Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-28936621-20160705214231/@comment-28936621-20160706211024

Hey guys, back I be!

@A_O: Gotcha, I'll stay here, no problem.

@Empy: I took everything you mentioned into consideration when reediting. As a quick info regarding the plot issue you mentioned at the end of your review, I wanted the government to execute her because of their convictions that she's a terrorist too, judging by the fact that she comes up with new information every day (to everybody’s massive confusion). Thinking that she gives information the same way she receives it, they get a bit anxious regarding what she could disclose about her current whereabouts, putting all the people there in danger. Since she never tells them what they want to hear, which is the name of a leader, they decide it would be best for their own safety to kill her - I went a little overboard with this conclusion and, you're right, I didn't elaborate her imprisonment at all in the first version of the story, which is why, at first glance, killing her makes no sense what so ever (sorry about that!) - this time, I found a better way to tackle her death. I changed the story a lot... like, a lot! I just wanted to introduce new sentences here and there, but ended up writing almost a completely different story. I hope this version is better than the first one.

Should you encounter further problems or if you decide there's no way in hell you'll ever publish this, please let me know.

Thanks again and I look forward to hearing from you!

Here’s the second version of “TtttT”:

 ***





“Let me start by saying, that there are two types of people I've grown to hate.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">“The first type, are the people that claim they've had a paranormal experience in which the unseen presence called out to them by name. Te ones that say demons don't know your full name and that you mustn’t, by any means, tell it to them, are a subcategory of this type of people. Don't fall for this. Demons don't need any personal information of yours at all – if they decide to drive you insane with fear, or if they decide they want to walk in your shoes, they will, regardless of who you are... Demons won't call you by name. They won't call you at all. They will simply speak to you and tell you things that will make you want to bleach your brain out just to un-hear them. Which leads me to the second type of people I came to hate...

<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">“If you believe that knowledge is what makes one strong, you belong in this category. Who was the first to say that “knowledge is power”? Seriously, who said that knowledge is power?! Show that person to me and I’ll spit between their eyes. Knowledge is power, huh?

<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">“If knowledge is power, I am the most powerful person on the face of the earth. And the most powerful person on the face of the earth is tied up to a pillar of support in an abandoned factory. At least, I think it’s a factory... Kind of looks like it, with the concrete walls and metal contraptions. I don’t always understand what languages my capturers are speaking. They speak mostly in English to one another, since, judging by their accents, they’re of different nationalities and can’t understand each other otherwise. Even so, I can barely make out what they’re saying. This is how drugged I am.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">“’Who do you work for?!’ This is the fourth time this question has been screamed at me today, and I’ve only been awake for half an hour now.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">“’I work at the Barns & Noble from the train station.’ Or used to, I guess. They must have fired me by now, since it’s been over a month since I last went to work.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">“’Stop fucking around! Who do you work for?!’”

<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">*smack*

<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">“The iron bar they keep hitting me with, bent a little. I wasn’t sure before, but now I’m certain that at least two of my ribs are broken. Someone else interfered with ‘Who told you about the attack?! Who’s the snitch?! If you point the snitch out to us... we’ll let you go!’

<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">“I cried for the millionth time ‘There is no snitch! It’s Tammy. Tammy tells me everything!’

<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">“‘Who is Tammy?!’

<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">“It would actually be so easy to just randomly point my chin to one of them, to get it all over with. Damn my moral values... I can’t do it: ’I already told you... Tammy is my demon. It tells me a truth per night. I’ve been stuck with it for the past 27 years of my–’”

<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">*smack*

<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">“I wish it were a lie, but it isn’t. I am visited by a demon every night. I call it Tammy because it always makes this weird “tadamm-tadamm” noise whenever it arrives, like it’s trying to imitate a running train... that voice... that god-awful voice... it sounds like a man, a woman, and three children speaking simultaneously. I've met my fair share of people I never want to meet again, but I don't wish the haunting of this voice to anyone! No matter how terrible of a person they are... nobody deserves this agony.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">“I don't know why it chose me. I broke down my entire life, I even traced my family tree all the way back to the 14th century and, nothing! I am the plainest, most normal girl you could ever meet! I really am! I don't get it... Why is it after me and not after my brother, for instance?! He's the one who's into the paranormal, reads horror novels and all that shit. Why am I the only one who can hear it, why is it telling all of these things to me?! I, like, invented the word "mediocre", I did: I'm average-looking, I like to talk about boys, sales and work with my girlfriends, I'm into action movies, I upload Instagram pictures with pets, I tweet, I hike, I walk my dogs every evening and I love baking digestive biscuits, really, why me?!”

<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">[Silent sobbing.]

<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">“I was 7 when Tammy first came to me... It didn't even dawn on it that I was still a child, for Tammy began its short, stomach-clenching retorts with the most terrible truth of them all. As always, it started the same...”

<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">*Tadamm-tadamm... tadamm-tadamm...*

<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">“Like any child with fear of the boogie man, I gripped Mr. Teddy tighter and hid under the covers. No names were asked, not even the very first time it came to me. Names aren't as important as us humans want them to be. There are labels far greater to each and every one of us, than any name shall be...

<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">“’Do you want to know how the world will end?’ it asked me.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">“If there is something I know about 7-year-olds, it’s that, to them, the world goes on forever. To me, the world as I knew it, ended that night. Yes, Tammy told me how the world will end. I was a child though, and as any child, I still hoped there was a ray of sunshine on the other side of the darkness. I asked my parents the next day, if they came to speak to me the night before. They didn’t. I must have had a dream, they said. I pretended to make the logic of that assumption my own, but deep down, I knew...

<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">“I knew I’m damned. And I knew what Tammy was. Tammy came back the following night.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">“’Do you want to know how Harry will die?’

<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">“I had named my hamster after Harry Potter.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">"’She'll die of a blood clot in the heart in 10... 9... 8... 7...’

<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">“'It's a she?!', I asked myself. By the time I decided to rename my hamster to "Ginny", she was already dead...

<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">“I was 12, when I asked my cousin not to go to his best friend's house the following weekend. He didn't listen, just like Tammy said he wouldn’t. He was right around the block, when he saw the puppy and followed it to the unmarked van. Needless to say, he never made it to his friend's house and was never heard of since.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">“When I was 14, I asked my mom not to trust her new boyfriend. As Tammy predicted, mother was head over heels in love with the guy and snapped at me with the fury of a natural disaster. She didn’t listen either: the boyfriend was cheating on her with several other women and after she found out about it and broke up with him, he uploaded their sex tape online and even had the nerve to post her real name in the title, description and video tags. She lost her job because of that, but never talked to me about it. I had to find out from other sources...

<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">“A year later, I told my chemistry teacher that she’s pregnant. I shouldn’t have – it was one of the truths that didn’t involve me or my family directly and I learned the hard way that it was best to hide most of the knowledge Tammy was providing me with. I don’t know why I told her... probably because Tammy mentioned ‘unless she’ll have an abortion soon, that boy will ruin her life.’ My teacher slapped me across the face the very second I finished my sentence. She must have thought that I was calling her fat, because she didn’t apply for maternity leave until a week before she actually had to start staying home. Sweet denial, I guess... I knew she had it rough, so pressing charges never crossed my mind.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">“I was 19 when I sent my first anonymous letter to the officials. 9/11. Tammy told me it was going to happen the night before it actually happened. Sadly, I had too little time to write the letter and have it arrive fast enough. I started crying my heart out with 10 minutes before the plane actually hit the first tower. I wasn’t tech savvy enough to mail the information electronically – I was way too scared of the mail being backtracked.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">“When I was 23, foolish me actually thought I finally managed to save someone’s life...

<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">“‘Do you want to know what will happen to the boy in the Star Wars shirt from the bus station? He’ll make a detour on his way home from school and go to the park by the lake, to visit the grave of his frog. The grave is by the oak tree. In the oak tree is a bee hive and the hive will fall on him. The boy is allergic to bee stings.’

<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">“The boy in the Star Wars shirt sat next to me in the bus station the following day. Halloween was right around the corner, so I told him that I saw Darth Vader costumes on sale at the costume shop at the other end of town and that just one of them was for a kid his height. I pushed, that he should go check it out as soon as possible. Which he did. I was the only one to get on the bus and was as relieved as can be for two stations. At the third, though, I saw a boy in a Star Wars shirt waiting on the bench for the next bus. I had lied to the wrong kid. The right one was found in the park by the lake that evening, all swollen up and as dead as can be.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">“That’s when I realized. Tammy is telling me only those terrible truths I can do nothing about. All I can do is listen, suffer and watch the world burn... I’m damned for knowing everything.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">“I'm 34 now and I've sent over 100 letters to American, Swiss, German, English, Belgian, Finnish, Japanese, Korean, Danish, Norwegian and Netherlands’ embassies all around the world. Even so, I’m not helping. Before I ended up here, Tammy told me the second worst truth I ever heard from it: ‘Do you want to know how many lives you saved so far? None!’ It was the first time I heard it laugh.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">“‘That does it!’ I yelled, getting out of bed and turning the lights on. As always, I was alone in the room. I had a terrible truth from two nights back I needed to communicate to Germany: Isis was planning a terrorist attack in D üsseldorf, a city in the North Rhine-Westphalia at the beginning of June, and this time, I made a fake E-mailaddress and installed all necessary proxies to make sure I won ’t get backtracked. For the first time ever, my warning was heard! The terrorists were captured, the attack never happened. Two days later, I was walking home from work when I suddenly lost consciousness and woke up in this factory.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">“’I’ll ask you one last time... who told you about us!?’

<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">“There’s no anger as bad as the one that has a neutral tone of voice. That is the level of anger my captors reached because of me. I never liked repeating myself and the man who asked, already has his hand on the gun. Apparently, it’s my last chance to come up with something credible or kiss this world goodbye. I’ve already made my choice and, for the first time in 27 years... I can see it.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">“A woman and a little girl. I see no eyes. I can see them grin, but I see no eyes. Their grins, though, outstretch on the entire lower half of their faces. They're black with dark hair, but then again, if they get out of those heavy shadows, they might as well be white with blonde hair. I can't tell. All I can see, is that both of them are girls. They look so similar, the one on the right is the miniature version of the one on the left. They’re mother and daughter, I have no doubt about it.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">   “’Tammy...’, is all I can mutter before the terrorist pulls the trigger on me. As the bullet makes its way towards my scalp in slow-motion, I get a random thought... Tammy always asked before telling me those truths. ‘Do you want to know?’, it said. Even though the pause between the question and the answer was short, it was always long enough for a firm, blunt ‘No!’ on my behalf... something I never said in all those 27 years of pure torture. Would it have disappeared, if I simply asked for it all to stop? If I just said ‘No!’, when it asked me if I want to know? I guess I’ll never find out...

<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">“As soon as the metal alloy penetrates through my scalp, I see both of Tammy’s halves open their arms to me welcomingly, saying in perfect sync:

<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">“’At long last... the divine Anti-Trinity is complete.’

<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">”It is. I have earned my role as the damned one and my damnation is the truth I bear. The mother and the daughter don’t have to tell me anything anymore, for I now know more than they ever will. So, before I go, a little word of advice to you... do something you enjoy today. Take your family out. Go on a trip to a country you always wanted to go to, but never got the chance. Do the one thing you enjoy most in life...

<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:272.65pt;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none">“Because the world is going to end. Really soon.”

<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:272.65pt;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none">***