When Living is not Living: A Short Story by Me

When Living is not Living

By Snowie

“As soon as there is life there is danger.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The robot’s green eyes stared right at her, no, not right at her, right through her. Kassie stared straight back, saying nothing, thinking nothing. They had been like this for hours. Kassie had barely noticed. She had forgotten why she was staring at her father like this. How long had Kassie been standing there? The robot’s eyes flashed in a sort of automatic blink. Kassie blinked back. A ping came from the robot’s speaker. Kassie’s father turned around and rolled down the hall. He disappeared around the corner.

Kassie stood in the the hallway waiting for the nothing that would never come. Or possibly, the nothing was already there. Maybe the nothing was all Kassie’s life was. Maybe everything that ever existed was nothing at all. Everything that ever mattered to her (Which was nothing of much importance) was blanketed in nothing.

She moved her foot forward one inch, two inches, three, down. Kassie stared at her heavy feet as they shuffled. For some reason unbeknownst to her, it seemed like they were not her feet. Somehow the feet seemed to have detached themselves from her feet and found another person to carry around. She took another step and watched as the padded floor rose around her white shoes. Another step. Her hand touched the padded wall. Kassie looked up at the fake sunlight pouring from the fake windows. For a second she wondered what actual sunlight felt like. She froze. Why had she thought that? Sunlight was dangerous, the government said so. She could be thrown in jail for at least a month for just thinking about sunlight. Kassie held her breath. She waited for alarms to sound. None went off. Within seconds, the thought was forgotten and Kassie was left wondering what she was doing standing in the middle of the hallway.

Her mother came around the curved corner carrying the portable IV in her padded robot hands. Her usual monotone voice came on. “Time for lunch, Kassie.”

Kassie’s feet moved again and she was walking out of the hall and into the dinning area. She sat on the white padded floor and took the padded white IV from her mom. Kassie lifted her white shirt a couple of inches revealing pale white skin that had healed around a closed tube. Kassie took the tube from the IV and locked it into the tube that disappeared inside her. Kassie touched the start button lightly. A clear fluid filled the tubes and vanished inside of her. Three minutes later lunch was done. Kassie relaxed a bit. She had heard that lunch, breakfast, and dinner were the most dangerous parts of the day. Mom had told her that the government was working on making IVs safer. Kassie carefully unhooked the IV and stood. The robot bent over and picked up the IV. Kassie watched. Something shiny and pointed stuck out of the robot’s back.

“Mom, can you stop?” Kassie moved closer and the robot froze. It was an odd object. She had never seen anything like it in real life. Maybe she had seen something like it in the dangerous listings. What was it called again? ...Metal. That’s it. Metal. Kassie reached out and hesitated. This was wrong. She should not touch it. She should call the police and turn Mom in. Mom was dangerous. It would be the right thing to do, wouldn’t it? Kassie looked down at her mom. But, it was her mom. Would Dad notice if Mom left? Kassie looked at the metal sticking out of her mom’s back. She stared and turned her head to watch the fake light reflect off of the tip. The thing was so beautiful. Kassie’s hand shook as she moved closer. Her fingertips were inches away from the tip. Touching it once could not do any harm, could it? Even closer still. Perhaps everyone was wrong. How could something so beautiful be so dangerous?

Kassie poked the metal. She screamed.

Mom jerked up as Kassie snatched her hand back. Alarms blared through the house. Doors locked and the light flared. Kassie stared at her finger. It was throbbing slightly. A dot of red sat on the tip of her finger. She stared at the droplet and watched it fall to the ground. The padded floor soaked up the red and it spread through the fibers. Another droplet formed on her fingers. For a moment she stared at the droplet. Kassie hesitated then touched her finger to her lips. She licked the red dot. Something funny happened to her mouth. Her spit seemed to change and be different. She spit on the ground trying to make the funny spit go away. Mom stared at her. Her blue robot eyes blinked simultaneously.

The padded door swung open. Three men and a woman walked in wearing helmets and thick suits. The three men walked straight over to Mom and opened the control panel. One of the men punched in a code. Mom followed them out the door. Kassie looked away from Mom and the men. The woman was standing by her, waiting with a large medical kit. Kassie held out her finger for the woman. The woman bent over and opened her medical kit. She took Kassie’s finger and wiped away the red. The wipe dissolved in the woman’s hand. The woman brushed the remains away and the floor cleaned up for her. Kassie watched silently as the woman took out a lighted wand. The woman pressed the wand against Kassie’s finger. When the wand was removed, there was nothing to prove that the red had leaked from Kassie’s body.

The woman smiled and put her equipment away. “Now go lay in bed. By morning you will have forgotten everything terrible that has happened today.”

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”

Socrates

A Writer's Life Through Her Words: A To Kill A Mockingbird Essay

“Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy . . . but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee is considered one of the great American novels right next to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. This novel by Harper Lee is about a girl named Scout who is six years old at the beginning of the story. Scout, Jem, her brother; and Scout’s father, a lawyer named Atticus, live in the small town of Maycomb in Maycomb County, Alabama. Harper tells the story of how Jem broke his arms through the eye and words of Scout Finch: “When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.”(Page 1) The main event in this novel, besides Jem breaking his arm, is the trial of Tom Robinson, an African American accused of raping Mayella Ewell. All writers show more of their life than the writers realize. Many events, names, personalities, and characters are drawn from Harper Lee’s own life. 

As an adult, Harper studied law like her father. Her father, Amasa Coleman Lee, served in the Alabama legislature between 1927 and 1939. Amasa Lee was supposedly a segregationist until civil rights protests caught Amasa’s attention and sympathies. Harper Lee used all three of her mother’s names, Frances, Cunningham, and Finch, for characters in To Kill A Mockingbird. Finch is Scout’s last name, Francis is the name of one of Scout’s relatives, and Cunningham was the last name of a semi-important family in the book: “Hey, Mr. Cunningham.” (Page 153) In To Kill A Mockingbird Scout’s friend, Dill, was based off Truman Capote, a good friend throughout Harper Lee’s life. In the novel, Scout could read and write before Scout even went to school, and Scout read every night with Atticus. In real life, Harper was an avid reader and spent a great deal of time helping Truman Capote write his own novel. One of the main characters named Arthur “Boo” Radley was closely based off a man from Lee’s hometown of Monroeville. This man’s name was Alfred Boulware. According to townsfolk, Alfred and his two friends, Baggett and Sawyer, broke into the Hudson Store to steal cigarettes. Although, another town story claims the three boys shot out the store’s windows with a sling shot. Alfred, Baggett, and Sawyer were sentenced to attend reform school, but Alfred’s father would not let Alfred go. Instead, Alfred was to stay at home for the rest of his life. He was not allowed to leave the house without a family member to accompany him. The townspeople of Monroeville say that Alfred’s friends would often come over and sneak Alfred out of the house. “Arthur Radley just stays in the house, that’s all... Wouldn’t you stay in the house if you didn’t want to come out?” (Page 44)

Just like many of the character’s are tied to Harper Lee’s life, Maycomb is tied to Monroeville, Harper’s hometown. Both towns have a courthouse in the center of town where  similar court cases, like Alfred and Boo’s cases, were held. Both Maycomb and Monroeville are small, rural towns: “Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop . . . somehow it was hotter then . . .” (Page 5) Monroeville has grown quite a bit since the 1930s and if Maycomb was a real town, the town might have also grown. Both towns are county seats and are named after the county the towns are located in. Some writers, like Harper Lee, alter events from their own lives and place these altered events in the stories the writers write, for example the Alfred Boulware trial. Some of the general public believe that the Scottsboro Trials, may have created the idea of Tom Robinson’s trial for the rape of Mayella Ewell. These trials first took place in March of 1931 when Harper was six. In the Scottsboro Trials, nine African American teenager where accused of violence and rape. On the freight train, a fight erupted and the African Americans threw all but one of the caucasians off the train. Some of the men who where thrown off the train went to the nearest station in Stevenson to report “an assault by a gang of blacks”. The train was stopped and armed men rounded up every African American teenage boy that the men could find. These arrested boys came to be known as the Scottsboro Boys. Victoria Price and Ruby Bates claimed that twelve African American boys with knives and guns had raped them. Price accused six of the nine arrested boys. Just like a group of men came to hang Tom Robinson, a group of several hundred men gathered around the Scottsboro Jail hoping to hang the Scottsboro Boys. Neither group succeeded: “That proves something- that a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they’re still human... (m)aybe we need a police force of children...” (page 157) The first of many trials was held twelve days after the Scottsboro boys had been arrested. The case made its way to the Supreme Court where the convictions were overturned. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus, who was defending Tom Robinson, wanted to appeal the case until the case went to the Supreme Court in the North. Tom’s trial did not stand a chance in the prejudicial South. The trial was never appealed as Tom Robinson died soon after his first trial.

Finally, although Harper Lee has long time said that To Kill A Mockingbird was not based on Harper’s own life, many events, names, characters, and settings are drawn from Lee’s life. Harper Lee did admit that her father was the model for Atticus Finch.  To Kill A Mockingbird has other examples of similarities between the Harper Lee’s life and the novel, such as the Walter Lett trial from 1933. Today there is a movie for To Kill A Mockingbird where many of the examples from this essay can be found. Over all, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is a complex piece of literature formed from events and people who greatly affected Lee’s childhood. 

“If you just learn a single trick, Scout, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”

To Kill A Mockingbird... Essay to Come Soon

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I thought that To Kill a Mockingbird was a very interesting and fascinating book. I loved how accurate the time period was in the book and the characters who were created. I had to write an essay on this book and I chose to write about the similarities between Harper Lee's real life and her book including characters, setting, and events. This opened up a whole new world for me and made the book even more interesting for me.

View all my reviews

I WON!

I guess that's it for November. It's been a whirl wind and I can't wait to suffer through next year! Hopefully by then I will have a plot and a novel I can stick to. 

See you on the flip side!

~Snowie

NEVER GIVE UP! Stats 3

LOOK AT THAT!

This goes to show that you can come back and win even if you are behind, doesn't it?


If you're winning, stay ahead. If you are losing, stay ahead of the other losers so you aren't dead last. =) Also, do not give up. Never give up. Giving up is just another way to say you are quitting and quitting will never get you ahead in anything. It takes hard work to get somewhere you really want to be, but once you are there it is completely worth the effort, isn't it? Life has it's own way of working out. It just takes a little time.

Never give up, DFTBA,

~Snowie

Stats Dos

Another Update!
If you're like me and six thousand words behind, you can still do it!!

And congratulations to Crossing for already finishing her NaNo novel and crossing the finish line once again!

~Snowie

“Stubborness is also determination. It's simply a matter of shifting from "won't power" to "will power.” 
― Peter McWilliams

21968 Words In Seven Days

It's been almost a month since I posted a blog. Sorry, I've been busy writing for NaNoWriMo! Here's my current stats...

As you can probably tell, I'm a little behind. 21968 words in fact. And there are seven days left, not counting today. And to finish on time I need to write ALMOST 2746 WORDS A DAY!!! To finish on time. Ugh. My family is going to hate me when I don't talk at all on Thanksgiving because I am trying to finish a stupid novel. Oh, well. That is what Christmas is for.

No where to go but up, right?

Five beginnings of novels, a chapter for a Sherlock fanfic, and this blog post have all contributed to the making of this word count. Comments are appreciated.


Happy Giving of Thanks! Go eat some turkey and pie, it's good for you.

-Snowie

This post has contributed 156 words to my National Novel Writing Month Novel.