Jeni was standing at the edge of the bridge looking into the shadows where I stood below. She was going to jump, I knew it. I could either stay here and try to catch her, try to talk her out if it, or just leave and pretend I didn’t see anything. If I tried to catch her we would both be hurt, but I can’t do nothing. I guess option three is out.

I would just call up to her, but I’m sure from where I’m standing she can’t see me. I don’t want to startle her and have her fall off the bridge. I needed a way to keep her there until I could get to her.

I start moving my legs but they feel thick as tree trunks, and heavy too. I feel a burning sensation as I watch as my best friend jumps into the fiery lava under the bridge causing a huge wave to wash over me. Before the lava even singes the hairs on my arms I wake up, drenched in sweat.

A Formica battlefield strewn with paper napkins, the two combatants eyed one another “Sweetie you like pancakes remember.” “I want happy meal!” Nelly sighed deeply. Bella’s eyes harden. Nelly’s hand trembled slightly as she raised her coffee cup to her lips. Everyone in the Macdonald’s was starting. Office workers grabbing breakfast avoided making eye contact, the oldsters holding court in the middle of the fast food joint glared openly. Nelly’s cheeks grew warm. She just wanted a quiet coffee and a sausage biscuit. Her mother-in-law would say cook at home. Her mother would say this wouldn’t happen people still spanked. Her sister would say all discipline problems stem from processed foods and recommend an organic raw food diet for toddlers. This is not the time for hand pressed carrot juice, Nelly thought. She considered a different tactic. Pouring a plastic cube of high fructose syrup over her daughter styrofoam tray she said, “how about syrup for your pancakes. Yummy.” With a howl, Bella swept her breakfast on the floor. Every thing froze. The mother and daughter stared at one another without blinking. A uniformed teenager ran into the fray with a handful of happy meal toys. Inexplicably Bella threw herself to the floor kicking and screaming. Nelly thanked the bewildered cashier for the toys. An older employee stood at the ready with a mop and bucket. Shoving her sandwich in her coat pocket Nelly pushed away from the table. Nelly held her head high coffee cup in her left hand screaming child in her right. Exhausted but unbowed, she marched out to the parking lot.

“Cookie, bread, or pizza?” asks the waiter. “Don’t you have veggies,” I reply. “Cookies, bread, and pizza are all vegetarian, Anne. Don’t be a snob,” hissed Louisa. “We can do the bread without crust?” chimed in the waiter. I hate this city. I swear every restaurant serves bread as their main course. I love bread, I do, but I can’t just eat bread all the time. You are what you eat, you know? While bread is warm and tasty, it’s also dense and chunky. Not really my goals. “I’ll have the cookie,” I grumble. “I’ll have the combo of pizza and bread, thank you so much!” the waiter writes down Louisa’s order after mine and then nods before sauntering off. Louisa can get the bread and the pizza because she’s a literally stick, and she’s just visiting here. Louisa lives in Barlington where they mostly serve barley, beans, and kale at restaurants. Bread like is quite the opposite. Maybe I need to move.

The sun had sunken beneath the earth. The night cascaded in the sky. I flopped down onto my bed closing my eyes, relishing on the stressful day I had. I snapped awake. My room was darker, the dim light from the outside world was gone. Peering over to my clock, the red glowing numbers, showed that it was now 3:30 a.m. I sat up rubbing the sleep from my eyes. Stalking my way over to the bathroom I hear a light scratch sound on the ceiling. I glanced around the room, but everything was in place. I brushed it off and continued to the bathroom. I turned on the bathroom light starting at myself in the mirror. I turned to the fossett water. Running my hand under the cold water till it warmed up and I dunked my face. Another long scratching sound came from behind me. Quick I dried my face off and opened my eyes. I stared out the bathroom door. The glowing light from the bathroom only shone so far. The room was a black ibis. Quickly I turned off the water and the light. I ran out of the bathroom and jumped on to my bed in the middle of the room. I shuffled under my blankets and sat at the top of the bed, the headboard pushed against my back. My heart race quickened and my breath became heavy. I scanned the room over and over again, waiting for anything or anyone. My hands shook as i clutched the blanket to my chest. “Missy?” Someone on the other side of my bedroom door called out in a singsong voice. I covered my mouth to silence my scream. “I know you in there”. A cry escaped my mouth. “Can i come in?” It asked. I kept quiet not saying a word. “Don’t be rude, Missy.” It laughed to its self as if it was taking pleasure in my fear. “GO AWAY!” I screamed my voice breaking. “It’s not nice to yell” It whispered right behind me. Before I could react I felt a cold metal across my neck.

There would be no winning. No happy ending, no golden crown. At least not for me. One way, I would loose my true love, my only chance at happiness. I would spend the rest of my life alone, living a life I never really wanted. And I would resent myself for my choice. How could I be so selfish to value my own life over his. How could I ever be truly happy, knowing that his death was my fault. But the other way, I would loose myself. I would loose all of the hard work that I’ve done to overcome this illnesses, all of the pain that I’ve gone through. It would all be for nothing. Or maybe not. Maybe I could live with the fact that he is still alive, and that’s because of me. If I could accomplish one good thing into life, that would be it.

also idk how to end it so just pretend I have a good ending

The chess board is a place of black and white. Checkered from one square to the next. A place of sharp minds and witty places of where the next pawn lands. Where sacrifices are made and battle plans are drawn from one black square to the next. The pawns stand at the front line, all in a pretty shiny row of sacrificial soldiers standing vigil for their queen and king. Puppets with their strings controlled by unknown hands.

Sometimes, she thinks in the darkest hour of night, the she was only ever just that. A pawn. With her pretty little scars and her pretty little bruises and the pretty little smile on her face as she takes hit after hit after hit only for it all to start again when the suns rises in the sky and she has to open her tired eyes.

She dresses in her white garb and dons her white sword and silver dagger and stands at the attention of her king. Reporting her run in with the black pawns and rooks and knights with their contrast armor. The kings sings of their triumph over the dark, he praises the bishops and the rooks, he pats the heads on each of the pawns with his flowery words and backwards worded insults when they don’t drag a black pawn back screaming.

He spreads his hands wide, as if to bring them all into a hug, the twinkle in his eyes brighter and brighter when each cheer of his name falls from their mouths. He is grand and wise and powerful on his pillar of pure white. Crystalline in his perfect posture and practiced perfection. She remembers the last time she saw their king high and mighty and being brighter than any at his side.

She remembers now as she drags herself far from the checkered board to harbor away as the plans to over take the castle fill her mind. Their is blood leaking from her side, down her head and over her eyes, staining her from white to red.

She revels in it. The change from pureness to the killer she always was when she cut them down with a stroke of her sword with a smile on her face and a laugh on her tongue.

She loved when she buried the dagger deep in her kings chest. But she hated how he smiled, how with his last breath he begged her to kill him instead of being captured. Now as the last of the whites, she has to choose where she runs and where she stands. She washes herself in the river, drags and runs and jumps from the trees to put off the knights she knows is tracking her.

Deep in the night as she stares at the stars above her head and with rabbit in her stomach she plots. She awakes with the sun in her eyes and footsteps beneath her, the barking of dogs far in the distance and a jumble of Pawns at the base of the tree. She sees the Black King riding with his Entourage of rooks and bishops and tall standing knights.

Adrenaline races through her when she sees them, and knows it’s too late to run. She draws her dagger from her thigh, brings it to her throat and…pauses. The kings voice travels through the land with a gravel.

He sounds nothing like the practiced perfect facade and his blood covered hands.

“Come out. There is no where to run.”

Die or be captured? Die or be captured?

Die

Or

Capture.

She does not know. Her king had chosen death. This king had won his battle, she wonders if she will die if she crawls from the tree. Wonder if she will be executed like the Black’s that were captured by White’s. He speaks again.

“Come….White Queen. You have no where left. Your castle has been seized, your king was killed by one of his own, you are surrounded.”

Capture.

Her dagger flies through a pawn and a rook. Embedding it’s self in the horse the king sits apon. In the chaos, she jumps from the tree and cuts any Black the crosses her path. She is captured, just as she breaches the outward enemy lines. A voice in her ear and a sword at her throat.

“Did you kill him?”

She laughs and laughs and laughs.

“Yes.”

The grin on his face is bloodthirsty.

“Be the Black Queen.”

She returns it.

“Yes.”

Both ways led to ruin. One led to the army. Where I will perish under an execution. Where my hard work will go to ruin. Where everyone who has ever wronged me will be proven right. On the other hand if I stay, I will have to face him. I rip my head up as I stare into his ocean blue eyes. I see everything in his face. He was never able to hide his emotion. If I stay here there’s no certainty I will exit alive. I bow as I feel him watch every joint move. I walk towards him. And cross my fingers

“If you plead guilty, they’ll automatically seek the death penalty,” Rose snaps, long manicures fingernails tapping on the top of her briefcase. “It’s your legal right, but as your attorney, I have to advise you against it. I’m in the business of winning cases, not handing capital punishment verdicts directly to the prosecution.”

Gregory leans back in the plastic prison chair. He hooks his hands behind his head and studies the ceiling tiles. There are 88 in this room—he’s had plenty of time to count them.

“Don’t you think sometimes that’s better, though?” he asks, eyes trained upward. Rose has a glare that he’s sure is half the reason the jury votes in her favor, and he’s not very fond of the times when she turns it on him.

“Losing? No, I don’t.”

“Not losing,” he amends. “Dying.”

He watches a fly buzz around the ceiling, slamming its body into the fluorescent light again and again. An apt metaphor, he thinks, and the thought would make him smile if it wasn’t so morose.

Rose shuffles her papers loudly. He doesn’t think he’s ever had paper shuffled angrily in his direction before. Rose is a master of the nonverbal cue.

“Gregory,” she says, her voice sharp. “If you’re trying to seek the death penalty, then I don’t know why either of us are wasting our time here.”

He looks at her finally, taking in the pursed position of her lips before dropping his eyes to the table.

“I don’t WANT to die,” he emphasizes to his lap. “I just thought that maybe it would be better to get it out of the way now. I mean, you can’t choose to not die, so really I’m just picking whether I want to die now—well, in 10 years of so, whenever they get around to it—or if I want to be shanked by someone in prison or if I want to die after 65 years of sleeping on a state issued cot. Not a lot of great options here.”

“Fantastic,” Rose says. “Why don’t you discuss that with your counselor and get back to me when you’ve decided to actually let me help you, then?”

She stands, her heels clicking on the cement flooring, and Gregory shifts in his seat. He doesn’t like the sound of high heels, or the sound of the door when it screeches closed, or the hissing sound the prison pipes make through the night. It’s one of the reasons, he thinks, that it might be better to just…go. He bets the afterlife is silent.

“Does it take a long time?” he asks her, just as she’s made her way to the door.

“What?” she asks. “The trial?”

Gregory shakes his head.

“The part where I…die.”

Rose stops and pauses (most likely for dramatic effect, he thinks). Her eyes fix on his face.

“Five to ten minutes, if it goes well. If there are complications, you can be lying there dying for hours.” She turns back to the door. “I would think about that before you make any decisions about it being an easy way out.”

Then she’s signaling to the officer, and Gregory feels the handcuffs click around his wrists, and he thinks about how ‘trapped’ can take on many, many meanings when every solution is a problem in disguise.

“Come on man, this doesn’t seem safe.” Jeff says anxiously, rubbing his arms to cope as he looks down at the shiny, unused knife. “You hate him, right dude?, I’m doin this to help you out man!” Caden says hyped up, happy to do it. “I just don’t think we should do this, we could just tease him anything but this.” “Don’t be a wimp this will get him out of our hair.” I can’t keep dealing with Caden I feel bad if I don’t do this for him, I mean he is just trying to help right?” Jeff looks at the knife and gulps hard “I’m ready.” They travel down the dark alleys, the smell of trash burning their nostrils, until they see 4311. His address. “Open up you dirt bag!” Caden bangs on the door. “Let him come when he’s ready.” Jeff says to try and get some of the attention off of the fact that he’s doing this. The door squeaks open. “Jeff go get him!” Running through the mud I do it. I look down to see red, I cannot believe I did that all because Caden. “Yes he’s out of our hair for good!” screams Caden. Tears running down my face as I say “How could you be happy, you just took his life.” His lifeless body I rush to it, no pulse. I breakdown and just cry, I can’t believe I did that just because of Peer Pressure..

(They get tossed into a room) “sis?!!?! Are you okay??” This bigger sister named Riley said. “I think so.. are you?” Said Abby the younger one. “You kids fell into my trap heh” the unknown man said “ there’s no way out unless you want to face snakes, fire or sharks.” He listed. “No!” The bigger sis said. (Sorry this was a short one)