Who am I?

[Noc]

This is my humble application, after perusing the boards I found my self appealed to the nature of this place. I enjoy melodrama, and the sorts as you will most likely surmise. I consider my self to be a amateur novelist at best so please don't criticize to harshly, I'm very fragile and break like crystal glass

 

For the most part I try to keep my opinions separate from my characters as not to influence their personalities. This is a short glimpse into the life of Noc, a 21 year old with some problems.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Noc lay flat on his back, brown hair disheveled and unkempt set in a sunburst around his head. Small veins crept from the sides of his temple up to the top of his pale crown and just below the jawline.

 

What was he staring at; The olive colored paint with hair line cracks spreading like vines across the inverted V shaped roof perhaps?. Or maybe nothing at all. Noc could spend hours staring into the void thinking of nothing. When he was younger another boy living in the same home once asked his foster mother, why Noc wouldn't answer people and just stare at nothing ignoring the world. She replied that he was playing a game and no one could shut every thought out, that the mind was always active. Noc thought her to be naive and a crass woman, he didn't live there very long.

 

All the young man would have to do is just unfocus his eyes and hide behind them. He guessed early on that was what it must have felt like to be dead.

 

Crisp air filled his lungs, and a sudden chill ran down the length of his slender body. Clever blue eyes darted to the side of the room without a movement of his head, wind had flung the dull bronze latches asunder with an invisible fist. There was the sound of shattering glass before violently returning to the deafening silence.

 

Noc sat up, legs arching and head buried between his knees. In his left hand was a letter that he just recently opened, it was crumpled into a jumbled ball of white paper. Memories were as painful as salt on fresh wounds so he lived for the moment. After the accident "Who am I" was a common thought that he didn't know the answer too, no one did. Six years in his past he awoke in a hospital bed, alone with no memory. Of course they had informed him what happened, some emotionless automaton said he was found lying near the mouth of a river face up on a pebble shoreline; After he tried to commit suicide by jumping off the highest bridge in the city. Memory loss was his karma a psychologist once remarked, and that because no one had ever managed to lift Noc's veil of silence was a failure on there behalf. It wasn't really any one's fault to begin with, just that the boy never had anything important to say. He was hopeful in the beginning that his parents would come to claim him from the hospital ward, but they never came. So he made a decision not to speak.

 

He turned his over to the translucent shards scattered across the lacquered wood planks that made up the floor. Noc's memories were like the glass scattered and clear, but there like his voice.

Something else stole his attention away, a faint smell and a crackle of electricity. In the the corner of the small room the only lamp in the room went out as a moth landed on the soft iridescent glowing bulb. Noc wasn't phased by the sudden shift of power between darkness and light, empty was how he felt inside and now it had just been epitomized, but not completely. A greasy taint of street light that also hid the stars from the sky fended off the shadows around him in a near perfect rectangular box.

 

Noc rose to his feet and walked over to the window sill following a path of orange light, glass snapped and fractured under his weight the soft undersoles of his feet bled crimson. He leaned over the edge of the window while grasping onto the letter in his hand tightly and then became weightless. Baggy clothes flared angrily at his sides and then went silent like him, he felt nothing.

 

The paper in his hand came free and rolled into a small gutter hugging the dull gray sidewalk, ink from his parent's't last will and testament joined with soiled rain water on it's journey to the sewer. They died just the week before.

 

After a lifetime in darkness, a world of light opened up to him. The verdancy of the forest and pastures of rolling hills swept by him faster then he had ever ran before. The smells and sounds of a place Noc hadn't experienced was all to alien, but comforting. At the speed of thought he was amidst a rabble, throngs had summoned him into their midst all smiling as they hugged and greeting him. Perfect strangers who he never saw before and two familiar faces with laugh lines on their brows.

"I've been waiting for you" Noc muttered softly as he embraced his new family.

Edited November 19, 2004 by Noc

[Wyvern]

Noc leans back in his applicant easy chair and stares blankly at the ceiling of the Office, the veins surrounding his temple throbbing in response to an approaching headache. The applicant had been waiting for several days in the hopes of having his story accepted by the Elder of Initiates, but had yet to see the infamous Elders scaly face. In fact, with the exception of an odd incident where an orangutan had crawled out of an air duct and passed by his seat, the lonely applicant hadn't seen anyone enter the cluttered Office. Sighing and breaking his eyes from a meditative trance, Noc lifts himself from his seat only to jump as the front door of the Office suddenly slams open and Wyvern barges in.

 

Turning towards the tired applicant and bowing apologetically, Wyvern quickly rushes towards his desk and sorts through several documents, hissing curses under his breath until he comes across Noc's application story. Turning to the applicant and frowning, the overgrown lizard hisses:

 

"Ssssorry for being so late, Noc. Ever since the Chef Special Operations Outfit has been on my trail, Almost Dragonic Brand Thanksgiving Schemes have been much harder to execute. You wouldn't believe how difficult it is to paint a rubber chicken brown and pass it off as a roasted turkey nowadays.."

 

Picking up Noc's application sheet and brushing off the cobwebs that have gathered on it, Wyvern immediately sets about reading over the story. Once he's finished, the overgrown lizard strikes a grin full of razor-sharp teeth and exclaims:

 

"A nice application piece, Noc. There's certainly a lot to be thankful for in this piece. Before I accept it, however, I want to offer you a product that I think you may particularly enjoy."

 

Noc raises a brow as Wyvern digs through the pockets of his tunic for moment, only to squint as the greedy lizard cups his claws together and shows him what appears to be thin air.

 

"Errr, Wyvern?" mutters Noc, staring at his empty claws. "Are you sure that you didn't miss the product? I don't see anything there."

 

"Well that's precisely what it is." hisses Wyvern gleefully, grinning and winking. "Nothing, but not just any nothing. This is Almost Dragonic Brand Nothing™, guaranteed to have more durability then your normal nothing when it comes to extensive staring periods."

 

Noc stares at Wyvern as if he were insane, then slowly mutters:

 

"Uhhh, I'll pass."

 

Wyvern curses to himself and nods, stamping Noc's application ACCEPTED and deciding that he'd have to use those leftover candywrappers as Almost Dragonic Brand Stuffing™ after all.

 

;-)

 

OOC: A good story, Noc, and an ACCEPTED application. Welcome to the Mighty Pen! I apologize for my late reply, and look forward to reading more of your work as well as to participating with you in Pen commnity projects. Once again, welcome!