Personal Narrative Fiction

The mysterious Olmec civilization prospered in the Pre-Classical (Formative) Mesoamerica from c. 1200 BCE to c. 400 BCE and is considered the forerunner of all subsequent Mesoamerican cultures, like the Aztecs and the Mayans.

Nell passed out trays to the customers, just like she usually did, but this time, it was quietly and sadly, not like her usual self. Even though the coffeehouse the packed full with men, the whole place was filled with sadness and despair. “Poor Mattie, why did she have to go?” cried Nathaniel, leaning over the ornate coffin.

“I hate to change the subject so suddenly, but there’s a tall, good looking guy pacing up and down right under our window, and Musa?” Stella said, giving her friend a cheeky smile, pointing a slender finger to the ground. “I think he wants to see you.”

I watched as Judal looked around the dark room. The way he gently caressed the bed of stone. The way his hands would clench into fists as thoughts would run wildly through his mind. We watched him out of curiosity as to why he decided to come down to the palace dungeon in the first place. His gaze rested upon a certain treasure chest that sat in front of chains that were connected to the walls. His body wavered a bit not going unnoticed by any of us. Alibaba went over to his friend to make sure he was alright. "Judal...?" A whimpering sound could be heard from the magi as he muttered something. "Alibaba what is he saying?" I asked.

“Why would he do that?” Harry asked, his confusion bleeding through his previous hardness. “And if you believed that I was fictional, why did you—” He cut himself off with abruptness of a gunshot. Then he took another deep breath that he let out slowly. “I did not come here to fight any of you, even if I’m a bit miffed that you let Spencer just leave after he had died on a case.”

Slowly, my feet dragged behind me as I walked through the pouring rain in the streets and in my soaking wet pajamas; I had no recognition of the time that I've been out here but I did know that it was sometime in the dead morning between two and three o'clock. The only thing that I knew was that I was heading back home at a sluggish pace, shaking.

As I felt my body awakening, I opened my eyes slowly, blinking away the phosphenes. I looked around my surroundings and felt instant panic. There were no doors or windows; just pure white walls. I leaped up from off the ground and glanced down to the floor; there was blood. My hands were bloody, my clothes were bloody, and everything else was bloody. I knew it wasn’t mine because I was in no way harmed. Suddenly my head was filled with horrific screams; ones that were not my own. I couldn’t shut it off, they just kept screaming. The pain became so intolerable that I too, began to scream. I collapsed onto the hard, white floor. The cries continued until it was all too much to bare and I passed out.

She thought it was over. His words had been final, driven with a hammer's blow into an eternally buried coffin.

I could only see darkness, I could feel other puppies blindly bumping into me, but where was my mother? I felt something warm grab my body and gently place me into a crate filled with towels. I could hear a loud noise somewhere close to me, then I felt the warm sensation again and something set me into a bucket filled with water. It felt great on my delicate fur until wind blowed all over me, the loud noise I had heard earlier started again and I was placed back into the bucket with my siblings and mother. Three weeks later. My eyes were opened. I could see my owner's, my mother, and my siblings, life was so full of color.

Harry began going to Carmelo’s every day for lunch, hoping to see her once again. He found himself thinking about her, even when he wasn’t at the diner searching for her face. He began to lose hope after a few days of going to the diner and not seeing her. He wondered if maybe it was one of those once in a lifetime moments that required a braver man than him.

I lay in bed, my eyes squeezed shut in pure terror. The hair on the back of my arms and neck stand straight up on end. The window to the bedroom has just been pulled open from the outside, and I'm too afraid to move, too afraid to see the person who’s breaking into the house.

“Small fire! I said a small fire!” I shouted, glancing behind me as I began to run.

His fingers delicately weaved their way into my hair as our eyes met. My body was pressed up against his with nearly no space between us. Our mouths were slightly agaped, neither of us really knowing what to say. My heart was numb, but on fire at the same time. My breathing picked up and I felt like my heart was about to jump out of my chest.

I woke up and followed the herd. Every day was just the same. We wake, we walk, we stand around for a while, and then we go back. Fluffy wool puffs decorated the meadow all around me. Though, for some reason I knew I was different than them. In which way, I’m not sure—but whenever I get near, they look at me in disgust and I just don’t understand. I just want to stand with them; sunny skies or wet grass days, neither makes a difference to how they treat me. It’s always the same. I’m thetloner. I follow, but I do it alone. I finally found my mother lying in wide open space beneath the sun, I needed to know what was wrong with me. She just stared; was it how I looked—eyes of a mother staring at a face only she could love?

Barbarism and silence in suffering are major themes in Philomela that draws on the point of the absence of gods. From the very beginning, the reader realises that the absence of the gods foreshadows disaster and tragedy. Ovid writes how the ‘’wedding wasn’t attended by Juno as bridal matron, the Graces, or jovial Hymen’’ (line 429, p 230). The torches that escorted the guests were ‘’snatches from a funeral’’ (l 430, p 231) and a ‘’sinister screech-owl’’ (l 431, p 231) sat on the roof of their bedroom. Ovid explicitly states that ‘’these were the omens that marked the union of Procne and Tereus’’ (l 433, p 231). It is clear to see how the absence of the gods from the beginning of the tale prompts the reader to wonder of the tragedy