Ideas...

These aren't fully fledged stories, they're more like character plans. I wrote them a while ago and forgot about them, but I've been going through some of my prehistoric folders on my computer lately, and actually quite liked these... Thought you might like to have a look! I've written about Jake Summers on my blog before - aeons ago, so if you can't be bothered looking back at it, I won't be offended! - but this was where his character came from! Well, enjoy!

Love,
Sarah x

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Introducing:

Jake Summers

Jake held them safe in a loving grip. Thin and nimble and smooth. They sat perfectly in his hand. As if they’d grown there, as if they belonged there. Maybe they did. Jake couldn’t be sure. All he knew was that they where his life-support, his therapy. The only thing keeping him sane. His Mum needed alcohol, his Dad needed drugs: he survived on the beat of a drum, the crash of a cymbal. His world was lit by music.
    To a torrent of fantasy applause he rose to his feet, twirling the two drumsticks in his hands: spiralling, spinning. He tossed them into the air and grinned as they fell back into his outstretched fingers. His arms rose above his head, like a noble hero: sticks still just blurs of movement in his hand. And then he dropped his stance, letting his sticks loose on the kit.
    Some drummers learn. Some drummers sit with books and study how to play. They talk about all this technical crap that doesn’t really matter. Those where the drummers that played with their mind.
    Jake liked to think he played with his soul. He liked to think that he was driven by this super-natural force. Music flowed from his body; a crackling energy. He didn’t learn, he just knew. He didn’t study, he just did it. And when he did it? He did it well. He was the best. He always had been. Nobody understood the steady backbeat like he did - nobody got that. He didn’t understand the concept of learning how to play a musical instrument. He believed that you’re born with it. A miniature drum kit in your heart: pumping music and fight through you’re bloodstream, searching for something more.
    Jake was tall and supple. He had thick black hair that fell over eyes of tantalising chocolate and flickering gold shards. They where hard though. Torn and confused and blood-thirsty. He walked with a boyish gait and a killer smirk. He walked like he owned the place. In some cases, Jake did - and on these not-so-rare occasions, you wouldn’t have to tell him he was everybody’s legend. He wore black skinny jeans and scuffed-up Converse everyday; along with his signature leather jacket and aviator sunglasses. He had a Spaniard tan that glowed golden in the sunlight. The boy was hot. And he knew it.
    Emotionally, he was beyond unstable. He was a loose cannon, ready to blow at any second. They’d tried medication, therapy…The works. Nothing helped. It was as if God himself had wanted Jake Summers to be a delinquent. Or maybe Cupid had that idea - after all, this is your classic love story.
    Right?

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Introducing:

Esmeralda Jones

 Esmie sat in her dark room, cradling her camera like a new-born baby. Her emerald eyes glowed in admiration at the vintage design. The lens…The sleek case…Words and things no ordinary human being  could ever begin to appreciate. “Details, details…” They’d say. But not with Esmie. Details mattered. To her, it is the tiny things that are most important. So hard to find, so barely noticed: They’re our toughest fights. They will build and infest and warp, until they become the most unimaginable creatures that will seek revenge on being ignored. It is the little things that build our lives, she’d decided a long time ago. It is the little things we will miss the most, the smallest things we will long for, and those miniscule moments that will change our lives forever.
    Esmie was also very superstitious. Some people called it a medical condition, others a grieving process. To Esmie it was stone-cold-fact. Esmie liked facts. When she read 100% it made her feel full again. She didn’t have to doubt it, she didn’t have to over think it, it was fact. There was evidence.  It was tested. It was verified. It was proven. And that was that.
    When Esmie had been twelve, she’d conducted an experiment. A week of superstition and then a week of superstition-reversed. For the first three days of her first week, she’d avoided walking under ladders, standing on cracks in the pavement, putting new shoes on the table. Halfway through that week, her Mum had been shot dead on her way home from work. Ever since then, Esmie lived her life by the second week’s rules: She nailed a ladder into her bedroom wall, in the doorway to her dark room, so she’d walk under it every single day. She taken in a stray black cat. She rearranged her bedroom furniture so the feng shui was all wrong. Esmie believed that the reason mankind was so unlucky, is because they where superstitious about the wrong things.
    Esmie leaned into her bathtub, staring at the images coming alive beneath the surface. She’d kneel there for hours, thick black hair tied in a knot, pale white skin glowing eerily in the crimson half-light. Esmie rarely left the safety of her bedroom. She’d been taken out of school after her mother’s death, and had started home-schooling. Her father was meant to help her with her schooling, but he wasn’t the teaching type. Instead, Esmie lived by a strict schedule - she taught herself. She didn’t need people.
    They just got in the way of the bigger picture.