Snippet Sunday: July 19, 2015

Keeping things consistent again while I am working on Darkness Becomes Her for Camp NaNoWriMo this month, I am posting some excerpts from a story I already have finished and posted to Wattpad, titled Rivers of Black, a short paranormal story.

I’m skipping ahead one paragraph from last week’s snippet. My main character had been thinking about wanting to take her own life, but her fear of being found had stopped her. Now, she is out wandering the woods, looking for no place in particular that would be her place to sit in peace at last.

A bit of background on this story as well: This story is rather dark and depressing. It deals with a topic some people would be hesitant to read; which is self harm and suicide. I don’t sugarcoat this either, I write it raw on how someone in my character’s state feels. Just be forewarned with that. I hope it doesn’t deter you from reading, but I know others cannot deal reading these kinds of things. (This snippet has nothing bad or dark to it though.)

(Some sentences may have been creatively punctuated to fit the ten sentence limit.)

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I must have walked for over an hour before I finally found the right spot, where for the first time in a long time I felt at peace. It was next to an old gnarly oak tree that looked half dead already. It looked lost and forlorn all by itself surrounded by a group of maples; lonely, like it needed a friend — just like me. I knew the second I came upon it that it was the place I would lay myself down to wait for the end.

I circled the once mighty oak, gazing at the number of gouges in its bark and the limbs that had broken and crashed to the forest floor around it. Pieces of bark had been torn from the tree and lay scattered, deep claw marks raked down the tree like scars from a battle lost, but fought well; about half way up the trunk the tree separated into a “Y”, one of giant limbs still remained, but the other looked like it had been struck by lightning and severed in half. It lay shattered and scorched on the ground a few feet away. A deep black gash split the remaining of the limb, creaking in the gentle breeze.

Vaguely my mind wondered what animal had made the deep claw marks but it mattered not to me. All I cared about was the feeling that the tree gave off. It was as scarred and shattered as I was, yet somehow it still lived on.

Cover made by @_teenagers on Wattpad

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If you want to read the whole story, it is available to read on Wattpad! I love to hear any and all feedback on my work as well. Comments are greatly appreciated, as are the reads.

And if you’re looking for some other great snippets of fellow authors,

hop on over to Facebook and check out Snippet Sunday!