Further story description – This is kind of a novelisation, but it's got its own AU backstory, a few extra events (maybe) and the characterisations are going to slightly differ because it's no fun having a story about a silent protagonist. Or at least it isn't fun for me.
Creative criticism (coughcoughreviewscough) is appreciated.
[NOTE AS OF 2014: THIS STORY IS NO LONGER BEING UPDATED. See my profile as for why. Please do not judge the rest of my writing or my current self on this story. This was, at its heart, a self-insert story I thought up when I was twelve and carried with me until I became the cynical weirdo I am today. Honestly, I want to delete it because of its personal nature, but there was at least one person who liked it, so I'll hold off - if you're really interested, I'll tell you the rest of plot. If I can remember it. But that's enough of my blabbering. Without further ado, I present you with a story which you should take with a grain of salt.]
- The 12th Road -
An expensive-looking woman with Rapunzel-like hair stands on the roof garden of an apartment building. She looks over the railing, eyes flicking between cars rushing by and the bridge between the luxurious inner-city apartments and the department store. Then she looks up at the sky. It seems so wide and empty to her. Too wide. Too empty. A powerful wind rustles the leaves in the trees.
There are many paths...
A young boy lies in one of the plain white rooms of a country hospital. The smell of soap, that stench which seems to infect all hospitals, lingers around his bed. Most people who visit the others in the room think he's sleeping. He is not asleep, however. But that doesn't mean he doesn't dream. He dreams all day...of a seemingly far-away time, although it was just before he came to the stark-white hospital on a distant hill a long way from his home.
Many possible futures...
A teenage girl runs through a forest. She has always been an athletic child; she loves the feeling of the cold wind rushing against her face, of the burning in her legs as she races to the finish line. Pushing a lock of her ash-blonde hair out of her face, she nears the scarlet paper ribbon she tied between the old oak tree and the rowan near the end of the orchard. She dashes through it and it breaks in two with a satisfying snapping sound. A grin breaks out on her freckled face. But then she sighs, ties the two pieces of ribbon back together and walks back to the start of her track, almost a kilometre away, at the back of the replica Gothic mansion in which she lives. She bolts off through the apple trees, rustling the fallen autumn leaves as she goes.
Other people...the choices they make can change your future...Sometimes, only they are able to change it...
The Rapunzel-like woman slowly paces towards the staircase. She stops, realising the absence of a weight on her nose. She reaches for her glasses with her left hand. Not finding them there, she grasps around with her right. When her fingers find nothing she realises she has left her handbag near the railing. The woman considers getting contact lenses for a moment. She decides against it; she loathes that sort of fuss. Going back, she picks up her classy emerald handbag, digs through it for her glasses, and begins cleaning them . The expensive-looking woman turns towards the staircase, but then she hesitates. She turns back and looks over at the cars again. She wonders if anyone would miss her if she fell. If anyone would realise she was gone.
Their paths...your paths...all of them intersect and alter each other...
An older man walks into a room in which a boy dreams. He looks quite like the child, with the black hair, although his is speckled with brown, the pointy nose, although his is a bit crooked, and the round face with the pointed chin, although he has a beard and a moustache. If the boy was the same age, they could be mistaken for being the same person. But the boy's eyes would give him away. The eyes of the man, they are grey. The eyes of the boy, a blue the same shade as the sky at midday.
The man walks towards a doctor clad in a coat the same colour as the walls.
Even if it seems as if you have no connection to them...
The teenager feels the wind rushing against her face, the burning in her lungs as she nears the finish line. She thinks about the Olympics. Maybe, just maybe, she'll get to go there someday.
...They have always been close to you, in one way or another.
The woman takes a step backwards. She knows she shouldn't be thinking like that. Her boyfriend, her parents, they would care, they'd notice. Surely, a lot of people would notice... She is about the turn towards the staircase when the wind suddenly starts up again. Her glasses fall off her nose and she desperately tries to reach them.
She trips.
She falls over the railing, towards the cars below.
Time...
The man talks to the doctor. He says that they've decided. Decided that it's time to let him go. The doctor sighs, and slowly paces towards the boy.
...Time.
The girl feels a burning in her lungs, feels them constricting in her chest, the world closing in around her. She collapses. Her asthma, she hasn't had an attack for a few years now, it's acting up again. She doesn't call out; she knows there's no-one there to help her. She's too far from the house.
...Time, freeze.
All the people stop in their tracks.
A light voice echoes throughout the whole world. Despite the fact that nothing in that world gives any sign of life, the voice speaks as if people can hear her.
...Do not be alarmed...You...have been given a chance to live. There is not enough time to explain, asmy powers are limited here...But you will live...if you save him.