(4) Death in a Bottle

I couldn't let anything happen to John. I would protect him in any way that I could, if it was the last thing I did. The raging flames of passion burned inside me as I tried to think of a way to keep him safe. My body trembled from the crash and new adrenaline rush. I felt as though my body was trying to shake itself apart from the inside out. It was a very unpleasant feeling. My body was no doubt also protesting the lack of food and drink. I thought about asking for some, before realizing that my impending death made life-sustaining things like that obsolete. I thought for a long while on that table. Finally, my voice, trembling like my body, broke the silence.
"How are you going to take my memories?" I tried to make my voice as innocent as possible with the right amount of curiosity present to seem real. I was not surprised by the silence that followed. This man was not very verbose. I tried pleading with him, yelling at him, trying to break my restraints: no reaction. Nothing. Not even an acknowledgment of my presence. Eventually I started to cry. The tears slid down my face and into my ears. This was quite uncomfortable. I wanted to sit up, but I was trapped lying down on this sterile table covered with an old sheet. I laid there, pouring over the memories I had of John. When I compared them to my other memories, the ones without him, I noticed that the memories he was in were brighter. They were more wonderful. Everything seemed better when I was with him. Even other happy times before we met were dim when held up against the glowing light that radiated from every stolen moment with him, every little look and touch. I would not lose these memories and give him up to the Beasts.
The hours dragged on. I was unable to sleep, but I was also unable to do anything else, so I thought about John. Finally, after what seemed like an age. The man in the white coat came over to my table holding a flask of an orange liquid in it. He looked me in the eyes and said, "This potion will reveal what you are thinking about as it enters your mind. I want you to think about everything the Beasts want to know about John. His physical appearance, place of residence, and other such details would be appreciated. When the extraction is complete I will administer another potion which will kill you"

(3) Not Him

Ice blue eyes pierced through mine with an intensity I was unaccustomed to. He had a gaunt face, with pronounced cheek bones and a long chin ending in a somewhat haphazard-looking white beard to match his long white eyebrows and equally white and haphazard hair which reached his collar. He stared at me for a long while, the reached a long finger up to scratch his nose. He sighed. His eyes closed and I felt as though a spotlight had been turned off my face. He turned back to his concoction and added a vial of a purple liquid to the mixture that was smoking faintly. I was still rooted to the spot. Why didn't he say anything? Why had he turned back to his work? Who was he? How did he and I relate to each other in the Beasts' schemes?
"Sir", I ventured, "where am I?" I decided that my location was the most pressing mystery at the moment. He didn't answer. I tried again, louder this time and still he didn't respond. I reached a trembling arm out to tap his shoulder and I repeated the question. He brushed my arm away as though it were a pesky fly. I tried grasping his shoulder firmly, but he shook me off. I shouted as loud as I could, and still he refused to acknowledge me. I plopped down on the sheet-covered table and rethought my strategy. I attempted to be more aggressive and turn him to face me by force, but he was too strong. That failing, my frustration reached its boiling point. I turned to the wall of flasks and selected a medium-sized one full of a pond-green liquid with a dead fish suspended in it. I threw it will all my might in his direction screaming "TELL ME!!" It smashed just a few inches from his left hand. The contents splashed all over his arm and dribbled down the counter and his left trouser leg.
He stopped his work. Slowly, he turned to face me, his eyes full of, was it pity? Then they turned to ice blocks and he took two quick strides toward me. Before I had time to react he was in my face grabbing my wrist in an uncomfortably tight grip.
"You were sent to me so I could extract some memories from your mind before I kill you. You will only be let out of this room when they are sure you are dead. Now that you know, I am going to have to restrain you." He said this with a tired lilt to his voice. As though he had been doing this sort of thing for years, but was wearied by it. He was going to kill me, after taking my memories? How was he going to accomplish this? I thought about struggling against his grip, but I realized that there was no use. I had lost everything, and now my life was going to be removed from my body along with the only thing I had that brought me any joy: my memories.
His eyes looked sad when the man saw I had lost all the fight in me. He led me silently over to the table and laid me on it. He raised straps up from the sides of it and used them to tightly bind my hands and feet. I allowed my body to go limp. There was nothing left for me to do. It was over. I was as good as dead now. But one thing puzzled me. I turned to him as he tightened my last restraint.
"What memories do they want?' I asked in a hollow voice. He stared at me for a long moment, as though he were trying to ascertain my ability to handle the answer. He must have seen something which showed him the affirmative because he said: "The memories relating to a man named John."
The fire which had died within me flared up so strong and fierce I thought I would burst into flames. Suddenly nothing else mattered. I had to escape. I had to. I couldn't let them get to him. Not him. Oh why did they want him? I could have died quietly in this cell if I knew he was safe. Not him. Not John.

(2) The Impossible Room

My eyes slowly slid into focus. Directly in front of me was a pair of shoes attached to a pair of legs in dark trousers. The owner of the legs was standing with his back to me, giving me a fine view of his long, white coat. I tilted my head back ever so slightly so I could see the man in the white coat better. He was busy fiddling with something on a long counter. He reached above him to pull a flask full of a blue liquid off the shelf overhead and placed it gingerly on the counter beside him. My senses were heightened. I slowly pulled myself into a sitting position and sat there, still as a mouse for a moment. Then, I turned my head to look around. There was a single table covered with a white sheet to my right, and to my left there was a large facet and a small metal drain. The walls were stone, like the floor, and they were covered in strange instruments, shelves filled with jars containing strange substances, and diagrams showing chemical compounds and...human internal structures. I was in a laboratory.
Why had the beasts brought me here? What could this man do to me? What were his orders? Why was I left unchained on the ground? I turned my attention back to the man in the coat, but he was still busy at his chemicals. I got slowly to my feet, my eyes scanning for a way out. I turned in a circle three times, there was no door, nor any windows. How had I gotten in here? I searched the floor and saw no sign of a trapdoor in the small, square room. I looked up at the ceiling and still could find no exit. There had to be one! I hadn't been walled in here had I? I was just bringing my eyes back to the man in the coat when I froze. He was staring right at me.

(1) Moonlit Flight

I was running, faster than I've ever run before. My heart was racing and I thought the blood pumping through my temples was going to split the thin veneer of skin separating it from the air whipping past my sweat-soaked face. I was being chased. I could not stop. One misstep equaled death. Trees were snatching at my arms and brambles were tearing deep gashes in my legs but I could not stop. The gasps escaping my lips were not those of pain, I was beyond that, they were the only means air could find its way into my desperate lungs. My chest was heaving and my sides aching, but I could not stop. They were coming for me.
How had they found me? What could I have done to give myself away? What would happen if they caught up to me? My mind was rolling these thoughts in a tumbling cyclic vortex when I rounded that corner. My body was falling, but only for a moment. I slammed into the ground and thought "This is it, I'm dead." I was lying there in the mud and my own blood when the footfalls behind me were suddenly above me. A strong, rough hand reached down and dragged me up by my tangled locks. It held me, suspended a foot above the ground so that my face was level with the beast's own. In the moonlight it started into my eyes with it's coal black ones. They flickered when they recognized me as the beast's prey. My hair was pulling on my scalp as it held the entire weight of my body. Tears slid silently down my face and mingled with the sweat dripping down my cheeks and sliding down my neck. The creature turned to it's companion and nodded before I felt my body fall again to the ground. My eyes caught the raised hand of the creature before it fell upon me and I dropped into the spiraling darkness.
The swirling blackness was all I knew. Sensations came, but they were disjointed at best. Cold, smooth stone; drip, drip, drip...water dripping on....something; a terrible pain in my head. This sensation took over from all the others. As the pain grew, it was all I could think of. It was all I knew. Slowly the reality of the pain brought me back to consciousness. When I was finally fully conscious, I kept my eyes closed. I didn't want to face whatever waited my sight. I don't know how long I laid there, just waiting. Waiting for a reason to open my eyes, to see the horror that surely awaited me.
Eventually, I don't know how long it was, human instincts took over and my body demanded food and water. Before I had been hunted down I had gone several hours without food. The energy expended in my flight had used up all my energy stores and I had no idea how long I had been under the tide of consciousness. I held my eyes closed for one more moment, one shining moment, while I assessed my body and its condition. I had not moved a centimeter since I had woken, but I seemed to be in one piece, lying on my side, my legs curled and my arms bent so that my hands were toward my face. My hair tickled at my face and down my back and kept my right cheek off the cold stone that the rest of my body felt beneath it.  I inhaled the damp air through my nose as I prepared to part my eyelashes. As I exhaled I slid my eyes open...

Host Club and Howl: My First Anime Convention!

Adventures? I've got some. Let's try the first time I went to an Anime Convention.

The year was 2010, the place: The Hilton in Bellevue, the event: Aki-Con! The fall Anime convention in Washington state. My sister and I had registered and were eagerly awaiting our departure from the house to a hotel filled with other anime and nerd-dom fans and fanatics. I had been working for over a month on creating us two jackets for our cosplay as Haruhi and Tamaki from Ouran High School Host Club- our current favorite anime. :)  (the show is on youtube and netflix if you wanna watch, I'd rate it at a mild PG-13 for inappropriate stuff and some mild language. It's a young adult show)

For those of you not familiar with the Anime, let me give you a run-down. This is a rom/com about a school for the rich kids of Japan. The girl (yes girl) sitting in the middle of the picture is an honors student who got in the school on a scholarship. She accidentally broke a vase worth more than she could even imagine and now she works as a Host (pretending to be a boy) in the Host club to pay off her debt. The Host Club is a club where the six boys, plus Haruhi, romance girls who come to visit them. They each caeter to certain steryotypes the girls find attractive. Hilarity and sweet moments ensue in the show.

So, my character is the Prince of the group (self-named of course) and is the biggest drama king I've ever seen. I love it! He's the tall blonde in the middle of the picture above. He is kind-of stupid when it comes to dealing with Haruhi, who he falls in love with.  My sister was Haruhi, the poor honors student with a sarcastic and dead-pan sense of humor. It was great!

The irony is that our heights were backwards for our characters. lol.

The first time I walked into the hotel to pick up our badges I was floored. I had never seen so many nerds dressed up as characters before. I was even more excited to get started. I was in plain clothes at the time and I felt out of place! What maddness was this!?

My jacket was not finished on Friday so I ended up going as Emily the Corpse Bride instead. I was surprised and pleased to find that people recognized my character and more than that--they wanted to take my picture! This was new. I felt a bit like a Disneyland Character. My sister and I both ran around with our camera taking pictures of other people dressed as characters we loved. It was so much fun!

That night we watch the opening ceremonies where the power rangers came to save Jonny Young Bosch from the evil villians. It was so hokey, my sister and I rolled our eyes and laughed. Then we settled down to watch those who did well in the AMV (Anime Music Video) contest. My sister's video won!! But there was a problem with the file so we went up and promised to bring a back up copy the next day.

Later that evening we played Mafia with a bunch of other people and I managed to kill a lot of them as the Mafia because no one suspected the poor, sad, Corpse Bride of murder. hehehehe. Then, it was getting late, but my sister was up for the Karaoke contest. She got up and sang the Ouran Theme song and she was smashing! I loved watching her perform.

The next day: Saturday, was the busiest. We were in the skit contest. We were 4th in the lineup. We had written and choreographed this skit together. It was so much fun. I loved working off the energy in the crowd. :)
We didn't place, but it was one of the funnest things I've ever done.

Later, for Sakura Con in the Spring my sister and I entered their skit contest and shortened our skit to 3 mins and changed the ending. If you want to find it, it's on youtube, we called our group "fancy tuna" if you search that with "sakura con 2011" you'll find it.

This was so exciting. I remember being nervous and excited, mostly excited. I we had practiced it so many times--I could have done it in my sleep. But hearing the crowd get the jokes and laugh at us just made me glow! This made me fall in love with performing all over again. And the best part was, I got to share this moment with my very best friend: my sister.

We goofed around the rest of the day, shopped the artist tables, found time to do some caramelldansen, and went to some fun panels.

The last day of the con, Sunday, came and, after getting ready in our church's bathroom, we were toted to the hotel for the afternoon. I was rather looking for a Howl cosplayer and I had been all weekend. Sunday, it turns out, was my luck day. We met a trio of Howl cosplayers:

 Calcifer, Howl, Me, and Sophie

I was a bit of a fangirl here, He posed with me just like Howl does in the "Strolling through the sky" scene in the movie. It turned out that we had both painted our eyebrows blonde for our cosplay, this gave us a starting point for conversation.

My sister and I wandered around amlessly. There wasn't much to do on Sunday that interested us. Eventually, we ran into the Howl group sitting in an empty hallway and we decided--what they hey! Let's join them. So we sat with them and talked about random nerdy stuff. Then we went to get seats for the Closing cermonies together. When some tall-ish people sat in front of me, the Howl cosplayer asked if I wanted to sit in his lab so I could see better. I blushed and declined, showing him how I've learned to cope with my disability (shortness) by sitting on my legs to give me a height boost. My sister was called up to recieve several prizes including the best AMV award. After some techincal difficulties, we were all able to watch her video and we sang along to "Be Our Guest" as the Disney tunes moved in sync with the Ouran characters. I cried as I saw the people around us laughing, singing, and making approving noises as her video played. I was so proud of her. :')

Afterward my sister and I said goodbye to our new friends and when Howl asked for my phone number I lied and told him I didn't have a phone. Then, before they left we exchanged email addresses and wrote to each other a bit. He pretended to be Howl in his emails, which rather tickled me. I have never been sure if he was hitting on me or just being friendly. Eventually he decided he was bi-sexual and now has a boyfriend. yup.

All in all, it was a wonderful experience, significantly enhanced because I was with my sister and best friend. I don't know how long I will go to anime conventions. I just know that I will always cherish the memory of my first con because of the sisterly bond it strengthened.

Diabetes Begins

Well, past adventures were requested. I have more that I shall write about, but I had already written most of this post in an essay for English I. This is the story of my Diagnosis with Diabetes, which was a bit of an adventure.

“Got the news today, doctor said I had to stay/ A little bit longer and I’ll be fine… /And you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone/ And you don’t know what it’s like to feel so low/ And every time you smile, you laugh, you glow/ You don’t even know.”

            These lyrics are to a song Nick Jonas wrote about his life with Type 1 Diabetes called “A Little Bit Longer.” This song was a source of comfort in my life when I was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. I was sixteen years old. As my life turned down a path I never expected to take, God was there with me every step of the way.

            It was a Saturday morning in August of 2008 and my family and I had all piled into our van to drive six hours for a family reunion. However, we had to make one stop at our Children’s Hospital on our way out of town. My mom and I checked in and waited in the sea-themed and dimly lit lobby for our pager to vibrate. When it did, a nurse took us back to the examination room. We settled into the vinyl bench to await the special kind of doctor I was there to see: an endocrinologist. The seconds ticked by at half their usual speed. The wait seemed to take forever, and we were beginning to wonder when we would arrive at the family reunion. I was really hungry. When the doctor finally came in, we talked about the slightly high blood sugar count that had shown up in my most recent blood-work. He tested my blood sugar and decided to check me into the hospital. Our family trip was canceled, and I was going to stay overnight in the hospital for the first time since I was born.

            The nurse assigned to my room was a sweet, tall, blonde in her twenties named Amanda. The hospital smelled like rubbing alcohol and latex gloves. The sheets were scratchy, and the pillow was so flat that I had my dad bring mine from home. The sound of doctors walking up and down the hall and phones ringing at the reception desk fell into the background as I sank into the blankets and turned on the television. With the knowledge that a nurse was going to check my blood sugar in the middle of the night, I slowly drifted off to sleep.

            Around 3 am, a few nurses proceeded to poke my finger and check my blood sugar. I heard my mom get up from the spare bed and ask a question. I don’t remember what my blood sugar was or what else was said except for these words spoken by the nurse: “Yes, she has Diabetes.”

            The next morning, I was informed that I would be staying in the hospital for at least another 24 hours. They needed to keep me there to monitor me and teach me about how to live with my newly diagnosed disease. Then Amanda, who was still on duty, came to explain the basics of Diabetes and give me my first dose of insulin.  

“I get that through shots right?” I asked.

            “Yes,” Amanda answered.

            “How did you know that?” my mom asked me.

            I shrugged. “I dunno, I just knew it from somewhere. Why?”

            “Because I wasn’t going to tell you,” she said. I remember feeling slightly annoyed at this. I knew it was out of love on my mom’s part, but I was sixteen years old. Couldn’t I handle a few shots? It turns out that my mom was more right than I realized. After leaving the hospital, I was unable to give myself shots. I had a mental block that stopped me from getting closer than a few centimeters to my skin with that needle. Eventually, my mom threatened to take away my chocolate. The very next time, I gave the shot myself, and I have not had to have anyone do it for me again. Chocolate is a brilliant motivator for me. :)

            In the hospital that morning, I was unable keep my breakfast down, perhaps because of all the stress my body had experienced since the diagnosis. Since the insulin the nurse had just injected into my body no longer had any food to process, I experienced my first low blood sugar. The next several hours were a bit hazy because I was shaking, my eyes were not focusing well, and my brain was having trouble stringing coherent thoughts together. I sat in a small, sterile room with my family, a young couple with a newly diagnosed four-year-old daughter, and our Diabetes educator, Barb. She was a middle-aged woman with long dark hair that had streaks of white in it. I slowly sipped juice to bring my blood sugar back up while listening to Barb talk about managing Diabetes, living with Diabetes, and her own life as a Diabetic. My parents practiced giving each other saline shots and we all gave a pad of fake skin a stab with the syringe. She informed us that a woman with Diabetes was three percent more likely to pass it on to her child than a non-diabetic and that a man with Diabetes was five percent more likely to pass it on.

            “So I am less likely to pass Diabetes on to my k-kids?” I said with a slight blood-sugar-induced stutter.

            Everyone stared at me. My poor family probably feared for my sanity in that moment, and my mom was probably wondering about my math skills. She patted my arm and said with a worried voice, “No sweetie, you are more likely to pass it on.”

            I shook my head slowly and said, “No, I am less likely to than if I was a boy with Diabetes.”The thought had made sense in my head, but it took a second to get it conveyed in words. :)

            Eventually my sister and father left to go home for the night. My mom and I stayed up figuring out how to determine the amount of insulin I needed, and before bed, she gave me a shot. I kept my arm limp and did not show pain because I did not want to make this harder on my mom than it already was. As I lay wrapped up in the rough sheets that night I listened to “A Little Bit Longer.” Somehow, it was comforting to know that someone else in the world had gone through this process and had written a song of encouragement that I felt was directly aimed at me. A year later, when I was at the Jonas Brothers Concert with my sister, we both cried as Nick Jonas told his story about Diabetes and performed this song live. It has been a special song in my life ever since.

            After another training session the next morning, I was discharged from the hospital and given an appointment to see an endocrinologist very soon to help me start my life with Diabetes. I climbed into our van and hugged my pillow. My brain was still processing everything that had happened. I wondered how my friends from church would take the news. The whole congregation already knew because my dad, the pastor, had announced it in church that morning. On the ride home, I realized that my life would never be the same. However, I had something that has kept me going to this day: my faith in Jesus. 

            This August will mark the four year anniversary of my Diabetes diagnosis. It seems strange, but I can't imagine my life without Diabetes. My life with this disease has had its ups and downs, but I rest in the confidence that God allowed me to have this for a reason. He knows I can handle it. I know that I will look back one day and see how Diabetes has worked in my life in a mysterious and God-driven way. I already count myself blessed that I didn't get Diabetes when I was a child. I was old enough to take responsibility for my own treatment. I can't imagine the hardships that a family goes through when their young child is diagnosed with this. I suppose I might find out, if I am ever blessed with children, since there is a chance that they could have Diabetes as well.

 “So I’ll wait till kingdom come/ All the highs and lows are gone/ A little bit longer and I’ll be fine/ I’ll be fine” In heaven, where there is no more sorrow, pain, or Diabetes, I will finally be able to speak to my Lord face to face. Then I can truly thank Him for everything, including taking care of me as I lived with my Diabetes here on earth. For now, I will rest in His arms and trust Him to carry me through every trial.

Naturally Me

I love nature, but I'm also quite the indoor girl. This is a puzzle I've yet to work out.
I love being outside, but I don't like the bugs. I love being in the sun, but I wear spf 100 to keep from getting burned. I love swimming, but mostly in a pool. I love reading outside, but only if I have a blanket otherwise the grass makes me itchy and I get too many bugs on me.

One of my favorite things is taking a long, solitary walk through the trails at Jayboo. I simply love it there. The path is nice and paved and there are many ways to get down to the creek to find a quite spot to pray or journal. The beauty of the trees, the babble of the brook, and the way the sun shines through the leafy canopy onto the path is just breath-taking.

I feel closer to God when I am out in nature. I find it easier to focus on Him when I am at one of my many hidden spots down by the creek (even when I get momentarily distracted by a serpent winding its way through the water).

Needless to say, one of my primary means of worship is nature. My other two methods of worship often come out when I am in nature. If I am walking and worshiping I sing songs of praise, or love songs I've imagined a more Jesus/me meaning to ~ thus another act of worship for me is music. I also imagine Jesus is beside me, holding my hand, playing with my hair, carrying me in His arms ~ this is known as the "holding hands with Jesus" means of worship. I use visualization to imagine Him with me. This makes Him more real and present in my life as well as brings me great comfort when I feel alone (which happens in a crowded room sometimes).

It's funny, but I can't talk about what I love about nature without talking about Jesus. :) My favorite things in nature are flowers (esp. Roses), creeks, trees, sunshine (which I lack here), mountains, cool grass beneath my toes, wind blowing my hair, and fog rolling in making things look mysterious.

My favorite season is Autumn. I love the way the leaves change colors, I love the crunch as I crush the fallen ones under my feet. I love the steely grey sky that stands over the change in foliage. I love the crisp chill in the air. I love that I have to bundle up and start wearing jackets and scarves again. Fall has always made me happy. (Also, two of my favorite holidays are in fall as well as my sister and my birthdays)

My other favorite time of year is spring and early summer. I love all the flowers that bloom. I love the flowering trees that rain down petals on unsuspecting passersby. I love the sunshine and the bright colors of the flora.

I love roses best of any flower, maybe because Rose is my middle name. They are so beautiful. As a child, pink roses were my favorite, but now as I grow older I find that I like red roses best. I see roses as showing the life of a girl. When girls are young they are pink roses, full of innocence and princess-dreams, as girls grow older they become more mature and sophisticated and are more like a red rose, which usually symbolizes romantic love, they come to the age when they choose to be in relationships and get married. Later, when they are grandmothers, they are sweet little old ladies, and they make me think of yellow roses. The best analogy between girls and roses is the white rose. My prayer is that every girl would be a slow-blooming white rose who will be pure in what she does and save herself for her wedding day when that white dress will not be merely because of tradition, but because she has kept herself pure for God and her husband.

In sum, I am a big nature girl. I love being outside because it brings me closer to the one who created all the beauty I see around me. I pray that I will always live close to beautiful nature and I hope that someday I might have a garden (if I'm not too lazy). I'm am a white-picket fence, rose garden type of girl. :)

Next stop on this blog: Adventureland!!