Liara looked back over her shoulder as she ran. The sun was starting to disappear behind the mountain ridge to the west and she knew she didn't have much time. It was terror that drove her forward, forcing her to ignore the ache of her legs and the burning in her legs. If she stopped, if she even slowed down for a moment, she would die.
Silently she cursed Gregor even as she wept for him openly, hot tears coursing down her cheeks as grief and fear drove her on. He had convinced her to leave the protection of the town when it was so close to nightfall, intent on showing her a hidden grotto deep in the woods. She had known what he wanted and despite her objections, she had been willing to give it to him. Only woodsmen and soldiers from the church ventured that far into the wilderness on their own, but it was the opportunity for them to be alone together that had finally convinced her to go with him. She had left her father's shop early, telling him that she wanted to pick up some things from the market before it closed. She had felt guilty when he had so readily agreed but all of that had been forgotten when she met Gregor at east gate and had ridden out with him.
The grotto he had found was beautiful, filled with wild flowers and heavy tree branches hanging overhead. A small pool of water was fed by a stream that led deeper into the forest. It wasn't long after arriving that their arms were around each other, their hands roaming over each other as they began to undress. They were young and in love. Gregor hadn't asked to marry her yet but she felt like if she gave him this, he finally would.
All of that was gone now. Gregor was gone. They had ignored how far the sun had set in the west and they were so wrapped up in each other that they didn't realize the danger until the horse shrieked in terror. The creatures set upon it first, monsters with dark fur and snarling voices, moving so fast and with such violence that Liara hadn't realized what they were. The horse was torn apart by claw and fang, it's throat ripped upon, it's guts spilled out onto the ground as the werewolves feasted on it. Gregor had risen first, intent on stopping them. But he had no weapon in his hand and he was too late to realize the mistake he had made in drawing their attention. He screamed at her to run, grabbed a fallen branch and charged at them with a yell of fury.
The largest of the monsters towered over Gregor and leapt at him, hitting him hard enough to silence his battle cry and dragging him into the forest with a single bound. The others had followed after him and that was when she heard Gregor screaming in terror. She didn't know what they were doing to him but all she had to do was look at the butchered remains of the horse before she turned and fled the way they had come. Eventually, Gregor's screams were silenced, either because he was dead or because she was far enough away not to hear them. She didn't stop. Branches slapped her in the face as she fled, bramble bushes cut at her clothes and skin. She knew she was bleeding, that they would be able to smell her blood and find her. That was what the stories said. They were just like any animal, hunting by scent. But she couldn't stop and tend to her wounds. All she could do was run.
When she emerged from the forest she found herself on the main road that led back to town. The sun was nearly gone and the cover of nightfall was fast approaching. If she could make it to the town's gates she would be safe behind the wards and weapons that the town guard used to protect them. With nothing between her and home but open ground, she ran as fast as she could. The howling started soon after that.
It wasn't long before the town was within sight. The torches on the walls and at the city gates were a beacon of hope and she could hear the clear ringing of the church bell. They had heard the howling too! The soldiers would be coming, bearing the swords inlaid with holy silver and arrows tipped with the same. All she had to do was make it to the gates before the monsters got her.
The howl sounded again and she heard a snarl near her back. She risked a glance over her shoulder and had only a moment to widen her eyes in shock before the beast pounced upon her and crushed her to the ground. She screamed in terror, trying to push it away from her, but her strength was nothing compared to the beast. The shouts of soldiers coming out of the gate reached her ears before the beast wrapped a massive claw around her waist and dragged her into the woods. It moved with incredible speed and grace, passing through trees like a horse running on an open plain. Liara struggled to escape it's grasp, she screamed so the soldiers would know where she was. She prayed. She prayed to God to save her, to spare her, to forgive her for her sins with Gregor.
There was no one to answer her call. The beast ran on and on, out of sight and sound of the soldiers, until she couldn't even hear the hopeful ringing of the church bell. It carried her deeper into the dark, on into the night until her throat was too ragged to scream anymore and there was only sobs. Only when it came to a clearing in the wood did it throw her to the ground. She looked at the beast in terror as it descended upon her.
She found she had the strength for one last scream.
- - - - - - -
This is something I've had in my head for awhile. I'm having writer's block issues, so I'm going to try and knock out these little random ideas I have in my head in the hopes of clearing some space. Don't expect this to turn into a story or a series. It's just one scene I've been wanting to write. Enjoy!
Saturday, February 4, 2012
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Confessional Lee
There's some things I've wanted to talk about for awhile but I really haven't been able to bring myself to do it. Mostly because I just haven't had the motivation and also because I've been afraid to do so. So I suppose you could think of this as something of a confessional.
Firstly, I want to talk about my name. Everyone who has read my blog or followed me on Twitter knows me as Lee Chambers. However, this isn't my real name. Maybe some people thought that was obvious, maybe some didn't, but I felt the need to make that clear. My real, legal name is not Lee Chambers. It's a name I created years ago when I started writing erotica and I use it to protect myself in case someone from my real life was to come across my writing or my Twitter account. The internet can be a dangerous place when you have to worry about losing your jobs or your friends when they discover what you do in your spare time. I've read stories and known people online that this has happened to. It's never pretty and it's not something that I want to have to go through.
Secondly, more importantly, is that I've been fighting with depression for some time now. There's a long story full of sighs that I could go into about it but the biggest part I want to address is how my depression seems to have taken a turn for the worst in the last several months.
Near the end of October I started feeling down in the dumps. This isn't unusual for me as there have been times where I've had low periods, especially in the last year when I turned thirty and my job became something that was tolerable to a job I absolutely despised. It's also a job that I can't simply walk out of easily. I've felt for a long time like my life was going no where and these feelings only helped feed the depression. At first I was able to ignore it or just kind of shrug it off. I knew if I just soldiered on eventually the demons would get off my back and I would come out of the slump. Only the slump didn't go away. It stayed on. For nearly two months.
I don't know what changed. Maybe it was the holidays. Maybe it was the hyper-speed start up to another election cycle. Maybe it was a series of things that just managed to break my cynical nature and feel more pessimism than I've ever felt in my life. Whatever the reason, my feelings got worse and worse as the days went by. I love listening to music and it's one of the few real escapes that I have when I'm feeling down. It wasn't enough. I reached a point where I would listen to my music and would start to feel better but as soon as I turned it off it was like the floodgates were just opened back up and all the progress I had made trying to clear my mind just came back even harder.
Then I started thinking about suicide. I don't say this kind of thing lightly. These were serious thoughts that involved serious ideas about how to end my life. When I was a teenager, full of angst and lots of emotions like a lot of kids are, I had thought about suicide then. I've actually thought about it a lot in my life. But when I would think about it, it times when I was really down, there was always a part of my brain that would immediately shut down that avenue of thought. I would ask myself "Maybe it would be better if I were dead." And that part, the strong, unyielding, angry part of me would slap me across the face and say "Absolutely not!" That same voice was there this time, still strong, still angry that I would consider doing something so selfish as to kill myself just because my life was a mess. Suicide would never be an option for that part of me, no matter how bad things got.
But for the first time in my life, that voice started losing strength. Day after day, the negative thoughts in my head would grow stronger, feeding on themselves, reminding me again and again how worthless I was, how useless I was, how much I had fucked up my life, how much it didn't matter, how nothing I did would ever make a difference, how I had done nothing, how I had nothing to live for. The strong voice couldn't keep up. The depression grew and grew. It weighed down on my every day. I worked the job I hated through Thanksgiving. I watched people maul and crush each other in a panic to get whatever cheap shit they wanted to buy for Christmas. I watched as a season I used to love as a child, the time when I would be together with all of my family for a wonderful meal, was turned into something that couldn't even be called a holiday anymore. My family doesn't get together for those meals anymore. Anger and mistrust and family issues have driven us apart so that these days we barely talk to each other.
Eventually something broke. I was sitting at work, in a moment where I had nothing to do and nothing to distract me from my own misery, and I hated my life so much. Suddenly I was having trouble breathing. I didn't have to guess at why. I knew the stress of my depression had created an actual, physical reaction and for a moment I was afraid I was having a heart attack. As I sat there gasping for air, feeling like the demons that had been plaguing me for weeks were now sitting on my chest trying to crush the life out of me, I did everything I could do calm myself and breath. After a few minutes the pressure eased up and I was able to breath again. I spent the rest of my work shift trying to keep the negative thoughts out of my head, fearing that that crushing pressure in my chest might come back, or worse. Then over the next day or two I started to feel incredibly good. I felt like something inside of me had finally cleared out. I haven't felt like that in years. I thought that maybe, finally, I could get over all the negatives in my life and move forward.
But nothing changed. It wasn't long before all the negatives returned. I still hated my job and things there just got worse. I still hated my life, feeling trapped in a situation that is partly of my own making and partly of circumstances that I can't get out of due to my own sense of obligation and honor to people I care about. I looked at all my friends, who have gotten married, had children, raised families and started careers. Nothing is as perfect as it seems, of course. I know none of their lives are all peaches and cream. But I doubt any one of them would look at my life and think that it would be nice to trade places with me, even for a day.
I still have the negatives in my life. I'm trying to figure out a way to change them but I'm not sure that I can. I've pulled myself to a point where I'm trying to find a way to leave my job while feeling that anything else I would go into would simply be a lateral move, more of the same. There's part of me that knows that isn't true but I just can't help but feel that way. Which I'm sure is a bad sign in itself.
I've been thinking about going to see someone about this. If it reached the point of actual physical impairment, then I think there's a real problem that I can't work through on my own. I don't feel like this is something I can talk to my friends or family about. My family is the type that likes to ignore inconvenient problems unless they don't have a choice. My mother's answer to my issues has always been "You just have to give it up to God." My father passed away a few years ago but he was never a man who talked much about his feelings. My friends all have their own problems that they have to deal with and it wouldn't sit right with me to burden them with my own. I don't think they could help me with this anyway and I worry that they would just feel sorry for me or think that I'm weak rather than offering an actual solution.
I'm not sure what I'll do about it. I'm not sure what I can do. But I know I have to do something and I felt that if I could at least put this thing into words, give it a force and a form, something I could see, then maybe it would be a first step to fighting my way through it. I haven't had a relapse of how I felt before, but I've lost that free feeling after that first break. More than anything, I want to get that feeling back.
The other reason I wrote this is because there are a lot of people in my real life and on Twitter that I haven't been speaking to much in the last few weeks. For that I'm sorry. I feel bad because I've been ignoring you, even when you've spoken to me, but I just didn't want to be around anyone this last month, even my closest real life friends.
I've spoken to some of the people online and told them that I was "working through some issues." Some I've talked to and given a bit more of an explanation without going into great detail about it. Well, these are the details and it's a lot more shit than I can put into a 150 word tweet. I hate that I've had to resort to this but I've clearly got problems that I've been fighting all my life and I think now they're finally coming to a head. I feel weak for having to do even this, like I should be able to face this problem on my own and not burden anyone else with it. This isn't like some disease or injury that I would feel justified in asking for help. Maybe that's a guy thing. Maybe that's just a me thing. I don't like to think of myself as the stereotypical male who tries to shrug off his problems and say it's nothing but I guess I am. This isn't nothing.
I don't know what I'm going to do. But I'm hoping this, at least, will give me an idea of where to start.
Firstly, I want to talk about my name. Everyone who has read my blog or followed me on Twitter knows me as Lee Chambers. However, this isn't my real name. Maybe some people thought that was obvious, maybe some didn't, but I felt the need to make that clear. My real, legal name is not Lee Chambers. It's a name I created years ago when I started writing erotica and I use it to protect myself in case someone from my real life was to come across my writing or my Twitter account. The internet can be a dangerous place when you have to worry about losing your jobs or your friends when they discover what you do in your spare time. I've read stories and known people online that this has happened to. It's never pretty and it's not something that I want to have to go through.
Secondly, more importantly, is that I've been fighting with depression for some time now. There's a long story full of sighs that I could go into about it but the biggest part I want to address is how my depression seems to have taken a turn for the worst in the last several months.
Near the end of October I started feeling down in the dumps. This isn't unusual for me as there have been times where I've had low periods, especially in the last year when I turned thirty and my job became something that was tolerable to a job I absolutely despised. It's also a job that I can't simply walk out of easily. I've felt for a long time like my life was going no where and these feelings only helped feed the depression. At first I was able to ignore it or just kind of shrug it off. I knew if I just soldiered on eventually the demons would get off my back and I would come out of the slump. Only the slump didn't go away. It stayed on. For nearly two months.
I don't know what changed. Maybe it was the holidays. Maybe it was the hyper-speed start up to another election cycle. Maybe it was a series of things that just managed to break my cynical nature and feel more pessimism than I've ever felt in my life. Whatever the reason, my feelings got worse and worse as the days went by. I love listening to music and it's one of the few real escapes that I have when I'm feeling down. It wasn't enough. I reached a point where I would listen to my music and would start to feel better but as soon as I turned it off it was like the floodgates were just opened back up and all the progress I had made trying to clear my mind just came back even harder.
Then I started thinking about suicide. I don't say this kind of thing lightly. These were serious thoughts that involved serious ideas about how to end my life. When I was a teenager, full of angst and lots of emotions like a lot of kids are, I had thought about suicide then. I've actually thought about it a lot in my life. But when I would think about it, it times when I was really down, there was always a part of my brain that would immediately shut down that avenue of thought. I would ask myself "Maybe it would be better if I were dead." And that part, the strong, unyielding, angry part of me would slap me across the face and say "Absolutely not!" That same voice was there this time, still strong, still angry that I would consider doing something so selfish as to kill myself just because my life was a mess. Suicide would never be an option for that part of me, no matter how bad things got.
But for the first time in my life, that voice started losing strength. Day after day, the negative thoughts in my head would grow stronger, feeding on themselves, reminding me again and again how worthless I was, how useless I was, how much I had fucked up my life, how much it didn't matter, how nothing I did would ever make a difference, how I had done nothing, how I had nothing to live for. The strong voice couldn't keep up. The depression grew and grew. It weighed down on my every day. I worked the job I hated through Thanksgiving. I watched people maul and crush each other in a panic to get whatever cheap shit they wanted to buy for Christmas. I watched as a season I used to love as a child, the time when I would be together with all of my family for a wonderful meal, was turned into something that couldn't even be called a holiday anymore. My family doesn't get together for those meals anymore. Anger and mistrust and family issues have driven us apart so that these days we barely talk to each other.
Eventually something broke. I was sitting at work, in a moment where I had nothing to do and nothing to distract me from my own misery, and I hated my life so much. Suddenly I was having trouble breathing. I didn't have to guess at why. I knew the stress of my depression had created an actual, physical reaction and for a moment I was afraid I was having a heart attack. As I sat there gasping for air, feeling like the demons that had been plaguing me for weeks were now sitting on my chest trying to crush the life out of me, I did everything I could do calm myself and breath. After a few minutes the pressure eased up and I was able to breath again. I spent the rest of my work shift trying to keep the negative thoughts out of my head, fearing that that crushing pressure in my chest might come back, or worse. Then over the next day or two I started to feel incredibly good. I felt like something inside of me had finally cleared out. I haven't felt like that in years. I thought that maybe, finally, I could get over all the negatives in my life and move forward.
But nothing changed. It wasn't long before all the negatives returned. I still hated my job and things there just got worse. I still hated my life, feeling trapped in a situation that is partly of my own making and partly of circumstances that I can't get out of due to my own sense of obligation and honor to people I care about. I looked at all my friends, who have gotten married, had children, raised families and started careers. Nothing is as perfect as it seems, of course. I know none of their lives are all peaches and cream. But I doubt any one of them would look at my life and think that it would be nice to trade places with me, even for a day.
I still have the negatives in my life. I'm trying to figure out a way to change them but I'm not sure that I can. I've pulled myself to a point where I'm trying to find a way to leave my job while feeling that anything else I would go into would simply be a lateral move, more of the same. There's part of me that knows that isn't true but I just can't help but feel that way. Which I'm sure is a bad sign in itself.
I've been thinking about going to see someone about this. If it reached the point of actual physical impairment, then I think there's a real problem that I can't work through on my own. I don't feel like this is something I can talk to my friends or family about. My family is the type that likes to ignore inconvenient problems unless they don't have a choice. My mother's answer to my issues has always been "You just have to give it up to God." My father passed away a few years ago but he was never a man who talked much about his feelings. My friends all have their own problems that they have to deal with and it wouldn't sit right with me to burden them with my own. I don't think they could help me with this anyway and I worry that they would just feel sorry for me or think that I'm weak rather than offering an actual solution.
I'm not sure what I'll do about it. I'm not sure what I can do. But I know I have to do something and I felt that if I could at least put this thing into words, give it a force and a form, something I could see, then maybe it would be a first step to fighting my way through it. I haven't had a relapse of how I felt before, but I've lost that free feeling after that first break. More than anything, I want to get that feeling back.
The other reason I wrote this is because there are a lot of people in my real life and on Twitter that I haven't been speaking to much in the last few weeks. For that I'm sorry. I feel bad because I've been ignoring you, even when you've spoken to me, but I just didn't want to be around anyone this last month, even my closest real life friends.
I've spoken to some of the people online and told them that I was "working through some issues." Some I've talked to and given a bit more of an explanation without going into great detail about it. Well, these are the details and it's a lot more shit than I can put into a 150 word tweet. I hate that I've had to resort to this but I've clearly got problems that I've been fighting all my life and I think now they're finally coming to a head. I feel weak for having to do even this, like I should be able to face this problem on my own and not burden anyone else with it. This isn't like some disease or injury that I would feel justified in asking for help. Maybe that's a guy thing. Maybe that's just a me thing. I don't like to think of myself as the stereotypical male who tries to shrug off his problems and say it's nothing but I guess I am. This isn't nothing.
I don't know what I'm going to do. But I'm hoping this, at least, will give me an idea of where to start.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)