Guardian Half-Angel - Chapter 1

"No," she awoke, the word lingering around her lips like a key to a lost memory, one locked within her unfinished and hidden dreams.

She'd been sleep-thinking again-Victoria referred to it as that because she was always half-awake while it occurred. And yet, I can never seem to remember anything upon waking, she mused. Victoria was fully alert now, slipping into her daydreams with the practiced ease of an athlete dipping into a usual routine. The need to retreat into her mind was strong, an urge formed by instinct, to keep her from going insane in this world of pathetic trivialities and minor dramas.

One she wished sorely to be above. But even as this thought appeared, it slipped quietly to the back of her mind at the sight of a new thought: Beauty.

She pretended that when she stared into the mirror, she would be changed; she would be beautiful. Perfect. Oh, how they would gasp, all those stupid popular boys the attentions of whom never seemed to matter before they were in her grasp, as she walked, no, floated down those artificially lit hallways, brightening them like the real sun as spring would, illuminating everyone around her like...

"Ugh."

The mirror revealed the truth-she had not undergone an amazing transformation overnight. The daydream fled, as though as repulsed by her ugliness as she.

Brown hair, brown eyes-Don't forget the flatness, the greasiness...the utter repulsiveness, she shivered.

Slimish body with ragged nightclothes, dead arms and a sleepless look about her-when she dreamed, she was only half-asleep, and so her nightly cycle of rejuvenation from her long, torturous days at high school was interrupted abruptly. She sighed, knowing without predicting that this day would be the same as many, predetermined by her usual morning ritual of downing.

And yet I'm too weak to even try to stop it, she barely considered. But it’s not completely my fault-change is hard. Despite how much she knew she probably needed it.

Breakfast was as boring as her morning-sloppy cheerios-she missed Birdman and his usual wake-up texts that brought her immeasurable joy. But Victoria set the memory aside, not wanting it to spoil (even further) her soggy cereal.

The bus ride was even more sad-but with the added pleasure of a dead ipod and the bumps and swerving turns of an insane bus driver, freed into the world with a gigantic, yellow, hunk of metal. She imagined it careening into the sidewalk, sending people flying-yellow journalism wouldn't even exist then-it'd be the truth. And then she created a world where she was finally respected, where she jumped ahead to save the bus from the maniacal, criminal driver. Ah, the advantages of being alone. Though, I do seem to be turning into another Walter Mitty…

But reality exerted its inescapable grasp over her soon enough, as she smelt exhaust fumes and hands of laughing teenagers “accidentally” shoving her further into the exile of her lonely bus seat. And then there’s the disadvantages…