The Tower
by Megan Richardson
East Central High School
Megan Richardson is currently a senior at East Central High school and will be graduating this spring, she'll be pursuing a higher form of education in creative writing, as she has been writing for many years now. She is currently writing novels such as "Twenty six", "The City of the Last", "Allure's Calling" and more to come!
He lost his trust in the world within a single night. It was cruel and disgusting, its maw open wide, taking everything and anything it wanted without any regard for you. It didn’t care who you were. It didn’t care about all the sins you’d done to stay alive that long. That you were a survivor, whose hands were stained with the blood of thousands. It didn’t matter you were only eighteen, the world didn’t care what you could or couldn’t endure. It only knew how to push you to your breaking point.
He was drowning in his head as he ran through the black sea of trees. The branches slapped him, they dug into his face, into his arms. Thorns stuck to his hands, his legs as he ran through bushes, and rocks cut up his feet, twigs stuck through his skin.
He didn’t feel any of it. He was already too numb to care. He didn’t care that for the first time in years he was feeling fresh air, that he could see the moon and her arsenal of stars. No, he didn't even stop to gaze their way.
His wounds cast streaks of blood across his bare chest at the speed he was sprinting. The only thing his ears picked up on was the shouts behind him, they came from the darkness like throwing daggers, and they jabbed him in his legs making him move faster. He weaved and turned every which way, he didn’t know if he had a tracker in him and he didn’t entirely care. His mind was completely vacant of any and all possibilities of them following him.
Her cloudy lilac eyes were all he saw. All he felt was the caked blood on his hands and chest, the dirt underneath his nails, and the sand of the arena against his knees. All he heard was the deafening cheers. He smelt the metallic pool underneath his legs, it formed bigger as he held her to his chest.
It surrounded the two of them like a pool with no ripples. She had handed him her dagger then, the one she kept hidden from the guards. She told him to take care of it. She made him promise. She made him promise to stay alive. Shame, coated his tongue. Guilt raked his bones and fear, an unbearable amount of fear consumed him.
The hell they had been trapped in stretched to the twilight sky, the tower; which sucked in the very essence of moonlight, it washed out the stars in their beauty and left nothing, but a haunting wasteland. It was a monster laid to rest in the middle of the forsaken forest. Its hollow eyes watched his every move. He couldn’t escape it. But he knew he had to. He had to get away. He couldn’t go back. He just couldn’t. If not for himself then for her.
Though he knew he couldn’t run forever, that the life he had bit at his heels, threatening to drag him back in chains, there was no other choice but to try. One day maybe he'd return to burn the tower to nothing but smoldering ash, but that wasn’t today.
Today he had to save himself.
He had run till his feet bled so much, leaves were sticking to the bottoms of his feet. He had fallen down a steep hill, and his body had banged up against tree trunks and violently struck the ground, but at the bottom, when his momentum ran out, he stood like it didn’t even happen. Not because it didn’t hurt, his body had been on fire, his arm had to have been broken and his leg hurt like it was. But at that moment he got up because he had to. He couldn’t lay there and wallow in pain because he saw their strobe lights dancing among the trees behind him.
They were coming, but the absence of the dagger in his pants pocket scared him more than the lights. He flung himself to the earth and patted through the leaves till he cut himself on its blade, then he was up again running to who knows where.
His legs brought him to the first town he stumbled upon. He hid in a small shed behind a warehouse on the outskirts. He wasn’t sure if it would be safe, but he had to rest, if only to calm his racing heart even for a couple of minutes.
He messed with her blade as he laid among the hay of the shed. He wondered how differently this would have been if the plan went the way it should have. If Tilly and him planned better, if they didn't put their trust in the hands of the wrong person. Maybe she'd still be alive if she hadn't fallen in love with him.
She'd still be in that cell next to his filled with the scars of his life drawn on its walls. She'd still be that frightened, naive little girl like the day they brought her in. She wouldn't have changed into such a skilled fighter, she wouldn't have become bold and unwilling to bend to their captor's will. She would have been compliant, she wouldn't have gotten her fair share of scars. She wouldn't have gotten close to him and she would have been alive.
But those were what if's filled with maybes and that didn't change the fact that she was dead because of him and he was stuck here picking up the pieces.
It was daybreak when he awoke to bells chiming in the distance. For a moment he had been disoriented by his surroundings, it wasn't the familiar cell he had been waking up in since he was young. Fear gripped him till he tried to sit up and the gashes on his abdomen brought him back to reality.
He had escaped, he left the only life he had behind him. Why did that scare him? He didn't know this world. Didn't know manners or customs, didn't know languages, didn't know people. He was a tiny speck compared to most and he felt the size. He was lost. A part of him didn't even want to get up. A part of him almost didn't, but he knew Tilly died for nothing if he gave up. So he stood, holding his guts inside with barely a hand to his stomach. With every ache and stretch of his cuts, with every pulse of his bruises and crunch of broken bone, he left the shed putting one foot in front of the other into the new world he had just escaped to.
Interview with the Author
What inspired you to write this piece? What was your thought process throughout?
The Tower was inspired by my DnD character that I wanted to make a tragic backstory for and as I continued to develop him I realized this would make a fantastic book so that's exactly what I did. This short excerpt is taken from the beginning of the novel that I hope to finish someday. I knew I wanted to write something that would make you feel for my boy and I hope I accomplished that.
What do you hope readers will take away from your piece? What effects do you want the piece to have on the person, community, or society?
I hope readers can feel the emotion behind my words and can connect with my character, even if it was short. I hope this excerpt leaves you wanting more and fills you with questions like what happened to him? What will occur next? Most importantly, what is his name? ;)
What is your favorite piece of fiction (short story, novel, flash fiction, etc.) that you’ve ever read? Why?
My favorite book series is Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas. She did such a fantastic job with the world building of TOG and did a splendid job showcasing all that the world had to offer in the eight book series. She also makes you fall so deeply in love with each character, even with so many it doesn't feel like too much and you get so much insight from each one. It really inspires me to do the same with my characters and I hope one day I can succeed.
If you plan on continuing to write, what are some goals/plans you may have for your future?
A goal of mine is to be able to sit down at my dining room table with a cup of tea, holding a hard copy of my novel and say, "WOW. I wrote this."