Author's Note: IMPORTANT This has not been edited yet, so don't bug me with annoying flames about how I have errors. I KNOW I do, alright? So if I get one of those annoying messages I'm going to laugh at it, alright? Now go and enjoy the story, please? puppy eyes
"Second Chances"
By Tenku Greywords
Chapter 1: Save Me
Part 1
Storming, it's always storming. A young girl of fourteen thought as she stared out the window in a sedated fashion. Dieing tracks of tears were being dried up or swallowed into her pores, just as the rain was being drawn into the ground. Her eyes were rimmed by red and bloodshot, and the room was dark save for a small lamp on the desk before her.
In a lazy fashion, she trailed a knife across the cross two inches from the crook of her arm, a tan scar set against pale skin. Other, smaller, and less visible scars littered the left arm of that blonde-haired young teenager sitting there in a daze.
Her eyes, once sparkling with life, were dead now, killed by sorrow in the wake of her family falling apart. Everything that could go wrong had gone wrong, it seemed. And her grandmother's death had been the last thing before she broke, like a dam in a storm.
Her mother and other relatives that had come to comfort them after the wake were all drowning their sorrow down bellow, the stereo blaring out their wild cries as they took in glass after glass and can after can of beer in an endless cycle of intoxication.
The girl burly in figure and dawned in black, baggy clothes, let a few more salty tears fall, kissing the blade in her hands. A tiny drop of red blood rested at its tips, wavering on the edge as if it were going to fall.
Her heart constricted in emotional agony; she wanted to get through with it tonight. Dominique wanted all of it to just go away, to fade into nothingness and not be around to care anymore.
The knife slipped, and a red, angry line was made near her wrist, and crimson began to slip from it, coating the edge of the knife that was wedged into her tender flesh. But the pain seemed so unreal now, and all Dominique had to do was grit her teeth a little bit to hold in a shocked cry.
Her note, short and simple, lay on her desk, now flecked with a few droplets of blood, smeared by her shaking hands as she looked at the pile of pills she had emptied early from their cases. They looked, she supposed once more, like a little rainbow colored pile of happiness.
Carefully, so as not to ruin her note even more, Dominique took a pill and put it in her mouth, swallowing it without the aid of water. Then she slipped in another, and another, and yet another. The pills flew into her mouth so fast; she wondered where she got enough spit to swallow them all.
With a happy, deluded smile, she stared at the space where the pills used to be and picked up her knife. Her vision began to double up, and she felt so… light now. There wasn't even pain, she mused, when she slashed her other wrist twice, deeper than her mess up, and then re-slashed the other one, making two crosses on either arm. Finally, she retraced the cross farther up her arm, grinding her teeth as the knife bit into her flesh.
Then the knife slipped from her bloodied fingers and fell to the floor. But Dominique didn't care. Instead she leaned back in her comfortable office chair and focused her eyes on the ceiling, where earlier she had, by impulse, written some nonsense surrounded by the kanji of all the elements. It had been tedious, and difficult to write, but she had done it.
Now, as incoherent as a drunken man, she babbled those words through lips that were cracked and bleeding as the life began to leave her eyes in a new way, one that mean nothingness-death. For the briefest moment, she was scared, and then the sedatives she had swallowed gobbled that feeling up, putting her in a happy place again.
"Wake me up from this self done sleep, and for my old body, do not weep. I am dead and in the sky, don't you see? I have died(1)…" she murmured and then slowly let her eyes close and her hands fall limp at her sides.
Save me…was the last thing Dominique Porter thought as she was enveloped in blackness.
Part 2
White, it was all around and never-ending. Odd, Dominique thought when she opened her eyes, I never expected death to be so empty. She would have wondered if she actually had opened her eyes, but a quick look down told her she had; she found herself clothes in only a long blue tunic, and her hair was hanging down.
She was floating in the nothingness colored white, the only entity that seemed to be among the nothingness. It was so lonely and frightening; so much, that tears somehow managed to wet Dominique's cheeks. She wondered if she were dreaming, or perhaps having a nightmare. Had she been saved and was her body in the hospital? Was this an out-of-body experience?
"Ah, here you are." A soft, yet oddly authoritative voice spoke up, echoing in the nothingness. Dominique looked around madly, trying to find the person who had spoken, but no matter where she turned she found no one and nothing. She couldn't even find her own voice.
This is stupid! Dominique thought and managed to turn herself around only to bump into the smiling someone who spoke. She wanted to yell scream, rant and rave, but she found herself weak and overpowered by the white-haired old man before her. Her wore a purple tunic framed and intertwined with gold and silver. He had a strange walking stick in his hand; the wood was molded with silver and it seemed to chime with every movement.
"You are a very interesting little girl." He murmured, gently placing a hand on her head. Everything seemed to melt away then, and her eyes slowly closed until she stared at his chest, half-lidded. Any comments she wanted to make on how he was treating her like a little girl seemed to have disappeared. Something inside told her he was much, much older than she and had lived many lifetimes.
"Do you know that poem on your ceiling? It's written in elfish, and is a means for calling me. But you, little girl, are no elf." He said smiling. Dominique stared at him, confused. Her mind was whirling and buzzing all over the place; it made her want to scream and cry and laugh all at the same time.
The man chuckled and then continued, his blue-gray eyes dancing in amusement. Dominique had no idea why. Perhaps it was because he'd finally get a chance at mischief in about 100 years, or perhaps it was just a grandfatherly thing she'd seen her own grandfather do.
"The particular way you called me was rather interesting, when I found you your soul was just leaving your body. It was so beautiful and touching; you seemed so sad that I just plucked your soul and brought you here, to the place of which you will choose your new home."
It was as if something magical had been said, for with a giant whoosh doors came flying at them on each side. These doors ranged from tall ones to small ones, green ones to pink ones, oval doors and round doors, squares and triangles. There were so many doors of so many different types, shapes, and colors that it made Dominique's head spin and throb more. She had no time to grasp the fact that she was dead.
"I know you have so many questions for me, little one, but my time with you grows short. So I will explain quickly. These doors lead to other dimensions, other realms of which you can start anew. But someday you will have to choose between that realm and this one." A door came foreword. It was a modest door with vines growing around it. It was 'homely' to say the least of it.
Dominique reached forward to touch it, but as suddenly as he door appeared before her, it disappeared into the fray of moving doors that always seemed to be shifting, like a gigantic school of fish swimming in an ocean that seemed to small to hold them all.
"Just choose." The ancient man whispered in Dominique's ear, eyes full of a childlike youth and wonder as she pondered which door the youth would choose.
He could read her like a book, and she was so very confused. It was interesting, this little human, he thought. She was so complex and yet so charming at the same time. Whichever realm she chose, he silently hoped it would be a good one. He may have been the keeper of the realms, but he wasn't unnecessarily cruel.
Dominique wanted to reach up and rub her temples to ease the throbbing between her ears. She wanted it all to end; she didn't care where she ended up. She wanted release; that was all, nothing more. Why couldn't this man understand her?
Hen, out of the blue, a particular door caught her eye. It was an odd door to say the least of it, and it looked to be a sewer cover. Without really knowing what she was doing she managed to lift her arm and point to it. Immediately the roar of the doors died and the chosen door came forward expectantly and obediently under the man's magical persuasion. The door seemed to have a life of its own, and almost seemed nervous at having been picked out the fray. It might have been a novice.
Secretly the man smiled at the door, perfectly content with the choosing. The human child beside him would find a wonderful home in that realm, he decided. Then, turning back to the child, Dominique he supposed was her name, he uttered;
"Sleep, little child of so much sorrow." Dominique opened her mouth to utter something, but a white light enveloped her, causing her to shrink back and her eyes to close, her large eyelashes delicately kissing her cheeks as if they were butterflies.
The man smiled and gently picked the girl up into his arms as a blue light enveloped him. He lifted her up where she floated above him like a sleeping angel. Lowly, he poured the blue power over her.
Dominique, before the man's eyes, which were neither old nor young, began to shrink and regress in years. He molded her body with him power, until she was but a baby whose blonde hair fell to a little bellow her ears. But he was not done, gently, he formed additions on her small, naked body as a potter might do to one of his great pottery masterpieces. Slowly, he grew her a foxy tail and ears and molded Dominique's hair until streaks of blue highlighted it. He replaced Dominique's old set of ears with the fluffy fox ears and places the tail gently on her seat. Finally, the blue power sharpened her canines into small fangs that would tear into her food most easily.
Smiling, the man gently fitted the small child with clothes and wrapped a purple and silver blanket around her frame, even as his power set her back in his arms. Dominique did not wake or move, even as the man gently uncapped her tiny fist and places a silver cross with a blood red ruby in the middle in her hand.
"Now, off you go, little one who knew only sorrow." He murmured quietly, and then gently opened the door to reveal a dirty sewer. He searched the place until he found a clean rise free of garbage. There, with a small note attached to the blanket he left her. Smiling, he pulled away and closed the door, leaving Dominique in the world of her own choosing.
TBC
A.N. Well, what do you guys think? Interesting? Please send feedback!
1. This is actually said in elfish, alright?