Are you an evil villain?! I'm an evil villain! MUAHAHAHA!!
Naah, not really. Just pulling your leg(;
That's kind of a weird way to start of the first thing I've posted in multiple months. But, hey, does it really matter? The point is that I am posting for my grand audience to read!! Every last one of you! And if you're reading this, then that includes you!
You should feel special.
Considering I am writing this just for you. It's almost personalized. Someday, my name will be famous, and you'll remember reading this inconsequential blog post and think to yourself, my gosh. A famous person has almost wrote me a blog post. Almost.
And then you will feel all happy about yourself and your life will be complete.
The end.
Heh heh. Just kidding. This isn't personalized at all. I don't even know your name! Well, I'm using words like "your" and "you" so I guess you could consider this personal... If it makes you feel better, this is completely personal. You are my best friend and I love you. I couldn't live without you.
Better??
Thought so.
Soo I don't really know where to go from here.. Soo random paragraphs of a story I have never written nor will ever do so!!
Kallica sat on the cold stone ground, so hard against her bottom. She was propped up against the wall that looked and felt exactly like the floor. After six weeks, her pained body had become accustomed to the hardness of it all. It had been such a long time--even before she had been caged here, caged like an animal--since she had felt anything soft. The rag her captors had given here, claiming it was a blanket, was scratchy and so torn it's only use could be rags.
And it wouldn't be so good at that either.
This place had become more appalling by every passing moment. Kallica was sick of the boring gray surrounding her, the heavy chains attaching her to the wall and that chaffed her wrists and ankles. She was tired of looking forward and seeing only the black bars of her prison. She wanted so badly to be outside in the open air, moving stealthily among the trees of forests as she had used to do so often. When she got out of this place--and she would, eventually, get out, she knew she had to do or she would find a way to kill herself--she knew she would never again take for granted moving about and being able to step outside for fresh air.
She missed moving so much, but it was much too hard here. When she had first come, she had paced near the bars. She could walk exactly seven steps forward, measured small by the chains attaching her ankles together, before she had to stop about a foot before the bars. She couldn't even move her hands forward to grab the bars. Her wrists were chained to the wall behind her. She could walk five measured steps until her chains stopped her, a few inches in front of the brick wall. She could turn and walk five more steps to the other side.
For the first two weeks, that's all she had done. Five steps to the right. Turn. Five steps to the left. Turn. Five steps to the right. Her guards had walked past and laughed at her pacing. She had spit at them, but the distance was too far and it had landed just outside of her cage. She hated them so much for their endless torment.
She sat there, her back pressed against the wall, and she cursed everything. Her captors for bringing her here, the guards for keeping her here, herself for getting herself into this situation to begin with. She even went so far as to curse her parents for giving her life.
She wanted to die, but couldn't figure out how.
They forced food and water into her. They cleaned away her waste. They did not take care of anything besides that. It was all just enough to keep her alive and give her nothing to commit suicide with. She was unwashed, disgusting and filthy. She had long since lost the urge to even reach up and push the oily, disgusting hair from her face, let alone get up and keep pacing.
It was through those oily strands of hair that Kallica saw it. It was something so out of place, she was sure she was hallucinating. There in all the gray and dirt and grime, there was a red rose.
It was growing straight up out of the stone ground, it's stem so green and the petals so red that it seemed too unreal. Those two simple colors seemed almost to blind Kallica. She had to wonder how she had not noticed the beautiful flower before.
In her mind, she was brought back to a place. The present and the past stitched all together in a whirlwind of emotions and senses. She was suddenly happy and young, pain free and without a worry in the world. She was full of life and ready to live, not at all ready to give up.
When Kallica closed her eyes, letting her emotions envelope her, she found herself in a plush green garden. There was a quaint log home behind her with a little porch overlooking the square of green grass that was so wonderfully soft under Kallica's bare feet. Hummingbirds buzzed up to feeders and bees flitted around all kinds of flowers. Any kind of color or flower you could imagine was here! It was so bright, so full of life, so beautiful, and the smell.. It was so wonderfully overwhelming.
But the flower that stood out the most, smell the most beautifully and popped among all the other flowers, was the red roses.
They stood there, all regal and important looking, on their bush. They put the rest of the flower garden to shame with their brightness and beauty. The way they simply overwhelmed everything else always impressed Kallica. It didn't matter what was happening anywhere else in the garden, the red rose always stood out.
Of course Kallica knew right where she was by all the flowers and the inviting home. It was her grandmother's house. She had spent so much time there as a child, playing in the garden and in the creek that ran through the forest just beyond the house. She had always loved it here, but she had loved the red roses the most.
"Now Kally," her grandmother had once said as they tended the rosebushes together. "There is something you must understand about roses. They are fragile things." She had touched one of the roses in just the right spot and it had fallen apart in her hand, the petals just fell apart from each other. Kallica had gasped, sudden sadness gripping her over the loss of such a beautiful flower.
"They must be cared for just right," she had continued in her gentle, grandmotherly voice. "Not too much water ever, and just the right fertilizer. If you want the most beautiful roses, you must give the bush--the base of the whole plant--just the right food so that it can be strong. The stronger the bush, the more roses it can hold.
"In this way, a rose is like life." Kallica had looked at her as if she had grown a second head. How could a rose be like life? "You don't understand that, do you now?" She had shook her head while her grandmother just chuckled a bit to herself. "A rose is a beautiful thing, just as life is. But a rose doesn't just happen, first you need that strong plant. In life, a rose would be the reward after a journey full of hard work. So first you need a strong foundation. You must work hard and give yourself all the right things so that you can be strong. Once you are strong enough to handle life, you'll find the thorns.
"Now thorns are no fun thing to deal with. They prick you and hurt you. But remember how strong you have become? You can handle that bit of pain, but you must remember that! If you loose site of how strong you are, all will be for naught and you will not get the roses. Just like if you gave up on a rosebush the first time you were pricked with a thorn. You would never get the beauty of the whole thing.
"Once you toil through the pain, you finally get to the end. The rose. Your reward. You will never be able to get the rose without hard work and some pain, and sometimes it will be harder than others. But you must always stay strong and work through the pain, because beauty always lies on the other side."
Her grandmother had spoken those words to her when Kallica was ten. It had been her last visit to her grandmother's house. Her parents had died three months later in a car accident. She'd been thrown into the foster care system, her grandma deemed "unfit to care for children". She had run away from home after home, working hard to get away. When she was thirteen, she found her way back to her grandmother's house, only to find she had died a month earlier.
Kallica had walked into her garden and found it overgrown. She fell to her knees, remorse overwhelming her. The place she had loved the most was destroyed. Her flowers had been over taken by weeds, except one rosebush. The bush had stayed strong and on it was a single rosebud. Kallica had gone up, touched it, smelled it. She had felt the rose's will to stay alive. She had felt it's power and determination. She knew at that moment what her grandmother had been saying, although she hadn't completely understood before.
The bush was strong, it had made it through. It had outlasted the other plants and was fighting the weeds, and winning so far. Kallica had almost fallen into tears for the first time since her parents had died, since she had hardened herself to emotion and had dedicated her life to running.
The police had pulled up at that moment, coming in the yard. She had run, after one last glance at the strong rose. That had been the first time she had run from the police, and it wouldn't be the last.
Later, as she settled down in the familiar woods from her past for the night, she had remembered the rose. She vowed to herself at that moment that she would be like the rose and stay strong. She would fight to survive, even if it meant pain and despair. She would conquer and continue.
She would survive.
And now, so many years later in a stone prison, Kallica remembered the promise she had made to herself. A wave of determination surged through her as she opened her eyes to the gray. The rose was gone, but other roses burned in her memory, pushing her forward. She pushed herself to her feet, moving for the first time in days. Her body creaked and groaned in protest, but she persisted. She pushed her hair from her face and stood tall. She walked those measured steps as far as she could and she paced.
Because she would be strong. She would fight this cage.
She would fight and she would win.
