Strangest thing. I was on GaiaOnline, and I was in a contest, and I looked at the prompts, and immediately exported A Lifetime and began writing this in the export. Completely spur-of-the-moment. I'm happy. It got me out of my writer's block.

Here are the prompts used:-Then all falls to glass and you’re staring at the shards as they rise into smoke. Nothing can be like it was before.
-Sometimes happily ever after is in someone else’s fairytale.
- The sand turned pink beneath a sunset of rubies. The stars were on fire, slowly simmering until they became diamonds. The sky was cold again, and wrapped me in a cloak of darkness. I felt right at home.
- There was a strange flower growing in the backyard.

Enjoy. Please R&R.

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You can be normal. You can see things the way other people see them. You can act, dress, talk, even think the way other people do. But that's a choice. You choose to be someone you're not. You choose to be a carbon copy of your idol, running around like a brainless android with cookie-cutter emotions and actions. When you conform to your surroundings, you are boring. It's as simple as that. Take down the poster and tack yourself to the wall, because all anyone sees is the flat, glossy you.

With choosing to be normal, you can choose to be different. You can march to the beat of a different drum, as some would say. You can say, Oh, I'm not going to dress like that whore! or Oh, that's so cruel! I'll go befriend the fat girl. If conforming is blending in, then veering in the other direction is changing. How you see the world becomes your own vision, your own terrible fate or your own intoxicating passion. You can break other people out of the can of conformity, but only if they are willing--if they see what they're doing and realize, Hey, that's not me.

Sometimes being different can get you into trouble. I understand that only too well. My family is huge--I'd like to say we're Italian, but we're not. I'm pretty sure we're Dutch, but I could be wrong. It's not like I care, anyway. We knew a lot of people, had a lot of friends. Our get-togethers were pretty much the talk of the town.

I have a sister, Lorelei. She's three years older than me: Twenty-seven to my twenty-four. In a perfect world, I would be either just finishing college or just beginning my life. But this isn't a perfect world, and I finished college long ago. My mother never knew what happened the day I got my first taste of the world behind the we're-so-happy-happy-reality-is-all-there-is mask. Most people wear that mask; they sit atop their high horse and stare down everyone else with it, hoping they'll conform to the idea that there is nothing beyond the bonds of science.

When in reality, there is. Funny how in reality, something that can be classified as unreality exists. No one knows it unless they've seen it. I stumbled upon it. I was fifteen, in my second year of what I now call normal high school. I was out with friends, just having a good time. It was almost Christmas, and we were at my oldest friend's house. We were stoned, I admit it. The others were drunk, but due to my low tolerance for alcohol, I wasn't. And I don't know if I'm happy about that or not. I guess I shouldn't be. If I had been drunk, I may not be where I am now.

My friend had gotten a stripper to come to the house. He said his parents would never let him have one for his sixteenth birthday, so he got one while they weren't home. Through the haze I was in, I remember how beautiful she was. I'm not just saying that because she was taking her clothes off in front of me, either--she was truly a beautiful woman. There was something I sensed about her, something strange and different.

She had her shirt off when I first noticed it: The tattoo on her back, the black wings painted there. And then the mark faded into her pale skin, and there really were wings there. My buddies were impressed, but I was amazed. Completely enraptured in the beautiful appendages: Black feathers, flaked with white. Then, I thought I was hallucinating. But when I woke up the next day in bed, my head pounding as the drugs wore off, I remembered those wings--those wings and nothing else. They were there, firmly implanted in my head, and they weren't going anywhere anytime soon. They were like nothing I had ever seen before, strange, alien, fascinating.

I ran away from home the next week. My home life wasn't crappy, but it was unsatisfactory. I had been pondering running for months, and the stripper with the wings was what finally sent me to the streets. I needed to find her. I had to know if I was hallucinating or not. My friend was too stoned to remember much about her, so I trudged blindly toward the place I thought she was. Eventually, I left the city on a bus, bound for the ocean. The endless blue waves were something I'd never seen before, and I was absolutely amazed by them. I had almost forgotten the stripper's wings by then, but sitting on the sand my first night there, I remembered them, and remembered how enrapturing they had been.

A couple of years later, I was mugged on the beach. It was late, and I was the only person out there save for the assailant. All I remember is a rather heavy blow to my head; I still have a scar beneath my hair where the skin broke. When I came to, I thought I was going to die, it hurt so bad. But I realized I was alive and inside, and opened my eyes. I had been found by a family who had a summer house near the beach. They told me I could stay with them until the end of the summer, and I gladly accepted. I still walked on the beach, telling myself the attack was a one-time thing.

I also fell in love. I was mugged mid-June, and I was in love by mid-August. What was to be expected, though? I was barely seventeen years old and living with a girl my age. Tabitha. Her name was Tabitha. We walked on the beach together and basically spent all our time together. The day before they were supposed to leave, we stayed on the beach all day, swimming, playing, building one hell of a sandcastle, and waiting for the sunset. I couldn't help kissing her, and it definitely wasn't the first time I'd done it--I just wasn't expecting to make love to her on a plaid quilt in the middle of a beach.

We missed the sunset, needless to say. But maybe we didn't? Maybe, through our passion and above our breathing, we took notice of the setting sun, the rising tide, the way the sand turned pink beneath a sunset of rubies. The stars simmered above us--I could hear them crackling. The sky was cold, clouded by the salt air and the coming morning. It wrapped me in a cloak of darkness, but the cloak wasn't tight enough to keep out Tabitha's arms and heat. It was in her embrace that I felt completely at home. I didn't remember the stripper with the wings; or Tabitha's parents, waiting for us to come home; or my sister, who I promised to return to--it was just us and the night, and the waves crashing on the shore.

The next day, I invited Tabitha to go home with me. I figured I would need someone by my side to be able to face my mother and father. Lorelei wouldn't be able to make them forget everything I'd put them through when I'd run away. Tabitha wouldn't, either, but having her hand in mine would give me confidence. And it did. I had confidence, however cocky it was, but my parents refused to listen to anything I said. I ended up saying, Fuck you, and leaving. Afterwards, in the car with Tabitha, as I rolled the window up to shut out my sister's attempts to get my parents to listen: That was the first time Tabitha ever saw me cry. The first and the last. She ended up being the one to drive us to my sister's house.

Tabitha had some secrets of her own. I went home with her the next day. I couldn't stand being within a hundred-mile radius of my parents, no matter what Lorelei said. Tabitha's home town was an average-sized place, probably around five thousand people. Much smaller than anywhere I'd ever lived or stayed. She had her own apartment, and I quickly moved in with her. I got a job, started working, and nothing really seemed odd. Then one day, Tabitha said I could finish school if I wanted. She said that most people my age were out of school, but that I could finish my remaining few years and graduate with a degree. I wasn't stupid--I knew eighteen-year-olds weren't already out of school. I pushed the objection away, however, and chose to accept her offer.

The next week, I was in school again. The kids there were just that: Kids. I ran away in the middle of my sophomore year, so I figured that if I picked up school again, I would be in a class of fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds. But I wasn't. They were only about eleven or twelve. I was shocked. Not just by that but by the schedule. The classes were longer than I remembered them. The school day went to five-thirty, and began at seven-thirty. It was ridiculous. Ten hours of school a day. The school year went farther into the summer, too, as I soon figured out after asking around.

The first night, I got home and pressed Tabitha for answers. She seemed perfectly fine with the idea of a school system like that. But she explained to me anyway. She explained that the town belonged to a larger community, one no one knows about. She warned me of all the dangers, weaving in pluses every once in a while. She said that since I was an outsider, I should take extra precautions, that I was in danger of discrimination and hate crimes. It was strange to be on the receiving end of the hate. So strange. She explained that she used to be in my shoes, but she was very, very young. She didn't remember any other life. I took it all in, figuring, What the hell? My life's fucked up already. What will a little more mud do?

I remember the day I saw the newspaper. I remember it crystal-clearly. It will never vanish from my memory. There was a murder story in it, on the front page. With a huge picture--one of the stripper, the wings on her back again. The murder had happened on the West Coast somewhere, but it still knocked me breathless. Nothing was said in the article about there being strange wings on the woman's back. As much as the article was supposed to be unbiased, the author had a prejudice against her. He called her a tlim'okli, and all I knew then was that people like the stripper were hated, despised, segregated against, much like African-Americans were in the fifties and sixties.

Tabitha told me she didn't want me wrapped up in what she called her world. She said she wasn't going to explain what a tlim'okli was, and advised me not to dig deeper into the subject--or any subject involving the race of someone from her world. It was the first time we fought. And I guess that's where the rumor that I abused her came from. According to Lorelei, Tabitha had called her afterwards and she told our mother we had fought, and our mother had automatically assumed I'd hit her. I would never have hurt her. Never. I loved her. I still do, but not in the same form.

After that first fight, we decided it was better for both of us if we moved out of the town. We moved to a nearby city, but I still went to school in the town and Tabitha still worked there. Lorelei came to visit us one day. She told me our mother was thoroughly convinced that I abused Tabitha every night when we got home. But our mother knew nothing. She assumed that because I hurt her by running away, I hurt Tabitha as well. According to Lorelei, she was telling our whole family and all our friends that I beat the one I love, and that they all had a piece of their minds to give me. I don't have the words to describe how awful I felt then. It was so much worse than my parents turning me out, so much more personal. I was angry on top of the indescribable grief--angry at my parents. How dare they assume I had it in my soul to harm someone? When they fought, did they hit each other? I don't think so. So why would I be any different? Because I ran away?

A year or so later, I graduated high school. I was amazed at how quickly I made it through my remaining two grades. Tabitha had me take both of the grades offered during the year, so I was learning all the way through the year. The grades overlapped, but Tabitha's family provided a tutor for what I didn't yet understand. It was impressive. I could not believe it.

That same year, we began talking about getting married. We were nineteen and had been in our relationship for almost two years, so what else was there to do? On our two-year anniversary, I proposed to her. She said yes. The date was up in the air, but when she found out she was pregnant a week later, we decided the wedding would have to be either in her first trimester or after the baby was born. We went for after the baby was born. Then we began piecing together our lives. We began planning for the baby, working closely with Tabitha's family. We even moved into their house when Tabitha got so big she couldn't make it down the stairs in the apartment building.

Lorelei was ecstatic. She was so happy that she was going to be an aunt, and she made the commute to us as often as she could manage. Our parents didn't know. We both thought it would be best if they didn't. That way, they wouldn't try anything to get me away from the child.

The baby was born in the winter, on February 29th. A Leap Year baby. We named her Roxanne. Roxanne Amie van der Meer, daughter of Ike van der Meer and Tabitha Orbin. She was beautiful; so perfect, so helpless and needy. I actually teared up when she took hold of my little finger for the first time. Not even the midnight wake-ups and ear-piercing crying could stave my love for that tiny being. I fell in love all over again with this new entity, this merging of Tabitha and I.

I never could have imagined what happened the next month. We were on our way back from Lorelei's house, and I was driving. There was snow on the ground and on the highway even as April approached, and traffic was moving at snail's pace. We shouldn't have been driving. I know that now. We should've stayed another night at Lorelei's. But we didn't. I don't like talking about this because I could've protected my family by doing any of a number of things differently, but for the sake of explanation, I'll keep going. A police car was coming up the shoulder toward an accident a mile or so behind us. Traffic moved a few feet forward, and in that few feet, two things happened simultaneously: The police car drew near and I lost control of the car. Tabitha was killed instantly, but Roxy was fine. My leg was broken from where a piece of the engine had been forced through the dashboard, and I had cuts and scrapes all over my face and right side.

When I got out of the hospital, Lorelei offered to take me in, but I decided to stay with Tabitha's family. I didn't want to look at the baby for a good two weeks, and I broke down every time I heard her crying in another room. Left to bed rest and a cast for a month, I didn't do much at all except sleep and think. I lost thirty pounds, I ate so little. I only dreamed of coming to in the wreckage and looking down to see Tabitha's mangled body, her head on my shoulder as if she were asleep. I realized then that sometimes happily ever after is in someone else's fairytale. You have everything one moment, then the next it's gone. Everything is whole and perfect, then it all falls to glass and you're left staring at the shards as they rise into smoke. I realized nothing can be like it was before. Not then. Not now. Not ever.

With hours of nothing came torrents of thoughts. I thought of everything from the mundane and boring to the extravagant. My thoughts eventually turned to the very thing that had fucked up my life in the first place: The stripper's wings. I was so angry at Tabitha for leaving Roxy and I all alone that I ignored her warning and decided to focus everything I had on finding out what exactly a tlim'okli was.

I left Roxy with Tabitha's parents, who would have been my in-laws by then had the accident not happened. It had been seven weeks since the accident, and I was back on my feet, but unable to drive for more than ten minutes at a time. I realized I had to get out of that town if I wanted to find out what a tlim'okli was, so I swallowed my fear and drove to another place in Tabitha's world. This new place was larger, a city. And with the larger size came more people, and I suddenly realized what Tabitha had been warning me of. Tabitha's world was the unreality within reality. The difference facing conformity across the trenches and No Man's Land. But this isn't a story about the people in general. It is about a certain species: A tlim'okli.

I found one soon enough. She was fidgety, nervous, frightened. I followed her around like a hunter, but I couldn't bring myself the speak to her. She didn't have wings. I figured she had the tattoo like the stripper had had. I honestly don't know how I knew what she was--it was just instinct. I knew nothing about her other than wings and tlim'okli. It was as if there was a strange flower growing in the back yard, beneath the big oak tree, and I was staring at it through a dusty window. Only when the glass was cleaned would I see it clearly.

I followed her to a rundown old flat above a bakery. This rush of something--I didn't know what it was then--washed over me, and I was taken aback. Inside the flat, there was a desk with an elderly man sitting at it in a pinstripe vest and poker hat. He looked up and silently handed me a flier. The flat was the headquarters for a tlim'okli prostitution service. The flier advertised what you could do to the one you bought for the night, mostly torture any way you wished as long as you avoided killing them or harming them permanently.

My intentions were much more innocent than that. I bought one so I could question her. She wasn't as frightened as the one I had followed to the flat. She was probably inwardly glad that I wasn't going to hurt her, but she wouldn't answer any of my questions unless she gave me what I had purchased. I could barely think as she straddled me, but I managed to ask and get answers to a lot of my questions. She said her wings were bound by a spell, but that was the only thing that could be controlled. At night, she was the same as a vampire. During the full moon, she ran with werewolves. As much as I wanted not to believe her, I couldn't bring myself to do it. Everything she said, I took in. She went on to explain the way she was treated and how she had become what she was.

When I fell asleep, I quickly began dreaming. When I awoke the next morning, my back was heavy. It hurt badly, but I couldn't figure out why. I tried to roll onto my back, and that's when I noticed them. Whatever the bitch had done to me, whether it was planned or not, I had wings. Dusty gray ones with occasional black speckles. I panicked, calling Tabitha's parents immediately. Surely they would know what to do. I was completely hysterical when her father arrived at the hotel I was staying in. From the look on his face, I could tell he was disgusted, but as he realized just how awful I felt about it, he tried to calm me down and explained to me what I would have to do. I had been dragged into the world Tabitha had warned me so strongly about, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. I realized I must have bitten the prostitute's lip while we had sex, and Tabitha's father noticed the raw mark on the side of my neck, like a hickey, only deeper. That's how our blood was exchanged.

He took me some place I could have my wings bound, because I could be arrested for not having the procedure done. I understood why the woman I had followed to the flat was nervous and afraid—I was instantly met with the tlim'okli prejudice. I was cursed. I still am. I said before that being different can get you into trouble. Becoming a thing that isn't quite one thing or another is as different as I imagine you can get. Even though I couldn't help what happened, it was the biggest mistake of my life. I haven't gotten over it. It's been five years since that day. Five years of hardships, both internal and external.

Roxy is safe, luckily. I am so happy for that. If I could do one thing, I would remove myself from her life and leave her with no memory of me. I am dangerous. I can't control myself sometimes. My condition will cause Roxy countless problems as she gets older and begins to understand things like prejudice and discrimination. She may even despise me one day. I curse myself every night: For running away from my home, for killing Roxy's mother, for becoming a monster.

My family doesn't understand. They can't. My parents can accept a thing like me as their son, and I don't blame them at all. Lorelei is the closest one to understanding completely. She stands before me when everyone else comes running at me with torches. I ruined her wedding--the biggest day of her life--and she is the only one that's there for me.

A lot has happened in the past five years. I'm still alone and I'm still guilty, but I am working on reconnecting with my family and friends. The turning point in all of this was at my sister's wedding, about a month ago. Lorelei's fiancé didn't even know I was coming until I showed up at the ceremony. He's always hated me. I don't think he'll ever change, either.

When I got there, I realized how different everyone looked. Family friends were there with their kids, aged eight years since I'd last seen them. I don't know if they recognized me at first. I hadn't changed much. Roxy was nervous as anything. She was five that day, and had a tight hold on my hand. We made our way to the second pew back in the church, and took our seats just in time to watch my father walk Lorelei down the aisle. She looked stunning in a flowing white gown. I was amazed.

Roxy barely knew her aunt. She was even more nervous as we made our way to the reception, where the guests were mulling around and talking amongst themselves. Lorelei came up and embraced me tightly; we hadn't seen each other in almost a year. I don't know who started the whisper. It was probably an old family friend. But soon, I could feel everyone watching me. As used to it as I was, I was still uneasy. Then my mother came up and grabbed Roxy's hand, pulling her away from me, yelling something about me kidnapping her and abusing her. Needless to say, Lorelei and I began arguing with her. I took Roxy back and picked her up, trying to calm her down. Everyone was watching by that point. So I left. I stood outside the tent with Roxy until Lorelei came to find me. She said she'd pulled rank on our mother and that I could go back in without any hassle. People still looked. They stared, their eyes piercing as the woman abuser walked through the tent with a child clinging to him.

I had to get away from the tent by nightfall, however. Lorelei and her fiancé had chosen to have the wedding the first night of full moon and I had to get far away before the moon rose. I left Roxy with Lorelei and went to the hotel. The wedding reception was close to the forest, of course. Before the moon could rise, I ran as far into the forest I could, hoping the distance between the hotel and the distance I ran into the forest would be enough.

I woke up naked on the patio, beside the pool. My body ached, as it always did after I ran beneath the moon, and I was covered in scratches from my own claws and the foliage in the forest. The hotel ground keeper found me there and called the police before Lorelei found me. She took me inside, but not before most of the wedding party saw the shape I was in. I had never walked that much after I woke up, and my head spun and pounded so badly that I became ill, and what came up wasn't what normally should came up. The spoils of my wolf hunt were revealed, and questions soon followed. Lorelei ignored them for the moment and took me to my room and put me to bed, where I slept for much of the day. I don't know what she told the guests--whether it was the truth or something close to the truth or a complete lie--but they avoided me even more when I saw them next.

My mother was there when I woke up. Lorelei must have told her the truth. All of it. She was really making an effort to understand, but I could tell she still despised me. She didn't forgive me for running away, but I wasn't expecting her to. She did half-apologize for assuming I had hurt Tabitha. She thought I'd killed her. And I did. Lorelei keeps telling me it was an accident, but it wasn't. I could've done things differently. I could've kept control.

My mom is still trying to understand. My dad is even further behind than she is. As I said before, I've started repairing my relationships. If they want things to go back to the way they were, then they have to accept me for who I am now, and they have to be willing to listen. Many aren't. My friend is. The one who had gotten the stripper that started this whole thing. He is further along than my mother is.

I'm living on the same street as Lorelei. I'm living in reality, in unreality. This is my world, my curse, my fault. The beat of my drum is fast, urgent, nervous, and I'm still keeping up with it. I will continue to stay on beat until the drummer gets tired and stops, and maybe then, I can rest in peace.

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I've also always wanted to name a character Ike and use the last name "van der (something)". "Van der Meer" is the last name of one of the executive producers of the Sci-Fi show Stargate: SG-1, and I liked that one the best, so I used it. Plus I was originally going to use it anyway.

This was typed completely on FictionPress's document editor. Well, actually it wasn't. Most of it was typed in the document editor. Until it went blank and I lost a few paragraphs. Then I switched to a word document. -.-