hurts "illuminated"


This is from a "series" of stories I've been writing on and off again for two or so years, about two families. One is the Rose family, and the other is the Pennington family, and it focuses on the children from these two families. From the Rose, which constitutes of only a mother and her kids, I focus on the kids, Connor "Rosie" and James "Jaimy" and their relationships with the Pennington kids, Adam and a girl that doesn't have a name. I originally focused on the story from the Pennington daughter's point of view, and it described how Jaimy ran away from home to New York City, addicted to crack, and is just now coming home because he's run out of money, while trouble is boiling at home. This right here takes place while Jaimy is in NYC, and from Rosie's point of view.

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                      My name is Rosie Rose.
My real name's Connor, but everyone calls me Rosie.
They say I'm a looker, and that my movie taste is that of an '80s freshman, but it's really the thought that counts, right? I'm a really big fan of Guns n' Roses, Tears for Fears, and Mew. I'm a bit of an artist, a comma aficionado, an enemy of periods; endings; good-byes. That sorta thing.

I remember in high school how I was pretty much the rebel. I laugh at the memories.

For four consecutive first days of school, teachers would ask, "Rose, Connor?" and I would stick my hand up lazily and roll my eyes, saying, "Rosie," as my friends snorted into their hands. Rosie. It was universally known that the guy in all black had the girliest name around. Duh. C'mon.

It was also univerally known that I was the chick magnet, heartbreaker, douche bag of the 21st century. Rumors floated around that I would have sex with a girl once and then dump her the next day; weird, because I have only had sex once, and that was with a girl I had known since 5th grade.

I did dump her the week after, but that's a whole other story entirely.

I have a younger brother named Jaimy. He's four years younger than me. They say we act a lot alike, and while I would have agreed with that statement from the ages of three to seventeen, nothing could be further from the truth now. We got into cigarettes for the first time together, and he would ask to bum a whiff or two in high school occasionally, but as for now, my kid brother is somewhere in the country, unreachable, razing his sanity bit by bit with every line of crack up his bloody nose.

Meanwhile, our mom is dying.

I couldn't say if he even knew. He doesn't know anything anymore. He's completely wasted his life on making sure he dies before he graduates.

I don't have a number. No address.

There have been moments when I couldn't care either way if he was dead or alive.

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Q: "Why does Renee like the name Jaimy so much anyway? Why are all of her characters named Jaimy?"
A: I have no idea. I like that name in general because Jaimy is this character in a series of books I like, but Jaimy is this character in my mind that functions as my masculine other-half too, and the name just appears out of nowhere a lot.

so long, the killers. i have to quit you. you really are my drug. xD

FREEWRITE! - before i do my stat homework, just to get the creative juices flowing before i get stabbed in the soul with probability formulas.
this  is a rewrite of a fight club -esque story, written instead of from the narrator from fight club's eyes, but renee p.'s.

So this was it: I peered out over the skyline, the pink dusk fading into a velvet, choking blue, and I finally heard the familiar footsteps coming closer down the hall. The glass windows of this abandoned office building were musty, but from this height I could see clearly out, and down. Way down.

"Renee."

I turned around, slowly, and clenched my teeth. He was here, right on time, just as I had wanted, but this was not at all as I had imagined. Because he was getting stronger and I was fading away, he stood upright, beaming, while I sagged, fighting for composure in his midst. His clothes were expensive, the height of fashion, but the dirty, oversized rags I wore drowned my limp frame in fabric.

He was beautiful, undoubtedly. He had thick, black hair that fell with perfect grace across his forehead, and his midnight blue eyes ached to be kissed. He was me, the perfect me, with immaculately pale skin, the perfect muscles, the best clothes.

"Jaimy," I could barely murmur through weak lips. "You're here."

"You asked me to come here, didn't you?" His smirk was disgustingly bright, knowing so many things that I didn't. He was doing so many things I couldn't do anymore. I was just too weak. He was replacing me, and I was fading away.

"Yes," I said stiffly, but I merely stared at him. How was I supposed to say this...

"I've changed my mind," I said, "about everything. I'm taking my life back."

His smirk didn't waver. "Oh yeah? And what makes you think you can do that?"

I hesitated, unsure. Stammering, I blurted, "B-because I don't need you anymore. I've realized you're not who I thought you were. You're not me at all, you're someone totally different."

"But I am you," Jaimy replied lazily, reaching into his impeccable leather jacket and pulling out a small shotgun, which gleamed wickedly in the moonlight. "You made me, don't you remember? To be the perfect person that you so desperately craved to be? And now your imperfections and your mediocrity are dying, just like you had wanted. You can't afford to be imperfect any longer, my dear."

"No," I whispered, my bony limbs quivering. The shotgun in his hand aimed closer and closer to the center of my chest with each second I stared at it. Suddenly, my will to live gave me sudden strength. "NO!" I screamed. "NO! Everything you said was a lie!"

His beauty, which I once thought captivating, now made me want to vomit as his smirk grew into a razor-sharp, pristine grin. He was mocking me; he thought my efforts to resist him were comical.

So I ran. I blew past him, praying that my rash decision wouldn't end with a bullet in my brain, but he shouted behind me, "You can't escape me! Stop trying!"

My pathetic lungs began to sear, my legs throbbing. I couldn't look back, I swore to myself I wouldn't--

"Nice try."

I screamed. I blinked, putting my hands in front of my face, because he was right there in front of me.

"You can't get rid of me, so stop trying," he said again, and he dug into his pocket for a lighter to ignite the cigarette already perched between his pouting lips. "Remember when I wrote that scathing email about your dad to all your friends because you were angry? Remember when I made you sob in self-pity because you weren't as pretty as your best friend? You had felt so good inside after all that."

The blood drained from my face. I could feel it rushing into my toes.

He chuckled lightly, blowing out a veil of blue smoke from his cigarette. The fumes attacked my eyes, forcing tears to collect. Power built up from deep within my chest, and it came rushing out as a moist sob. "Jaimy…," I almost begged, backing up as each of my heavy footsteps traced dread. "Jaimy, please don't do this."

"But I must, Renee."

"You can't!" I screamed again, pressing a palm to each of my ears. I clamped my teeth and eyes together as tightly as I could, hoping beyond hope that it would just block him out.

BANG!

My eyes shot open. Was I dead?

"Open your eyes!" he yelled, the sly grin finally disappearing from his mouth. "What do you see? Huh? Tell me!"

I was cowering. Shaking. "I see... only you."

He smiled. "That's what everyone else sees too, darling. They don't see you anymore, and that's the way it's supposed to be. When I finally kill you, my dear," he said, eyeballing his shotgun and cocking it with two hands, the smoke quivering between his lips, "only the parts you wanted of yourself…that you never had…will be the only parts that will exist."

"N-no-no!" I cried. "You can't!"

"You knew it was coming, Renee-"

"Stop!"

"Will you just shut up and stand still-"

"JAIMY! STOP IT, STOP IT!"

The cigarette fell out of his mouth as he began to laugh. He laughed and laughed, striding towards me with open arms, trying to wrap his arms around me like any boy who just wanted his girlfriend to shut up, but I pushed him away.

"It's crazy what a person will do to survive," I managed between gasps for air. Between one breath and the next, my hand wrapped around the shotgun in his left hand, dangling aimlessly, and I yanked it from his grip. The point came to a nice resting position between his eyes. He only had a second to make a pinched face before the bullet blasted a hole through his skull.

He was dead.

I was alive. I watched my alter-ego collapse before my heaving body, his haunting blue eyes still open, a trickle of blood winding its way down the side of his chin.

I was Jaimy: straight-A student, piano prodigy, a poet, a face so beautiful that it made them all just weep.

He was me: lazy, susceptible to emotions and bouts of cowardice.

With one last glance over my shoulder as I walked down the hall and pressed the down button for the elevator, I witnessed what life would have been like with a better me. I watched it die. There can only be one me. I climbed into the elevator as the cigarette that had fallen out of Jaimy's lips began to catch fire.