Main
Fan Fiction
Table of Contents
Next...
Chapter OneToday is the beginning of the rest of my life. I don’t need them, I never needed them. I’m glad they didn’t show up.
Peering out of the window into the murky darkness, she saw the rain falling in gray sheets, pelting the runway with no mercy. Looking towards the bustling airport for what she hoped was the last time, Allara felt the hot tears welling up her eyes, and the sob threatening to rip itself from her throat. Her chest heaved with the effort of restraining it and her face contorted to form a pained, anguished expression that was unreadable as anything other than deepest sorrow. By simply looking at her, it was impossible to discern anything other than the fact that something was bothering this young woman greatly.
You keep telling yourself that, Allara. You need them, and what’s more, you want them. And you know it; deep down you’ve always known it. You just didn’t want to accept it. Well accept it. You want them, but finally, they don’t want you.
They had not come. She didn’t know why she expected them to be there; every ounce of logic she had ever possessed told her that they would not come to see her off, not after what she had said to them the night before. Her tongue had been like a whip, ready at command. The words she had hurled at them were cold with a barbed edge. She had been thoroughly vicious this time, holding nothing back in her verbal attacks, which were so much more painful than any physical pain that anyone would ever be able to inflict. Her words went to the very marrow of one’s soul, and what was worse was that it was blatantly obvious that she meant everything she said.
And so, they had not come. She could sit there and tell herself that she didn’t want them there until she was blue in the face, but in the very depths of her heart, not seeing them for one last time was ripping at her soul.
Why should they have come, Allara? There was no reason for them to be there. After all the shit you put them through…you deserve this. You had your chance, and you blew it. In fact, your chance was 20 years long, 20 years you’ve been alive and under the care of mom and dad. There’s no retracing your steps now, no repairing your wrongs. Face it, little girl, you fucked up. You thought you were invincible, and be damned if anyone was going to get in your way. Well you got what you wished for, and now you have to live with it for the rest of your miserable life.
Throughout her entire life she couldn’t remember a time when they weren’t there. She knew she had pushed them and pushed them until they could take no more, but she had never meant to completely drive them from her. It was just that everytime they got too close for her comfort, she pushed a little harder than the time before. But they had always come back; never before had she managed to hurt them enough to isolate herself from them. When they had caught her smoking for the first time they were angry, but everything smoothed over. When she stayed out until the early hours of the morning, knowing that they were worrying about her at home, they were still there. They were there the time she had run away; they still loved her after the time they found the cocaine in her purse, even when they came home early to find all of her drunk friends crashing the house, they were patient. Still, they put up with her after they took her car keys away and she had another set made just so that she could go to the only club in the city they had forbidden her from.
It was just normal teenage rebellion, everyone’s parents had to put up with it. I wasn’t the only one, look at all my friends. Their parents still love them, their parents will still always be there for them. Isn’t that what parents are for? To be pushed to the very limits of humanity and still be able to return right back to where they started? It was normal, the way I acted. They were the ones who overreacted.
But she went further, and she knew it. It wasn’t normal because everything they ever caught her at or everything they ever found was planned, planted. And it wasn’t only the physical things that she did, the parties she went to, the drugs she was always mixed up in, and the sex that she led them to believe she was having. She was always telling them that she hated them, always talking about how she couldn’t wait to leave, always saying the wrong things at just the right time. Her mother had actually gone into therapy for a few months because she thought she had failed as a parent. She had fallen into such deep depression that Allara’s father had threatened to lock her in her room, bar her windows and feed her through a mail slot if she didn’t quit fooling around long enough for her mother to be healed. Nothing that she did went without cold calculation behind it; she calculated everything to hurt, calculated everything to hit that nerve that when pushed hard enough, causes that pain that makes you wish you were dead, or better yet never even born. Not everyone’s parents had to put up with that, did they?
None of that means anything. I wasn’t the only one who was doing the hurting; this is not all my fault. It can’t be all my fault, I’m not a monster. They are not the only victims here, goddammit! I even tried it their way for a while…so it didn’t work out, am I to be blamed for that?
Maybe it wasn’t all her fault. Maybe some of the blame was to be put on her parents, for smothering her. For never letting her have the freedom to find out who she actually was and what she wanted to do with herself. They were always there backing her up and supporting her for the most part, but maybe that was the root of all the problems. Everyone needs their room and everyone needs to experiment. Part of growing up is growing with your experiences and your mistakes and finding out what kind of person you are. She never got that chance. She was never completely free to do as she wished, and everyone needs to experience that at least once before they are shoved out into the world to face reality for the first time. How are you supposed to experiment with your parents breathing down your neck all the time?
But the point is that they were not here now, when she needed them the most. She had finally decided that she was leaving Atlanta, and she actually wanted them to see her off. For as long as she could remember, she had always hated that city, but finally she had worked up the courage to leave. Her parents begged her to stay, pleaded with her, and she did. For a while. She attended her first two years of college at the University of Georgia before she decided that the teachers there had far too high an opinion of themselves and their curriculum. She dropped out after sophomore year with no intentions of finishing college, there or elsewhere. She was sick of dealing with the closed minds and hostile attitudes of people that cannot accept the new and different. That is why she was moving to Los Angeles; not very many people seemed to care what you were doing there, just as long as you were having fun doing it. Surely that was the place for her.
God, I need you so much. Mom, Dad, where are you? Why didn’t you come? The first time I want you to be here in years, and I’m all alone. I admit it, ok? I admit that I was wrong, and I was horrible, and no one should have to go through what I put you through, but can’t we just forget it? Please? Come back to me…
It was a silent plea that would never find its way into hearing. The burning first tear came rolling down her cheek, gaining momentum as it slid down the ivory skin to the corner of her pouting mouth. She was still trying to keep the sob down in the back of her throat where it couldn’t do any harm. The plane began to roll down the runway, keeping in time with the cascading emotions passing over Allara’s face. Eventually the effort that was required in quelling the violent, ricocheting emotions inside was too much for her already worn-out body. She fell into a fitful, uneasy sleep somewhere over Kentucky.
Mom… Dad…you came.
She awoke with a start as the plane touched down. The crackling, distant voice of the flight attendant through the speaker told her that this was the first stop, in Chicago. She knew that getting a cheap flight was difficult, and that you had to take a roundabout way sometimes, but she saw no point whatsoever in going from Atlanta to New York to change planes and go to Los Angeles. What’s more is that she boarded the first plane in Atlanta at ten at night. After working out the flight times and time difference in her head, she realized that it would only be around 1 a.m. when she arrived in L.A. but her biological clock would be telling her that it was four in the morning. Groaning, she rotated in her seat to stare out the window, where she found that the rain had given way to inky skies that obscured the stars and shrouded the moon. She began to gaze through the heavy clouds, trying to find a random star here and there and guess what constellation they were from. When that got boring, she moved her attention to her purse. Maybe if she glared at its soft tan surface long enough, she could actually smoke one of the cigarettes that was contained within it.
It was just a dream. I dreamed that they came to see me off, except this time I wasn’t so heartless. I actually hugged them and for the first time since I was a little girl, I told them that I loved them. And Daddy actually said it…he hasn’t said it in years. “I love you bigger than the sky.” Just a dream…
Damn these federal aviation regulations! I want a cigarette!
Groaning, she rotated in her seat to stare out the window, where she found that the rain had given way to inky skies that obscured the stars and shrouded the moon. She began to gaze through the heavy clouds, trying to find a random star here and there and guess what constellation they were from. When that got boring, she moved her attention to her purse. Maybe if she glared at its soft tan surface long enough, she could actually smoke one of the cigarettes that was contained within it.
She fell to her own thoughts for the next few hours of the trip. When they became so disturbing that she dared not ponder on them any longer, she decided that it was time to read. Her tattered copy of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” was extracted from her purse and she began reading the satirical tale of Arthur, whose home planet had just been destroyed to make way for a solar by-way. Eventually, her eyes were tired and her mind was drifting. By that time her nicotine craving had gotten so unbearable that she found it impossible to sit still, despite her weariness. The people around her were looking for other seats on the fairly deserted plane as her tapping, drumming, bouncing and twiddling had far surpassed being irritating. She began to think that she would never survive the flight without having to go into the bathroom and break one of the smoke detectors. She decided to try and sleep again. After all, sleep is the most peaceful form of oblivion. But sleep denied itself to her.
Jesus, I can’t even get a fucking break around here. All I want is a simple cigarette. If I can’t smoke, then at least let me sleep. But nooooo…
The flight landed an hour later in New York, just in time to prevent Allara from pulling out all of her hair. She had to quickly de-board this plane and race across the airport to catch the last leg of her trip to Los Angeles. She was weighed down with her purse and one bulky carry-on that she refused to fly without, for fear that the airline would lose her luggage and she’d be clothes-less and without a toothbrush with hardly any money.
20 God, finally. Maybe there will be enough time in between flights for me to catch a quick five minutes. That’s all I need, five minutes, and a smoking room, five minutes, five minutes, five minutes…
Yet another thing for her to be deprived of. Her arriving flight was late and her departing flight was ahead of schedule. Dashing through the airport, with her bag bumping at her side as she ran, she barely made it to the boarding gate before the plane moved away from the building and onto the runway. She sank into the uncomfortable, stiff, and slightly stale smelling seat for the last four hours of flight. Los Angeles, she was finally on her way.
Yeah, I’m on my way. I’m on my way, but no one will be there to pick me up and no one was there to drop me off. I don’t have an apartment, I don’t have a job, and I don’t have money for a cab. Excellent planning Allara, you should really pat yourself on the back for that one. My fault, I suppose. So, being the manipulative bitch finally has its drawbacks.
This last four-hour flight was even worse than the first. Left alone with her thoughts, she went over everything that she had ever done to her mom and dad, and all of her “friends”, pseudo-friends, and true friends. No detail was left unnoticed; no past wrong, slight or manipulation was left unscrutinized. And finally, after all the damage was done and she was able to look back on everything, she realized that she made everyone’s life a living hell, whether she meant to or not. There was not one person who escaped her vindictive grasps, not a single being who managed to come out of contact with her unscathed. And yet, she didn’t mean to do any of it. She wasn’t purposefully, consciously trying to hurt the people around her. At first glance, yes, it looked like she was killing everyone with her words and actions, but she hadn’t meant to cause this much damage. She wanted to have some fun, she wanted her parents to leave her alone, she wanted to feel free and be able to soar with the eagles, but instead she was scurrying with the rodents. She had thought that with a well-placed word here and a thoroughly thought out action there, she could have her dreams, but she was so very wrong.
Soon what started out as a way of letting people know that she needed love and space at the same time, turned into a spiteful habit that was threatening to take control of her being. And yet through all her ruthlessness, there was a perishing soul that just needed someone to nurture it. With time, it had the potential to become a loving, caring, generous and above all else, happy person.
Oh dear God in heaven. How awful were you?! To all of them, to every single one of them.
Stoppit. Just stop thinking about this.
But here she had reached a standstill. She was both a victim and a monster. She was both evil and the underdog. Which was the real her? Who was Allara Evans? She had had her moments, like everyone else, and hers had been more frequent and more volatile, but did that make her evil to the core? Here she was, undecided. She could plea and beg for people to see her side of the story, how she was put upon and how all of this could not possibly be her fault. And indeed, it wasn’t. Then again, she had to remember all the things she had done out of spite and for the pure hell of it, because she could. Did that make her the monster she was setting herself up to be? Had she forgotten all the good things she had ever done in her life? How many times she had bailed out her friends, or taken the blame where others had been the wrongdoers. She had forgotten the weeks of work that she lovingly put into any gift prior to an anniversary, birthday or Father’s/Mother’s Day. She had forgotten the weekend outings with her mother, and she had forgotten the days of pretending to clean out the basement with her father.
No, face it. You have to face it sometime, might as well be now. Maybe that’s just the way you are, it’s the way you were meant to be. You can’t change who you are and the way your nature leads you to behave. People can’t help the way they are and they shouldn’t be forced to be something they’re not. If anything, you’ve learned that over the past few years. So you just give up and let this take control; it’s obvious that that’s what’s going to happen in the end anyway, whether you want it to or not. You can’t stop it, so why try to hinder it? Yes, it’s harmful to other people, but it will be more harmful for you if you keep it deep down and act like everything is fine when in the core of your being you know that nothing was ever fine and that nothing ever will be fine.
Thus begins the story of Allara Evans. Over the next four hours, she managed to convince herself that no one wanted her love and that she was not worthy of the love of anyone else. She was able to make herself fully believe that she was not worth the time of day to anyone else in the world, and the only way to be noticed by other people was to hurt them before they had a chance to hurt her. By the time she arrived at her destination, she had told herself so many times over what a horrible, frigid, manipulative, unloving, unlovable person she was that she actually began to believe it, and that was how she was going to begin to live her new life.
She stepped off the plane with this new found knowledge of herself and felt confident that surely this was the way things were supposed to be. She would make it in the world, with or without the help of anyone else. Who needed them? They didn’t need her. She didn’t stop to look a little bit further. She had looked only deep enough to scare her into believing she was a monster straight out of a horror story. If she had delved just a bit deeper, she would have found the person that her parents and friends loved. It was there, and in the depths of her subconscious she knew it was there, but there was a universal truth that she fell to for support. It was simply this: It’s much easier to be a bitch when that is what everyone has labeled you as, than it is to be the loving person you originally were. So she refused to go the extra distance and find the original her, she refused to face the fact that perhaps she wasn’t as heartless as she and others had set her up to be. It’s a good thing she didn’t have time to actually begin living her life this way and let these beliefs truly set in and take root. She didn’t’ have time for these thoughts to crystallize in her mind and make themselves inherent in her daily routines and patterns. Otherwise, that would make his work much harder.
