Alder's Grove

In The Tower, Continued (for @dahob)

2012-07-18T19:40:18Z

After In the Tower and In the Tower, Continued

For dahob's 500-word continuation from the June Mini-Giraffe Call

Bobbie was getting bored. It wasn't the first time he'd gotten bored, but this was the longest he could remember.

For days, the food had been boring and short, and there hadn't been any new books or even any homework, no toys, no

games, nothing in over a week. The TV was on the fritz, which meant he had three old books, a notebook full of

drawings, and pacing. And pacing was getting really, really boring.

More than bored, though, Bobbie was starting to get worried. They'd left him high and dry a couple times before, but
( Read more... )

Edited to add: The funky line breaks were an accident, but I kinda like them, so I'm going to keep them

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In The Tower, Continued

2012-07-02T20:42:35Z

After In the Tower

Amanda liked her room. She didn’t know why, sometimes, her Aunt Tanta warned her against wanting to leave. She had everything she ever needed here, and it was warm, and safe, and comfortable - but most of all, safe.

She watched the television, and it told her about wars and rapes and murders. None of that happened here, in her tower. Nothing bad could happen to her at all, here in her castle. She was the protected princess. She was the safest maiden of them all. And she had everything she wanted.

Aunt Tanta told her she’d been found on the doorstep, a foundling. She told Amanda she was special, for she alone of the five children in the towers had been given Tanta’s personal care and personal visits. She alone had been bottle-fed by the ancient woman, she alone met with her for tea three times a week, rain, snow, or sunshine, summer and winter.

Amanda called herself, Amandianna, Princess of the Southermost Tower. She wrote long and involved stories about herself, about Amandianna, which involved a miniature horse and adventures in and around the tower, being wrested from it by force only to find a way to return, being pulled out into the world and fighting her way safe, back here, to her tower, to her safety, to the dragon who protected them.

--

Fred had been trying to send messages to the other towers.

Nothing else had worked so far, and he’d been trying for 584 hash-mark group-of-five days plus three.

He’d been growing out his hair for most of that eight years, thinking of the Rapunzel stories his sister had loved, back when he had a family. (He still didn’t have a beard to grow out. He wondered if that would grow faster). His hair dragged on the floor, now, when he didn’t braid it, but the tower was a lot taller than that.

Ripped sheets had just ended up with him not having a bed for a week, after an unseen hand had plucked him back into the tower from halfway down. Messages in balloons vanished into the wind and never came back.

He’d tried to take the dumbwaiter apart for the rope, but they’d just left him all alone and foodless for two days while they replaced and repaired it. “They:” the invisible keepers. He assumed they weren’t machines, but he wasn’t certain. He’d asked for seeds and started growing linen, but his rope had vanished overnight. They hadn’t stopped him from practicing climbing up and down the stairwell walls, but a fall on a slippery patch of rock (Moss, damn it) had left him with a broken ankle (set by maybe-robots while he was unconscious) and second-guessing that plan.

So now he was sending letters in schoolbooks, written in the margins of the boring sections, slipped between the pages, anywhere he could. How long have you been here? Why do you think they want us? Have you ever seen a person, since you got here?

Sometimes he just wrote I’m lonely. What about you?

He wrote one every day, and then did his homework, assigned the same way food was delivered, by dumbwaiter, read a book, ran up and down the stairs, maybe played some games, drew the few out his window, and then wrote another letter. The TV showed him a world so far away, so long ago, it might as well be another planet. The letters, at least, seemed like they might contact someone.

And then, thirty-five hashmarks later, a poetry book arrived with a note in the margins.

I was here for twelve hundred days when I lost count. I’m lonely, too.

Next: In the Tower, Continued

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In the Tower, a beginning of a story idea

2012-05-21T14:23:23Z

It had gotten to the point where Bobbie could barely remember home. Home that wasn't the tower, at least, home that had, if he closed his eyes and really, really, thought hard, four straight walls and a straight roof and, possibly most importantly, an exit. Several of them, including the bedroom window he'd snuck out of more than once... but maybe one time too many.

That, that, he remembered very vividly. Sneaking out his window, slinking along the fence line, down to his buddy Jack's place, and then, the grip like a hand holding him armpits to hips, the sudden sensation of being pulled off his feet.

And then... and then there was the tower. He wasn't very clear on how he'd gotten in here, but there was certainly no getting out. Not alive, at least.

When he'd first woken up, Bobbie had looked out the window and thought dumbest kidnapper ever. This is a giant tower- later he'd learn it was one of five giant towers -out in the middle of a field. My folks will find me in no time.

He didn't know how long ago that had been, but it had been quite a while, and, for some reason, nobody seemed to find the giant towers in the middle of a field. Maybe they weren't looking. Maybe they'd set him up.

Somebody knew he was here. Food came up by basket three times a day. (He'd tried escaping that way, only to discover that he didn't fit in the basket chute, and that trying meant he didn't get food for two days), and books, and learning materials, books, games, anything he asked for. Anything except an exit.

Somebody was keeping him here for a reason. Bobby paced the confines of his cell once again, and wondered - not what the reason was, not this time. This time, he wondered if he was going to regret knowing, when he finally found out.

Next: In the Tower, Continued

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