(0.5)
"Lana, it's going to be alright," I whispered into her mind, feeling the pain she felt from last night and trying to empathize with her.
"Dam it Destie! If you were who I am and I was who you are, you'd want me to shut up!" Lana said in a harsh but quiet tone. I took her advice and "shut up." Though I hurt nowhere near how she did, I still knew that it could've been very close to—if not—outright unbearable for her.
This is probably getting confusing, so I'll try not to make things worse. See, I'm not Lana, and I'm not a physical being. I'm in her mind, and I can talk to her, but I'm not bound by her. And, at the same time, I'm not in her mind, and I will always see her in the third person. So, to Lana, I sometimes seem like a friend or a helpful thought, or idea. But from my perspective, I'm usually nowhere near her. I'm like consciousness without a specific personality or a tangible essence. Now, some people reading this might think that I am some sort of demonic spirit, but it's quite the opposite. I know this is hard to understand. I'm kind of powerful, like almost all-powerful, but I am limited ever so slightly to what Final Sees allows me to share with you.
If you don't already know, Final is "technically" the "author" of "Book." So, if it's not clear by now, I'm just going to go out and say it. I am Prospective. Yep, that's my name, though in this Book Lana calls me Destie (1).
(1.5)
Oh, I thought I should mention one more thing; often in this Book, if it seems as though Prospective sounds—or rather—treads a little off, it is because I will technically be in the shoes of Lana. Or in other words, being her character. And yes, I did just refer to myself in the third person forty-one words ago. Don't bother counting them; continue the story.
(2)
Also, I thought you should know this, and I am allowed to do that sort of thing because I am the Third, Second, and First Persons in one existence. So don't be surprised if I refer to myself in these forms. But what happens to Lana's personality if I become her character? I guess you'll just have to find out later in this Book.
"Stepping into the stars" is a phrase that I will probably use several times. It's a kind of state of mind that Lana can manually put herself into if she is in enough despair. And it is a different dimension for her. She can zone out of reality completely and entrance herself into her own universe. She is the only person on the planet in this Book who can communicate directly to Perspective without Destie being Lana's character (2.5). This process of possession is identified by Lana's dark hair turning into a silvery-white color, and I will be able to talk to whoever I want, oh yeah, and do whatever I want, because I'm, I am the character Lana. You're probably still wondering, "What happens to Lana when I do this?" As I said, just wait and find out! To everyone who Lana tells about me, I seem like a personality, and even Lana thinks I'm a personality living in her head. She thinks I got there because of quantum entanglement. "Lol…" (3)
(4)
(5)
Lana was sitting cross-legged on her bed, face unseen because it was buried in her wet hands. This was only the second time she had ever cried all year. I noticed a dark red dripping from Lana's hands and onto her sheets. Lana could smell blood coming from somewhere, and she lifted her head enough to get a good view of her palms. She sucked in a deep breath, then went to her nose with a finger to see how bad it was, but the blood wasn't coming from her nose. Lana hated bleeding, for it meant that she was losing life. She smacked her lips, but the blood wasn't coming from there either.
Lana quickly scooted off her bed and walked over to the tall free-standing six-foot mirror near the center of her room. She slowly brought her hands up to her face and could see that they were trembling. She let them drop to her sides, then stared at her reflection. It was like nothing she had ever seen before. Hesitantly, she put an index finger to the inside corners of each eye and winced in pain.
"Oh my god," Lana said softly, "damn it, how come I didn't notice this earlier?"
"Because you were swallowed in your grief, you didn't notice the sting," I told her.
"Shut up, Destie, I thought I told you to piss off." Lana blinked away the remaining blood from her eyes and winced again, fighting back the pain. "I can't believe this," she said, making her way back to the queen-size bed in the middle of her room, planning to clean the red that had stained her bed.
She had been crying blood. Lana pieced herself back together to prevent another mess to clean up. She went downstairs to get a soap-spray bottle and a rag to clean up the stain.
"Spill something?" her mom asked as Lana got the supplies she needed.
"Uh, yeah. No, it's just a nosebleed," she replies.
"Everything ok?"
"Yeah, Mom, the air's just been a little dry up in my room, everything is fine."
Her mom nodded, and Lana went back up to her room. She finished cleaning up the blood and tossed the damp red rag into the laundry basket that stood to the right of her dresser, and placed the spray bottle on the dresser, then walked back to her mirror.
"What the fuck is wrong with me?!" Lana whispers, still not fully believing that only moments ago she had been crying crimson tears.
She took in the full form of self's reflection in tight dark blue jeans and a loosely fitting magenta sweatshirt that was probably one or two sizes too big. Lana did not move or blink. She wanted the bloodstains to be fake; she wanted them to just be her imagination, but she had to be sure. Just before breaking eye contact with her reflection, she felt her spine tingle for a brief moment and thought nothing of it.
She crossed her room to the laundry basket and reached inside to pull out the bloodied rag, but it wasn't there.
"Destie?!" Lana asked in a frightened tone. "You saw me put it in here, right?"
"How could I have not seen you?" I responded.
"Then where is it?"
Lana had a nagging feeling to turn around, and she did.
"Ugh," she tilted her head back in annoyance to look at the ceiling. "Seriously, god damn it Destie! I told you to let me know whenever you are going to kick me. This is my body, so be thankful I don't kill myself."
"There is a part of your brain that caused me to exist, so this is also kind of my body, too," I retorted.
So, throughout this Book, you are probably going to be left confused lots of the time. And as I said before, I'm going to try my best to make sure you stay in the know. The term "Kicking" is something Lana and I made up to describe the action of me taking control of Lana's character. So whatever I do in Lana's body will result in her having no conscious memory of any of my actions while "in her shoes." When Lana was staring in the mirror a minute ago, I inhabited her self and took the rag out of the dirty laundry to put it on her bed for what reason, well, I get to that right away. So after I relocated the rag, I went back to the mirror so that she didn't suspect a thing.
Well, almost not nothing. Lowering her eyes to her bed again, she made her way over and snatched the rag, bringing it up to her face.
"What are you doing?" I asked Lana, as she brought it to her lips to taste.
"I had to make sure all five senses tell me that it is blood."
"You shouldn't worry about the blood; that's why I moved the rag."
"No, Destie, something is wrong with me, it's not normal for blood to be coming out of my tear ducts, something isn't right."
She puts it back into the basket, satisfied that it was blood but wishing that it wasn't.
"And you got my sheets dirtier."
Lana was annoyed, but I told her, "It's fine, it will dry."
Lana sighed as she lied down on her back on top of the blankets.
(5.5)
"I know there is something very wrong with me," Lana said, her voice becoming thick with something other than sadness. "And I think you know what it is," she accused. If I told her the truth, it would make her aware of the whole plot, and then this would no longer be a Book.
How would you feel if someone told you that your future, and you knew that you were just an insignificant character whose life was made up by some storyteller? Lana has every right not to know just that.
"There's nothing wrong with you," I said. "Jesus was distressed so much to the point where he sweat blood. Maybe you're just so depressed that you're crying blood."
I chuckled slightly, and Lana heard me in her mind's ear.
"You know I don't like you sometimes," she said.
"I know, but try and get some sleep, you've been so distraught."
Lana hesitantly obliged, but when she was breathing deeply, she dreamed of a voided mind. Nothing but utter blackness, a never-ending hole. And this dream was just about the most tormenting one yet. You might be asking me, "Why put her through such torture?" But if I were going to be most honest, I'd just say that it is the proper character development. It's true, but at the same time, I wish I could just make that same development a different way.
This might be a shocker, and you'll probably want to throw this Book down the stairs and never pick it back up, for what you are about to read might make you feel sick. But you need to know that I have a plan, and you need to trust me.
Lana finally woke up, exhausted and feeling as if she barely slept. She glanced at her alarm clock and sighed. It's two-thirty in the afternoon.
Lana felt a jolt of panic.
"I'm late for school."
She looked at the calendar hanging on the wall.
"It's Saturday…" she said, letting out a slow breath.
"You seemed panicked for a moment there. Are you doing ok, Lana?"
I know there is no way that she could know just yet of the horror I have done to her (or rather), for her.
"Do you have a problem? You know why I was panicking."
"I know, but I want you to acknowledge why you felt like you might get in trouble." I am still setting up the plot.
"I thought that it was either Friday or Monday, and two-thirty on a weekday means that last period more or less just started. I thought I was very late."
She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and lifted herself to her feet.
"God, I'm hungry. I need something nutritious and filling."
Lana looked down and rolled her eyes.
"Did you do this?"
"It was all you, girl, tossing and turning all night."
"I don't even want to think about last night."
She scanned her messy bed for the pants she had lost in her fit of sleep, then decided to put on a clean pair of leggings from her wardrobe. Lana headed downstairs and into the kitchen.
The sorrowful and horrified shout escaped her throat even before her mind had time to consciously register the gruesome image that would haunt Lana for the rest of her life. Lana ran over to the beautifully twisted form of a human female with shattered features lying on the linoleum floor.
Her hair fell about the form of her mother as she kneeled beside her. The sobs that filled the air were enough to make a dragon bow its head. Every sense that Lana still had was assaulted on the highest level. The smell of blood, the absence of all other sounds in her world except for her broken cry. The feeling of cold skin that hung about her mother's bones, the never-fading sight of her mother, who had died due to some vicious and cruel, ruthless murder. And worst of all, the taste of death in the air.
It was so thick that she could barely breathe. Lana gasped through sobs, trying to fill her lungs with enough air to even cry. Never in her entire life did she think she'd have to prepare for such a tragedy.
"What the fuck is wrong with me!"
The words ripped out of her mouth like a savage claw, thirsty for blood vengeance. She opened her eyes for a brief moment, trying to see through a curtain of blood.
"God damn it!"
"Why do you always say that?" I said, knowing fully well that it wasn't the right thing to ask.
"Fuck you, Destie, are you blind?" Lana's voice broke, and I knew I may have gone just a little bit too far. "Fuck off!" I backed away in small increments. "If I had the power to murder you right now, I wouldn't hesitate. I just need to be alone for a moment. Come back again when you're not nosey." Bitterly, Lana finished with "Ha, never."
"Lana, I truly am sorry for your loss. I'm sure the person who killed your mother will be condemned."
"Hope, all you want... where do I go? I can't think."
I went too far.
The next thing that Lana did couldn't simply be explained in a few sentences, maybe not even a paragraph, and there is no time to explain because if I explained that, then I would have to explain just about everything else like that in this Book, and by then, this would be like, over a thousand pages long so bear with me. Ok? I have a plan for the story layout and plot, and everything has to fit together a certain way, or it would no longer be a Book. Lana is my creation, and I'm trying to make her perfect, and to get that perfection will take a shaping and molding process of her character.
At last, Lana got up slowly, her hair dripping with blood and hanging all about her face. And only one thought was shouting in her mind.
"Run!"
She didn't know why she was running, and she didn't know how. Destie was distant and almost non-existent. She wanted to run until she was no more. And she didn't know where she was running to.
The passing scenery blurred past her in her peripheral vision. Her mind was completely zoned out of reality, and her body was the only thing keeping her moving.
The exact location of her conscious mind is something that I can't tell you, do to the risk of plot holes (6). And I'm not going to go into detail about that, you just need to trust me.
It was a long time before Lana found herself again.
(7)