SNIPPETS!! i.e. a post where I throw a load of snippets from my current WIP at you and then run before anyone can come after me

So I am in fact not dead and actually alive!! Wow! Who'd have thought it!! I guess miracles really do happen

Let's just ignore the fact that I haven't posted anything on here in like a month and that I don't have enough time to plan out and write a proper blog post anymore so I'm just going to lump together a bunch of snippets from my current WIP, throw them at you, and run like hell before you all come chasing after me demanding to know why I haven't posted in so long, enjoy kids

First things first, I created a Pinterest mood board for my WIP! I'm pretty proud of it if I do say so myself, check it out here (also maybe follow me on Pinterest if you haven't already? I mainly save memes and shit on there but I do occasionally create something vaguely aesthetic, so idk).

Also, just wanna say that I'm wayy more active on Instagram these days than I am on my blog (well, duh, I haven't posted anything here in aeons), so you should check it out! It's a public account now, so you don't have to have an account yourself to see my posts, have a look here. Also I'm trying to grow my account so a follow would be greatly appreciated!

Anyway, time for snippets, enjoy mah frens


                                                                               

I can feel Alexa’s curious eyes on me as I begin to draw a small person, doing its face first – round, with huge eyes and a small mouth and nose – and then the rest of its body. Halfway through the picture, I glance up to see Alexa gazing down at the drawing with a frown creasing her brow.

“Do you like it?” I ask, pulling my hand back to let her see. “I know, I know, it’s nothing compared to what you can do, but hey, we can’t all be creative geniuses, right?” I laugh.

I continue drawing, and Alexa continue staring, her frown deepening more and more in confusion as the moments tick by.

“It’s a cartoon drawing,” I say once I’ve finished the sketch, uncertain why she looks so perplexed. “Have you never seen one before?”

She doesn’t respond.

I reach out for a few coloured pens and hastily give the person shoulder-length blonde hair, a dark blue shirt and a pair of headphones around its neck, then push the paper over towards Alexa. “Look,” I say. “She’s you.”

She gazes down at the picture, and carefully reaches out to touch it with her fingers, as though trying to figure out what it is. I watch her curiously as her expression twitches subtly in ways I can’t read.

And then – suddenly – unexpectedly –

She smiles.

It’s like a ray of sunshine coming out from behind a cloud; it lights up her whole face, making her seem a lot younger and a lot more carefree than I’ve ever seen her before, making her seem unworried and untroubled for the first time since I’ve known her. She runs her fingers over the drawing, lips still curved up in a smile, clearly finding it amusing.

I find myself smiling too. “Do you like it?” I ask softly.

She looks at me, and after a few seconds’ consideration, nods firmly.

                                                             

I pick up a discarded pencil and pull a blank piece of A3 paper towards me, and turn to face Marty, who stands expectantly by my shoulder. “So tell me, what animals are there at this zoo?” I ask.

She starts listing a wide variety of animals – from tigers to horses to polar bears to cats to dragons – and I quickly sketch them out on the paper while Marty looks on in delight. My drawing skills are so truly mediocre that I think I might be smashing some world record for the levels of shittiness that can be included in a single sketch – the horse looks more like a dog than anything, and I swear the elephant bears a slight resemblance to my old chemistry teacher, and I’m not even going to mention the mess that is the dragon that Marty insists is a resident of the zoo – but Marty goes absolutely wild. She picks up the sheet and hugs it passionately to her chest, making it crinkle. “I love it, I love it, I love it!” she shrieks. She runs to Alexa and waves it out. “Look, Alexa! Look! It’s my very own zoo!”

Alexa pauses her painting and glances down at the paper. I cringe in embarrassment at the thought that she, of all people, is being shown my crappy attempt at drawing wildlife, but her eyes light up as they land on the sheet in much the same way as they did when she looked at my cartoon drawing the other night. It seems she likes my attempts at art, or at the very least is amused by them. I’m glad. I want her to be happy. I want them both to be happy, I think as I watch Alexa and Marty smile over the sheet of paper, Marty cheerily chattering away and Alexa lovingly smoothing back the little girl’s hair, accidentally leaving a smear of orange paint on her wild curls. I want to do everything in my power to make sure they keep smiling like that for the rest of their lives. I want it so much that it’s almost a physical pain in the centre of my chest.

Marty bounds over to where we left the dolls and picks them up, then runs back and props the paper zoo up on the table, smoothing it against the window with my help. She hands me back my doll, and moves her own doll across the table towards the zoo. “Look, Rachel! Here we are! You can see the animals from here!”

We play for a little while, acting out the dolls’ misadventures at the zoo using the animal sketches and a large dollop of imagination – they accidentally wander into the lions’ den at one point, and only escape by pretending to be lions themselves, then after that go to play with the little fox cubs and aren’t able to leave for ages because the cubs want to keep playing for hours, and finally mistakenly leave the door to the dragons’ enclosure open and let the dragons escape, much to the displeasure of the zoo manager, who we make at a moment’s notice from an old broken ball-point pen and a few scraps of paper, and who chases the dolls away from the zoo and tells them not to come back or else he’ll carry out the very serious threat of throwing pie in their faces.  

By the time we’ve finished, I’m spluttering with laughter and Marty is laughing so hard she can barely stand upright, clutching the back of my chair for balance as she giggles uncontrollably, her face going bright red. When she starts coughing from the effort of laughing so much I put a hand on her shoulder, trying to quieten her down. “Come on, kid, I think you should relax now,” I tell her. “You’re going to pass out from a lack of oxygen if you keep laughing like that.”

                                                                     

I’m about to ask her about why she was confused by my question, when Marty charges into our aisle, holding a huge tub of something that sparkles dazzlingly in the harsh store lighting as she runs towards us. “Look,” she breathes, holding her find up in front of us. “Glitter.” She shakes the tub, making the powdery glitter fly around inside it like it’s trapped in a mini hurricane. “So much of it.” She sounds completely awed.

I laugh. “You want to buy it?”

Marty nods. “Alexa, you can use it in your paintings, to make them sparkly!” she says brightly, handing Alexa the container. “The happy ones, anyway. And I can make stuff with it too!” Her eyes go dreamy, clearly thinking of the hundreds of different sparkling creations she can make using her new discovery.

We go around the store one last time, the three of us together this time, and we pick up a small selection of supplies that Marty chooses and that Alexa seems just as eager to use at some point. Just before we leave, I ask Marty if she wants to pick something from the large selection of different kinds of paint.

She gives me a strange, concerned look. “We don’t need to buy paint, Helene,” she says, patting my arm worriedly. “It’s not something we have to buy. There’s always paint in Alexa’s studio.”

This doesn’t make a whole load of sense to me – I mean, surely the paint in the studio has to have been bought somewhere? – but I remember the look on Alexa’s face when I asked her the exact same thing, and I decide not to press the issue.

                                                                 

“Don’t you dare,” I snarl, and I barely recognise the sound of my own voice, it’s so warped by anger. I can barely see; my vision has gone cloudy and tinged red at the corners and I can’t focus my sight on anything in particular; this should be worrying me – a tiny, quiet part of my brain tells me I should be worried – but I don’t have any room inside me right now to feel anything besides my rushing, burning rage. “Don’t you dare say that about me,” I choke out. “Don’t you dare make assumptions. Don’t you dare think you know the first thing about me. Because you don’t. You don’t know anything. You have no clue who I am or what I’ve been through or what my life has been like. You know nothing about me. Nothing.” I’m shaking, trembling like a flag left out in hurricane; God, if only she knew.

If only she knew what my life has been like.

If only she knew the exquisite brand of hell I live in.

                                                                              

“I knew it.” Morgan steps forward, coming towards me; she keeps a wary distance between the two of us, though. Her eyes glitter with loathing, but also something else: triumph? Like she’s just proved something important. “I knew you weren’t the little saint everyone seems to think you are. I knew you weren’t different. I knew you had a dark side, just like all the others.”

And –

I can’t even consider arguing, because she’s not wrong.

Not wrong at all.

I do have a dark side.

I have a dark side so horrifying I’m terrified to even try and look at it.

After what happened all those months ago –

After what I did –

I’m just as bad as Morgan thinks I am.

Worse, even.

I’m a monster who only ever hurts people.

I’m a monster.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper yet again. “I’m so, so sorry.”

                                                                           

Maybe this is where it all ends, I think mildly, through the whirling turmoil that has become my soul. Maybe this is the moment when I lose my mind and lose everything that makes me who I am. Maybe this is the moment when I become lost and never find myself again.

The thought should frighten me, terrify me out of my mind, but, well – we’ve already established that my emotions are not functioning the way they regularly do – so I only consider the thought from afar, nonchalantly, like it’s something that’s happening to someone else and not to me at all. Is this what it feels like to lose your mind? To feel like your brain has abandoned all logic, and jumped straight into a dark wonderland where nothing makes sense and everything is the wrong way around?

                                                                                  

I stay still. What do I do? How do I comfort her? How do I comfort her without just making things worse? In the end, I can’t help it. I give in to an impulse deep inside me and slowly slide my arm around her narrow, scrawny shoulders.

I feel her muscles go rigid for a moment, feel her tense up, and I’m about to pull my arm away and apologise for touching her when she gives a deep, shuddering sigh, and, to my surprise, relaxes against me.

I pull her a little closer and she brings her cheek to my shoulder, leaning securely against me. I lean my head down, pressing my cheek to the top of her head and tightening my hold on her, holding her as close as I can. I can sense her still trembling and spasming and making almost inaudible gasping noises.

I can feel the damp of her tears through the fabric of my shirt, where they’ve dripped off her cheeks and onto my shoulder.

I close my eyes, and I realise that I, too, am crying, tears running silently down my face and into my mouth and falling to splash noiselessly onto the top of Alexa’s head. I’m not sure why I’m crying. It seems that these days, whenever I cry, I’m never sure of the exact reason – I have so many different reasons to cry about. I might be crying for Alexa and the rest of the Montague girls and all their memories and pain and suffering. I might be crying for myself, and my own memories and pain and suffering. It might be a mixture of both things. It might be neither. I don’t know. I don’t know. I can never know.

All I know is that I’m sitting here on the cold, hard floor of the studio, with my arms around Alexa, holding her closer than I’ve held anyone for a long time, and we’re both crying for reasons that are simultaneously completely different and also very, very similar, and in this moment, in this here and now, I feel like we’re the only two people in the world, the only two people left in a harsh, shattered world, the only two people left who know what it means to be human and to feel and to suffer. We have nothing. We have nothing but each other.

We are nothing but two lost, broken girls sitting with our arms around each other, sitting in this dark lonely world, sitting in the eye of a storm that will not stop raging. A storm that will never stop raging. A storm that is a part of us and will never leave.

A storm that, while we sit here together, cannot touch us. Cannot hurt us. Cannot do us any harm. While we are together, we are safe.

I tighten my hold on Alexa and close my eyes against my tears. I can almost hear the sound of the storm raging on over some distant, harrowed horizon.

                                                                           

So um talk to me guys?? Did you enjoy reading this?? Got any feedback for me?? Got anything else you want to say to me?? Go ahead, guys! I love getting comments.

Also this is my 100th blog post go me!! (Plus I can't believe it's my two-year blogiversary in less than a month?? How has it been nearly two years since I first started blogging, jeez.)

See you guys later,

> > > A n d r e a < < < 

*vanishes in a puff of smoke*