Started a new manuscript today.

Because I'm already restless with no writing project in the wing. The manuscript tab to the right has thus been updated!

This one's style incredibly different from how I'm accustomed to writing (this story is told from the perspective of a modern teenage girl in first person, the direct opposite of SoF), and the writing just springs out of nowhere as I type. It's very exciting...so exciting that I wanted to share a snippet I just finished with ya'll. Read on for it! :)

I know how the world ends.

Some say the world ends in fire. Others say it ends in a flood, or a supreme deity smites us all with no mercy. I’ve heard people stand on street corners on soap boxes and shout to the world that it’s end is near. We will all be judged at the end times, they say, their eyes wild and frantic. There is nothing we can do to stop it. I always wondered, as I passed such people, why they were raising their voices and screaming for all they were worth if what they preached was true. Would that be how any of us, should one of us be gifted with the ability to see the truth, with how it all ends, act? I can’t say it would be my first response. Warn people, yes, but I’ve seen crazy people all my life. I know the signs, I know what others shrink away from and decree as abnormal.

I know what will not be tolerated.

It would be my choice, if I knew when it was to come, to let it. I have no one to warn, no one to frighten with my doomsday speeches and predictions that none would take seriously. I have nothing, but even as I passed such people in the beginning, my head down and my eyes cast anywhere else, my music blaring in my ears as I walked, I had everything. I had everything because I was not standing at that street corner screaming those words, I had everything because I was not in this moment that jars the irony so deep into me I wonder if anyone would be able to extract it, if I were to live. It’s doubtful.

I know how it all ends.

It is with none of the things that humans, over time, have concocted. The irony of it all is what the world does end with, and how it is so simple. How something like this eluded even the greatest story teller, even the greatest mind that ran over the probability of the universe running it’s course.

The world ends with a name.

My name.

My identity strung in one word. Three syllables for those who do not know me, two for those that do. The very few I held close to my chest and refused to let go.

It would be a very short tale to tell if that was how I began, with the end. All tales have beginnings and ends, and I could not help but begin mine with where I stand now.

I’ve always been a bit backwards.

Let me begin again, the best I can, with what I know.

My name is Cynthia McDonnell.

Remember that name when it is whispered at the end, and remember, remember as this unfurls, one very important fact you cannot let go of.

I know how the world ends.

And very soon, so will you.

Prompts.

I've been writing a lot of SoF lately, so I wanted to do something different. I think it's important to switch it up now and then with writing. I searched for some prompts, and came up with "Flourish of hate". It seems different enough, so I ran with it; featuring Cindy from Crossfire!

Do any of you guys have any prompt ideas? I'd love to try them out!

There were two things that I had never felt before.

Two very important things, both interlinked by their intensity, woven into each other like needle and thread. These two things were as important as life to many and were nothing to a very few, and even those few were lying. I knew they were lying now, as I stood and stared, and I knew that as soon as one of them clicked into place, the other would be out of my grasp for forever.

You could not hold all the cards and still sit at the table.

I had never been skilled at bluffing, and I refused to let this be any exception. I had not been told by a kind parent or a loving mentor that either of these things were dangerous, that either of them were binding. That if you put your hands into the shallows it would envelope you, suck in you in and never let you go as if it were tar. It would stain your skin and rip whatever was left of you out through your pores until you were convinced that you could never feel more alive, never feel more invigorated then you did at that moment. It would throb and ache and shoot ice through your veins that was melted by fire shortly afterwards, singing everything else that you thought you held. Your fingers would be raw and bleeding after you touched it, and once you invited it in, once it slunk lovers hands over you, you could never go back.

It would take a part of you you could never replace, and it would own that piece until you died. Until your last breath scattered through your body, it would have you.

I would like to say that I fought, that I struck out against it before it could claim me. I wish that I could write this to you and tell you of my struggle, of how it clawed at my throat and I pried it away from my skin before the claws sank too deep.

But I can not.

It slunk up to me and I threw open my arms and invited it in. I wrapped it around me like a second skin, as if it clothed me and I were naked without it. I let it choke every breath out of me that I had, let it rip my veins and replace it with its own pounding venom until it escalated in my ears and thrummed its touch across every part of me.

Never had I felt more alive, and as I stared across the room at the woman on the opposite side of the table, it was through new eyes. Everything had been repainted in aggressive shades of crimson, and I let it curl my lips into a snarl, I let it lower my brows over my eyes and coil my body into tension that could only be released by a series of three words- three words that were representations of one of the two things I had never felt. Three words that were equally important to another set.

“I hate you,” I whispered, and watched as the ripples from my body plunging into the thick feeling boiled to a stand still and the identification was complete.

And with a flourish of hate, I leaned back in my chair against my bound hands clasped behind me and smiled.