ANOTHER chapter 1

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Well, prologue, and chapter one, and the beginning of chapter 2. But I can't resist posting all of it! Just tell me what you guys think, and be honest.


Prologue


The low buzzing sound began in the back of her head, tingling on the edge of her consciousness. As it fluttered and beat against the walls of her brain, it began to try vigorously to escape the prison of her sleeping form. She became more aware of the gentle wings of sounds just as she started to become aware of herself. Her body now felt cool to her, soft and relaxed, completely at ease; The sound escaped the confines of her head and traveled lower. Her skin stiffened at the unwelcomed intimacy of the noise, and she unconsciously drew her knees up in an effort to preserve the purity of silence.
At this movement she finally opened her eyes and sighed deeply. Taking a moment, as she did every morning, she tried to grasp the flitting memories of images and ideas, of things that always seemed to sit on the edge between her sleeping world and her waking one, waiting for her to finally grasp and see and understand....
And then, as it was every morning, defeat was conceded. She allowed herself another long minute to quietly curse the now angrily buzzing alarm before she finally rolled over and shut it off.
The sound echoed once, twice, in the stillness of the morning and was soon replaced with less ethreal noises - the running of the shower gave way to a rustling in the closet, and then finally, a long low grunt of pain as our heroine (as she may very well be called) stubbed her toe against the door.
“God damnit” she informed the silent room, who felt understandably obligated to agree with her. She finished dressing in a huff, and then our rather petulant victim of fate stomped her way downstairs.
Fate has been known for a tendency to be a sore loser. As Cayman argued with anyone who sat still enough to listen, it had apparently lost a battle or bet with someone important when she had managed to find the perfect job in the perfect sleepy little town some months before, and was determined to repay her in some not-terribly-pleasant way. Her paranoia was only incresed when she then stumbled upon the perfect house with a minimal amount of effort.
Cay caught herself from falling the rest of the way down the stairs and slowly picked a path into the kitchen.
After the Big Bad Thing failed to materialize, Cay decided to take a less obvious view on things; and so every minor, annoying and slightly harmful thing that happened - Cay sucked on her fingers after burning them on the coffee pot - was slowly adding up in some vast karmaic equation that would eventually equal out her run of uncanny good fortune.
Cay finished getting ready, packed up her satchel of books and things, and walked out the door. And here is where the story begins, as the house grows silent with the memories of friends and lovers long departed. Because general clumsiness and sheer luck are with a person always...
But fate is never that subtle.

Chapter 1

Cay headed for the bus stop quickly, hoping that the driver would not choose to be early on the one day she was late. She rounded the corner of the street and noted the small crowd at the stop with no small amount of relief.
She quickly wedged in between two of the other regulars for the bus, and exchanged brief smiles with them - she silently thanked god that 6 am was at least too early for them to complain about how early it was.
The morning’s ride was quieter than normal, and Cay found herself in a truly pensive state of mind when she finally arrived on campus. She trudged past a few of the hardier early morning students, and slowly took in the now familiar grounds; the trees loomed high and stately, framing the older brick buildings with self-possessed dignity. Early fall had begun to sink in, and the noticeable coolness seemed to throw everything into a sharp relief. The leaves glowed emerald with the early morning dew, and the sharp twittering of the migrating birds cut through the air with an almost perceptive edge. Each note hung in the sky breathlessly, waiting for its answering call - Cay wondered then, if she could string together each individual note to create...
Something. She was reminded suddenly of monkeys and typewriters, shuddered, and ran lightly up the steps and into the building.
The Fairlain building was one of the oldest on campus, and appropriately enough, housed the majority of the ancient history and antiquities staff. The hallways always had an odd odor that Cay could never place- old books and old floor wax and old mustiness of old building. Old old old, all of it.
Cayman Richards could not have been happier there.
She pushed open one of the side office doors and entered what she privately termed her Domain of Books; It had been christened by the general populace that deigned to enter as a Horrendous Mess, or more often ‘Holy Christ Cay!’ and it bore all of the affections with a quiet, messy dignity.
She dumped her satchel onto a neat replica of a Horus statue, and skirted several small mountains of books to find the one empty chair-which had the dubious distinction, now that Horus was preoccupied, of being the only empty thing left in the office. She wriggled the chair back as far as it would go, barking her shins in the process, and sank deeply into it. Affecting a position of extreme languor, she tipped the chair back, (sort of), studied her nails and pointedly ignored the note perched jauntily on top of a small stack of papers.
“I thought I put you guys in here to keep people out” She grumbled to her small collection of stony-eyed statues scattered across the room. “C’mon now, these booby traps don’t work if you don’t put some effort into it.”
Cay added another stack of books to the precariously over-flowing shelves on her walls, and managed to create a small and generally futile clean area on her desk. She picked up the small scrap of paper gingerly, and read it with another grump. A small sigh followed and she rolled her eyes dramatically at the contents - an action that was repeated once for effect, since there was no one around - crumpled up the paper and threw it across the room, almost but not quite entirely missing the wastebasket.
Cay carefully stood back up and re-skirted her way towards the front of the office. She retrieved her bag from the grateful god and, spreading her arms wildly to encompass the entire room, shouted...
“It’s been fun!”
...turned on her heel and strode forcefully out the door.


______________________________________________________________________________

It was a summons, certainly. Not a request, no ‘Please Cay, could you meet me at the library, jolly good.’ It trampled through the borders of good taste and danced gleefully across the idea of human interaction. It was a complete and unabridged chest-thumping order, one she was certain tempted him to put on armor and start bellowing up and down corridors. It was three lines that set women’s lib back 100 years, and proved that even words could be uniquely smug and satisfied. Cay knew in her heart that she was only obeying it because of self-preservation, and the fact that she was the one that agreed to research for Professor Thomas in the first place. Odd that no one else would? Not really.
“Well,” she shrugged inwardly as she trudged across the grass, “At least it wasn’t in Latin this time.”
(Just for the record, the exact content of the three lines in question is not important; the Latin note was exceedingly more memorable, anyway. No, you don’t need to know what that said either.)
Cay followed the small path that skirted the woods, and eventually grew brave enough to intersect with them. She preoccupied her mind with the image of tiny pins sticking in a tiny, pompous, and self-absorbed voodoo doll, and by the time she crested the hill above the Old Wall, had introduced 4 tiny horses to draw and quarter the victim. Which at least would have fitted with his area of tiny expertise.
The small path shrank considerably on the east side of the hill, and it was always slow going to reach the bottom. A slip on the wet morning grass would eventually slam the unlucky person into the unforgiving Old Wall, a long stretch of grey rocks that had been there since before the land was horse country. That particular pathway once kept horses caged and now served as the fastest, if most dangerous, line between the east side of campus, where the library was located, and the west.
Cay has made it halfway down before Fate glanced sharply in her direction and smiled.
A tiny stone loosened itself beneath her foot and began it’s slow tumble down the slope, excited in a stony way to finally be free of its moorings. Filled with the breath of escape, it ignored the approaching rumble that followed it down the hill-A rumble which was, naturally, Cay who was not quite as excited with the opportunity to become intimately familiar with the ground.
She had tucked herself into a roll with the initial plunge, and now endeavored to catch herself on the rolling ground. Her foot momentarily struck against something hard, and she scrabbled among the leaves in an attempt to slow down. The weight of her body continued to carry her down, and she felt her foot twist painfully as it slipped free of its moorings. She began to slide, headfirst, bouncing and painfully on the uneven ground, and the beckoning grey stones of the wall seemed to flash nearer.
Too late. Her eyes closed involuntarily, preparing for the impact she could not stop...
She felt nothing. It was more than the absence of pain, which surprised Cay enough on its own - it was the absence of space and gravity, a complete nothingness that took her breath away. She tried to open her eyes and gauge her surroundings, and found that she could not, as the nothingness seemed to weigh heavily on her face.
Cay’s mind argued spun frantically and she struggled to keep the rising hysteria at bay. She clenched her jaw tightly to keep from screaming, suddenly fearful that the Nothingness would enter her and consume her from the inside. It took on a heavy, sticky feel, and she knew... The Nothing was unhappy, it resented her presence for its solidity.
From the inside of her body began a slow tingle, like small electrodes had been planted on each of her nerves, slowly increasing the charge until the hairs on her arms stood on end. A shudder passed convulsively through her body.
And in that split second before she passed out, through the Nothing she felt a Something...




Chapter 2

There was a rose colored dawn over Greece that morning; or so the wireless claimed. It was less of a miracle than a relief, as it meant that the systems operations for the area had finally programmed correctly. Jordan was well pleased with the news, and flipped through the rest of the reporting screens cheerfully; After the fiasco earlier that week, when half the sky over Egypt had turned emerald green, he had been forced to order the sphere to be reset to default, and the serviceable white light effect was... serviceable, and completely unsuited to daybreak.

 

I know this wont be seen as very creative but all I can say is that I want to know where this is going. This text has really been worked through, the set up is intriguing without really revealing anything at all about what is going on. I would even say that you shouldnt post it here, someone might steal it from you.

 

Very well written, The type of story that grabs your interest, and the character Cay in just a few short lines succeeds in quickly becoming someone you wish to know.