Part II: Chapter One

Pre-read note: Here's another twist! Ok, the problem right now though, other than the fact I'm writing New Wings instead of studying for my exams, is that I am not sure where Part II is heading. I'm tempted to leave it as a cliff-hanger, but at the same time, I do like conclusion. I am still writing, though, which means I'm writing without direction. Hopefully I figure out where it's going soon so I can finish the story. I really, really want it to be done, but in other ways I'm terrified to write the second draft. The second draft would be so... official. And if I'm not posting it online, what will I do? What will motivate me? 

Anyways, here's the beginning of part II. It's long but not dense. 

Part II, chapter one, section one:

“Sit down.”

I ignored the voice despite the stern edge to it.

“Sit down or you’re going to pace a hole through my floor.”

I looked up at the man, sitting calmly at his desk, unfazed by the current events, and bit my tongue. Swearing at him would get me nowhere anyways. But I couldn’t stop my feet from moving in circles through the small office space.

“Jake, sit down!”

The sudden burst of anger made me freeze. I caught his eye for a moment and noticed a change in them. They seemed a shade darker than they usually were.

I sighed and sat down across from the man at the desk, placing my hand in my hands.

“I’m sorry, John,” I said to the floor by my feet.

“You need to calm down, Jake. We’ll have orders from the head office soon enough.”

I swallowed words again. The orders from the head office were not the first thing on my mind. Although, I knew they were going to have an impact, a huge impact.

“John...”

“Yes, Jake.”

“You don’t think...”

I looked up at him, typing away something into a black laptop. He glanced up at me for a moment through his paperwork, saying, “You can’t be fired from being a Guider,” then returned to the steady typing.

“That’s not what’s worrying me.”

“What is it then?”

“When they find her, you don’t think they’ll wipe her memory, do you?”

John paused, organizing files on his desk before answering my question.

“What they decide is not up to you or me, and it certainly is not something for you to worry about it.”

My head fell back into my hands again. They were considering it, and there was a strong probability it would happen then.

“Why does this bother you so much? You’ve had other New Wings who you no longer can have contact with. This one just ended earlier than you expect.”

With that sentence he confirmed what I had already been quite sure was going to happen: they were taking her away from me, I was no longer her Guider.

“Jake?”

I couldn’t pull my head from my hands.

“Jake? This doesn’t have anything to do with...?”

I didn’t have the energy to protest in defence the way I knew I should.

“You didn’t... did you?”

I shook my head back and forth in my hands, but it was a pathetic attempt to deny it.

“You fell for her?”

His voice was calm, but it turned angry. “You fell for her!”

There was ruffling of paper and the slamming of a laptop shut, then silence.

John sighed quietly before speaking again. “You brought this upon yourself. This is bad, but it doesn’t change much. The plan was for her to fall for you anyways, so this doesn’t complicate much besides the degree to which she probably fell. I’m assuming you left a few things out of the reports, then?”

I looked up, although avoiding his eyes. “I skipped a few nights.”

“You didn’t mention anything to her then, though? You never, ever brought up the reports? Or that you could guess what would happen the next day? There was nothing to make her suspect, right?”

John looked at me sternly as I answered honestly, “No.”

He continued to stare until I responded, “No, of course not. I never know anything much about the plan anyways, I was only told what I needed to know for the next day, never even any further ahead. Besides, she only figured it out because I left my cell in her room. She wasn’t suspicious before that.”

John shuffled his papers around again, picking up a thick black folder.

“This,” he said to me slowly, “Was her plan... until she broke it, and we lost her.”

He handed me the folder. It took me a moment before I could open it. Inside were charts with dates. They started at the time Annika had arrived in Heaven, and they described in less detail the things that I already knew. There were days on the beach, the problems she faced with friends, the ups and downs she’d felt in this world. What surprised me, tough, was that it had been planned that she’d be able to remember her past from the first day.

“You knew she was going to remember? Why didn’t you warn me? That day in the hospital, sitting outside the window with her, I panicked. I’d thought something was wrong.”

“We needed you to panic,” he responded. “It was one of the things that kept her ok, kept her moving despite her knowledge of the past.”

I sighed and glanced back down, then another question came to my mind.

“I always wondered: why did you have us keep a relationship a secret, if you had it in the plan too?”

“It was unique to this plan, to break the rules of Guider and New Wings, so it was decided that in order to cause the less disruption it would be easiest if you kept it secret. Then again, you were not supposed to fall for her remember? I have a feeling that you skipped more than just a few nights in your descriptions.”

I looked down, avoiding the statement, and kept reading. When it came to the date of that day, there were descriptions of things that were supposed to happen, but didn’t. The plan went on for three more months and two more weeks, although I quickly noticed that the descriptions for each day got progressively smaller and less detailed.

“Why does it end where it does?” I asked.

“The day after that would be her re-naming ceremony, the end of her time with you, her Guider, and her complete integration into the society.”

“Is that why it gets less detailed as it gets closer to the end, then? Because she’s more integrated?”

John reached across the desk and gently took the folder from my hands. “Yes and no. But I can’t tell you the full details, since I don’t even know the full details.”

This was something I was used to by this point, not being told the whole story. I nodded at John, who tucked the black folder into a drawer of his desk.

The phone on his desk began to ring and he picked it up with a swift movement. There were no introductions or informal conversation, and after a second of listening, John said simply, “Thank you.”

Then he looked up at me. “They’ve made their decision. We’re to go up to the boardroom now.”

Chapter 25 (post four) The End of Part 1

Pre-note: To make this extra confusing, I have decided to break my book up into parts. Therefor, this is the end of part 1. Please don't make fun of my writing -- I'm not feeling like it's flowing the way I want it to lately. 

Chapter twenty-five, section four, the end of part one:

There always comes a breaking point. For me, it was that moment, holding the doorknob and looking into the stairwell with my mind too full to think anymore.

I don’t remember much. Or, rather, I choose not to remember much. Each time I think back the pain emotions start to trickle through my body again.

I can tell you that I remember the floor. Running through those hospital-like halls, I had lost my shoes. Bare feet pounding on the cold tiles, I had just kept running. Standing in the doorway, I felt my feet loosing feeling.  

I can tell you about the stairwell. The whitewash covered everything, including the concrete beneath my feet as I sped up the stairs until I reached the top. Here there was nothing but a pair of big black doors, which I hit still at a run. The fresh air and starlight that I emerged into startled me to a stop.

I can tell you the stars were gorgeous that night. The moon was nowhere in sight, but the stars were sprinkled across the sky like powdered sugar across a black granite countertop. I remember the feel of the fresh air in my lungs and the gravel pinching beneath my toes as I wandered around the top of the building until I stopped right at the edge.

Can I tell you that that what I would do next was out of character for me? That the idea had never crossed my mind back on earth? That it wasn’t until that moment on the roof that I was desperate enough to even consider it?

Around the edge ran a small barrier that came up to my calves. I stopped a few inches from it and looked out at the skyline of Soleres. The building was tall enough that the view it provided was picturesque. The unlit buildings glowed in shadows cast by starlight, looking like the beginning of the ending of the world.

 My heart shuddered as I placed my one foot onto the low wall, then the other.

Suddenly there was nothing between me and the sky. I felt like I was somewhere between reality and fantasy, the end and the beginning, the physical and the beyond. My wings shook as I glanced downwards into the black abyss and didn’t stop until I look back up the sky.

I don’t remember what came first, my conscious decision or my feet no longer grounded, but I do remember the breathless, hard feeling of falling.

The End of Part 1

Chapter 25 (post three)

Pre-read note: My writing is crap. I have all these ideas but when I write them out, I feel like they are nothing but disappointing. Rather than dwell on this, though, I am just going to run with it. Especially since I think I am coming closer and closer to the end of New Wings. 

Chapter twenty-five, section three:

What is real?

Is anything?

Was my friendship with Jake real? Was my relationship with him real? Was he even real, or had he always been acting and lying?

I looked up at the bookcase towering above me, the file drawer open where I had pulled Jake’s files from.

What is this place? What is this world?

I slowly stood up, wiping my eyes.

I could feel myself started to shudder again, I could feel the tears threatening again. But this time I shook my head back and forth, clearing my thoughts until I was standing in this dark passage through history with the only emotion that comes after breakdown: anger.

I felt something pulse through me that I hadn’t felt in a long, long time: the drive to run. It drove me out the door of the library, leaving the photos and files scattered everywhere, and down bright, windowless hallways. My feet carried me faster and faster until I was running in circles through the maze of the building. I hit a dead end with only a single wooden door and I stopped although I was hardly out of breath, realizing I was lost.

For a second I considered what I was running from exactly. I couldn’t quite pinpoint it. Not Jake exactly, but what he represented. Not my school itself, but the idea behind it. Not Amy or the others, but their values and beliefs. Not the graphs or the charts, but the control embedded in them.

I’m running from this world.

That’s when I opened the door in front of me to find – a stairwell.

Chapter 25 (post two)

Pre-read note: It's 2am so I don't feel like editing this before I post it. So here it is, in all its mistakes and imperfection -- Annika's real story, Jake's real past. 

 Chapter twenty-five, section two:

I sat there hoping to feel something.

I kept staring at the wall. If I focused too hard, kept my eyes wide open, I could feel the water brimming at the edges. And then I could concentrate on the warmth slipping down my cheeks.

I kept waiting to be hit with something.

Instead I kept analysing.

Analysing the details of my after-life, the details that were laid out before me in sheets and graphs, the details that were pre-planned from the moment I woke up here in this world. The good times, the times of breakdown, the fights and the friendships – everything, everything including Jake.

I tried to find the find the files that would tell me what else that had planned for me, but I could only find the files that led up to yesterday.

I wanted to really cry. I wanted the pain to fill my veins, pulse through me and out. I wanted to feel something exploding from my chest, tightening my stomach and causing me to double over.

Jake.

I stared at the white wall, concentrating, until the burning started in my eyes again. Unblinking, unmoving, I watched the shadows blur as my eyes stung and the salt water came to relieve them.

I felt the tears drip warm and comforting down my cheeks.

He had charted my after-life like a story or a game. He must have known that I’d fall for him, fall for him like a glossy-eyed puppy naive to the background workings of this world.

That’s when suddenly I finally started to feel again: What had been real?

Was the relationship I’d shared with Jake been pre-planned because we were meant to be together? Or had he known all along that this was supposed to happen, that this was what he was supposed to do? The way I felt about him was real – but had the way he felt about me ever been real?

As the tears fell mellow-dramatically down my face and my stomach twisted, I tried to figure it out, but there was no way to know. Unless...

I jumped up and wandered the dark aisles of shelving. The file cabinets were organized by dates and I kept wandering back through time to find that date I was looking for: the day that Jake died. Through the shadows on the dark wood I found 1945, then April 25^th. Hopefully Jake hadn’t lied that day on the beach.

Hepburn, Jake.

I opened the file immediately and black and white photos escaped, floating down around my feet. I ignored them as I glanced through the pages. There were reports about his first days spent in this world, in the same hospital I’d woken up in. He’d had a Guider of his own, although from what I could understand he’d always known that his purpose in this world was to become a Guider. Then I found pages on his life – and I gasped.

He’d lied, his family hadn’t been shot by Germans. As I read the pages and pages, I started to understand.

He’d grown up in a city in the North of the Netherlands. He was from a family of class and prestige, his father working in the government. When the Nazis invaded, everything had changed for him. The government was taken over by the Socialist Party and his father had been put out of a job. Instead, he was forced into mandatory labour in factories like every other man over the age of eighteen. His father, though, had been an activist who resisted the Nazis and was part of a group trying to rise up against them. In 1944, he was part of a resistance that attacked German troops – and died fighting for the liberation of his country. This same year, Jake turned eighteen and was to be forced to work in the factories the way his family had, factories that were regularly bombed by the Allies. Rather than do this, Jake ran away. He ran away and lived on the streets until he was picked up by the Nazis, and became one of them.

I read this part over again.

He’d become a Nazi soldier. He’d become one of the bad guys – one of the soldiers that his dad had died fighting.

He had died fighting on the wrong side. He had been part of the Nazis when they starved the Netherlands during the winter, killing thousands. Two of his sisters died. He was killed shortly afterwards in a bombing of the city that also killed his mother and his eldest sister.

He had lied to me.

I slowly picked up the photos that lay dusted around my feet. They were smiling faces of a happy family, Jake always beside either his father or a blonde-haired girl who looked to be the eldest sister. Checking back to the files I found her name: Sofie. Her bright eyes caught mine and for a moment I could’ve sworn they sparkled through the black and white film. I let go of the picture as I gasped, and it slowly drifted to the ground.

I dropped to the floor with the remnants of Jake’s past life scattered around me and curled into a ball, letting my wings wrap around me and my tears flow freely once again.  

Dear New Wings

Dear New Wings,
I miss you.
I miss you a lot.
I miss the late nights we spent together. I miss the planning and the sketching of ideas, and of that moment where it would all suddenly seem to click. I miss the teas and the midnight snacks. I miss the tap of the keyboard and the smell of ink. I miss the good times and the bad, when you made me smile and made me cry.
I know I haven't looked your way in a long time, but I wanted you to know that I'm thinking about you. Even if it seems as though I've pushed you done my priorities list, I haven't. Even if it feels like I've abandoned you, I haven't.
Sometimes we push the things we love the most the furthest away because we know that those things that matter the most will wait for us. I know you'll wait for me.
But I wanted to let you know I miss you. I miss you a lot.
Wait for me.
Anja

The Very Very First Version of New Wings (post 2)

Pre-read note: As Writer's Block is still gnawing away at my creative writing ability, and exams and assignments and Facebook are eating away all my time, New Wings has unfortunately come to a standstill. However, because I got over 10 pages views on my other "very very first version" post (which is A LOT for me!) I decided to post another very embarrassing section of that story I began when I was twelve years old. Enjoy the preteen-ness of it all (notice the very bad dialogue and the fragment sentences! lmao!) :)

The very, very first version of New Wings, section one, pg 1-2:

I don't remember what happened after that. It was all black. They moved me to another room while I was passed out. Smaller with white walls and baby blue sheets and blanket on my bed. It felt like a week before I woke up again. Of course, it was only a day.

I woke up to a good smell. When I opened my eyes, it turned out to be a tray with breakfast on it; juice, eggs and toast, beside my bed. A nurse walked into the room, through a door at the left. She was carrying some sort of clothes.

"Good morning, Miss."

"Good morning.''

"I see that you haven't touched your breakfast. You don't like eggs?"

"No, it's not that. I just woke up. I love eggs."

"Ah, I see. Well, you'd better hurry. She wants to see you."

"Who?"

"Mother Earth, of course. I brought you some clothes. A simple blue, knee-length sundress, a pink bra and a pair of underwear. She would like to see you in ten minutes. I will leave so that you can get dressed in peace. I'll be back in five minutes." She placed a dress, some under wear and a bra on a chair beside my bed, and left.

I got out of bed, slipped on my clothes, which proved to be a struggle with my new wings, and drank my orange juice. I tried to eat the eggs, really, but my stomach didn't agree. I took one of the pieces of toast off the plate instead, and took it to the window beside my bed to nibble on. The sky was twice as blue here above this busy city. The nurse walked into my room.

"Hello, Miss. You ready? She wishes to see you."

“I’m ready. But my name is Katherine."

"I must call you Miss until you get your halo, Miss."

"Oh, okay." I said unsurely.

"Now, follow me, Miss. Take your toast with you if you want to, I'm sure She won't mind."

 "I'll leave it here, thanks." I said, placed it back on the plate, and followed her out the door.

She led me out of the room into a long hallway with light blue walls. I followed her around many corners and down many halls. There were lots of people in the halls. All of them wore either white, short dresses and the old fashion nurse hats, like my nurse, or simple white pants and white doctor coats. But, the next hall we turned into, there wasn't anyone. I followed her down this hall, until we came to two, large golden doors. Beside them slept a large fat man dressed in, what looked like, a blue mechanics suit. We stopped about a meter from him.

"Ralph! Wake up! You're on guard duty!" My nurse screamed in his face.

His answer: "zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz,"

She walked over to him and started to kick him."Arghhhhhhhh! Ralph! Wake up!"

"What? What did I miss?"

"Ralph!''

"What?"

"You're on guard duty! You're supposed to be on the watch!''

I was watching all of this with interest. But what was I suppose to do?

"Umm, Miss?" I said quietly.

"Oh, yes! Ralph, I would like you to meet Miss. I was bringing her to see Her, until I found you. Could please open the door?" She said this with a fake smile.

"Okay, I'll open them. Hey, Miss. How are you?"Ralph said getting up and turning toward me with a smile.

"Fine. Thanks."

Ralph turned to face the door, and pulled out a large ring with, at least, ten keys hanging off, out of his pocket. He selected, what looked like, a rather important key. It was an old gold one, with very beautiful carvings of flowers on it. He placed it in a key hole that had the same carvings as the key around the hole. Ralph turned the key, and we all heard a faint 'click'.

I and my nurse were only about three meters away from the door. But when the door opened, I wished that we were a lot farther away. What came out of that door was a blinding light. So bright that it hurt. But neither Nurse (a nickname I made up for her) nor Ralph seemed affected by the light.

"Aaarrrggghhh!" I cried as I flung my arms in front of my eyes to try to protect them.

“What? Oh, I'm sorry, Miss! I forgot! You see, before you see Her, the light that shines in Her office will blind you. After you meet Her, the light will be like any other, even paler. You must straight ahead, into the light. You can look at the light, it might hurt a bit but, nothing long term will happen to your eyes. Now, go on. I cannot accompany you into Her office. Go on, She's waiting. Don't worry.''