Sunday

Welcome to the Wise household! Population: Many. Sanity: None.

It started out as a normal week for Anju Wise. If you know anything about Anju and her family, though, you’ll realize that a normal week really doesn’t come anywhere close to most people’s normal weeks. That didn’t bother Anju as much as it used to, though. As a mother of one and soon-to-be step mother of six, she was ready to expect anything.

Anju slowly blinked open her silver eyes to see the small, dull room she shared with her family. Unfortunately, Anju’s fiancé didn’t have a job. Lance went out every day for hours to look for a job, sometimes helped by his eldest daughter, but not many people were interested in his help. He was known by everyone in this town as well as a few neighboring towns. He was a good person and loved his children, but he was literally insane. Sometimes he had days where he was calm, collected, and knew the answer to any question you asked him. He also had days where he didn’t recognize anyone and went rampaging down the streets with a knife. So Lance really had no people skills because of this unfortunate problem of his. The lack of money forced him, his pregnant wife, and five children of assorted ages to move in with his father. There were very few places to sleep because of this large family, so they had dug up every blanket they could find in the house and made temporary beds on the floor of Lance’s childhood room for their children.

Anju stretched her arms above her head and yawned, causing a few popping noises to crack through the room. Luckily for Anju, she was the last one up today. That was weird, because it was only ten in the morning. She wondered if something was going on that she had missed, so she decided to slowly pull herself out of the bed, give another stretch, and then exit the room. Lance’s room was the last one on the right of the hallway. Grand, Lance’s father, had never bothered to clean out the house when his son’s family moved in. Most of the space in the house belonged to Grand, so it was no surprise that Grand had both his own bedroom and his own study. After those two rooms, she passed the bathroom and the laundry room before the hallway finally dumped her into the living room. This was probably the biggest room in the house, but Anju had never gotten a good look at Grand’s study. There was one couch and two matching chairs in the center of the room. There were a few stands and lamps scattered about the room, and near the entrance to the hallway stood an old television set. Anju had learned from personal experience that the T.V. had bad reception. It had been reasonable, though, until Lance had had one of his bad days and ended up hitting the T.V. Now it always had a weird, static sound to it and the screen would skip once in a while. Grand was normally cooped up in his study, so the lack of a good television didn’t concern him. The children learned to just deal with the state of the appliance, though, because even the younger ones knew that the family didn’t have enough money for a new one.

Anju smiled as she saw her son playing in the middle of the living room. He was playing with his older brother, Lance’s youngest son with his ex-wife, Tyki. Tyki was five years old and had silver hair and silver eyes like his mother. Unlike his mother, though, his silver hair was on the dark side and looked almost black. Tyki tended to get scared easily and clung to his oldest sister almost constantly. Anju thought Tyki was adorable, but not as cute as her own son, Soren.

Soren was two years old but already learning at a faster pace than most children his age. Anju loved everything about her son, including his looks. He had blond hair and ocean blue eyes like his father. Though he had a more feminine look to his body, he was growing up to be a strong little man. Soren seemed to love all of his siblings and loved to play with them, though most of the time they didn’t want to play with him. Although Soren was born out of wedlock, she loved him nonetheless. Although Lance had never wanted him to be born, he had ended up falling in love with the boy at first sight. He was so sweet that Anju didn’t know who could possibly dislike him.

She left Soren and Tyki to playing and walked into the only other room left in the house: the kitchen. Lance and his first child, Mayella, were the only two in the room. Mayella was eating a bowl of cereal as Lance sat next to her, reading the paper. She didn’t think Lance had noticed her come in, and she didn’t want to disturb him in case he was in one of his moods. She smiled at Mayella though, who just gave her a slight wave. When they had been younger, Mayella had looked up to Anju. Unfortunately, the two of them were now in competition to be the main woman in the household. Mayella had silver hair that went down to her shoulders and had a slight flip at the ends. She had blue eyes like her father, but besides that looked like her mother. She was a strong eighteen year old girl who was forced into maturity earlier than most kids.

Anju walked over to the cabinets and poured her own bowl of cereal. She could tell by the dirty bowls in the sink that Soren and Tyki had already eaten, so she shamelessly took the cereal back to the table and sat across from Lance.

“So,” Mayella said, “The wedding is in exactly one week.”

Anju almost jumped when the teen made conversation with her. She could tell it was only basic, polite conversation, but it was a good start to a relationship. She nodded her head in reply, waiting for Mayella to continue.

“How are the plans coming along?”

Anju almost cringed at the question, but she was careful not to let her smile falter. She didn’t want to look incompetent in front of her soon to be step daughter.

Anju responded, “I suppose they’re good. I haven’t checked in with my mother yet. You know that she’s running the whole thing. She’s more excited than I am!”

Mayella laughed and smiled at Anju before awkwardly returning to her cereal. Anju inwardly sighed when the conversation stopped. She didn’t know what to say to Mayella. She couldn’t ask how school was because they didn’t have enough money to send the children to school. She couldn’t ask how her family was because they all lived here. She couldn’t ask how her day was because it was only ten in the morning. So Anju was thankful for the distraction Lance suddenly caused.

“Ah, Anju? Don’t you know this man?” Lance growled, putting the newspaper into Anju’s hands.

Anju stared at the section that Lance had directed her toward. It was the obituaries. She didn’t often read the newspaper and never bothered to look at the obituaries, so she found it quite odd that Lance was showing this to her. She gasped when she saw the paper though.

“I do! It’s…it’s him!” she announced, staring wide eyed at the newspaper. She dropped it onto the table, allowing Mayella to take a look.

“Oh. I remember him.” She said nonchalantly before picking up her empty cereal bowl and putting it in the sink. When she left the kitchen, Anju looked up at Lance with worried eyes. The look in his eyes was identical, but Anju was fairly certain it was only worry for her that concerned him.

Anju had two secrets that she tried to keep hidden from the world. One of them was how her son, Soren, was conceived. The other was that her family was full of Immortals, or people that had eternal youth. The man featured in the obituaries today was one of the few people that had discovered one of Anju’s secrets. It was a long story that she had tried to forget about, but all of the memories flooded back to her as she read the name ‘General Ephraim James Spoorn’ at the top of the article. Seeing his picture made chills run down her spine. She knew something bad was going to happen, and she didn’t want to deal with it this close to her wedding. But something told her she was going to have to. Whether she would survive it was a completely different story.

 want to finish

Sep 12, 2011

• my version of addict me
• The Thorns of A Dream

 

 Write More! :)

Aug 11, 2011

• Books, Books, Books
• The Thorns of A Dream

Author's Note

A/N: I made this story for my good friend Tiny! So I have to give her a lot of credit here. Especially for the characters of Anju, Tyki, and Grand.

Warnings for implied homicide, implied incest, and implied rape

Reviews

[Meat of Dog]

This had an interesting introduction, the quick mentioning of her finance's insanity. being someone fascinated by mental illness, my attention was drawn right away. His situation is very unfortunate, both for him and those around him, leaving me to wonder if he had these problems when they got married. Regardless, Anju seems really tolerant of his issues, going through with it all.

I liked the realism of her divvying them up into favorites. Such as she saw Tyki as cute, but not as cute as her own son. To say that she adored and loved them all equally would be a little too distant from the way people are in life, especially with kids. I'm curios to see if any of them have inherited their father's mental instability.

I really liked the paragraph about having nothing to talk about with Meyella. The way it flowed sounded cool as she literally described all of the things that she could not ask about. Also, I'm seeing some potential for this dynamic between Meyella and Anju, though Anju almost seemed like the more submissive of the two. You ended the chapter with a great cliffhanger, I'm excited to read on, and see what being one of the 'immortals' entails.

other suggestions:
Didn't see any grammatical issues.

[Mary Evans]

Is it necessary to say Anju’s name in every sentence she’s mentioned? The same goes for other characters like Tyki. Just use “she” or “he.” Also is she Asian? Because if she isn’t there’s absolutely no grounding in giving her that name. If you’re pulling off the fantasy world maneuver it might just work but I’d still suggest modifying it a bit.
I think you need a better transition before the introductory paragraph and the beginning of the action.

You have quite a bit repetitions throughout the whole thing - helped, help; have job, look for job; etc.

Why isn’t this person, Lance, locked up yet? He goes rampaging out on the streets with a knife! What peaceful age or era would allow such a person freedom? Try it, I’m pretty sure you’ll be locked safely in an asylum with the schizophrenia/extreme bipolar diagnose before you reach the corner of the street.

Don’t give us big pieces of exposition and character descriptions, try presenting everything at a moderate pace. The characters through gestures, hints, etc., the exposition with the story flow.

“she shamelessly” – why does she have to be ashamed? What’s the reason? Is she not allowed to eat? Is it because she’s new in the house? If that’s the case I don’t think it’s a good enough reason for her to feel shame.

Overall although it might have some good ideas and concepts it lacks essence. The writing might be good even though it needs a bit more flow, but the story is just… raw. Too many things are just summarized or presented like blocks of text when they just beg to be integrated in the story. Don’t state things; show them, that’s what writing is supposed to do. And even though characters are well presented they still feel weighted down by the sometime mundane and unnecessary details.

I’m sorry it’s just not good enough to stand on its own just yet. It’s not even on the first draft level. Go back and work on the development and presentation of the plot, is what I would suggest.

[Sakib]

Great start. I liked the characters. I'll read the next chapters.

[Annie N.]

Great start to a very interesting story. Good job!

[Star Wolf]

Ah, a good way for this first chapter to end...an interesting mystery to lure readers onward into the story. Awesome!

[Dearantlers]

Wow, this is really good. Makes me want to keep reading! Good job!

[Black Cat Fever]

Your first chapter is a attention getter. Excellent story telling!

[Tina Kline]

Great first chapter. Excellent introduction of the characters and lead in to the story at the end. It does make the reader wonder what is going to happen now.

[Silent Knight]

Ooh. I am liking the story so far. If you ever need some help with ideas or something, I would be happy to help. Not that you need it at all, seeing as how this is quite interesting so far!