Rachelle's Story

So... I had the Heart of Darkness test/essay today. That was... glorious. *cough* That is the most beautiful example of complete BS you will ever find. Yes, you may commend me for it. Yearbook brought on exciting moments regarding risque lingerie, superhero counterparts, and a friend that emits Laughing Gas. Fourth period was pretty glorious. It was judgment and it wasn't scary! That's a complete first! 

Then some Cranium with the team. Marty and I thought we were going to lose for sure. And Almaraz was so full of it. "I'm a master at this game!" "Prepare to be defeated!" "Winning team right here!" Yeah, right. He subsequently knocked over a Big Gulp cup full of Coke. That's ownage right there. Whatever, Marty and I won. Yay for the Blue Team! 

Afterwards, I got protection for the blonde-skateboarding molester and worked some things out. Yay for plans! 

1. I say you should just go for it. 
2. I thought you heard me the first time. Like I'd really say anything else though... :D
3. You're confusing me. I'm not going to stress over it though. I'm done with that. 
4. Honestly... I think I'm done with that, too. Sorry for abandoning you.
5. One day, you and I will make our own language. It's going to be awesome. So awesome. 

Monkey do.

1. I'm embarassed to admit that this is making me terribly impatient. But it is. And I can't wait. :]
2. You're extremely frustrating. And that's coming from someone completely outside the situation. That's how frustrating you are. 
3. You are also very frustrating. Just... just let me be for once. Please? 
4. You're a model, you know what I mean. You gotta shake that little tush up on the catwalk. LOL. ILY. <3 
5. Do you know something I don't? Or did you do that accidentally?


Yeah... Only 5 this time, because that's all I have to say at the moment. I'll add more if I feel like it. 

 To do today:

-Do not forget to bring my Physics book.
-Do NOT forget my Academic League shirt.
-Bother Mr. McBride to either tell me what I got on my last test or grade the last test if he hasn't already and then tell me.
-Pick up my Winter Formal pictures.
-Ask Alicia and Vic what colors they want on their 42 shirts.
-Scold Vic for not coming to lunch yesterday when I asked him to and confirmed twice.
-Freak out about the Academic League match this afternoon against San Ysidro.
-Ask who's coming to the match this afternoon against San Ysidro.
-Confront two very annoying and bullheaded teammates about my captainship.
-Kick San Ysidro's ass and inwardly choke them back as a form of vengeance for last Friday's "Incident". 
-Go home and call Dr. Sinclaire about my "possible ties to other universities". 
-Go to the Financial Aid workshop @ ORHS @ 6 with my mommy.
-Practice my callback scenes/song for Grease callbacks tomorrow.
-Watch Survivor: Fans vs. Favorites.
-Catch up on all of my English homework and actually read Slaughterhouse 5 in preparation for tomorrow's essay.
-Catch up on today's lack of sleep.

I want need to unclog my schedule.

Gah... I'm so tired... I have to - Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

So I took a test that I owned (but I think #4 owned me). Then second period rolled around, which was pretty much uneventful until ELP, where I learned that females are attracted to males who give off pheromones that indicate possession of similar immune systems to the female's father. Neat-o! There isn't much to say about third period except that it was then that I started to get nervous about the Teacher-Student Academic League Match, which we charged $1 admission to. Haha, Fish paid a dollar to watch us get owned. 

Wow. 78-36... to the teachers. Lovely. 

We totally got school'd... if you don't mind the pun. 

But whatever, Kim and I indulged in some Hawaiian food and insanity afterwards that made the loss insignificant in the long-run. Thanks, buddy. 

Yeah, so that's your basic "summary o' the day". Stay tuned for the in-depth, over-reaction posts, folks!

Rachelle, out.

And it's even harder living with anticipation. I thought worry was bad enough.

Benjamin Walker stood straight, defiant, stoic as he walked toward his death. His posture, his gait, was that of a man with a fierce determination to see his mission through to the end, a man with pride despite the situation he was thrust into so completely, a man who knew that he could not escape his fate and did not care, a man who was looking Death straight in the eye and saying “Bring. It. On.”

The townspeople’s cries of “He’s innocent!” and “Let him go!” went unheard. The loud and tortured sobbing of his mother as she tried, hopelessly, to reach out to him as he walked by, despite the guards holding the masses back to let him through, did not faze him. His friends and comrades, fighting to get to him, trembling in a mixture of rage and desperation, were ignored. Their struggles, along with the struggles of every other person present, every other person who wanted him freed, were noticed, but neglected.

Benjamin Walker looked straight ahead as he walked, hands bound, back erect, eyes focused, narrowed. With each deliberate step he took, his boots would scrape the dirt beneath him unceremoniously. He was never one to linger on such trivial things as the fact that these deliberate steps would be the last steps he would ever take. He did not care to relish in them, to savor them, to remember these few passing moments. Caring about such things did nothing.

Death is something I have yet to experience and that is all.

A child broke through the hold of the sentry wrestling to restrain the mob, lost balance, and almost tripped before racing to halt directly in front of Benjamin Walker.

Benjamin Walker immediately stopped, as did the sentinels on either side of him, as he looked, without emotion, down to the boy before him.

The boy panted and moved to wipe the sweat off his forehead, smearing the dirt on his face in the process. Still panting, he looked up, wide-eyed, brows furrowed, body shaking with suppressed tears.

“What are you doing?!” he cried. “Why aren’t you fighting back?!”

A fleeting glimmer of shock gave way to a quick flash of regret in the eyes of Benjamin Walker. The minute display of emotion was short-lived, however, having died as quickly as it had appeared.

Benjamin Walker opened his mouth, a simple gesture that silenced the throng of people around him thoroughly and completely, and said indifferently, apathetically, uncaringly, to stunned ears, “I am through with fighting back.”

The crowd ceased to move. Shock and utter disbelief settled in among everyone present.

Something inside the boy snapped. His eyes widened and bulged. His tears fell. His trembling grew stronger, more frantic. His fists clenched so tightly, his nails dug into the skin of his palms. His breathing stopped and his throat went completely dry.

The boy stuttered. “But… But you… You always fight back.” He gulped and pleaded with his eyes for Benjamin Walker to be joking, to be lying, to be saying anything but what he was saying right now. “You… always fi-“

“Not anymore.”

Benjamin Walker stared at the boy for no longer than a second more before he straightened himself, moved his eyes to look ahead, and began to walk once more.

As Benjamin Walker passed him, the boy gazed, unseeingly, in the opposite direction, shaken completely, shocked thoroughly, and heartbroken utterly, as the realization of the defeat of his hero shot through him like cannon-fire.

Gasps turned into whispers. Whispers turned into chatter. Chatter turned into shouts. And the rioting resumed, the voices of all of the people melding together into one loud, incessant, ominous hum.

The boy didn’t hear any of it. Neither did Benjamin Walker.

Benjamin Walker’s world was silent as he walked up the steps to the guillotine. He did not hear the cries of the masses. He did not hear the words falling from the maw of the prosecutor three yards away from him as he read off all of the accusations with which he was charged. He did not hear the creak of the wood beneath his executioner’s feet as said executioner made his way toward him in a burly, menacing fashion only to shove Benjamin Walker onto his knees and forcefully slam his head through the hole in the wooden framework of the horrifically abominable contraption.

Benjamin Walker looked down and what greeted him was a sight thoroughly macabre and grotesque: a basket full of the lifeless heads of those put to death before him. The basket itself was sickening with the blotches of blood soaked into it, perhaps permanently, and splattered around it, leaked from the throats of the death-penalty victims. The states of the necks, the points of decapitation, of each individual head varied greatly. Some were clean and neat, from the executions of those who had the privilege of being executed by a newly sharpened blade. The skin and muscles were jagged and torn on some, from when the blade had been dull. The whole thing carried the unbearable, foreboding, and chillingly ghastly stench of death.

But the feature most gruesome of all was the faces.

The face of one man’s head had its eyes shut tightly as if the man was bracing himself for the strike of his imminent doom. Another had its mouth and eyes wide open in agony and terror as if the man had been alive for a second after the moment of impact. A moment of surprise flitted over the face of Benjamin Walker as his eyes fell upon the head of a woman. This woman’s face was, unlike the others in the basket, completely serene, at peace. It was as if, had her body been attached, the woman was in a state of slumber. It was as if, like Benjamin Walker, she knew she was going to die and she embraced it.

Benjamin Walker blinked and the surprise was gone.

“Ben…” The word slipped whisperingly from the lips of a woman in the throng and, despite the silence of everything else, Benjamin Walker had heard it. It traveled to him on the faintest of breezes as if the wind were speaking to him.

Benjamin Walker craned his neck upward, without any regard toward the ache forming from being in such a position. His eyes fell upon a face in the crowd that stood out amongst the rest, the face of a woman, the immaculately exquisite face of Julietta Harrington.

Their gazes locked.

To any onlooker, it would have seemed that Julietta Harrington was just as stoic and indifferent as Benjamin Walker, but Benjamin Walker knew. He knew her eyes were telling a different story. The plethora of emotions running across her large, warm, gray orbs was sign enough for him to know she was suffering inside.

“Ben…” His name slipped once again from her perfect lips and, for the second time that day, Benjamin Walker felt regret.

Their gazes grew more intense as if stares could tell the other person exactly what each was feeling, exactly what each person meant to the other. As if stares would save him.

“Juliet-“

The prosecutor had stopped reading the charges from his scroll. The uproar of the masses had faded into silence. And now, no onlooker could confuse the look on Julietta Harrington’s face for indifference. The shock was thoroughly and completely evident on her pretty features.

The executioner had pulled the lever.  

The bridal lace made her look so utterly pure. Her bridesmaids were fussing over her, brushing off unseen specks of dust here and there, straightening nonexistent folds in her skirt, adjusting and readjusting her veil, making sure she was perfectly perfect. 

They didn't realize there was nothing that could be done that could make her anymore beautiful than she already was. They never did. And so they fussed. 

She gazed at her reflection. Her reflection gazed back. Both girls stared at each other in utter emotionlessness. Her eyes were bored and her lips were set in a line that displayed none of the feelings brides were supposed to feel on their wedding days. Where the hell was the happiness, the euphoria that was supposed to come with the whole Holy Matrimony package? 

Wasn't this supposed to be her "Big Day"? 

Oh, but it was big. It just... didn't sink in. 

The words of everyone around her, everyone rushing to make sure everything was perfectly perfect, sounded like some incessant buzzing noise. The sentences said were all blurred together to form one, incoherent, ugly din. 

"Oh, Marie, you look so-"

"Gorgeous! Absolutely-" 

"That's not supposed to-" 

"Where is my-"

"Almost, almost! Right-"

"Seriously, where is my-" 

"Goodness, can't we-" 

"This is it!" 

This is it... This is it ... This was it. The words only faintly registered in her head for a second before the fuss that was going on before exploded. 

They started brushing off the unseen specks of dust more vehemently. They smoothed out whatever offending folds seemed to appear in her skirt. The veil must have gone through at least twenty different positions and repostions before everyone thought it was right. Everything had to be perfectly perfect. 

No one thought to consider that maybe it already was. They never did. 

And then they were gone. 

Her steady gaze upon her own reflection broke away reluctantly as she sluggishly surveyed the now empty room. Faint strains of music could be heard through the walls. The church pianist must have started playing already. 

Oh... Was her single thought before she hid her face behind the veil, gave her reflection one last, lingering glance, picked up her bouquet and skirt and left the room. 

Her father had passed on a while ago and she found herself feeling only slightly disappointed that he could not be here to walk her down the aisle. Several of her uncles had offered to give her away. Some friends had done the same. She declined them all. 

If it couldn't be her father, it would be no one at all. And so she walked into the large double-doorway alone. The thought should have saddened her, but emotions seemed to be falling away. 

She looked straight ahead as she began her journey down the aisle. She could feel the eyes of people on her and she could tell what they were thinking even though she decided against sparing any of them a glance. 

Oh, she looks so perfectly perfect. 

The bridegroom stood in her direct line of vision and her features refused to light up the way they were supposed to. Her eyes were the same empty eyes that stared back at her in the mirror. 

Each step seemed to take forever. The bridegroom didn't seem to be any closer to her than when she had started. And yet, she still walked. 

She was slightly aware of all of the smiles directed at her. She could barely hear the whispers murmured about her. She could almost imperceptibly feel the attention focused solely on her and her walk. The pressure to be perfectly perfect was acute. 

She walked. And walked. And...

The shot rang out before anyone had time to breathe. A room that seemed to be filled with stillness before now seemed utterly stationary. Shock was greater than any other feeling. 

Silence took over. Sounds that she could only barely hear before could now only be imagined. 

She tipped back an inch. Another inch. 

And they screamed. 

She fell slowly. Gracefully. Immaculately. Even now, she was perfectly perfect. 

They screamed but they didn't move. They were in awe of her beauteous descent to the floor. Angels had never fallen in front of them before. 

The ground seemed to cushion her as she made soft contact with it. 

The blood began to collect around her. 

And then they moved. The rushed to her. The fuss they and everyone else had made before was nothing compared to the intensity of what was going on now. 

Some gazed at her. Some cried. Some screamed. Some whispered utterly fake murmurs of denial. 

"Oh, but she was so perfectly perfect." 

The bridegroom knelt by her side and lifted the veil from her visage. 

There on her immaculate face was the first smile she had made all day. 

Dust was no longer important because the dress was now tainted with crimson. Folds and wrinkles were everywhere. Her veil was soaked. 

And yet...

The bridal lace made her look so utterly pure. 

No one stopped to consider the fact that maybe she was happier. They never did.