Writing Examples
Constant
This example was written for a Prose class at Alma College. It is a fictional short story and follows the earlier story I wrote also entitled Constant. As in the first half of this saga, the characters in this portion are very human and placed in familiar modern settings. This story was also written for my closest friend, and overall it is meant to show just how reciprocal friendship is and how important it is to cherish and support one's comrades.
Constant
by Kacie Schaeffer
Kailynn Christiensen Shepperd was in a particularly pensive mood that Friday afternoon. She had always been an overly-contemplative person, which was her problem, and today many thoughts weighed upon her mind.
The sun, for instance. Even through the filth of her small dormitory window, the sun's rays penetrated the floating dust motes that made her sneeze and her eyes water constantly. In the five years she had resided in this town in the middle of nowhere, the sun had never shone so brilliantly, usually choosing to obscure itself behind black thunderheads and taunt her with hailstorms instead. How ironic that the life-giving celestial body should be rejoicing today. But Kaye deeply loved irony, and so allowed other thoughts to preoccupy her.
Five years... Had she really been here for five years? The thought of the amount of time elapsed caused an agonizing wash of sorrow to flood the pit of her stomach. "I'm finished," were the only words that came to mind. And she was, on several levels. She was finished with school, finished with exams, done with presentations and extracurriculars and the all-nighters that had caused her health to deteriorate so. And tomorrow...
Tomorrow. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow... This was perhaps the most worrisome thought on Kaye's mind. She tried to envision what would happen tomorrow, but it was a strain. There would be a nice ceremony as she made her way to the front of the musty gymnasium-turned-stately. Actually, she had not bothered to find out if she was supposed to walk or not. She had processed last year, with the rest of her graduating class, even though the end of her trek had left her sans degree. "Tomorrow," she thought, trying to feel the excitement of the moment and failing. "Tomorrow I would have a degree." A degree that she had settled for when the tiny private school she attended fouled up the major she had been writing for herself not once, but twice. The first time had cost her another year and several tens of thousands of dollars she did not have. The second time looked to do the same, but there she drew the line, berated herself for not turning in paperwork fast enough, tortured herself for not meeting with her advisor regularly enough, and declared a Music major, counting herself lucky to have enough credits in one specific area to do so. She wondered how far she could get with a degree in Music, and supposed not very, remembering some vague percentage she had seen once that told her how many graduates never found careers within their respective majors. Another person might have been alarmed at how casually she accepted the worthlessness of the degree that had broken her financially and split her family. But Kaye was used to being flexible. She had had to be, in order to survive for so long.
Kaye took this opportunity to shake herself from her reverie, a tiny hiss of breath escaping her lips to disturb the blanket of lint on her antiquated desk. Briefly, she thanked the spurt of OCD that had allowed her to finish packing her belongings the night before. Save for her beloved computer, a pair of scissors, and the families of dustbunnies residing under her bed, she was alone in an empty room. She stared blankly at the pair of scissors that lay sleeping in her lap. She bit her lip and told herself that she really needed to pack her computer, it was getting quite late, and did not move. She was procrastinating, she knew, but her back still ached from where she had lifted the entirety of her room improperly, and she walked now as if she had aged eighty years overnight. As long as she procrastinated, she could still forestall the night and remain brooding in her void apartment.
Though she had tried to tell herself that she wanted to continue to further herself, to satiate her thirst for knowledge, Kaye had in fact come to college to try to prove herself, to repair her wounded pride, to immerse herself in a hectic and familiar environment so that she could gradually learn to cope with the life she had so elegantly shattered. She had once believed that every new day posed a set of challenges to which she had to adapt in order to succeed. It was a game that thrilled her, that had given her a glimpse into the infinite potential of the human soul. She played the game by the rules and she had been very good at it. In her naiveté, she had been seduced by each next day, childishly eager to please it with her best efforts. Quite suddenly and all too late, she had found that the Tomorrow she worshipped was not the kindly tutor she had thought he was, but instead a vile old man bent on ruining those with stars in their eyes. He had let her succeed, this four-point student, this National Honor Society president, All-League butterflyer, nationally recognized Science Explorer, blue ribbon musician, and all-around beloved peer and friend. He had shown her a world of limitless grandeur, where every goal was attainable. And then one tomorrow, Kaye fell asleep on one of her textbooks, and he pulled the single vulnerable thread that would begin to unravel her
She lost her sterling grade-point average to the final exam given on the final day of the final term in the final year of her high school career. She tried to think of how marvelously ironic the situation was, but she found she could no longer laugh away her disappointment. She read the 3.99999 that appeared on her transcript and thought that the imperfect number was the cause of her despair; after all, she had paid for that simple and round 4.0 with missed meals, innumerable sleepless nights, a nonexistent social life, a body laden with every type of flu known to man, three ulcers, and two nervous breakdowns. She cried and became despondent, lost her honors in swimming, science, and finally music, which devastated her to no end. She was rejected from the Ivy League school she wanted so badly to be a part of, and remembered how during the intensive application process the previous Fall an interviewer for the institution had asked her if she had ever experienced failure and what she had done to cope with loss. Kaye had been at a complete loss for an answer. She had never allowed herself to fail before, and it was then that she understood the true source of her sorrow. She had promised herself that she would do her best in high school and in life, that she would surmount any obstacle and achieve glory for her peers, her teachers, her family, her Creator, the world and the universe. In accomplishing everything, nothing would be able to stop her from showing others what they were capable of, from inspiring in them the desire to strive for any and all goals, no matter how unattainable or silly they seemed. This was Kaye's pact with herself, and in swearing this oath and falling asleep on that final night, she had betrayed herself with her weakness of mind and spirit, and she could not forgive a traitor.
The dust was truly putting Kaye's sinuses in a miserable state of affairs at this point. Absently, she ran her thumb across the plastic housing that sheathed her scissors. She decided that she had always been weak of body, a fact that was not entirely true but which she accepted as a rational balance to her startling intelligence and inner power. She had always been modest, but when she had allowed herself to fail so terribly in high school, her humility became full-blown lack of self-confidence. She had gone to college to search for the spark of inspiration that might rekindle the passion she had felt not so long ago, but found that she could only waffle through her classes, too afraid to exert herself or involve herself in anything too important, and too cowardly to set goals or take an active role in her future. Kaye took this as a sign of the weakness of her soul, and that pain was bearable only during the hysterical crying fits that seized her well into her sophomore year, proving to her that she was still human and therefore capable of redeeming herself. Now, as a fifth year senior, her tears had long since dried up and she scarcely argued with herself anymore when she dragged her tired body out of bed in the mornings and saw her tired face in the mirror, her tired brain churning out one word to describe the visual stimulus presented before it: "Automaton." The tomorrows here had not presented opportunity for her, but reinforced the qualities that enraged her. Her high school class ring was engraved with the word "L'Honneur;" she had never taken it off so as to remind herself to pursue her noble ideals. She had tentatively striven for a college four-point and half-heartedly hoped for a Summa cum Laude honor when she couldn't bring herself to study. The fact that she graduated Magna cum Laude without ever opening a college textbook did not give her any satisfaction, but allowed her to more delightfully detest herself for not bothering to even try. The tomorrows here had haunted Kaye for five years. On this day when everything was to end, she decided she might as well finish with those as well.
Kaye gingerly pulled the black sheath off of her scissors. The gaudy orange handles blazed in warning, and she acknowledged with a certain sense of trepidation that she had just unfettered and awakened a dangerous creature. Her stomach lurched as it always did when she let her mind rest on disturbing subjects. She ran her forefinger over the sleepy silk of the silver blades, polishing the engraved company seal with her thumb. She turned her left hand over and made a fist, arching her neck as a mother would to kiss a child's head. She was so tired. Physically tired. Tired of her friends telling her that she worked too hard without knowing what it truly meant to exert oneself. Tired of her fellow students not understanding the difference between living and Living. Tired of belittling herself for being unwilling to tap her potential to achieve the latter, instead choosing to fulfill the status quo and no more. She regarded the long scars that formed a six-inch trail from her wrist to her forearm, the product of her attempting to rescue the family cat from her brother and a vacuum cleaner almost a decade ago. The longest one rested neatly over the length of a blue artery, highlighting it in a pasty white line. "Cut here," she thought, and figured that she would probably just trace the line after she packed her computer. Imagining the gore made her so nauseous she had to put her head between her knees for several minutes.
What made her think that she could last so long? A prodigious creature indeed! After all, she had a history with scissors. She had cut her index finger in fourth grade with a pair of safety scissors. They were pink and dolphin-shaped; the tiny millimeter cut they had inflicted upon her caused her to pass out in the middle of art class. A year later she had slit her thumb on a different pair of scissors. She had sucked on it and closed her eyes, praying that she would not faint in front of the class. Her hemophobia had followed her all through high school, where she lost consciousness once or twice a year in the middle of bloody movies and studies of anatomy and had to listen, weak and dizzy, to the mocking whispers of her peers in the commons and in classrooms. She would make herself last. It was all she could do to show herself that she was trying right up until the very end.
Kaye began packing her computer, unplugging and neatly bundling the cords of her peripherals. Printer, scanner, speakers, microphone, joystick. She took them to her old beater in slow, thoughtful treks, the fading sun gracing the back of her neck. When she returned to her room, winded from her trip up and down flights of stairs, she sat back in her standard-issue campus chair, staring at the monitor that she had not yet had the courage to turn off, listening to the hum of her powerful CPU. She breathed slowly, clicking through menus to find the option to turn her computer off. She glanced briefly at her messenger service as her hand piloted the cursor over the radio button that confirmed her desire to shut down her PC. She noted with a twinge of nostalgia that her friend Trevor was online and thought for a fleeting moment how much she would miss him. She had known him practically forever; in Kindergarten, she had harassed him on the playground, seeking him out during recess to slaughter his name and tag him. She smiled faintly as she saw his screenname, Trebor, an homage to her inability to pronounce her v's when she was very young. She wondered with a smirk if he remembered all the hell she had put him through in school. There were good times, too, though. Kaye wondered if he thought of the moments they had shared, comparing grades, playing cards, and talking of computers and video games. It had been years since she had seen him in the flesh, and though they were the best of friends by the end of high school, she suspected that he had made a fine set of college friends that gave him fonder memories than mere recess antics. Still, he had been the one who had supported her enough to pull her through her senior year disaster. She felt she owed him a goodbye, at least.
"DreamSea (18:14:08): I found you, Trebor! You're it!"
His response came quickly.
"Trebor110 (18:14:42): hey dreamsea!!1 youre never going to believe the day i had"
"DreamSea (18:15:14): That bad, eh? ;)"
"Trebor110 (18:16:12): yeah missed my com lab, destroyed half my groceries, acquired $15 in video fines, and lost my keys. washers been broken for a week now too so my laundrys piling up x_x"
"DreamSea (18:16:32): *laughing* You managed to fit all that in in just one day? ;p"
"Trebor110 (18:16:57): yeah but whatever im over it. you know ive been thinking about you a lot lately. you doing okay?"
Kaye paused, considering.
"DreamSea (18:17:17): Yeah, I'm just finishing up a few last things."
"Trebor110 (18:17:21): graduated yet?"
"DreamSea (18:17:32): Tomorrow, I guess."
"Trebor110 (18:17:49): you shouldve told me that commencement was so soon. parents coming up"
"DreamSea (18:17:58): Nah, they came up last year when I walked. ;)"
"Trebor110 (18:18:06): do you have extra tickets"
Kaye's was taken completely by surprise at the request entailed in the last message.
"Trebor110 (18:18:58): hello??? can i come up tomorrow"
"DreamSea (18:19:22): That's not a good idea, Trevor... It'll be really boring and I don't think I'm even walking this year."
"Trebor110 (18:19:33): so what i havent seen you in forever and a half. we can go out and get dinner or something afterward, maybe catch up"
"Trebor110 (18:19:44): im on mini spring break now and wont miss classes so dont even try to say i shouldnt come"
"Trebor110 (18:20:32): hello? hellloooooo????"
"Trebor110 (18:21:53): at least play some diablo with me"
"DreamSea (18:22:04): I'm sorry, now's not good. I'm even packing my computer right now."
"Trebor110 (18:22:18): is that why you cant respond to my messages"
"Trebor110 (18:22:26): come on, you love diablo and my druid needs leveling"
"Trebor110 (18:22:57): =( "
"Trebor110 (18:23:38): =( "
"Trebor110 (18:24:07): =( "
"Trebor110 (18:25:00): =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( "
"DreamSea (18:25:23): You're not going to leave me alone until I say yes, are you?"
"Trebor110 (18:25:31): you wouldnt =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( =( "
"Trebor110 (18:25:42): you never answered my question"
"DreamSea (18:25:48): All right! All right! I'll play Diablo with you!"
"Trebor110 (18:25:57): not that one. i want to come up for commencement tomorrow."
Kaye smiled then, a genuine smile that hadn't surfaced on her lips in far too great a time.
"DreamSea (18:26:05): Yes, I would really like to see you again. And talk. I need to talk."
"Trebor110 (18:26:11): =) ill make the game see you in a few"
"DreamSea (18:26:23): Trebor... Thanks."
But he had already left an away message and gone in-game, leaving her feeling excited for once at the prospect of the future that, for her, was to begin tomorrow.