Angels of silken robes bearing no disguise 

Grace in battle and pain and flight

Flashing swords that hold flesh tight

As we sit and watch the clash

We actually witness a flash

The fire that will burn us alive

The flame that nothing will survive

A spark of hope and love and life

As see by a creature amidst the strife

But the death of a person and a race

As seen by a white warrior clad in lace

A race to the spot and clash of swords

A scream and a fight and a tangle of cords

The flow of red and then of black

Combining in air and leaving a crack

A crack in time and a crack in space

As black blood meets with silken lace

A break in existence that will never heal

As the two fighters cease to feel

The death of an angel and of a beast
A sad ending to say the least

For they’re only truly aloud to die

When they stop believing their creators lie

Everyday people read and write stories that are happy or sad or somewhere in between. They may be horrific or erotic or even comic, but these are not stories like mine. Like the one that I feel is my duty to tell. They may have similar characteristics on the whole, but they don’t carry the deep passion or tragic heart that mine contains. It is one of those that should not be told, but that must be. It brings life to things that should be feared. It turns myth to fact. It carries a teenager to the heights of life. It brings death to the sweetest of hearts. And it turns love, an abstract thought, into a solid thing. Many people may pick this book up in search of a romantic getaway, a place away from a hectic life; you will find that in this book, but you may find other things as well. Things not expected or explained. Things that can take someone into the dark side of their heart as they try to decide what the right thing to do is.  

At my sixteenth birthday I was just like every other teen. My friends were great, as were my grades, I had a job I loved, and I was happy. It was my life, my only curse being the name my parents had generously bestowed on me; Jessica Marron. It is just so plain! Why couldn’t they name me something exotic and beautiful, something that rolls off the tongue? My luck was fantastic; my parents’ had bestowed all of their good features on me. My face was never blemished, my hair was naturally blonde instead of died like all the girls at school had it, and my body was average in a good way; not that sickly skinny like most skinny teens are. I was well rounded in the right places with a flat stomach and skinny but strong legs. I was never unhappy with my body and never wanted to go on a diet. Guys were always trying to get me out on a date, but I wasn’t ready. Losing my concentration on work and school was not something that I could let happen to me. I’m not denying that I had my share of crushes, but my goals were held above everything else.

A few months after my sixteenth my parents decided it was time for change. They picked some small town up in the mountains. I fought with claws and teeth exposed. I begged and I screamed and then begged more. In the end, they won out, as most parents do. We moved. I hated the town the day we got there. It was small and quiet and there was nothing to do. The people were faking friendliness and the school was too small. I began to give up on school, not caring about my future or making friends. Everything had changed in my eyes. It had changed for the worse. I slunk around, not wanting to talk to anyone, just wanting to be left alone. They wouldn’t obey. Guys would hit on me, girls would ask me to go shopping, and parents would ask me to baby-sit. I turned down everything. Finally I came up with a solution that would get back at my parents and make the people leave me alone. I died my hair black and slowly became Goth. My parents didn’t understand and I stood there day after day silently as they screamed at me and begged me to go back to normal. They didn’t understand the depression that had taken over me.

I had always loved to write in journals and I had a full one for every year that I had gotten one; approximately eight. As I became more and more depressed I learned to keep my emotion unreadable and to pour my heart into my diaries. I filled pages in a single night begging to be freed from this life and contemplating ways of making it that way. I prayed for help from someone that really cared, but at the same time I didn’t want it. I became like a zombie outside of my room. My parents begged me to go see a psychiatrist but I told them no. I wrote more and more by the week and had filled up an entire diary by my seventeenth birthday with poems and stories and wishes and emotions. The book was filled with tear stained pages and shaky black script.

On my seventeenth birthday I locked my bedroom door and asked my parents to leave me alone. They agreed after I opened my presents. I went back, clutching the gifts to my chest. Once back in my room I cried for hours, unable to even sit up and write in the new black velvet trimmed diary they had bought for me. The gifts had hurt; the diary, a black skirt that would sweep the floor, a black leather purse that was filled with my colors of makeup, and a bouquet of roses. I held the things as I cried, not sure what to do. I knew I was hurting my parents and I also knew that it had taken a lot out of them to get me these things. Eventually I got up and began to write all of my questions down. I slipped into the skirt and a maroon shirt my mother had bought for me last year. Even if I was into more black than anything I kept this shirt. I found it incredibly beautiful.

I stayed in my room for most of the night, rereading old entries from old diaries. I wrote in my new one about how I missed my old life and I wished everything would be alright again. At around seven I came out of my room and went into the bathroom. I cleaned up my eyes and wiped off all of my makeup before going into the kitchen where both my parents were sitting at the table, talking. My mother saw me first and in an instant she was crying. My dad saw me and he stood up. I had not touched them for almost six months, but when he hugged me I hugged him back. How could I not? My parents probably thought I hated them. And I had, at first, but I didn’t really. I loved them more than anything, even if I didn’t show or say it. And I also wanted to be rid of that feeling. I didn’t want to be attached to anyone. I wanted to die and leave everything. Nothing should be there to make me hesitate.

It was as we were sitting at the table eating that I first saw him. I had looked up and out of the window for a brief glance and there he was. I know I did. He was in black and white, but I know he was there. I got up and stepped outside to see who it was. I don’t know why it intrigued me so, but I went none the less. I never found him. After dinner I went back to my room to write.

Dearest Diary, I searched, but found no twig out of place, not even footsteps in the snow. I’m not sure who he was, but I SAW him! It was his hair that caught my attention, a dark shade of black, a lot like mine. The white shirt fit with the snow, as did the pale skin, but then he was wearing black jeans. I couldn’t have imagined it. But then why no footprints? It’s confusing and starting to give me a headache. I don’t even know why I went chasing him. I didn’t see his face. He could be thirty for all know. I just kind of felt drawn to him somehow, like he was calling me. But he wasn’t even looking at me! All well, just another mystery…

The next day I went back to school and searched the halls, hoping for a small glimpse of the guy I had seen the day before, praying he was at school. I saw nothing through the first half of the day. At lunch I did what I always did; jogged. I loved running and the track was always abandoned by everyone but me during lunch. I felt so at peace when I ran that I couldn’t help but do it. I was on my third lap when I felt as if I was being watched. I looked at the school and saw someone staring out the window at me. I recognized the black hair against the white skin immediately. I ran to towards the school. The guy in the window turned and disappeared from my sight. I went to the door nearest the window and walked down the hall, searching for him. He once again seemed to have disappeared.

I was glad that I had at least learned that he was at the school and kept my eyes searching at all times. I prayed I would see him again. The day was long and seemed to have stretched twice its normal length by eighth period choir.  I stood on the stage with the other sixty or so people as we rehearsed the concert for the millionth time that year. I could have sung the entire thing in my sleep by then. I let my mind wander as I stood on stage and stared at the empty seats that filled the room while I sang quietly. Well, at least until I had that feeling that someone was watching me again. I looked around at the people around me but they were all completely focused on the teacher. Then I looked back out to the chairs and saw him sitting in the back of the auditorium. He was watching us as we sang, not making noise. I stared at him, unable to keep singing. It took him a minute or so, but his eyes eventually connected with mine. It had been the strangest moment of my life at that time. He was hypnotic. He stared at me for a few minutes, looking bewildered and confused, then got up and moved. I couldn’t help but follow him with my eyes, watching his liquid movements. He watched me as well and began to walk toward the stage. I looked around but no one seemed to even notice him! That made no sense because the room was basically filled with girls and this guy was hot. Normally every girl here is staring at any guy that enters the room. But no one was. I looked forward again and he was standing a few steps below me, watching me between the two girls that stood on the lower step. When I looked down at him he smiled this dazzling smile that could have killed me right there! I remember it clearly. The strange part of this all was that the girls didn’t turn their gazes to him once. He couldn’t have been but a few inches from either one and they didn’t move once. Not even the teacher looked at him. It was like he wasn’t even there. I continued just to stare at him until Mrs. Bitch barked at me and told me to get out of my dream world and start singing. When I looked back at where he had been standing he was gone. He just vanished! And everyone was staring at me like I had been the freak.

I didn’t see him again that day. I went home and wrote it all down. I explained as best I could how I was feeling. Mostly I was scared. I wasn’t sure what to think about this guy. I mean, it was almost like he was a ghost; and I certainly believed in ghosts. But, I found that there was a major difference between believing and seeing. I slept fitfully that night, my dreams filled with shadows that kept pulling me in different directions until I finally saw him. I begged him, time and time again, to help me. But every time he was walking away, not even glancing back over his shoulder. I woke three times. I fell asleep one last time and the dream changed.

Dearest Diary, It has been a long night. My dreams were horrific in new ways. I almost prefer the old blood and gore horror that I used to freak me out. The unknown seems so much scarier. He appeared time and time again in the dreams, a white light against all of the shadows. I don’t remember completely, but I can still see him walking away like he did at first. But that last seems so much worse! I can’t fully explain it, but I was there, surrounded by shadows in the beginning. I wasn’t in pain or anything, but I was afraid, I’m not fully sure why. Anyways, a little time passed and then HE appeared. I began to beg him for his help but his back was towards me. Finally I screamed at him and he turned to look at me. His face was so terribly beautiful. He smiled and walked back to me, not speaking. He continued to make no noise as he touched the shadows that were surrounding me. They screamed and disappeared. Once they were gone he extended his hand to me and I was just about to take it when I woke up. What would have happened if I had grabbed it? Would I have screamed and disappeared as well? I can only pray not. What does it all mean?...

It was a few days before I saw him again. My days passed in blurs as I searched faces and wrote about my dreams in the diary. It was confusing and horrifying and yet so compelling. I didn’t know what I would do when I saw him, if I saw him, again; but I knew I had to. I knew I was meant to. It was my fate. That scared me more than anything else. I wasn’t sure why I was meant to meet him. Why I had to.

A week later I had the next sighting. I was in biology, sketching on a piece of paper while others took notes on the lecture. I looked up at one point for no particular reason and saw him standing in the doorway. I felt myself gasp quietly and the guy that shared the table with me looked up, then at the door then back at me. His words seemed to echo and I would remember them even if I hadn’t written them down that night. “What are you staring at Jessica?”

I was shocked by what Dean had said, but didn’t take my eyes off of the guy this time. He stared back with a smile in his dark eyes. I memorized him in that minute. The way his hair fell in swept waves on his forehead. The way his dark eyes seemed almost to have no pupils. The way his skin was almost as white as the shirt he was wearing. And finally the way his smile was so easy and absolutely beautiful. I loved his smile. I wanted to talk to him right then, but I wasn’t so out of it that I forgot about the other people in the room. “Who are you?” I mouthed, not wanting to actually speak. His smile grew but he said nothing. He stayed in the doorway, staring at me for the entire class period and I never once looked away from him. At one point or another I stopped shaking and could keep a sturdy gaze. He was more mesmerizing in real life than he was in my dreams. When the bell rang I remember jumping but still staring at him. I gathered my books up without looking at them. He moved into the classroom and stood inches away from where I froze. I’m pretty sure we were the only two left in the classroom by then.

“You don’t really want to know who I am Jessica. You know that just as well as I do.” His voice was as hypnotic and beautiful as he was. But he was wrong. I was unable to speak so I just shook my head slowly. “No? You truly want to know?” I hesitated for no more than a small instant but he caught it. “Don’t lie to yourself, Jessica. You don’t want to know. That’s why you’ve been tossing and turning for so many nights now. Those dreams that frighten you are peaking your curiosity only because you know they are telling you to forget. Not to ask. Not to know.”

I don’t remember exactly what I said, but it was something along the lines of “How do you know that?”

The answer, however, I remember perfectly, “Because I am there. I know your dreams better than you do.” That sentence was the end to the first talk I had with him. He disappeared and I was left beyond freaked out. The rest of the day I didn’t watch for him, I was too lost in thought about what he meant. I figured, of course, that it meant he had been watching me, but then how would he know my dreams?

When I got home that day I didn’t want to go to my room. I stayed out in the living room, watching TV. When my parents came home they were surprised I was out there, but tried to mask it. They sat down carefully with me, as if afraid to scare me off. I stayed where I was. We talked a little during the commercials but mostly we just sat on the same couch watching a movie and pretending to be a normal family. I had a feeling this was hurting them; me acting like a slightly normal teen for a few hours just to have me go back to the Goth me again. I wanted to do something for them, to do something a normal family would. I offered to take them out to dinner. They had been surprised to say the least, but agreed. I told them to go change, wear something nice. They left and I went to my room to get changed. I slipped into the black skirt and maroon shirt that I had worn on my birthday. I took off all my black makeup and wore black eyeliner, brown mascara, mocha lipstick, and brown eye shadow. I thought my mom was going to cry when she saw me. I took them to the nicest restaurant in town and for an hour and a half we were a happy family, talking and laughing. I went home that night and cried myself to sleep again because I knew that they wanted the daughter I used to be, not the one I was at the time.

Dearest Diary, I’m still having the dreams. They are slowly becoming more detailed and I have a feeling that HE might be right. They are warnings. But I don’t want to listen to them. I wake every morning with his face in my mind and the hope that I will see him. I did yesterday, but will he be here today? Will he talk to me again? I really do want to know who he is, no matter what he says. I wish I could talk normally when he was around, but I can’t. It’s impossible. He enchants me. I’ve never quiet felt like that before…

As it turns out, I do see him again that day, but he doesn’t speak. He is sitting in the auditorium while the choir is singing in front of him. I sing quietly, watching him watch me. I never look away from him, not wanting to lose sight and have him vanish on me again. I was wrong; I don’t have to look away. He just got up and left. I was tempted to run after him, but held myself back, not sure if he would disappear even if I was there.

After school I was walking towards my car like it was any other day but was stopped by someone calling my name. I turned to see Keith Swanson walking towards me. Keith is a very persistent person to say the least. He is the one guy in school that hasn’t given up hope. He asked me out quite frequently. I rejected with more and more irritation each time. He wasn’t a bad guy or anything; as a matter of fact, he was actually really nice. But, not only was I not looking for a boyfriend, he was also not my type. He was prep and was well known for his writing skills in the small school. That day he did not ask me out though. He instead handed me a tube of lipstick. I looked at it, surprised. It was my lipstick, of course; the tube that had been in my purse the night before at the restaurant. He told me that he had been there and had seen me leaving. On my way out had fallen out of my purse apparently. I took it and gave him small thanks before leaving. I was back to my old self that night; locked in my room with nothing but my diary. I wrote a long entry about how I hoped I would find out who he was soon. I had the worst dream yet that night.

Dearest Diary, I woke up this morning screaming. My parents were actually the ones that pulled me out of it. They were banging on the locked door, yelling at me to open it. I did, eventually. Then I spent half an hour assuring them I was ok and that it was just a bad dream. I actually remember this one, as most people would. In the beginning I had been sitting on my bed, writing in this very diary when he appeared. He was smiling and seemed happy about something or other and I had asked him what it was, as if we were old friends. He sat down across from me and spoke so quietly I couldn’t hear him at first. Finally I got it. “It’s time.” I had been confused and asked what he was talking about. His smile became wider and he repeated his first statement. Still confused I asked him again. He grabbed my hand and, laughing, pulled me to my feet. I stood there, surprised as he smiled down at me. He was a lot taller than I remembered. After a second of complete stillness, he leaned down and kissed me. I was slightly surprised, but fell into the kiss. I closed my eyes until I felt myself begin to move. I pulled away from his lips and looked around; clinging to him. We were floating above the house and still rising. He laughed again, then pulled back. “Don’t worry; you’re doing it, not me.” I seemed to believe it and let go of him completely. We were both still floating up. Then I said the words that did it. “I don’t believe it. I can’t make us fly.” His face crumpled and I felt the weightlessness that had been my body evaporate and solidity return. I was plummeting down. He was following, but in a more controlled way, as if he was on wings. I was screaming for his help and he was reaching for me while I was just a few feet from the ground. I woke up screaming just as his fingers almost closed around my wrist and me feet were inches above the ground. I couldn’t go back to sleep. I was too afraid to have the dream again…

            My dreams turned black and seemed to overlap. They were unnatural, even for me, one of few bearers of black dreams. I wasn’t the only one, of course, but the only other I have ever known of was my own mother. No matter how much research I did, I could find no other documented people with the gift. Maybe it was still just an assumption, but I believed that we were pretty few.

I suppose it was when I woke up for the third time in one night that I new something was going wrong. I was tired and I knew I actually really needed my rest, but the dreams were trying to tell me something and I had to know what it was. The black dreams were usually about the future, but these ones were so urgent, that it had to be sooner.  I had seen shadows and heard screams. That didn’t tell me much. I had seen an open window and something crawling through it but no shapes had been definite. I closed my eyes, trying to recall more of the images. I saw an open car door and a guy with a lighter, but of course, his face was no more than a blur. I took a deep breath and thought hard. No more came back to me. I let my breath back out but it got stuck halfway out because I hand pressed hard over my lips.

I opened my eyes and saw someone standing over me. I try to scream against the hand, get someone’s attention, but the hand is too powerful and it blocks and muffles the noise. I kick and punch at the figure but he takes each blow with ease. Finally he growls slightly when I reach for his face again and he twists my arm so that I can’t move anymore without hurting myself. I stay quiet. The darkness slowly lifts itself from around me and I see that the figure standing above me isn’t the only one; there is another standing by the door. I can only think of one thing I can do, though I doubted it work. I began to try to plead with the one holding me to the bed.

“Please. I’ll do anything. Just let me go.” I say a few times, trying to get him to lift his hand. “Please!” Nothing changed. I whined, trying to get their attention. Trying to get them to listen but no one did anything. I gave up and decided the best way to handle the situation was to just stay quiet and not piss them off. It was at least the safest thing I could do, if not the most effective. However, as I lay, trying to unknot my muscles, I begin to notice a sharp pain in my leg. I figured it was because of the weird angle the guy was holding me in, so I tried to loosen the muscle and move my leg slightly. My attempt to ease it makes it even worse and my eyes water while I try not to scream. That is when I realize it’s not the angle, it’s something digging in. I begin to breathe hard and try to ease away from it. It gets worse again. I stopped moving completely, hoping that it would make it so that the pain only stayed, not deepened, but I was wrong. For some reason it dug in harder and I began to whimper. The pain which was already too much to handle becomes more and more intense as mere seconds tick by. I finally couldn’t take anymore and screamed while I tried to rip my leg away from whatever was digging into it. That made it hurt a lot more. I screamed and sobbed into the hand that still covered my mouth, trying with all my might to get away from the pain, but I was only making it worse.

The figure above me was watching me now and I was trying to tell him through my sobs that something was digging into my calf and cutting through but they did nothing. I knew they couldn’t understand and tried to get away even harder, still screaming and trying to tell them to help. Trying to tell them to make it stop. Finally the person by the door came over and said, “Shut that stupid girl up!” the voice was male and he sounded completely pissed about my constant noise. But I couldn’t stop; whatever was digging in felt like a rusty nail slowly sinking into my leg and cutting through my calf. I tried harder to get away. It only made it worse, but I had to try. I couldn’t take it.

“I think she’s in pain.” Another voice, the one of the guy holding me, says. The guy that had been by the door turns on a flashlight and shines it right into my eyes.  I close them, but still beg them to stop the pain. The light leaves my face and I open my eyes, but can only tell that it is moving down my body because of the way the flashlight is turning. Finally the guy holding me speaks again, but his words are far from reassuring. “Oh my god.” I try to look down to see what it was, but the hand that holds me to pillow won’t allow it. After a minute though, the pressure lessens on my mouth as the guy holding me moves closer to my leg. I move my head so that I can see, and what I see I don’t like. In a puddle surrounding my leg is a lot of blood. I can’t see the wound from which the blood is streaming, but knew the general area because the pain was still there.

The guy that was holding me let me go completely and I got up, tearing my leg away from whatever was in it. The pain didn’t end, but it didn’t increase either. I still couldn’t stop sobbing and shaking but when I looked at the wound, my ruling feeling was nausea. There was the handle of a knife sticking out of my leg. No blade could be seen, only the handle. And I recognized the knife instantly. It was one of my dads fruit knives. It had about a two inch blade, which was stuck into my calf. I didn’t hesitate. I grabbed the handle and ripped it out. The pain that it caused was worse than the feeling of it digging in, but didn’t last half as long. I screamed at first, then fell into my pillow, sobbing.

Another voice came, I didn’t recognize it. “What’s going on? I told you to keep the girl quiet!”

“We were trying sir.” The guy who had been holding me down said. “But…” he trailed off. I was still sobbing into my pillow.

The other guy finished. “She had a knife stuck into her leg. We don’t know how it happened, but she just ripped it out.” He came over and pulled the knife out of my fingers. ‘Sir’ turned on his flashlight and looked at the knife, then flashed the light onto my leg.

Considered one of the most beautiful things to many people

“A rose, by any other name, would smell as sweet”

Are we so sure? If a dandelion were not considered a weed but a beautiful flower would everyone not follow suit and agree? Would we not cherish this weed with as much reverence? Then a rose, if seen first as a prickly weed, would prove to be thought exactly that which the dandelion is now.

A diamond.

The most precious jewel in most eyes

Starting as a rock and cut and shaped into its new beauty. Cut out of stone, cut away from its outer shell. Remove its skin and it is the most beautiful and lustrous, the most luminous. Twiddled down further we find that it disappears from its original glory and is transformed into whatever beauty that the ‘creator’ wants.

A student

No more than a combination of that diamond and that rose