Feathered Roar Jennifer Niskanen, 2016 I woke to total disorientation that night, not sure if I'd even slept at all, reaching out in distress for a hand-hold, arms up and out for anything I could grab on to. My fingers flexed to breaking, only to curl back in convulsively, like a pulse, echoing my pounding heart. Should I go forward? Am I headed back, somewhere? Where am I going? My head whip-cracked down and up, right and left, looking for the right direction. What was all this for? How did this start? Was I always like this? Light feather-touched my face, drifting out of the shadows from the uncovered window, reaching around me, howling out of a snow storm but soft, far away, like I wasn't quite there. "There must be a way out," I thought …show more content…
I really felt like that little girl again, ready to jump. I had to hurry. Trudging on faster, my breath ripping my lungs between my hard clenched teeth. I had to run. I clawed at the ground, bending to all-fours like an animal, coughing and choking on my own hair, wild with the wind. The trailer wasn't even a spot in the distance. I had no sense of home behind me. There was only this moment. There was no room for anything else. Maybe that was my breaking point, but it didn't feel that way. I was giving in, I suppose, but I wasn't giving up. It was something else, and it was just around the corner, just a little bit further into the darkness. It was hard to think. It was so loud. That might have been part of the problem. Snow snaked like dragons pushing me on. Was the wind screaming like that or was it me? It made by ears ring. I was vibrating with it, like a struck bell. This was life turned up to the max, all pain and cold. I was loving it. I couldn't get enough. I wanted to revel in it. I reaching down, tearing off what was left of my nightgown. "Whatever! Give me what you've got!" I shouted, raw with the volume of it, shaking my head, jumping and waving my arms. I was flying. No matter what anybody said. This was my …show more content…
Wings wrapped and snapped the highest tree limbs, claws lacerated the trunks, bleeding sticky with sap. I could smell it. "Oh yeah. This was definitely it!" There was something else in the air too. It's hard to describe really, a sweetness, almost like vanilla but older with on-going decay and age. There was that and the cold. The storm permeated everything. Snow has a smell all its own, if you look for it. I breathed it all in. I wanted to remember it. Have you ever had a moment like that, where something inside you says, this is important? You have to remember everything! Their shapes where dancing around and above me, moving into each other, so nothing was exactly separate. There was no telling where one began and another ended, no dissociating them from the forest or the sky. It just kept mixing together, and I was a part of it. I demanded my place, hopping in disjointed affinity, my arms jerking, my back bucking. My laughter hooted with the madness of it. We're they crazy? Was
Her bedroom was closed but with an “open window” (463), with a roomy armchair she sank into. As she is looking out the window she sees “the tops of trees,” “new spring life,” “breath of rain was in the air,” and she could hear a peddler below in the street, calling to customers, and “patches of blue sky showing” (463). The author depicts in the previous sentence that when she uses “breath of rain was in the air,” rain is more like a cleansing so she could be feeling a sign of relief but can’t recognize it. She sat with her head on the cushion “quite motionless,” except when a sob came in her throat and “shook her,” like a child “continuously sobbing” (463) in its dreams. The author uses imagery in the previous
The chilling night wind rushes through the air, and cuts sharply across my skin, leaving a cold sting in my fingertips, making it harder to hold on. The curtain beneath me sways and shifts as I inch my way down.
As we were climbing up the hill, I looked around to notice how green the lightly damp grass was, how beautiful the tall trees were, and how fast those snow clouds were moving above us. We got one elk on this adventure, so we decided we would pack up our stuff and head back home. As the white GMC reached the summit of Red Mountain Pass, I looked back to Silverton to see nothing but snow falling from the nearly black clouds in the sky, and I thought to myself--let it snow.
I heard a blood-curdling scream and I jumped. I felt silent tears running down my heavily scarred face, but they weren’t out of sadness. Mostly. They were a mixture of pain and fear. I ran into the eerie, blood-splattered room and screamed as I felt cold fingers grab my neck.
My sweat soaked shirt was clinging to my throbbing sunburn, and the salty droplets scalded my tender skin. “I need this water,” I reminded myself when my head started to fill with terrifying thoughts of me passing out on this ledge. I had never been so relieved to see this glistening, blissful water. As inviting as the water looked, the heat wasn't the only thing making my head spin anymore. Not only was the drop a horrifying thought, but I could see the rocks through the surface of the water and couldn't push aside the repeating notion of my body bouncing off them when I hit the bottom. I needed to make the decision to jump, and fast. Standing at the top of the cliff, it was as if I could reach out and poke the searing sun. Sweat dripped from my forehead, down my nose, and on its way to my dry, cracked lips which I licked to find a salty droplet. My shirt, soaked with perspiration, was now on the ground as I debated my
The roar of voices has thankfully finally ceased. All that conflict and turmoil is now gone, and I am at peace. As the leaves blow in the slight breeze, all I feel is tranquility. It is not easy dealing with people who hold such contempt for each other, and that feel the need to instigate with such frequency. I see patterns cast by the obscured lowering sun are dancing about. They peak my interest and I watch them. They jump and dance with the shaking leaves’ rhythm, so carefree. This natural shelter is where I feel safe, beastie or no beastie. My body is limp and completely still; I contemplate many things during this brief period when I’m not listening to heated arguments of Ralph and Jack, and during this my eyes feel the need to close.
The air was tinted with a frosty wind, each breath making itself known to the world around you, though nobody was around to see. At least that's what you hoped. Feeling eyes watching you carefully, you glance around and see the shadows move again, but this time, you pick up the pace when you notice the thousands of eyes looking back.
She caught her foot in a gopher hole as she fell the grasses wrapped around her ankle. She stifled a scream. She jumped up even though her legs wailed at her to stop. She pushed them to run ever faster.
The line went fairly quickly. We finally sat and I had held onto the bars for dear life. I wanted to get off, but I knew this was something I should do. Then, the instructor started the ride. I shook in fear. The ride started and we started elevating. I closed my eyes for a second and thought, I have to see what I am about to do! I opened them and saw how high I was. I felt like on top of the world for the moment. Slowly we reach up. Higher and higher up, up, up. We got to the top waited for a couple of seconds. All of a sudden, the moment we have been waiting for. The ride dropped I felt like I was falling. We went down so fast I didn’t have a chance to think. That was the part where I appreciated Katarina for motivating me to go on the ride that I now love. The ride after was pretty easy to go through. Just that one drop got
A shrill cry echoed in the mist. I ducked, looking for a sign of movement. The heavy fog and cold storm provided nothing but a blanket, smothering all sight and creating a humid atmosphere. The freezing air continued to whip at my face, relentless and powerful. Our boat, stuck in the boggy water. Again a cry called. Somewhere out there was someone, or something.
Her skin sliced smoothly beneath my knife and she screamed, looking up at me with pain and pleading flooding blue eyes. Between slices I stabbed the knife in hard to those places on the body where nothing was vital to keeping you alive but felt pain acutely, twisting the blade to a chorus of high pitched screeching. Behind it all, the sound of metal in flesh and pain, was whimpered begging, asking me to stop, and asking why I was doing this. But there was a sound more horrific than anything, a hollow laugh that sounded maniacal and filled with mocking that came from my own throat.
The Creature That Opened My Eyes Sympathy, anger, hate, and empathy, these are just a few of the emotions that came over me while getting to know and trying to understand the creature created by victor frankenstein in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. For the first time I became completely enthralled in a novel and learned to appreciate literature not only for the great stories they tell but also for the affect it could have on someones life as cliché as that might sound, if that weren’t enough it also gave me a greater appreciation and understanding of the idiom “never judge a book by its cover.” As a pimply faced, insecure, loner, and at most times self absorbed sophomore in high school I was never one to put anytime or focus when it came time
It smelled. The fragrance fell somewhere between burnt broccoli and spoiled milk. Drops came from invisible clouds. Runoff ran through degraded ditches, seeming to multiply with everything it destroyed, passing on its acidic behavior to whatever it touched.
I was now within a couple of miles of my grandma’s house, my feet wet, my throat dry and my body cold. The wind crawled up my spine as I began to shiver. Suddenly the weather took a dramatic change for the worst. The thunder roared like the dominant lion, the lighting flashed and hailstones the size the size of golf balls began to pound my already weakened body. At this point I felt unable to carry on in my journey in the snow. As I turned the corner I was once again filled with joy as the sight of my grandma’s house brought back memories of hot chocolate and marshma...
It was drizzling outside, letting the cool wind to sway past my face every now and then. Every time it touched my body, shiver ran down my spine.