Chapter 1
She sighed. It was morning.
Sarah Williams reached over to kill the alarm on her phone. She'd had it set to play "Walkin' On Sunshine", thinking it would help start her day on a high note. Upon awaking, she'd immediately regretted the decision.
She swung her legs over the side of her bed, putting on her glasses and stretching lazily. The room was bone-cold. Guess that's what happens when I lose my job, she thought. I can't pay the damned heating bill.
The chimes perched outside her bedroom window ping-ed and pong-ed in the whistling wind.
Sarah dragged herself across the floor and into the bathroom, closing the door and staring into the mirror, blinking rapidly as her eyes adjusted to the automatic fluorescent lighting. Her skin looked ashen and old, hair greasy and mussed. She rubbed the sleep-seeds from her eyes and took out her toothbrush.
"Same old grind," she mumbled, before putting a bit of Crest on the brush and shoving it in her mouth, rapidly brushing and swirling the minty-fresh liquid around and around, cursing when the bristles cut her gum. Sarah spit out the toothpaste into the sink, watching the mix of green and red make their way down the sink's drain. "God help me."
A few minutes later the girl emerged, taking in the bleak scene around her. She was currently living in a hole-in-the-wall apartment, roughly forty-five years old and smelling of must and age. The wallpaper was a tacky orange and green stripe, peeling and cracked in places, especially around her small handrawn portraits of Stevie Nicks and Robert Plant. That's why she'd placed them there, to look at beautiful faces instead of shabbiness. She couldn't stand shabbiness. It encompassed every aspect of her life. Sarah was currently attending a liberal arts college part-time in order to work the other half of the week. She only got about five hours of sleep a night, and six if she was lucky. There were only two rooms in the apartment, and the bathroom hardly counted as a room.
Sarah went back over to her bed, sitting down and picking up her phone again. The time read 7:12am, Tuesday, December 22. Three days until Christmas. She'd only bought a gift for Toby, and had sent it to her parents' house four days ago. There weren't any other people she especially cared for enough to buy presents. Even if there were, Toby's gift had cost her thirty dollars, and that was the most she was able to spare. It was an antique toy train set, which she had wrapped in browned newspaper and tied with a bright red ribbon. Sarah prayed that her brother would like it. He was six now, and incredibly bright. She was the proudest sister in the world.
In fact, her brother was really the only bright spot in her life, despite him living roughly seven hundred miles away. Boston was a great city, but it wasn't her city. She wanted, more than anything, to go back home.
The wind continued to whistle and whip violently around her windows. Her apartment was at the edge of a long row on the outskirts of the city, a place not half as historical or interesting as the North End or Beacon Hill. Sarah had been lucky, getting two windows in her room instead of one. Though, in the winter, it made the room twice as cold. She scrolled through the weather and the news quickly, and got up to choose an album for the morning. "Rumours" seemed appropriate. Placing the well-worn vinyl onto the turntable, Sarah delicately placed the needle on the line just before "Dreams" and turned the knob to adjust the volume. She smiled as the blank space crackled, and turned to her small closet as the song began.
Now here you go again, you say you want your freedom
Jeans or corduroy pants?
Well, who am I to keep you down?
The cords. The wind would go right through the jeans.
It's only right that you should play the way you feel it
This long sweater will look nice…
Listen carefully to the sound of your loneliness, like a heartbeat drives you mad
A beret, maybe. Green or brown?
In the stillness of the memory of what you had
No, neither. Berets don't look good on me anymore.
And what you lost
Nothing looks good on me anymore…
And what you had
God, I miss him so much.
And what you lost
That man. The Goblin King.
A small tapping sound at her window awoke Sarah from her daze. She whipped around only to find the chimes hitting the glass. Sarah threw a hanger down onto the floor and leaned against the wall.
"What in hell am I doing?" She mumbled, running a shaky hand through her hair. "I can't do this anymore. None of this is me, who I am. I'm a princess, dammit."
Sarah laughed dryly.
"You wish."
She ripped off her pajama shirt and stared at herself in the rusty full-length mirror. Her skin was far too white to be considered attractive. Her breasts, she supposed, were at a decent size, but she hated seeing them anyway. At least her stomach was flat, but there wasn't anything special about that…She began rubbing lotion into her arms, shivering as the contact made the air feel extra cold. Sarah let her long hair fall down over her chest, and she breathed heavily.
He was just some sort of recurring dream, right? That whole thing couldn't have been real...
He said he would be watching me.
He said he would come back for me.
His eyes wouldn't lie.
His eyes…
Sarah heard herself moan, and she quickly removed her hands from where they had been. She saw herself blushing in the mirror. Why was she blushing? No one was watching her. Right? She could do that sort of thing if she so chose. She was an adult now.
"Fuck that," she sighed, hooking a lacy bra around her chest and pulling the thick sweater over her head. She hadn't touched herself like that in months. Gee, what a day this would be.
A second alarm went off on her phone, this time one that sounded like a fire alarm.
"Shit, no!" Sarah groaned, quickly pulling her pants up and racing to her sock drawer. Her Civil War History class started in fifteen minutes, and it took her twenty minutes on foot to get there. She almost fell over as she put on her socks and stuck her feet into her boots. Sarah shrugged on her parka, placing a newsboy cap on her head, grabbing her backpack and a PopTart, and racing out of her apartment door.
Had she looked down, she would have noticed a small, sparkling envelope resting on her doormat, with her name scrawled in large, curling letters on the front. A white feather was lying next to it, but when Sarah had left, the feather had swirled upwards behind her feet and conveniently attached itself to her bootlaces…
Hello everyone! Welcome to my new story. As I stated in the summary, this is a sequel to "Last Chance Before the Dawn", though, to be quite honest, if you haven't read that one yet, don't freak out. You can still read this one as well. There won't be too many connections made between the stories, but I love having my previous audience attached to this one as well!
Thank you all for your praise of the poem. I really appreciate it, and hope you enjoyed this first chapter. I hope to be updating more frequently now that I am on winter break!
Comments and criticism would be most appreciated!
Thanks so much!
P.S: If you guys haven't checked out "Darkness and beyond", please do so. She just started this story and would appreciate lots of feedback!
P.S.S: Lyrics quoted from the song "Dreams" by Fleetwood Mac (a band who I just might be seeing in the spring! Squee!)