. . .

The light faltered as she crumpled to the ground. He had been called quite involuntarily. The hard clapping of feet against the pavement receeded quickly off into the distance. In the flash of darkness, a figure stood there with his violet eyes glowing.

He held her, the warm liquid pouring from her side. It never occurred to him to avoid it, and his hand slipped into the sticky substance, dark and crimson. He kept his eyes trained on her face and tried to keep himself composed. On the surface, his face was stiff as he revealed himself to her.

Recognition spread across her face, remembering him from a distant memory. Her features contorted, unable to bring forth the recollection. Mascara streaked her face, marking her for the remainder of her life.

"I'm dying. . ."

"Yes."

She choked on some of her fluids and lost herself in a spasm of coughing. He pulled her to his chest and did his best to calm her down. It wasn't working.

After a minute, she quieted down. She looked up at him with large eyes and asked him the most simple question. The most blatant one. She barely managed to get it out, but it rang clear and true in his ears, "Where am I going?"

He looked down at her and remembered when she was young and full of life. Not this ghost of a woman he saw before him now, her life bleeding out onto the grimy pavement. Despite his commands, tears began to slide down his cheeks. He wanted to comfort her. He really wanted to. But he couldn't bring himself to lie to her like he had lied to so many before her. He pulled her close and whispered, "I don't know."

Going in the Opposite Way of Writing

Sometimes life just breaks down the door, grabs you, and pulls you out on a journey that ignores your pitiful screams of "WAIT!" and "I'm not ready yet!" And that's wher I've found myself for the last month.

For those of you not privy to the events of the past month, I've been promoted to the Store Manager of a (not-so-local) GameCrazy store. In this exodus to this store in Lawton (roughly an hour and a half away), I've had to move myself all the way there and take over a store that has been without a store manager for the last month (which is when I got the store but as held back at my old store until certain things got taken care of). Now I've taken over the store and am in the process of putting in a filing system and fixing the way they do paperwork.

What does all this mean?

I have had no time to write. I'm moving up in my company, but stalling out on my actual passion. Add to the fact that my laptop was stolen about a month ago and am now restricted to writing on random computers or at home on my desktop where there's so much shit to do that I cannot seem to focus on the writing at hand. I need to re-immerse myself in the world and will do my best to get back into the habit. Maybe I'll finish this book by the end of the year.

God I hope so.