Naturally Perfect

This is my second assignment from my advanced creative writing class. It is supposed to be a completed short story.

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Rachel Lane's office had cream plushy floors that sank with each step and pure white walls marred by pictures of smiling pudgy babies, their rosy cheeks and bright glinting eyes full of vibrancy. She sat in her tall backed rolling chair looking as if its black leather swallowed her petite frame as she leaned over with her chin propped up on her hand, elbow resting on the mahogany desk. One crossed legs in her short brown skirt jittered, the high-heeled shoe dangling on by her toes swayed with the movement. Her brown suit coat rested on the arm of her chair and her buttercup blouse's sleeves were rolled up as she flicked the black stylist against the screen of the tablet.

The screen flashed with colors, sounds muted as the score rose in the upper right corner. Her gray eyes were focused on the screen but she kept thinking, One more. One more client left and then I can leave.

For months she had planned this trip to Paris, picking the time of the year so the weather was ideal. Her plane ticket was paid for, with the hotel and events planned. And her luggage was waiting for her in the trunk of her Ferrari Spyder. All that was left was her and the last clients of the day, keeping her from reaching her plane on time. Perhaps it had not been smart for her to buy plane tickets so close to closing time but she hadn't once thought the wiser because no one was ever late to these meetings.

Not until now at least.

If I miss my flight because some inconsiderate nobodies-

A piercing beep made her jerk, making her miss the ball on the screen. The tablet darkened with the words Game Over flaring on the screen. Her pretty face that had already been tightened into a frown darkened as she glowered at the phone contraption to the side of her desk that was flashing red next to the text Secretary. The stylist to her tablet hit the screen with angry taps as she closed out of the game and brought up the file of the clientele. She set the stylist on the desk next to the papers she would need and rose, pushing the button in the same motion as she rolled down her blouse sleeves.

"Yes?"

"Rachel, the couple is-" her secretary started happily.

"Lane, call me Ms Lane," she snapped at the woman, "This is a profession workplace, Mrs Jennings, please do not force me to write another citation."

There was a pause on the other end as Rachel grabbed her suit coat and swept her arms in each sleeve before buttoning it. The woman murmured, "Uh, yes... sorry, Ms Lane."

"What is it, Mrs Jennings?"

"The Wellington's are here for their meeting."

Taking out a compact mirror from the drawers to her desk she looked over her make-up and blonde hair pulled back into a bun. "About time, send them in."

The connection severed as she put the compact away and sat back down in the chair, skimming over the files in her tablet for the couple. She didn't have to wait long when a knock sounded at her door. Calling them in, she didn't look up as she offered them to sit down. Yes, she knew she was supposed to shake their hands and be bubbly. Perfect. But they were late! No one was ever late to meetings like these. She made them sit there, fidgeting as they waited for her to speak. Finally her own curiosity at who this couple that showed up overdue to this joyful event was got to her and she looked up.

The couple looked plain. Not ugly or wrong. But at the same time nothing of real interest popped out at Rachel as she studied them. The wife's eyes were pinched at the side with anxiousness and excitement, like every other wife Rachel saw sitting in the chairs before her desk. The husband tried to smile only to rub his palms on his gray suit pants. Like all that made appointments with her they were dressed nicely and presented their best to her. But in those seconds all she saw were homely people trying too hard to be something they were not: Rich.

Rachel kept the smile on her lips, not letting them see that she knew their secret as she folded her fingers together on the desk. "Welcome to Naturally Perfect, thank you for choosing our company for this next step to your family. Have you settled on a package?"

The couple's faces blanked before looking at each other with uncertainty. Her smile slipped with frustration but only for a moment as she opened a drawer and drew out the laminated paper that listed all of the packages. She pushed her tablet and the other papers aside and set it down before them. Normally all couples had looked up a plethora of information online, knowing what they wanted long before this meeting. At this rate she wasn't going to make that plane.

"The most basic package covers all genetic diseases and allows you to choose three traits." She pointed to the top of the list and surprisingly they didn't lean over to read the laminated paper. "Whether that be boy or a girl. Base ranges for eye color or hair color. Of course if you want more exact colors that will cost more."

The wife shook her head. "We don't want that."

Puzzled, Rachel stared at both of them with a small frown. Her finger slid down the list. "Well, the next package goes up in-"

Again, they exchanged nervous looks as Mr Wellington said, "No, we don't want a package."

He reached out for his wife's hand and she took it, both squeezing as Mrs Wellington added, "We picked Naturally Perfect because you were the only company to allow us to do it the old way. You know, randomly without genetic altering."

Rachel backed away from the laminate paper. When was the last time anyone wanted to have a child the old way? Not since she had been working here and that was more than five years now! And even through the whispers she heard from other "child designers", she had not heard of something like this happening for over a decade now. Swallowing she nodded, her mind unable to process what was happening as she searched the piles of paper for that once unimportant piece that would allow the couple to have what they wanted: an unaltered child.

The wife continued, "We know that we will be in charge of any disease or ill effects this may have on the child and are willing to face it."

Again she could only nod, face pale and body shaking as she withdrew the needed paper from the rest. "A-As long as y-you know this, Mrs Wellington... Mr Wellington..." Rachel glanced at him and he smiled, no longer anxious.

It took ten minutes to finish up with the clients before she fled her office, making it to the terminal on time. However, she missed the plane in her haste, forgetting the ticket in her office desk.

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Again, any feedback will be helpful!

Lost

This is my first assignment from my advanced creative writing class. The work is obviously unfinished but we weren't tasked with a 'completed' full work.

Lost

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."
                                                                              -Albert Einstein
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Part I: Awakening

The screech of tires echoed distantly in my mind as I stood with a bright yellow windbreaker in the fog that surrounded me like a thick white blanket, a faint memory I realize now, lost in dreams where only the smell of acidic rubber and the wail itself remained. For how long I wandered that place neither here nor there I do not know, only that I did. I felt trapped and smothered by the fog as I walked endlessly. Not seeing anything but white and gray until an old woman with a scratchy voice called out from somewhere in the fog, "Over here, girl, over here."

But where is here? I wondered wordlessly fisting a hand through my light brown hair, frustrated and tired from this endless white of nothingness. About to ask, the fog parted around her, becoming a faint mist and melting into the ground as she rocked back-and-forth back-and-forth on her wooden rocker that groaned with each motion. There was a ball of rainbow spun yarn rolled up in a basket at her feet as she knitted a bright colorful afghan. Her hair was liquid silver as it flowed around her shoulders and her face nothing but wrinkles reminding me of a pug, smiling with one side twisted up as she knitted with her eyes closed. Personally I do not think she could have even opened her eyes if she had wanted too.

"You need help, my child?" she asked, her hands nor the movement of the chair stopping, "You do not look as if you need this path or the temple, but I have been wrong before, that I have." Her face grew more crinkled as she chuckled to herself.

I considered the walls of fog that surrounded my other three sides. "I-I do not know. Where am I?"

"Lost."

Frowning, my gaze came back to her. "Well yes... I know I'm lost, but what is this place?"

She chortled, again not once stopping her rocking or her knitting. "Lost is here, child. You are in Lost."

"Okay..." I licked my lips, trying to count to ten mentally and calm my ire. It did no good to snap at the old woman and maybe she was losing her mind with age. Besides, who sat in a rocking chair knitting, in the middle of nowhere? "How do I get un-lost or out of Lost?"

With my words she actually stopped knitting -but not rocking!- silver brows rising and yet eyes still not opening. "Why that path right there, my child." She gestured with her shaking bony hand to her right. I followed her pointed finger and my mouth dropped open upon finding a smooth rock path that had been obscured by the fog until she revealed it. "That will lead you to the Temple of Lost Ones. But are you sure you need it?"

Closing my mouth I gave a nod as I glanced back at her as she started to knit in time with her rocking once more. "If it is the way out of here then yes, I need it."

She shook her head with another laugh. "No, you only go to the Temple of Lost Ones to become found, or un-lost as you said. Taking that path there leads to a journey of self-discovery before you can ever hope to-"

"Thanks anyways, Ma'am." I knew cutting her off was rude -my mother had taught me better- but I had the sensation that if I let her she would have continued on-and-on forever and I was not in the mood for that.

Grasping the shoulder straps of my backpack -I only then realized was there upon touching them- I shifted the weight on my back and stepped forward with all my most prized possessions nestled safely within the blue zipped fabric. Faintly, as if a great distance and not a mere yard separated us, the old woman yelled about being careful, something about the path but I paid little heed as a few more steps took me above the fog and the sight stole the breath from my lungs. There above the fog I found a Roman arched bridge stretching up from the white nothingness. Not just fog but a sea of white and gray, the top of the clouds I had just been in, swirling and floating on either side of me, nestled between jagged mountain peaks. This white murky water licked around the edges of lesser mountains in the valley, small gray peeks, islands in the sea of white. But it was more than that. The clouds even tumbled off of a few jagged mountains, looking like waterfalls as they filled the sea.

How is it possible for clouds to look like this? The warning that all was not as it seemed flickered in my mind and I turned to ask the old woman what was going on. But she wasn't there anymore. The sea of white and gray had swallowed her up as it flowed like surf on the bridge at my feet, climbing up until only inches separated it from me before it slipped back down a foot away and then back up again. Gulping nervously, I stepped farther up the bridge, not wanting to temp whether or not these white gray clouds could sweep me away.

I faced forward and my gaze followed the bridge until it disappeared under one of those massive white waterfalls. Where does this path lead to? I see no temple. No, all I saw was white, white, and more white littered with ragged mountain peaks. But what other choice did I have but to follow the path? Was it not better than the fog from before?

Taking three more steps I glanced on either side of the bridge. Worried at how it felt like the width was shrinking. What would happen if I slipped off the edge? Of course I then pictured myself falling off, my foot slipping and tumbling off into the white nothingness. With nothing to catch me I would fall some great distance before splatting on the ground far below. Or maybe there would be some mystical property that would catch me, and I would hang there, suspended before my death. But I didn’t slip or fall. No, I remained dead center with each hesitant step. Concentrated as I was on my task of not falling off the then two foot wide bridge I barely noticed when I was nearing the giant white waterfall, only noticing due to the cool mist that flittered over me.

Bells tolled in the distance. With no warning wind rushed by, chilled by the crisp mountain air and I was forced to take a step back and brace myself against the strong current. Shielding my face with my arm, the yellow sleeves of the windbreaker rippling in the wind. I shivered as through my cracked eyes I watched the white waterfall before me divide into to, parting just before an alcove of carved stones with a large wooden door and fall safely away on either side of the bridge.

Other than the size, it was an ordinary arched door, the wood dull and worn pale with age. As the white waterfall thinned I could see the structure of the temple. A gray temple made from the very stone of the mountain that made it appear to grow from it much like a plant or tree spouting from the earth. The walls of stone covered in dampen moss extended further than I could see both to my left and right, while above it rose into spiraling towers that jetted out from the top of the white waterfall like the jagged mountains surrounding it.

My thoughts were stilled when the door opened suddenly and I stared blankly, face pale and eyes wide as I took in the creature that had opened it. I would later find out that this creature was named Tutith, and he was one of the permanent caretakers of the temple. He gave me a yellow toothy smile, his gray skin pulled taut over a tall lanky skeleton that loomed over me by two feet and his white hair braided neatly down the nap of his back. He had no eyes and a faint bump of the skin with thin flatten holes for a nose. His ears however, were huge. Human like in the basic structure and yet two sizes of her palm. His chest was naked, finger painted with a rich blue and red dye that swirled together in intricate patterns while he wore a vibrant orange and yellow skirt.

Stepping forward, he offered his hand for my backpack and still stunned I shrugged the object off my shoulders without any thought. He jiggled the backpack casually in his hands, contemplating the weight and pondering, then said softly, "Need not this anymore," before flinging it over the side of the path.

I watched it fall, mouth gaping open and imagined my most prized objects inside. My mother’s delicate tea set with the roses? My collection of the first addition Iron Man comic books? Certainly pictures of my two cats Oppa and Appo. I’m also sure there were other important objects. Something round. That went on my finger and sparkled… But I couldn't recall then as the memories and faces of my past slipped through the clouds with my backpack and plummeting to the earth below.

“Come, come, Lost One.” He waved me in with his long four jointed fingers.

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Any feed back on this would be very helpful and I'd love you forever and ever!