Word Count for the Year, Entry 10
25123 / 200000 words. 13% done!
I truly am slowly but surely working my way through this. I actually even wrote a little extra this past week! Hopefully, I can keep this pace up and actually, you know, *do* this.
Haylee - Charloft Thursday
Tell us, in 100-word form, about a time your character got lucky.
(OOC: This is actually a continuation of a different Thursday drabble on bravery))
“You asshole!” Haylee screamed as she helped Sy inside. “Jesus H. Christ what the hell is wrong with you? For someone that can sometimes be so smart you are a fucking moron.”
Haylee had kicked her heels off at some point in the car. They were impossible to drive in. She really had no idea who invented high heeled shoes, but she wanted to go back in time so that she could shove one of the monstrosities up his ass. Seriously, what on fucking earth was that person thinking?
She dropped Sy on the sofa as she ran into the kitchen to grab the first aid kid. Sure, most of it wasn’t necessary for a vampire, but a bandage still kept him from bleeding everywhere while he healed during the night.
“I told you that it wasn’t my fault,” Sy snapped from the living room. “We had already negotiated the price, and then he changed it.”
She walked back into the living room and dropped the kit on the couch, squatting down and pushing up his shirt so that she could get a look at the wound. Looked like a bullet wound from a .38 special. She hated that she was getting familiar enough with this stuff that she could start to identify wounds by just looking at them. Then again, maybe she should just consider them research.
“Two inches to the left and they would have hit a major artery,” Haylee snarled as she opened the kit, grabbing something so that she could start to wipe clean the wound. (Even though it couldn’t get infected.)
“I don’t think that matters for a vampire,” Sy pointed out with a grin.
“Yeah some of us still think in human terms here. I’m not some crazy old vampire who’s been around long enough to not care anymore,” she grumbled, snatching a bandage out and pressing it to the wound.
“I’ve only been a vampire for like…ten years, tops,” Sy countered, actually looking like he wasn’t even sure of that number.
Her eyes flickered up at him. “Seriously? Figured you were an old fucker.” Not that she got to see a lot of vampire acrobatics, but he did shit she didn’t see anyone else do.
“Guess I picked that up from my sire,” he muttered.
That was the first time she’d ever heard him mention his sire. “Was he an old guy?” she asked, trying to sound nonchalant in hopes that she’d actually learn something about Sy’s past.
“Guess I’m lucky that didn’t hit my neck.”
Yeah, Haylee didn’t figure he’d say anything. “I doubt it was less luck and more someone not knowing where to aim a gun,” she countered, sitting back on her haunches. “Well, you’re bandaged up as much good as it does. Now stop fucking around with people or you will get your dick cut off or something.”
“But I’m lucky.” Seemed like he was stuck on that now.
“Yeah, as lucky as me,” Haylee said with a snort, standing up.
Haylee - Charloft Friday
It's time to get up! What's on your to-do list of a morning? Shave and shower? Breakfast and bath? Tell us all about it.
1. Wake up after sunset.
2. Shower.
3. Get dressed.
Then it diverges, depending on the night. Then I either write until I’m near passing out usually or end up having to do shit for Sy, and god only KNOWS where that’s going to lead me by the end of the night.
Haylee - Charloft Saturday
Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why. -- Kurt Vonnegut
You know what? Even though I’m a writer, I fucking HATE Kurt Vonnegut. Yeah, heresy, I hear you. I get it. Guess I’m one of those who thinks that people should just write what they fucking MEAN, you know?
*sighs*
‘Amber of the moment’ aside, what I get from this is to not look into reasons for why things happen. If you get too caught up in that sort of thing, you’re going to forget to keep on living and just keep wondering. Like you shouldn’t ask why bad things happen to good people. Or why crazy vampires show up on your door step and start spewing nonsense at you.
Your life would be intensely more boring without me and you know it.
*snorts* Whatever, sigh. I’d be left alone, allowed to write in peace, and not have to deal with random shady weirdoes on a regular basis. Oh yeah, my life would SUCK.
Well I can always leave if you want…
I didn’t say THAT. Just…why with all the weirdoes?
Everything has a purpose.
I’ll believe it when I see it.
Haylee - Charloft Winter Bingo “Pop”
Haylee had heard gunfire before she had become a vampire. You didn’t grow up in the south without having heard it at least once. So many people that she had known went hunting out in the woods, but that actually wasn’t where she had heard it.
She had first heard it when she was a little kid, probably around three or four. Her parents had been fighting, and that wasn’t anything weird. She had hidden in her room. She wasn’t big enough yet to stand up to her parents like she had done so many times later, and hiding in her room seemed like a good idea at the time. Hiding never worked, though.
Her parents weren’t focused on her that night. They literally fought like their lives depended on it, because it usually did. She knew that her father kept a shotgun in the house, but, until that night, she had never heard it fired.
Even though she wasn’t in there to see it, she had later learned (from her proud sounding mother, actually), that her mother had gotten fed up enough that she had went and grabbed the shotgun, aimed it at her father and, when he didn’t back down, fired it just above his head, showing that she meant business. Apparently, she did not want to spend the night with him that night.
That had been enough to convince him that maybe he was better off spending the night somewhere else that night.
Even though she would later hear from people that gun shots sounded like pops, they always sounded more like explosions to her. Haylee had thought that part of her home had exploded that night. She’d been wrong, though.
She’d almost been disappointed to find out that it hadn’t.
Haylee - Charloft Winter Bingo “Fairy Lights”
She had woken up to Sy shaking her awake. God she didn’t know what he wanted, but all she wanted to do was sleep right now. They’d had a rough night the night before, and she’d actually forced herself to stay awake long enough to make sure that Sy was alright in bed as he’d been hurt the night before and wanted to be sure that he was OK and she hadn’t been feeling too hot herself. If vampires could get the flu, she’d feel like this was it.
“Sy, please leave me the fuck alone. I’m not in the mood to go out and deal with the freaks who like to try and tear out your intestines,” she grumbled, pulling the blanket over her head. She was just SO not feeling this tonight.
She didn’t hear him say anything, and she didn’t have a chance to react when he wrapped the blanket around her and scooped her up out of the bed. She screamed and bitch and howled the entire time, but he just slung her over his shoulder like some damn gypsy Santa Claus and whistled while he carried her…somewhere.
She had no idea what was going on when he dumped her on the ground. Somehow managing to get unwrapped, she jumped out of the blankets and pounced on him, for once in their relationship catching him enough by surprise to actually knock him onto the ground, her pinning him as she glared at him. “The FUCK is going on?” she screamed.
It was as if he didn’t even notice the shrieking brunette on top of him. He pointed up to the sky and just said, “Meteor shower.”
She turned around and looked up, noticing that yeah, there was a meteor shower going on above her head. He took her momentary distraction to knock her off of him, causing her to grunt as he knocked her off like she weighed nothing.
By the time that she rolled over, he was already up spreading her blanket out like they were out on a picnic. “You dragged me out of bed like that for a meteor shower?” she asked in disbelief. She’d more expect him to do that for some sort of ‘trip’ than something as simplistic as that.
“I thought we could listen to it together,” he said, laying back onto the blanket and watching the sky, not even looking over at her.
“Listen…?” Then she remembered his deal. “Oh! Watch, right.” Sy had some deal where he saw instead of heard, tasted instead of smelled, etc. She had looked it up once, but the name for it wasn’t coming to her right now. She got up and crawled over to the blanket, pausing for a second before laying down beside him.
“I saw something about it on your computer earlier and thought that it would be something nice to do together,” he said to her. “I do put you through a lot.”
She turned and looked at him like he had grown a second head. “No shit, Sherlock. I’ve got a couch right now that looks like an abortion happened on it.”
He started laughing. “My for a writer you have a way with words.”
She rolled her eyes and turned and looked back up at the sky. “They look just like little streaks in the sky,” she said, more to herself than to him. She really wasn’t the type that would normally take the time to watch something as…nice as this. She started to giggle as something random crossed her mind.
This time it was his turn to turn and look at her like she’d grown a second head. “You actually look…like a GIRL when you giggle,” she said.
She elbowed him in the ribs. “It’s nothing. I just thought of something random.”
“What’s that?” he asked her.
“I think this is the closest thing to a date I’ve ever been on,” she admitted to him.
He arched an eyebrow at her. “You’re kidding. You’ve never been on a date? You’re like…twenty-five! Are you a virgin, too?”
“I didn’t say THAT, ass!” she grumbled. “Jesus if I died a virgin I’d kill myself right here. You don’t need to go on a date to fuck.” She sighed, keeping her eyes on the sky. “To go on a date you have to actually…LIKE someone, at least somewhat. I always thought so. I never let anyone set me up on blind dates or anything because of that.”
“You couldn’t find anyone you liked?” he asked her, actually sounding amazed.
“We’ve met, haven’t we?” she asked incredulously. “I hate like…ninety eight percent of the human population on principle. Plus, anyone whom I might like, I could easily chase away with my charming personality or morbid sense of humor.”
Sy was actually silent for a while. She didn’t really mind. Haylee had just admitted something, well, rather embarrassing about herself.
“Well, I’m kind of honored to be your first date then,” he finally said.
She didn’t say anything back, but the slight smile on her face said enough.
Haylee - Charloft Winter Bingo “Lawn Ornaments”
For once, Haylee had went out alone immediately when she woke up. In an effort to not disturb Sy from whatever the fuck that he might be doing, she had actually went out her window and, when she realized that no one was about, jumped from the second story and landed on her feet. Probably one of the few ‘vampiric’ things that she had ever done besides feed. She wasn’t really the ass beater that she had Sy become on occasion, after all.
Haylee was fairly sane for a Malkavian, so some had told her. She didn’t talk to herself and she didn’t speak in ‘bloody riddles’ as she’d heard one person say it. Every once in a while she woke up with weird compulsions, though. She’d been that way as a human. Tonight she’d had the impulse to go shopping, so she did.
Two hours later she was walking back up to her apartment, letting herself in through the front door (like a normal person), carrying several bags in her arms.
“Where the hell have you been?” Sy asked, meeting her at the door. “I go into your bedroom and I don’t smell you anywhere.”
Haylee tilted her head at him and smirked. “How’s it feel to be on the receiving end of worry for once?” she asked him.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“Alright, dad. I went shopping,” she told him, setting the bags down on the floor.
He bent down and started to look through them. “Pink flamingos?”
“Even people like me get the urge to decorate once in a while.”
He picked one up and looked at it. “You don’t even have a lawn.”
He was right. She lived on the second floor of an apartment building. To that point she just shrugged. “I woke up with a want for pink flamingos.”
“I’m crazy and I think that’s weird,” he said with a laugh.
Mere - Charloft Winter Bingo “New”
Always seeking the new and interesting: that had been Mere’s philosophy for years. Sure, she had been in relationships, but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t always looking for some new threshold to push past. She was usually chasing it in her personal life, as newness was something that she had always wanted, but she perused it in her music, too.
She was always writing lyrics or working on music. This was actually something that, as notoriously ‘TMI’ as she was, she didn’t share with just anyone. Despite loving playing in front of a crowd, she didn’t like doing the ‘creative process’ in front of just anyone. She had to trust a person to be willing to let them see her like that, and Mere had only trusted a handful of people in her life.
It was this that helped her learn that ‘new’ didn’t always mean ‘good.’ You couldn’t trust a person overnight, after all. Just because you were comfortable with a person didn’t mean that things had to be stale and boring, after all. Plus, there were so many different experiences that you could have with a person you trusted. She was just now learning that.
Haylee - Charloft Munday
What's the most amount of research you've ever done for a character or a story? Did you ever actually get the story/relevant bits written, or did the research wind up overwhelming you?
I’ve done different amounts of research for different characters over the years. For one, I’ve done a good bit of research on a particular branch of Judaism called Jewish Renewal for a character that I play over on Insane Journal called Lilly Maymin. Her parents were a part of the movement during the 1970’s, and have something of a hippy background.
Research doesn’t get too overwhelming for me. What I tend to have to research a lot is religious beliefs (like above), simply because I don’t have much belief on my own and it’s a mindset that I have to purposefully get into. A lot of my characters are also of non-traditional faiths in some shape or fashion, so I have to do the work to play them right. I did a lot of research once into the Russian pagan beliefs for a character for Mage: The Awakening just so that I would at least know what I was talking about. I’d hate to look like an idiot, after all.
Haylee - Charloft Winter Bingo “Chemistry”
Tonight not long after waking up Haylee had headed up toward the roof of her apartment building. Other than one night of meteor watching with Sy, she didn’t come up here too often. There was nothing up here other than, well, the top of the roof. Sometimes people came up here to do barbecues and the like, but Haylee had never been one to do anything like that. It had just not been here thing, and now she didn’t eat people food. Actually, the smell of the stuff made her nauseated, if that was possible.
It didn’t take too long before she heard Sy coming up the stairs and heading up toward the roof. She was actually laying on the edge of the roof, staring up at the sky. “What are you looking at?” he asked, looking up at the sky.
“The sky,” she answered, knowing that he’d get a little agitated with her too basic of an answer.
“I ought to shove you off this roof,” he said with a snort, sitting down beside her and looking back up at the sky.
“I had an urge to do some sky watching tonight,” she admitted to him. It had just never been something that she had been into before. It had come off as such a romantic thing to do and she’d never been a romantic sort of person. People in her novels didn’t usually even have romantic relationships because it was something that went over her head. It wasn’t like she’d seen a good example set by her parents, after all.
“Seems like almost a sweet thing to do for someone that can so accurately describe an autopsy procedure,” Sy pointed out to her.
“Yeah well I’m like an onion. I have layers,” she said with a smirk. “Even an asshole like me can have her sweet moments.”
“Never thought I’d see the day when you grew up a little,” Sy said with a smirk. “I’m so proud of you.”
She picked up a rock and threw it at his leg. “You’re such an ass. If you were anyone else you know that I wouldn’t put up with you, right?”
“Yeah well, guess we’re kind of made for each other or something,” he said with a shrug. “Besides, your life would be boring without me.”
“And god forbid that might happen,” Haylee said with a snort.
Mere - Charloft Winter Bingo “Love Letters”
“Hey, pass this forward.”
Someone had tapped Mere’s shoulder in class and passed her a note. She actually didn’t know the name of the boy that was sitting behind her. She knew that it was someone who was in her math class because he had skipped a year, but otherwise she didn’t know who it was.
Whomever it was hadn’t folded up the note very well, so, as she was holding it, she could see what was written. The boy had written FAR too much for her to do more than scan it, but she could see that he had written a lot of stuff that was basically professing his love to the blond at the head of the row.
Tapping the shoulder of the boy in front of her, she whispered to him to pass it up and handed him the note, but her mind had already flickered to the idea of wondering if she’d ever meet someone who would ever want to write so much stuff like that to her. She wasn’t really the ‘dating’ type, but every girl, deep down, occasionally wanted to be romanced like that.
She just didn’t expect it to happen to her any time soon. Or ever.
(OOC: Takes place at the beginning of Mere’s sophomore year of high school.))
Haylee - Charloft Winter Bingo “Wreath”
“I told you: my family tree is more like a wreath. It circles in certain parts.”
Haylee hated large groups of parties, but it beat going home to an asshole father and a mother who could give a shit if he hit her or not. Sure, he liked to take his anger out on her mother, but if he saw her first, so be it.
That was why she was at this party. It was her senior year in high school, and her school was small enough that everyone knew everyone. It was why that, while she didn’t really have what anyone would call friends, she had people that she hung around, made some jokes with, and basically used to pass the time. She actually hung with the ‘druggie’ crowd, because they were the most tolerable to her. They had fewer pretentions.
She passed the joint and laughed. “Yeah, I know no one should be proud and say shit like that, but I’m a person who believes in telling the truth at all costs, even to myself,” she said with a smirk.
“Come on, Haylee. No one sane would admit something like that about their own family,” Janice, the girl next to her said.
“Yeah, and who said that Haylee was sane?” One of the guys shouted from the corner.
Haylee grabbed a beer bottle and hurled it in his direction, only missing his face because he managed to duck at the last minute. “And just WHO the fuck asked you anything?” she snarled, before turning back to Janice and laughing again. “But yeah. Might as well be honest about things, you know? Maybe if I was proud of my relatives, I’d hide that or something, but fuck those bitches. They don’t deserve niceties like lying for them.”
“Wow, either you are crazy or your family is full of assholes,” Janice remarked, taking a swallow of her beer.
Haylee just shrugged. “Can it be both?” she asked with another laugh.
Haylee - Charloft Twosday
Today, tell us about two dates you've been on. If you've never been a romantic date, tell us about two times you got together with somebody for a social purpose.
Fuck me…this is kind of embarrassing. As a human…I didn’t date. I didn’t die a VIRGIN or anything, but I always figured that you shouldn’t go on a date with someone unless you liked them in some way. Maybe no romantically, but at least just…something, you know? In twenty-five years, I never ran across anyone that I remotely liked enough to want to do that with. I turned down blind dates that people tried to set me up on because I feel like that.
I went to parties and shit in high school (better than going home), and I went to a few book release things after I started writing professionally, but nothing really sticks out in my head.
The closest thing I’ve had to a date PERIOD (even after I became a vampire) was when, one night, Sy dragged me out of bed and took me up to the roof of my apartment complex and watched a meteor shower with me. He like, literally wrapped me up in a bed sheet after I wouldn’t get out of bed and carried me up to the roof like he was some messed up Santa Claus. It was…it was actually kind of nice. One of those few memories I have that I really cherish.
((OOC Note: Full scene is here to any curious.))
Mere - Charloft Twosday
Today, tell us about two dates you've been on. If you've never been a romantic date, tell us about two times you got together with somebody for a social purpose.
Just two? *laughs* God, now I have to be picky and everything. Guess I’ll mention some of my favorites then.
1. It didn’t start as a date. It started as running into someone that I helped out a little by talking to him. I ran into Ash at the Bronze, and we danced. I’m SUCH a charming individual that he fell for me a bit. He even like, managed to make a rose appear out of nowhere and gave it to me. I didn’t know about magic then, so I kind of just assumed that he already had it on him (or pulled it out of his butt, I don’t know). Then we went back to my home and…yeah, X-rated stuff happened. Fun though!
2. Recently, I ran into an old friend at Avarice, named Kevin. He had broken up with his very long term girlfriend recently because he had become convinced that he held her on such a pedestal that he couldn’t really be his true self around her. Well, I was someone that he COULD be his true self around, he quickly found out. I’ll just say that we found out that we had very similar interests and then went off and explored them.
Oh GOD I’m kind of a tramp. I can’t really help it, though. Now I’m a one-man girl, though. I can say THAT much for myself.
Mere - Charloft Winter Bingo “Hot Chocolate”
Mere usually spent all of her money on coffee at Chloe’s Sugar Shack, but today was different. She wasn’t exactly dying for the extra caffeine, as she’d been up for over twenty-four hours. Sure, hot chocolate still had plenty of sugar (and chocolate had some caffeine in it as well), but that was still better off for her in the long run.
She’d been up for so long because she had been doing a long term session in the recording studio. She had actually been up all night with Lucy, Chloe, and Kevin, coming in for some vocals to add to a song that they were working on. Lucy had written a song that required a female vocalist, and, instead of doing it herself, she’d actually asked Mere to do it. The song was about love, and she said that it would be extra weird if she had sang it with Kevin, as they were brother and sister. That would have been a little gross.
Mere had been extra happy when Lucy had asked her to come in. She knew that Lucy could have gotten just about anyone, after all. Also, while Mere was a great guitarist, she wasn’t as well known for her voice. It was good, but it wasn’t the screaming monster that Skylar was so well known for. It had warmed her heart a little for Lucy to ask her to come in.
Also, working with the honey was always hot.
So, she was nursing some hot chocolate before heading home. She figured it was better for her than coffee, anyway.