Post by Black Sakura on Nov 2, 2006 19:53:14 GMT -5
"It's done."
Jane Smith looked at the last page of the finished draft of her latest story, The Trio of Bathsheba, with a sense of profound accomplishment that can only be felt by artists when they feel that they have created their greatest masterpiece. The Trio, as Jane herself affectionately had nicknamed it,stared back at her with adoring eyes, as a newborn child may look at his mother. Jane almost wanted to stroke the very computer on which her story resided. Gently, she guided the mouse to the 'print' button on the screen, and somewhere in the next room, in her mother's study, a printer snorted to life. With a great sigh, Jane also clicked the 'save' button, the second time she had done so in the past ten minutes. She had lost some of her best work in a computer crash not long ago, and she wasn't taking any chances this time, especially with The Trio.
Jane was about as plain a girl as you'd ever care to meet. She had brown, medium-length hair, an ordinary face, an unexceptional build, walked with a slightly straight, slightly curved posture as most of us do, and had dull brown eyes. Her skin was pale and like china, though not really awfully pretty, but then, it was not really awfully horrid either, for that matter. There was absolutely nothing noticeable about her appearance; one would pass her by in the street without a thought. She was entirely the average person, and it was almost strange in itself how normal she was.
Jane's personality was a quiet one, and she was quite the dreamer, and rather artsy. Perhaps it was her unobtrusive nature combined with the fact that she was almost invisible to the world around her due to her normalcy that made her friends forget about her during the entire summer. Of course, during the school year they didn't really mind her presence at the lunch tables or anything, but no one really truly cared about her. Jane knew and accepted this fact with indifference. After all, her main objective in life was not to make friends, but, rather, to write. Friends would come to her of their own accord once she made a name for herself. Until then, she was content to being forgotten.
Her talents in writing were neither appreciated nor noticed in the world, though it wasn't too much of a bother to her right now. She knew when she got older and more proficient, she would be seen, heard, and read by everyone. Eager she was to witness that day, but, until then, she did not mind not being noticed.
"Jane," called a voice from the next room.
"Coming, mother," Jane said, scooting the blue computer chair back and stepping into the next room.
"Jane," her mother stated again as Jane came in. "Is this the story you've been working on lately?"
Jane's mother, Mrs. Michaela Smith, was not in the least ordinary. Her hair was a stunning gold blonde and waist long, but done up in an elegant style. Her eyes were strikingly green, bright and luminescent. Her skin was peach and just delicate enough to give her a frail appearance. Despite her intense beauty, however, it always seemed to Jane as though her mother wore a thick ice facade. Jane had seen pictures of her mother as a little girl, and always, in every photograph, her mother had been surrounded by many entities who had claimed to be her friends. Never did Jane ever see a picture of her mother solo, or with less than two other persons. It was even rare to see the same person in two different photographs. For this, Jane did not envy her mother; rather, pitied her. It must be even more horrible to have fake friends than to have no friends at all. At least, when one is alone in the world, he can never betray himself. So-called 'friends' have no scruples against giving away one's secrets, unless one is rich, powerful, and attractive.
"Yes, it is my story," Jane responded quietly. She stood hesitantly and walked into the next room. Her mother was flipping through the pages amusedly.
"The Trio of Bathsheba, eh? How extraordinary." Michaela's interest was only polite, and was quite short-lived.
Jane said nothing. She paid no heed to her mother's underlying indifference. In the end, Michaela's opinions would not matter, Jane knew. The general public would love her more than her society-dame of a mother.
As Jane extended her arm out to pick up the sheath of papers which was her printed story, Michaela began to play with her daughter's hair.
"Why aren't you doing your hair the way I've taught you to? Don't you know that the current styles involve up-ness? Not hanging over your face like a nasty emo girl. Come on, put your hair back."
"I don't want to!" exclaimed Jane, tearing her head away. She did not notice nor mind the few strands of hair that were pulled out of her head, left hanging limply in her mother's hands.
"Why don't you want to?" Michaela's voice was cold and interrogating.
Jane flinched. She hated these confrontations. "Just leave me alone! I don't care about being fashionable!"
"You need to look decent."
"YOUR version of decent!" Jane rolled her eyes, an unconscious habit of hers.
"Yes. No one's ever going to want to be friends with you if you don't comb your hair and look nice."
"I don't look NOT nice!" Jane spat out the words angrily. Why did her mother care so much? What was her problem? Did she think that she was actually making Jane's life BETTER by telling her to do these things to herself, things that did not improve her in the least?
"What are you talking about? You dress VERY ugly."
"You know what?" Jane's face screwed up in anger. "I don't want to continue this conversation." With that, she stormed angrily away.
"You come back here!" Michaela's haughty voice cut across the air with the rigidity of a knife. "You have no right to turn your back on me!"
"I have the right to not be here!" Jane didn't even stop or look back behind her.
"I'm going to count to three," Michaela announced. "If you don't come back here--"
"I'm NOT three years old!" Here Jane spun around, furiously. "I'm three years from being a legal adult. In three years, I can leave you and--"
"...And you'll go to college, paid for by your father and I. And you'll not be able to get a decent job until you graduate from at least that."
Jane had heard this a thousand times before. In reply, she stormed down the hallway again.
"You'll regret this!" Michaela screamed.
"I don't care!" Jane yelled in return.
She went back to her room, after a time, to collapse on her bed. With a curse, she curled up under the unmade covers. Why did she bother to even stick up against her mother? It was always so futile.
In an attempt to forget the episode, Jane read through her new story for the twentieth time, savoring every word upon her lips.
An hour passed. Jane had finished reading her story, and had drifted off to an uneasy sleep. This she awoke when, suddenly, a blasting of sirens paused outside of her home.
Jane stood and looked out the window of her third-story room, which faced out onto the driveway. Squad cars had pulled up at the front curb, and her mother, bruised and bloody, was screaming and pointing to the house. Jane opened the window to better hear what was going on.
"She's in there!" Michaela was screeching and sobbing at the same time. Several of her fellow social butterflies had surrounded her and were offering support. "She's in there! She fought with me and then tried to kill me!"
"What?" "Who?" "Why?"
The demands floated, unanswered, in the air. Michaela gave a very vague reply in explanation.
"I wouldn't know WHY, of course--who knows with young people--but I think she might just have done it because she's jealous of my personal success...for being who I am!"
This statement gleaned the heartfelt sympathy of many members of the throng which encompassed her, and soon her form was lost among the bodies.
Jane was astounded. Her mother...her very own mother...was framing her! What a cold, heartless fiend...and she even supposed that Jane could possibly be jealous of her! She couldn't be more wrong; Jane pitied her greatly.
But now the question was WHY was Michaela doing this? Jane thought, gazing out as the people outside milled around aimlessly. Was it because Jane had something Michaela wanted? Probably not; she could take whatever she wanted from her without an elaborate frame-up. Was it something to do with making herself more popular? Possibly. People would just eat this story up, and call Michaela a martyr of a sort. But she could do something else if that was her only end in mind.
Then Jane realized something. "My work!"
Michaela was trying to steal her writing. Even without really reading Jane's pages or understanding her thoughts, Michaela knew it would always be far superior to whatever she could produce. So Michaela was not satisfied with her comfortable life as a society dame, eh? She had to steal her own daughter's passionate works just to up her popularity?
Heavy footsteps and shouting of the cops were heard on the stairwell. Jane began to panic, just a bit. She didn't want Michaela to have her work. And she knew that, if Michaela said that the stories that Jane had written were, in fact, HERS, then who was more likely to be believed? Not Jane, certainly--the strange nerdy teenager who had no friends to speak of.
But Jane was not about to let her mother steal what was her own. In a flurry, she drew a large black pen from a drawer in her unkempt, messy desk, and wrote, in large letters, at the top of her page: Property of Jane Smith, author. With that, Jane threw back the catch on the window, climbing up onto the sill. Then, as the pounding feet of the cops tramped down the outside hallway, she threw herself down to her instantaneous, and virtually insignificant in the general scope of things, death.
The police did not even notice the teenager as she committed her righteous suicide. They instead barged into the room immediately next to Jane's, to arrest the maid, Genevieve Estrada. This young woman had commenced to have a catfight with Michaela (her employer) immediately after Jane's spiteful episode. So, in reality, Michaela was not trying to frame her daughter, nor steal her stories.
Sometimes jumping to the wrong conclusion can be positively disastrous.
Jane Smith looked at the last page of the finished draft of her latest story, The Trio of Bathsheba, with a sense of profound accomplishment that can only be felt by artists when they feel that they have created their greatest masterpiece. The Trio, as Jane herself affectionately had nicknamed it,stared back at her with adoring eyes, as a newborn child may look at his mother. Jane almost wanted to stroke the very computer on which her story resided. Gently, she guided the mouse to the 'print' button on the screen, and somewhere in the next room, in her mother's study, a printer snorted to life. With a great sigh, Jane also clicked the 'save' button, the second time she had done so in the past ten minutes. She had lost some of her best work in a computer crash not long ago, and she wasn't taking any chances this time, especially with The Trio.
Jane was about as plain a girl as you'd ever care to meet. She had brown, medium-length hair, an ordinary face, an unexceptional build, walked with a slightly straight, slightly curved posture as most of us do, and had dull brown eyes. Her skin was pale and like china, though not really awfully pretty, but then, it was not really awfully horrid either, for that matter. There was absolutely nothing noticeable about her appearance; one would pass her by in the street without a thought. She was entirely the average person, and it was almost strange in itself how normal she was.
Jane's personality was a quiet one, and she was quite the dreamer, and rather artsy. Perhaps it was her unobtrusive nature combined with the fact that she was almost invisible to the world around her due to her normalcy that made her friends forget about her during the entire summer. Of course, during the school year they didn't really mind her presence at the lunch tables or anything, but no one really truly cared about her. Jane knew and accepted this fact with indifference. After all, her main objective in life was not to make friends, but, rather, to write. Friends would come to her of their own accord once she made a name for herself. Until then, she was content to being forgotten.
Her talents in writing were neither appreciated nor noticed in the world, though it wasn't too much of a bother to her right now. She knew when she got older and more proficient, she would be seen, heard, and read by everyone. Eager she was to witness that day, but, until then, she did not mind not being noticed.
"Jane," called a voice from the next room.
"Coming, mother," Jane said, scooting the blue computer chair back and stepping into the next room.
"Jane," her mother stated again as Jane came in. "Is this the story you've been working on lately?"
Jane's mother, Mrs. Michaela Smith, was not in the least ordinary. Her hair was a stunning gold blonde and waist long, but done up in an elegant style. Her eyes were strikingly green, bright and luminescent. Her skin was peach and just delicate enough to give her a frail appearance. Despite her intense beauty, however, it always seemed to Jane as though her mother wore a thick ice facade. Jane had seen pictures of her mother as a little girl, and always, in every photograph, her mother had been surrounded by many entities who had claimed to be her friends. Never did Jane ever see a picture of her mother solo, or with less than two other persons. It was even rare to see the same person in two different photographs. For this, Jane did not envy her mother; rather, pitied her. It must be even more horrible to have fake friends than to have no friends at all. At least, when one is alone in the world, he can never betray himself. So-called 'friends' have no scruples against giving away one's secrets, unless one is rich, powerful, and attractive.
"Yes, it is my story," Jane responded quietly. She stood hesitantly and walked into the next room. Her mother was flipping through the pages amusedly.
"The Trio of Bathsheba, eh? How extraordinary." Michaela's interest was only polite, and was quite short-lived.
Jane said nothing. She paid no heed to her mother's underlying indifference. In the end, Michaela's opinions would not matter, Jane knew. The general public would love her more than her society-dame of a mother.
As Jane extended her arm out to pick up the sheath of papers which was her printed story, Michaela began to play with her daughter's hair.
"Why aren't you doing your hair the way I've taught you to? Don't you know that the current styles involve up-ness? Not hanging over your face like a nasty emo girl. Come on, put your hair back."
"I don't want to!" exclaimed Jane, tearing her head away. She did not notice nor mind the few strands of hair that were pulled out of her head, left hanging limply in her mother's hands.
"Why don't you want to?" Michaela's voice was cold and interrogating.
Jane flinched. She hated these confrontations. "Just leave me alone! I don't care about being fashionable!"
"You need to look decent."
"YOUR version of decent!" Jane rolled her eyes, an unconscious habit of hers.
"Yes. No one's ever going to want to be friends with you if you don't comb your hair and look nice."
"I don't look NOT nice!" Jane spat out the words angrily. Why did her mother care so much? What was her problem? Did she think that she was actually making Jane's life BETTER by telling her to do these things to herself, things that did not improve her in the least?
"What are you talking about? You dress VERY ugly."
"You know what?" Jane's face screwed up in anger. "I don't want to continue this conversation." With that, she stormed angrily away.
"You come back here!" Michaela's haughty voice cut across the air with the rigidity of a knife. "You have no right to turn your back on me!"
"I have the right to not be here!" Jane didn't even stop or look back behind her.
"I'm going to count to three," Michaela announced. "If you don't come back here--"
"I'm NOT three years old!" Here Jane spun around, furiously. "I'm three years from being a legal adult. In three years, I can leave you and--"
"...And you'll go to college, paid for by your father and I. And you'll not be able to get a decent job until you graduate from at least that."
Jane had heard this a thousand times before. In reply, she stormed down the hallway again.
"You'll regret this!" Michaela screamed.
"I don't care!" Jane yelled in return.
She went back to her room, after a time, to collapse on her bed. With a curse, she curled up under the unmade covers. Why did she bother to even stick up against her mother? It was always so futile.
In an attempt to forget the episode, Jane read through her new story for the twentieth time, savoring every word upon her lips.
An hour passed. Jane had finished reading her story, and had drifted off to an uneasy sleep. This she awoke when, suddenly, a blasting of sirens paused outside of her home.
Jane stood and looked out the window of her third-story room, which faced out onto the driveway. Squad cars had pulled up at the front curb, and her mother, bruised and bloody, was screaming and pointing to the house. Jane opened the window to better hear what was going on.
"She's in there!" Michaela was screeching and sobbing at the same time. Several of her fellow social butterflies had surrounded her and were offering support. "She's in there! She fought with me and then tried to kill me!"
"What?" "Who?" "Why?"
The demands floated, unanswered, in the air. Michaela gave a very vague reply in explanation.
"I wouldn't know WHY, of course--who knows with young people--but I think she might just have done it because she's jealous of my personal success...for being who I am!"
This statement gleaned the heartfelt sympathy of many members of the throng which encompassed her, and soon her form was lost among the bodies.
Jane was astounded. Her mother...her very own mother...was framing her! What a cold, heartless fiend...and she even supposed that Jane could possibly be jealous of her! She couldn't be more wrong; Jane pitied her greatly.
But now the question was WHY was Michaela doing this? Jane thought, gazing out as the people outside milled around aimlessly. Was it because Jane had something Michaela wanted? Probably not; she could take whatever she wanted from her without an elaborate frame-up. Was it something to do with making herself more popular? Possibly. People would just eat this story up, and call Michaela a martyr of a sort. But she could do something else if that was her only end in mind.
Then Jane realized something. "My work!"
Michaela was trying to steal her writing. Even without really reading Jane's pages or understanding her thoughts, Michaela knew it would always be far superior to whatever she could produce. So Michaela was not satisfied with her comfortable life as a society dame, eh? She had to steal her own daughter's passionate works just to up her popularity?
Heavy footsteps and shouting of the cops were heard on the stairwell. Jane began to panic, just a bit. She didn't want Michaela to have her work. And she knew that, if Michaela said that the stories that Jane had written were, in fact, HERS, then who was more likely to be believed? Not Jane, certainly--the strange nerdy teenager who had no friends to speak of.
But Jane was not about to let her mother steal what was her own. In a flurry, she drew a large black pen from a drawer in her unkempt, messy desk, and wrote, in large letters, at the top of her page: Property of Jane Smith, author. With that, Jane threw back the catch on the window, climbing up onto the sill. Then, as the pounding feet of the cops tramped down the outside hallway, she threw herself down to her instantaneous, and virtually insignificant in the general scope of things, death.
The police did not even notice the teenager as she committed her righteous suicide. They instead barged into the room immediately next to Jane's, to arrest the maid, Genevieve Estrada. This young woman had commenced to have a catfight with Michaela (her employer) immediately after Jane's spiteful episode. So, in reality, Michaela was not trying to frame her daughter, nor steal her stories.
Sometimes jumping to the wrong conclusion can be positively disastrous.
