Why did you cook dinner?” [Ungrateful bitch.]
“I learned how to make spegitti today in ‘Teen Living,’” she said proudly. [Teen Living is what they called Home Ec at my Middle School.] “Try it, aunt Laura. It’s good.”
“I’m sure it is, but I already had dinner at the hospital. I’m too full to eat anything else.”
“But all they have are those candy and Coke machines.”
“I had a big lunch.”
“Come on, just try one little bite.”
“Alright. Quite begging.”
“I am not begging!”
“Just let me try some. I want to get this over with, so I can tell you the good news.” Laura picked up a fork and too some spegetti [WTF? Ok, I get it, took], and ate it. “Mmm. It’s very good, Abbie.” For cardboard, she added to herself
“So what’s the good news,” she said excitedly.
“We’re moving!
“What? Why? How? When? Where?” [You forgot Who, Abbie.]
“We’re moving. It’s because of my job. Driving Tomorrow mourning.” [Sounds like a bad band name.] “The old Creton place.
“We can’t move there!”
“Why?”
“Because the Creton place is evil. I was built on an ancent indian burial ground.” [Were you now, Abbie?] “It--”
“Stop it Abbie. Those are all just wild tales, and you know that.”
“But,” Abbie said in a trembling voice, “that place is evil. I can’t move there.”
“Nonsense. We are moving there tomorrow morning. Now go to your room, and pack some of your stuff. Now.”
“Fine!”
Laura watched Abbie walk up the stairs. She wasn’t very pretty--with brown hair, brown eyes, thick glasses, and was very plan--nor very smart. [This is Abbie, not Laura. And I might as well have been describing myself.] Still, there was something true in what Abbie had said just a few minutes earlier. [What? Even though she’s ugly, there’s truth to what she says. What the hell is that supposed to mean?]
* * * * *
The next morning was an exciting one.
* * * * *
But just how exciting we’ll never find out. What was going on with this story is genius-child Adam falls in love with Lora and tells her he wants to marry her. She laughs and tells him he’s too young for her, wounding his pride, ego, and soul. So what does he do but freeze her body and keep her held in the basement until he’s the same age as she is, and then unfreezes her. We’ll see who laughs then. It’s a love story. Or, at least, the closest I’ve ever come to writing a love story. This is one I actually would like to rewrite, but I guess I wouldn’t really be rewriting it since I never got around to the plot.
This next one is the “Epilogue” to a story I never wrote. And by Epilogue I mean Prologue, because it was supposed to be before the rest of the story. But Epilogue is written at the top.
The Epilogue that Never Was
1996
Age 11
Roxanne ran through the dark courtyard drenched in sweat. They were still after her. They wanted her for their ceremony.
So this is what it’s like to die, she thought. [What what’s like? You’re RUNNING.] She knew this was destiny. She knew this was why she was put on Earth. To die. To feel the touch of death.
Roxanne thought she could escape from her families legacy.
The legacy of Evil.
She knew it was going to e hers one day. But she was a fool.
Now Roxanne Walsh [Walsh?! Walsh is the last name of Maggie Walsh, from The LEGACY by John Coyne, which is about a girl, who is the heir to a family’s legacy of EVIL. Still not very original, was I?] was running for her life for being such a fool as to think she was going to survive.
Survive as a seventeen year old Walsh in the middle of the eighteenth century. The year is 1753. A wonderful year indeed. Yeah right.
Roxanne came to the river.
Trapped, she thought. Then she remembered a tunnel that led under it. [Just because it’s convenient, though I‘m starting to think...] She ran down stream some until she found.
Bingo, she thought. [Eighteenth century girls so did not say Bingo.] She slid into it ever so easy. And soon within that, she was on the other side. The she ran into the darkness of the woods, and remembered a story she had heard when she was a child. Her mother had told it to her.
* * * * *
A young woman named Valerie [I guess I really liked the names Roxanne and Valerie] was so happy to see her fiance again. He had been away from some time now.
When he came back, he had brought a young lady back with him. Valerie was insanely jealous. Her fiance kept telling her that she had nothing to worry about. But she didn’t believe him. [Why would she, he had some random girl staying with him.]
So one knight in haste she murdered the poor girl. Then her fiance walked in and told her the girl was his sister. [You can see from an early age I loved dramatic irony.]
She was so ashamed, that before the guy could stop her, Valerie killed herself.
* * * * *
Roxanne didn’t know why she had just thought of the story out of the blue.
Perhaps it wa because that woman--Valerie--was supposed the be her great grandmother. [How could she possibly be when the woman died before she was married? Or maybe that's what started the Evil legacy, an illegitimate child.]
* * * * *
After about an hour, Roxanne stopped and took several minutes to wright in her diary. [So it can be found in whatever story this was supposed to be a part of, of course.] The she put it down on the grassy ridge.
There, she thought. If anyone ever finds this, they’ll know what is going through my mind right now. [Because I sure don’t.]
Then she stood up, and walked to the ledge.
“Goodbye cruel world,” she called out the wind. [I used that in Dear Sister 3, too!]
She knew no one could here her. The wind was too strong.
She was about to end her life. Should she give this a second thought. [Die already!]
No, she decided. She had to end it now. She took a step. Then another, till she was at the ledge. [Wasn’t she there already?] Then she jumped.
And fell forever. [I knew it! Fall into Darkness.]
* * * * *
And there exists no more.
On a completely unrelated note, I'm a succubus. Wicked, huh?
| Which creature of the night are you? Your Result: Incubus/Succubus It's all about feeding, isn't it? You pay them back from their energy, though. You give them something (your drama) that will keep them distracted from life, which you consider a terrible joke. | |
| Vampire | |
| Ghost | |
| Sorceror | |
| Werewolf | |
| Cthulu Spawn | |
| Demon | |
| Which creature of the night are you? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz | |
Next time: The Dollhouse Murders. There are murders involved. And a truly awesome sounding dollhouse.
3 comments:
Love! Your comments are hilarious.
I love the Epilogue. If Roxanne was running for her life, why does she stop to write in her diary and then kill herself? Her survival instinct seems to be on the fritz. Why not just let whoever is chasing her kill her, or kill herself right away?
"If Roxanne was running for her life, why does she stop to write in her diary and then kill herself?"
I wonder that, too. ^_^
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