Haze

April closed her eyes and waited. Count to ten, she thought. She could hear the man coming closer to her, and willed herself to relax.

“Steady, April,” Derek said to her from the earpiece. “Steady.” April nodded, though she knew he couldn’t see, thought about opening her eyes, then let the thought fall away when she realized it didn’t make a difference—she was already in the dark.

Even though she could feel how close he was to her by the way the heat radiated off of him and transferred to her own skin, she still gasped as the man grazed his teeth against her neck. She felt her body tense as her eyes flew open and her hand instinctively reached for her back pocket. The man quickly pulled back and stared into her eyes, his eyes a startling bright, neon blue.

“April,” he said. “Just don’t think. Everything is alright, okay?”

Then something strange happened. Her body was tingling—this warm, numbing sensation that started through her hands and spread throughout her entire body. Her hand fell limp to her side and the man bent his head to her neck again, but instead of the feel of his teeth he placed a light kiss over her pulse. What a loving gesture, April thought vaguely. She felt her body start to sway, and the man wrapped his arms around her to keep her from falling. She sighed. She suddenly couldn’t remember what she was there for…what she was supposed to do.

“April! What are you doing? Snap out of it!” a voice hissed in her ear. “Damn it, idiot girl. You’re in danger! Use your head.”

Danger? April tried to hold on to this thought. Danger from what..?

“April! In your right back pocket is a wooden stake. You have to use it. Kill him quickly. You’re running out of time.” April felt herself being pulled from her serenity. She felt herself frown as she reached out and patted her back pocket.

She stilled.

“April. Kill him. Now.”

April hadn’t even noticed her eyes had reclosed.

She opened them again, quickly. Her eyes locked on the ceiling. She breathed slowly. Adrenaline started surging through her. Reaching carefully into her pocket, she discreetly pulled out the stake. She raised her arm to hold the vampire to her, and he–too lost in sucking her energy to comprehend–made a sound of approval. She tried not to fall under the monster’s control again. In a quick movement she had her left hand clutching the stake at his back. April plunged it down, and felt it lodge into his heart. The man stilled, then slouched against her, his breathing labored. She dug the stake deeper into his chest then roughly pulled it out, and pushed the vampire away from her.

“No!” He gasped, eyes wide, reaching for her as he stumbled back and fell to the ground. April stared down at the corpse, the neon glow quickly fading into the darkness of their surroundings, and suddenly wondered, who was this vampire?

Then April heard a door behind her open. She heard a soft click as suddenly the room was filled with light, and a man strode in wearing camouflage pants and a tan shirt. He wasn’t military. He smiled at her aloofly.

“Sorry I didn’t try to help you sooner. I didn’t realize you were losing control of yourself until it had already started to happen. I’m just glad you listened to me.” At her puzzled expression, he tapped the headphones in his ears. “Your haziness. Temporary. It should start to dissipate soon.” April blinked. She slowly looked around and let her eyes rest again on the ceiling.

The familiar ceiling.

With widened eyes she looked down at the dead vampire. His once beautiful and youthful blue eyes now held horror–dead horror–and as much as she hoped, he didn’t turn to dust. He just laid there staring up at her, with a dead look of betrayal.

“Derek,” she spoke, “you knew.”

No response.

She refocused her attention to the living man staring at her. “You let me come here to kill him. This is why you armed me. It wasn’t for a combat buddy system. You wanted him dead.”

She saw Derek square his shoulders. “I figured he would fight to live if I did it.” He walked to the corpse, moved his hand to pluck a band from the vampire’s ring finger. “He wouldn’t suspect you. Here,” he held out the ring. “I’m sure you want this.”

April took the ring but didn’t take her eyes from his. Derek narrowed his eyes and looked away.

“He had to die, April. He was one of them.”

“He used to be one of us.”

“But then he wasn’t.”

April stood silent. Derek sighed.

“We lose what we love. It happens. Sometimes it has to,” he said softly. Then, more firmly, “We are on a schedule. We still have more hunting tonight.”

April said not a word.

Derek shook his head. “I’m leaving. We have duties to uphold.” He paused at the doorway, “April.”

April clutched the ring tightly in her right hand before unclasping the necklace from around her neck and slipping the ring on the chain to dangle with its twin. Then, after what felt like ages, she turned around, and followed Derek out of her home.

 

copyright Marie Meyers, 2013

 

2012 Reflection

At the start of January 2012, I was still dating Micheal Hamburger. Which, at the time, I thought was incredible as he was my first long term relationship. And my first. New Year’s Eve I was to baby sit at his house because his mom wanted to go to a party with her husband. The only thing was that Micheal couldn’t stay there with me. Tonya, his mom, didn’t trust Micheal to save his life, so that ni…ght, as I watched his siblings–including his brother who liked me, was my age, and more trusted to be with me than he was–he was going to be at the skating rink, hanging out with friends and flirting with millions of girls. But that’s a story for later on. His elder brother stayed home with me, too, and together John and I hung out with Megan, Joel, Michael, and Johnathan.

We were playing dress up with Megan–John had let us paint his nails, when my boyfriend walked in the door. Apparently he had decided to go home because he hadn’t wanted to stay there while all the girls asked, “Where’s Lexi? Where’s your girlfriend at?” That was also the first time I had had a guy put a relaxer in my hair for me. And, the first time I had ever spent a New Year’s Eve with friends instead of family.

It was also the year anniversary of Candice living in our house with us.  We had met her the start of 2011. The New Year’s Eve before. “Dad’s New Girlfriend.” The year before, I thought my brother-in-law had been fucking crazy. He had praised this lady, and when I meet her, she’s a gross, awkward girl with an obsessive boyfriend. And an awkward ex-husband. Stayed with us in Tooele, got pregnant, and moved with us to Nebraska. She was a total bitch. Not in the begining though. She was quiet. She didn’t say much. Once she got used to everyone though, she made herself right at home.

That year, my school was Grand Island Senior High in Grand Island, Nebraska. I lived in the furnished attic of a slightly cramped plain house with a water logged basement. My cousins even lived with us for a while. I was friends with all the lower classman, and I had the senior boyfriend they all wanted. I went every where with everyone, skipped class to smoke cigarettes and smoke weed, and flirted with all the lesbian and bisexual girls and got their digits. In a sense, I was the cool junior everyone wanted to know. The new girl who was cute, smart, fun, and easy to talk to. I was friends with the preps, with the stoners, with the smokers, with the nerds, and with the losers. I didn’t have a table at lunch time, because I didn’t have one group. I had all of them. To be honest, it was kind of cool, but then again it was also really annoying. My 16th year of my life I did a lot of stupid things. Like getting shitfaced at my cousin’s house with my cousins and their mom. Losing my V-Card to a complete loser. Dating said loser for half a year, and believing that being in Nebraska was a permanent move.

I only cut a few times. Once or twice. In fact, my cutting had become so infrequent, that I had completely forgot about all the razors. But that didn’t mean I was better. I remember John and I got into it terribly. I blacked out, broke my dresser, and gave myself a concussion against my room wall. It was one of the worst moments, when I realized just how destructive a turn my life had taken.

We moved in March. After coming home from school two months before John had looked at me and said, “What would you say if I told you we were moving back to Utah?”
I didn’t hesitate. I told him without hesitation that I’d go.

I dated a guy named Micheal Patrick Hamburger. Folks called him Boots. He was a senior, a year older than me, and in the foster care system because his sister had told the courts that his dad had been a pedophile. The first time I met him was through two girls, Elizabeth and Star. I met them at a GSA meeting, after they had asked me questions about my experience being bi sexual. They had told me about their gay friend Lane, and their gay friend Micheal. So the next day I met Micheal Hamburger and he talked to me about how cute a dress was in a manfa he was reading…I thought it was him who was gay. I swear to God.

I didn’t find out he wasn’t until I met him that Friday at the skating rink. After spending a whole night talking to him, he tried saying he wanted me to be his girlfriend. I told him I needed to get to know him first. And he invited me to his birthday party. After that, things were set. We dated a few weeks later, and it lasted for 6 months, and ended in heartache.

See, he was a baby. A flirt. A liar. A tease. He wasn’t willing to see life for what it was, he only wanted what people would give him. He was always getting in trouble, and he wasn’t all that smart. But, I had been determined to keep our relationship in tact. I wanted to keep it together. But, after he lied on my niece, I had to let it go. Because family meant everything.

He had known I was moving a few weeks before, and asked if I’d wait for him. I never really gave him an answer, because I didn’t know whether or not I could. After we had broken up, he came to my house a day before I had to go out to Doniphan, and gave me a letter, telling me to come back if I still loved him. Which, I thought I did. Love him, I mean. But the moment I stepped off the train and was back on Utah soil, I realized I didn’t miss him. Not even a little bit. Over the months he’d try to get me back, but…the magic was gone, and I didn’t miss it.

I finally stopped talking to Ralph Christensen. It just happened. After we started talking again after I moved back I thought we could  be friends. But he used me yet again. Over and over. And then I was done.

I started going to a school in Clearfield, Utah, the March we moved back. I was very disappointed because I had hoped that we’d move back to Tooele instead of an hour away, but it just wasn’t in the cards. My first week of high school life back in Utah public schools, I already had skipping partners, and smoking friends. In fact, a close friend of mine, Izzy, became my good friend because I decided I’d skip with her when she couldn’t find any of her friends to do so with. It was then that Izzy, Dylan, Sara, and I started skipping every fifth period and first periods, and going to the store and buying donuts. Then we got a free period so sluffing wasn’t sluffing anymore.

Tyler and I hung out every other weekend. I would go to Tooele from Clearfield and stay with Melissa, and then hang out with her and Tyler for three days before going back. It really made my days, knowing that he as well as all the friends I had left behind, still cared.

In the summer, I moved out to Tooele. I stayed with my friends Jaycee and Emily for a while, before eventually moving back with my sister so her husband could help me get ready for college. Then, on the 26th of September, my sister told me to back our bags.

We left at four o’ clock that morning to  hide at a women’s shelter for three days, and then board a greyhound, and move back to Missouri. No one knew we were gone until we’d left.

In September, I moved back to St. Louis. My sister rekindled her romance and friendships with the people of her past, and I started going to a school. Theodore Roosevelt High School. At my school, the kids are rude and disrespectful and no one cares about anything. I didn’t really plan on making friends. Especially it beinf my senior year. But I meant Elizabeth Bauer. After her, I met Emily, Cattrina, Shannon, Kasi, Nick, Daniel, Shaheed, Travis, and Fatima. And Regina. And others. Not that I talk to all of them really, but they are people I’ve started to get to know. In fact, Nick is my boyfriend of two weeks right now. I like him, but things are so not weird that I’m terribly worried about it.

Tyler stopped being my best friend. He just…stopped wanting to be there, and I stopped waiting for him to come around.

I saw my mom. She’s obese. She has Cankles. Her rings are smushed onto her fingers. Her face is puffy.  She has pictures of my sister and I all over her walls but doesn’t remember who we are. And I cried, and realized just how much time had passed, and how much I will always love her.

Scored a 20 on the ACT.

Sat down on a friend’s computer, and decided to write a reflection of the moments I remembered in 2012.

-MAL

When I was younger I wrote poems for my mother. They weren’t anything fancy, nothing award winning or of literary sensation—just short, small, not-even-more-than-a-few-lines poems; the kind short enough to be haikus but just lacking that rhyming scheme.  I was sitting on her custom designed Windows computer—customized to be an easy-to-use gadget for the blind (even though she never used it)—and just fooling around.

“Mommy, come here!” I’d said.

“What?”

“Come here!”

“What?”

“I’ve wrote you some poems. Listen to them.”  When I was done reading my novice poetry, she said she liked them, that they were “good”. That was my first time writing anything I felt proud of, and the last time, for many, many years. It was also the first sign I should have had that my mother was sick.

Of course, thinking back on it, she was never quite right. She slept all the time and never seemed to have too much interest in what was going on with me. When I was a child I never thought anything of it. It was routine, a mundane cycle. Just how she was. Now though…I just should have realized.

My mother had fallen into our bath tub and was taken to a hospital one weekend. There, my older sister had to make the call of putting her into a caring facility for the elderly. I had been at my sister’s house the weekend it happened. For whatever reason, she had fell, and in the process, lost her mind, as well as her freedom.

Not that it was a real issue. It might have even been a good thing. Weeks before, I had read a letter saying that our house had got foreclosed on. We were eventually going to be homeless. Perhaps the reality of that knocked the wind out of her in the bathroom of our house that night. Or maybe the air pushed her.

With mom in the hospital, the only person I could live with was my sister and her family. Not that this was a bad thing, I mean, I love my sister. It was her husband who was the problem.

He was just…mean. I guess being in the Military makes you stricter than you sometimes ought to be, and I guess having a bad childhood only makes it worse, but the guy was tyrannical. He yelled all the time, had a drinking problem, and a severe case of PTSD. He was just an all-‘round angry guy. And with my mother in a nursing home, he was suddenly my provider. I was suddenly his kid. A nine year old girl who still told people that she wanted to go to college to be a baby sister—like there was a class that said BABYSITTING 101 that I could get a degree in, a child who was afraid of cemeteries because she believed that, because of the one time she had gotten her foot stuck in the mud of a grave, all cemeteries had zombies in the ground, waiting to suck her under. I was an innocent, ignorant child thrust into a suddenly angry world.

It was bad enough I was afraid of him. It was even worse when I moved in with him. The beginning of my sixth grade year, my brother-in-law—my sister’s husband, John—had came home from a tour in Iraq. Having already been living with them for two years, I had already decided I didn’t like him, and while he had been gone my sister had decided to divorce him. So when I came home from my first day of middle school and he was there, announcing our imminent and immediate move the next day to Wisconsin, and that there were no ‘ifs, ands, or buts about it’, I was, well…the loss of words here explains it all.

And that’s where this story really starts. Wisconsin. See, things were bad. Not the kind of bad that you think of when someone isn’t having a good day or when a child doesn’t listen to their parents—I mean bad. The kind of bad that can change a person’s life for the worst. The kind of bad that makes a person just go through life without an ability to care.

It was because John is abusive. But not to my sister. Not to his kids. Not to his family members. No, at the time, John was abusive to me. That doesn’t mean he didn’t belittle everyone else around him, because he did, but when it came to physically venting his anger about something on anyone, I was the go to. If it was a really bad day, and he thought I did something I didn’t do, he’d charge at me, cussing me out and yelling at me as he got right up in my face, using his whole hand like a pointing finger, curving in the thumb, to tell me how badly it angered him. If I tried saying something to it—even if to just explain my side, or say I had no idea what he was talking about—that hand would just flex; quick, sharp, hard, connecting with my cheek before fixing itself right back in its place. If it was a really bad day, after that first, initial slap, I’d be backed up against things—walls, tables, refrigerators, floors—and pinned, terrified, crying, as he delivered a blow after the next, telling me how if Military personal didn’t speak that way to him, neither was I.

So I turned to music, books, and the privacy of my bedroom. I figured, if everything I said and did got me hit, then I just wouldn’t do anything at all. I have rather been alone, then downstairs with my family where I knew that one tongue slip and I’d be crying.

It was then that I started writing. Lyrics, I mean. I had no desire to be a writer at the time, but the thought of becoming a singer was still in my head, and it seemed like, through the books and the music, and the walls I had built inside myself, that writing those songs were the only thing I could do to keep myself together, and even then, it didn’t work much. Still, though, with every song I’d think up and jot down I’d remember that first initial time of writing those poems for my mother, and the calm that had taken me when I had. Around this very same time, I was, at my new middle school, in International Club. International Club was a club where we learned about different cultures and got to pen pal and know the people from other countries. The assignment we had was to write a short story so they could be sent overseas. This assignment was the first time I had ever written anything that wasn’t words to a tune.

The story was called “May Belle Finds a Lost Puppy” and it was about a little girl who finds a lost puppy in the marketplace and desperately wants to keep it, but her mother at first says no. I had printed off a copy, ran home (we lived right behind Tomah Middle school, so the back parking lot was like an add-on to my backyard,) and read my story to my niece and nephews. Then John turned to me and said, “Not bad. You might actually have a gift at this sort of thing.” I remember spending days editing it with John’s mother’s help, trying to make it perfect.

After that, I just started writing. I wrote lyrics, fan fictions, and poetry. Eventually, I even wrote my own stories. Then, in Utah, my sophomore year, I wrote this short, Halloween story about a ghost sister obsessed with her brother and submitted it to my school’s Literary Magazine…and it got accepted. Published, when the magazine came out later that year, as the first publication in the whole book. I was excited, happy. It wasn’t the first time I’d felt like I was a good writer, but at the same time, I’d felt like it was the first time I had ever had proof of being a good writer.

Then, it happened. After John had had a major flip out (which he took out on me, of course), I wrote a poem, saying in few, short lines, everything that needed to be said. Slap by Alexis Meyer. That’s what it said when he and my sister found it in Teen Ink’s monthly magazine, March, 2010 issue, after I had submitted it to the Teen Ink website, and it had been selected to be printed. It was the first time, I think, that he realized exactly how I felt about him, or that, the reason why I had first started writing to begin with was because it was the only other option for me as a result of having him has parental figure, unless I wanted to hurt myself, or something.

However, it was that moment, seeing my words in newspaper print, which made me realize that if I wanted, I could do it. Be a writer. Become a somebody. Have my words read by millions and millions of people, and become an editor, where I could read the words of others, falling in love with works of genius and turning nobodies into somebodies. Like me. Or, maybe, every person who’s ever picked up a pen or pencil and just written. I began reading novels and noticing grammatical errors in the print, or reading a text message from a friend and thinking to myself, “You wrote that wrong”. Sometimes, it’s annoying, even for me. Other days, I’m surprised I even noticed these mistakes at all, and then just decide that it’s an early indicator of destiny. Cheesy, I know, but I have yet to find a reason to think otherwise.

Hollow Men (T.S. Elliot)

Mistah Kurtz-he dead
A penny for the Old Guy

I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us-if at all-not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer-

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Sarah Dessen

After finally reading Meg Cabot’s Jinx, I was browsing my school library’s limited book selection, looking for something sweet, romantic, and Meg Cabot like. And the first book I found was What Happened to Goodbye, about a girl named Mclean Sweet, who made a habit of creating new persons for herself and then just disappearing, never saying good-bye, as a way to deal with what had happened with her parent’s divorce. It was one of the most touching books I’ve ever read.

So, now, I’ve already read This Lullaby, and I’m about to start another one, soon. I plan on reading all of Sarah Dessen’s novels. She is really good at weaving strong morals in her realistic fiction, and the words she writes on the page seem to stick with you, even after the page is turned, or the book is done.

I really recommend her, and This Lullaby! Sara Dessen may be well on her way to becoming one of my most favorite authors.

–MAL

So this one time out in Utah, I had come to visit my family for the holidays. While I was there, I hung out with my friend Julia.

It was about ten o’ clock when we decided to take a walk. On our way back, we saw a green cart.

It was one of those tiny carts, you know, a cart that every grocery store should have for children who want to say, “Look, Mommy! I’m pushing a cart, too!” In the dark it looked blue, and cute. It had one of those hand guiders, in brown. Julia looked at me, I looked at her, and she asked me,
“Are we still taking it?”

We did. She took the first turn sitting in the back of the cart, me pushing. On the gravel road home, the wind racing alongside us, it was exhilarating.

After scaring me shitless taking her turn pushing -me-, we were taking turns just dragging it along on the trail back to my house. Well, one of the wheels got caught in a crack in the road, and the cart hit me in the shin.

Can I just say, Ow, ow, ow, ow, OW,?

There was an impressive bruise for a couple days.

Anyways, we get to my house, tip-toeing the cart up my porch steps and into my foyer. My brother-in-law at the time turns to us, looks, and says, “What the Hell?”
I told him it was a Christmas present.

Which it might as well of been. Instead of being the cute blue I first thought, it was a dark forest green. Yuck.
Talk about shabby looking.

It doesn’t matt…

It doesn’t matter, anyway, why you like me. [...] Just that you do.

–Dexter, This Lullaby, by Sarah Dessen

You had Me at Hello

Sitting along in the coffee shop
Not looking for love, only a place to rest my head down
I looked around–
and saw you in the coffee line,
Brown hair, soft smile, bright green eyes
That met mine, and then you smiled,
and you mouthed “Hello”.

It probably was only fifteen seconds,
but that was all he needed,
and from the pang in my chest I knew right then,
Cupid hadn’t missed me.
I’m sure that the world stood still
So it was only you and me,
I took a breath, and gestured with my hand,
It was a start of a new thing.

And you came, and sat down.
But little did we know that three years later,
You’d have me dressed in white.
And this is my vows to you,
To tell you what I never have:
How you got me, in this moment,
In three years and fifteen second,
Well you see, you had me at hello.

Copyright Marie Meyers, 2012

–MAL

Vampire Knight: Prose, Shorts, and Poetry chapter two: “Boundaries”, released now! Read a short synopsis below, then go check it out!

Title: Boundaries
Pairing: KanamexYuuki
Genre: Shorts, Angst/Drama
Rating: T+
Brief Summary: Lust, Desire, Longing. Feral and overpowering. Inescapable. Where will the line be drawn? Siblings, lovers–what are they really?

Vampire Knight: Prose, Shorts, and Poetry: Boundaries

©Marie Meyers

-MAL

Yesterday a stranger stood
next to me
at the bus stop.
He turned to me
and tipped his hat
‘How are you?’ he asked me.
I opened my mouth to reply,
but just then the bus, she came.
So the man just looked at me and smiled,
‘Just answer me tomorrow.’

-MAL