Welcome to Gaia! ::

I'm not quite sure what to call it and some help with the title would be appreciated. Um... it's only 2,000-ish words. I've been working on it for exactly 25 days and I've barely scratched the surface. I would love critique. Some of it just seems really bleh to me and my friends, as wonderful as they are, aren't giving me critique and I refuse to believe this is perfect, it being the rough draft. Any suggestions will be taken to heart.

Warning: is a bit crude


From the depths of a slobber and alcohol stained pillow blinked a pair of watery gray eyes. With a heavy head, Alice groggily sat up. She had another hangover.

Heavy knocks that rattled the walls split through her head making her teeth ache. With exaggerated grunts, she untangled herself from the plain sheets of her cot. She tripped over clothes that littered the floor but managed to reach her door with faded paint, forgetful of, though, in nothing but a too short tank top and black panties with a string of the elastic hanging from the band.

She opened that old door with the squeaking rustic hinges to an angry man, his very being glaring at her through his good eye.

"Miss Quarts," he nearly shouted, his stomach almost bulging from his simple button up shirt. "Where the hell is my rent? A week over due. I'll have you know, I'm not above kicking you to the streets." He stood shaking in his rage.

With her hand on the door knob, Alice blinked at him as if his request was ridiculous. "Mr. Ridge, you do realize I lost my job, so how could I possibly pay you?"

Now his draw dropped slightly with astonishment against his teeth. "Every time I ask you for the rent you always say you lost your job. How did you lose this one?" he said putting the toe of his shoe over the threshold.

"Well, my boss called me about," she concentrated on the ceiling as she counted off in her head. "Five, maybe six, days ago while I was a little more than tipsy and told me to come in after the b*****d said I could take the day off for my birthday, so I told him to 'suck my d**k'. They didn't tip well there anyway."

Mr. Ridge nodded unsympathetically. "That's a sob story you got there, Miss Quarts but I'm sorry-- Actually, no. I'm not sorry because you're just a drunk going no where fast. You got to go. Don't clean up after your self, just leave." With that, he drew his foot back and slammed the door to Alice's used-to-be apartment shut.

She cursed and griped under her breath, but not too loud for her headache was screaming in her eardrums, and grabbed the navy blue duffle bag she had when she first moved into the run down one room apartment. She struggled on a pair of faded blue jeans and a clean looking shirt with the face of Barbie printed on it that only covered half her midriff. Clothes in the little girls' section tended to be cheaper and alocohol wasn't.

After caking on deodorant and a sweet smelling body spray -she loved the smell of fragrance and vodka- she shoved clothes and her papers into the bag, hopping around putting on mix-matched socks and her only pair of shoes.

Taking two empty, plastic, water bottles, she poured the rest of her vodka in them so she didn't have to carry the extra weight of glass though the alcohol would have kept better.

"Alright, lets go find a nice cozy bench to sleep off this hang over," Alice said to herself, her voice gurgling in her throat.

Shuffling out of her room with the over stuffed bag, she almost knocked into Mr. Ridge. With out saying anything, he handed her two aspirin and a medicine cup of water. She swallowed them and tossing him the empty cup she whispered so quietly that Mr. Ridge barely heard it.

"Thanks, Grandpa."

Going down the stairs off-balanced made her sway to and away from the railing. With a wrong step, her heel hit the edge of the step below her and her foot went out from under her. She skidded all the way to the landing on her butt. Blinking, she sat there looking at the busy street.

"Get up," she coaxed her self, brushing off her backside and feeling the small hole. "Now walk." She adjusted her bag more comfortably on her shoulder and walked onto the side walk, taking care not to step on the cracks with wilted weeds snaking from the ground.

People driving by paid no attention to the pale young woman with short, almost white, blonde hair, jaggedly cut as if she did it her self with safety scissors. Alice paid attention to them though. Every hunk of glittering metal that zipped past her had faces in the windows, and she wanted to see them all. Of course conscious always of where she stepped.

'I'll be a painter,' she thought to her self. 'I'll paint the beauty and the ugly. I'll have joyful pieces with the sunshine like there is today with fields of lime and blueberry skies. I'll have horrific pieces with storm clouds and trees with twisted faces.' She gave herself this speech when she often felt inspired. And it usually worked too. For about thirty minutes until she sloshed into her alcohol.

She finally came to a bus stop bench after the sun had gone a few inches in its decent to the horizon. She plopped down, drowsy from the medicine her grandfather had given her. With her bag in her lap, it felt as if the two bottles were burning a hole through the thick material and tingled at her fingertips.

‘One sip,’ she thought. One sip turned into lying on her back and gulping it down, uncaring of the splintered wood digging into her back and scalp. The empty bottle, sucked dry, crunched in her hand and stuck to her lips.

When her eye lids drooped and the bottle fell to her breast, she didn’t dream like she normally did. She never remembered what she dreamt but she knew she did; just always at the tip of memory. Replacing those dancing images was a gray that seemed to sit heavily on her eyes. Just gray with tiny black speckles that swirled randomly, not even into pictures. It hurt her head to see only this gray because she slept completely aware of each minute passing into hours. Sleeping consciously but unable to wake.

Like hearing the dismissal bell on the last day of school, it came as a huge relief when she, at last, snapped her eyelids open , even to the dark of night. She bolted upwards on the bench, the split wood pricking at her shirt. Her head swam and her body ached and it felt as if plugs were jammed into her ears. She raised her hand to pick into her ear but poked her eye.

She shoved her palm over her eye and, in a voice that sounded distant and not her own, a string of curses. Her choice language caught in her throat when, from the corner of her eye, she saw a shadow seemingly stalk towards her. Turning her head to get a good look at the obscure shaft, it wavered for a moment and shimmered to the lighter black of its background.

Her heart thumped against her chest and down into her stomach. She felt as if she were going to wet herself and jumped onto the sidewalk, unaware of one foot hitting a small crack and the other rolling over the bag and tripping her to her elbows onto the sidewalk.

Oblivious to her blood sprinkling into the crack she stepped on, she felt the shadow fall over her and a chill coursed from the tips of her ears into the nape of her neck. It felt as if the very breath of a cruel winter sighed into her face.

Warm fingers clasped around her wrist, easily pulling her to her feet. Her mind swirled dumbly but smoothing over the chaos slipped a calm deep voice telling her to run. Leaving her bag and leaving her alcohol, she bolted, only concentrating on keeping her legs from tangling like string.

She didn’t even notice the looming silhouettes of trees and how she, on impulse, weaved her way between gnarled bark, always barely scraping her arms against them. Of course when the ground beneath her feet gave away to air, she noticed that along with tumbling down a rocky slope in a rain of pebbles and roots that dug into her flesh.

Her fingernails broke as she scratched at the walls of the slope and her head cracked on the tree that stood lonely at the base.

She lied there, half unconscious, and only barely aware of the trickle of blood dribbling over her eyelid. Feeling a couple insects crawl over her skin, she didn’t brush them off as she stared dazed into the dark leaves of the canopy. All night she could have lain, scrunched and doubled over herself but, of course, a break would have been too much for Alice, or so she thought as a finger with a too sharp nail jabbed into her arm.

After uncoiling herself painfully slow, Alice slung her arm out in a vain attempt to smack whoever leaned over her. Aching arm met bark and the disgusting crunch of a bug and a chuckle dancing into her ears.

“Who’s there?” she called out, trying to keep a bold facade. Her voice rang out weak, sounding pathetic and she knew it.

His voice snaked, low and smooth, almost seductively. Should her body have coursed with this much desire? All he said was her name but it was enough to make her eyes grope through the darkness to find him.

She felt her arm being jabbed again, turned, and almost jolted against the tree at the sight of a mans’ face a breath distance from her own. Calmness swept over her when he spoke.

“You are Alice, I presume.” More so a statement than a question. How silly it would have looked to see a man so proper crouched over a raggedy and drunken woman if it was not unseen in the hide out of a small woodland area.

In an attempt to keep her bravado, she replied with a bit of a sneer, “Says who?” She stood and brushed of dirt and grass from her clothes and put her balled fists on her hips, glowering down at the man. When he stood, Alice thought she had like it better when he was face to face to her instead of him a head taller than her.

Adjusting the red cravat tied high on his neck and clearing his throat, he smiled, not unkindly, down at her.

“No need to worry, Alice. I’m just a simple being with simple duties. My name?” he said when he saw Alice raising a finger in stubborn inquiry. “You may call me Cyrus.”

“Well, Cyrus, what are you? Some kind of stalker?” Alice stood up straighter to be eye level with the man but she swayed on the balls of her feet and her head tapped against his chest.

With a pale finger, Cyrus pushed against her chest and sent her sliding against the tree behind her. A thin chuckle still in voice, he replied humorously, “Stalker? Well, maybe a little. Spirit would be more accurate, though.”

Alice may have stared at him for maybe a couple of seconds until she began laughing so hard that she doubled over and clutched at her sides. He endured her hoots and snorts for some time, contenting himself by making sure his waistcoat had not a speck of dirt on it, until he figured Alice just might choke on her own spit, which was squirting from her mouth every time she tried to inhale deeply.

“Alice,” he sternly said. It sounded as if his voice broke in two and spoke simultaneously. “Silence.” Alice’s tongue swelled and pinched against her teeth when her jaw locked closed. She breathed heavily through her nose and would have been frightened into fainting if he had not also instructed her to be calm.

As Alice stood in front of him with her eyes wide, Cyrus pulled an old rustic pocket watch from his pocket. Glancing quickly then snapping shut, he lightly grasped Alice by her elbow and pulled her after him.

Swerving through trees and skirting around bushes, they made their way deeper through the woods. Her tongue gradually shrunk back to normal enabling her to speak. “Where are we going?” she asked loudly but instinctively ducking her head when she heard the frantic flapping of wings above her head.

I agree with Stripe; messed up people can be quite interesting. I like where this is going 3nodding Not cliché in my opinion, and it was fun to read.

The only thing I have to point out is pretty stupid.



I'm almost certain this should be "lain", but I'm open to objection. "lay" and "lie" always get me xd

Good job! ^^