Megan cracked her knuckles and reclined back in her seat with a sigh. Her eyes drooped and burned. She looked down at the time word counter at the bottom of the Microsoft Word window. “Only 400 to my word count. I’m sure I could make it.” She said to herself. “Yeah right,” herself said back. “You can barely even keep your eyes open. I have no idea why you’re doing this NaNoWriMo craziness when you have an insane workload like you do.” NaNoWriMo was a novel writing exercise that took place every November. It encouraged you to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. When you divided it up, it came up to 1667 words per day. 1667 words may not sound so daunting, but when you’re sitting down in front of your computer at 3:00 am, you being to realize what a pain it can be. Especially when you know that you definitely have more important things to do. It was only a week into November and she was already falling behind. She had a math midterm to study for and a couple projects to pass up, but she had ignored all that to focus on her novel. It was academic suicide and she knew it, but it was just something she had to do.
Ever since she was a child, she’d wanted to become a writer. While the other kids spent their spare time watching TV or playing games, she sit at her desk at middle school and write. Sometimes, it got her branded as a nerd by the other students and as a “troubled child” some of her teachers. But she was a really good writer and no one could deny that. As she grew older, her teachers began taking notice of her talents urging her to continuer and praising her skill. Her friends would tell her how much they enjoyed the stuff she wrote – at least the stuff she let them read. She was always shy with her writing, afraid that it wouldn’t be good enough. But she’d never been told that she wasn’t. And, at least back then, she was really sure that she was going to be a world famous author.
Then real life intervened. The world was literally littered with writers. Only a few made it to the top and became famous. Others struggled to make ends meet and died penniless, not because they weren’t good enough, but simply because they never got their breakthrough. The world was on the verge of an economic breakdown and jobs were beginning to get increasingly harder to find. Writing may be fun and liberating, but it didn’t always put food on the table. She needed a real career, one with a job that would provide enough money for her to survive comfortably. So she turned to studying science instead of studying literature as she had originally intended. She liked science. It interested her and left room for experimentation. It seemed that it was the most logical and realistic choice of career paths. But she had nowhere near the kind of love she had for writing for it. She told herself that it was only for a while, just long enough for her to get a proper job. Then she’d become a writer. But in truth, she had given up on her dream as a childhood fantasy. She’d taken her writing skill and locked in a metaphorical box in the attic of her mind. She came to St. Augustine College and enrolled in the Physics program they had there. And for a while she was happy there. The work wasn’t easy, but she wasn’t a dummy. She could pull her own weight fairly well in class. But everyday when she went to class she would see the excitement and the passion of the other students and wonder what right she had being here. She was probably taking the place of someone who really wanted to be there. No matter how much she tried to push the thought out her mind, she felt as if she had missed her calling. That she should be over in the Humanities faculty, studying something that didn’t have so many numbers and Greek symbols. She could feel her writing ability slowly fade away in the back of her mind. She thought that that part of her life was over forever.
Then one night, while she was mindlessly surfing the internet, she came across one of her Facebook friend’s blog. He was participating in NaNoWriMo and he had made a blog post on exactly what it entailed. A light went off in her head and she felt a stirring in her gut. Here was a way for her to pursue both of her dreams simultaneously, without having to sacrifice one for the other. Sure, it would be a stretch. College physics was no easy matter. She’d have a lot of work to do aside from the task of writing a 50,000 word novel, but she was determined to make it work or die trying, whether physically or academically, she wasn’t quite sure yet. Everyone who she told of her decision asked her if she was nuts or hitting the happy juice. They said that she could never pull something like that off and that everyone else who was participating in NaNoWriMo probably had nothing else to do with their time, or had an easier schedule. But she ignored their counsel, having already made up her mind to do it.
Now she wished that she had listened to them. She’d never stayed up this late to do her school work, but here she was doing it for some crazy noveling goal, trying to recapture something she’d lost. There was a name for what she was doing. Oh, that’s right. It was called a lost cause. She was on the end of her frayed nerves, wondering how she was going to ride out the next couple weeks, much less find time to study for finals. She sighed and rested her head on her desk. She wanted to sleep so badly, but she knew that there was so much more that she had to do. She should have known that resting her head on the desk wasn’t a very smart idea when you were as tired as she was, but her back and neck were killing her. “Just five minutes,” she though to herself. She wasn’t even going to sleep. She was going to just stay still and let her body relax for a while. But every one knows that when you stay still for any amount of time when you’re tired, you inevitably fall asleep. Megan’s eye’s fluttered as she tried to keep them open, and before she realized, she had drifted of to sleep.
Being a writer meant having a vivid imagination. And having a vivid imagination meant having very vivid dreams. Like the one Megan was having right now. She was floating in mid-air over a dark empty stretch of road. Seth was walking along the road, with a knapsack. He was walking quickly, as if he was trying to get away from something. Behind him ran Cassie, trying to catch up with him, her face wet with tears. Megan couldn’t here any sound but it seemed as if she was calling out for him to stop. He stopped and turned around and shouted something angrily at her. She shook her head and held out something to him. It was a sheet of paper with something printed on it. Seth slowly took the paper from her hand and stared at it. Then he deliberately ripped it in half.
The sound of the tearing paper ripped through the air suddenly Megan could hear everything. The street suddenly wasn’t empty anymore. It was busy, with cars driving up and down. There was a large building with people crowded in front of it. In the crowd, Megan could see Rebecca standing there, talking to some people with microphone and cameras. She still couldn’t here what she was saying; only being able to catch incoherent pieces. Rebecca had spotted Cassie and Seth and began stalking towards them, wearing an expression that could be best described as a mixture of triumph and anger. Seth and Cassie were still arguing. She could only make out little pieces of their conversation like when she was trying to listen to Rebecca. She managed to here Seth say “out of your life,” and “was right all along.” Cassie said something about “didn’t know this was going to happen” and “understand me better.” None of this made the slightest bit of sense to Megan. She wished she could move closer to hear exactly what they were saying, but she had no means of propelling herself through the air. Seth saw Rebecca approaching and started to walk away. Cassie reached out and grabbed his arm, but he shook it off and said to her what sounded like “Goodbye, Cassie.” before walking off. As he turned around, Megan got a better look at his face, and could see now that he was crying as well. Just then, loud high pitch scream filled the air. A large shadow fell over the street below, turning everything a creepy blood red color. A large dark pillar slammed down in the space between Cassie and Seth. Megan could feel the vibration of the impact all the way through the air, though neither of them seemed to be aware of what was going on. Megan followed the pillar upwards and found that it was connected to another massive black mass. Another pillar extended from that mass to the ground on next side of it. It took her a minute to recognize what they were. “Legs!” she thought, shocked. Those two massive pillars were the legs of some massive creature. She looked up the see it’s face, but it’s head extended up into the clouds. The creature let loose another shrill and from her right, she heard a loud whooshing sound. She turned just in time to see one of the creature’s massive arms rushing towards her. She tried to scream, but she couldn’t and she couldn’t move either. The arm reached out and grabbed her, tightened her in a death grip.
She awoke with a start. Sunlight streamed through her window. To her dismay, she found that she had slept all the way through to the morning. She barely had time to think about her weird dream as she rushed to get ready for school.
Note: She seems familiar, doesn't she? :p
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