Totally Twilight: MY Fan Fiction Take 3!

Grab the Totally Twilight Button!

<a href="http://www.alisoncanread.com/" target="_blank"><img src="http://i52.tinypic.com/atlnya.jpg" border="0" alt="Alison Can Read" /></a>

****First off, I saw Breaking Dawn on Friday and love, love loved it! So much more than I expected to. I'm going to try to see it a second time before I write up a review for it. Although I may not. Usually I hate the movie the first time I see it. I have to "grieve" for missed opportunities and don't enjoy the movie until I see it a second time when I've accepted it for what it is. This time, I liked it right away. It is definitely the best filmed and acted movie yet.

One of the most enjoyable parts of the Twilight culture for me has been Fan Fiction. A huge number of fan fiction stories have been written in the Twilight world. On Fanfiction.net, probably the largest fan fiction website, there are almost 9,000 Twilight stories. Only Harry Potter has more.  As you'd expect, the quality ranges from truly awful to arguably better than the original. A few stories mesh so well with the books that I forget to separate them from Stephenie's work.

Recommended Fan-Fiction

My favorite Edward transformation story is The Life and Death of Edward Anthony Masen by javamomma0921. It starts with the last several months of Edward's human life and goes through his first year of vampire life. The human portion is a slight deviation from canon, because it shows a relationship establishing between Carlisle and Edward prior to his transformation, but it does such a good job of being "in the spirit" of canon that I don't mind that slight change. I also love her take on Edward's early days as a vampire. He is emotional yet still kind and gets along well with Carlisle, which is different than many other fan fiction pieces which envision Edward spending much of his early years in a sulky rage.

My Fan-Fiction

I like writing short stories of Twilight fan-fiction. Everything I write is canon based. It helps further my Twilight obsession and I figure that it also helps develop my writing skills. See what you think!

Future Little Housewives

Alice POV, early-to-mid 1950s

*After two angsty stories - and probably another one next week - I thought it would be fun to have a somewhat light, cute, Alice story today.

*Of course, Stephenie Meyer owns all things Twilight.

Mash two bananas with a fork.

I carefully pulled back the banana peels, which were dark brown with only a few spots of yellow, and plopped the fruit into the mixing bowl. I smashed the two bananas into the bowl until they were a mass of sticky, sickly sweet, vomit-hued mush. How could humans eat this?

I was in home economics, the most miserable hour of my day. It was entirely unfair that all girls in this school were required to take home ec. We spent one day per week listening to mind-numbing lectures on child development, two days sewing, and two days cooking. I hate cooking. I have no talent for it, no interest in it, and no need for it. Yet, two days a week I had to bake up some masterpiece that usually turned out horribly wrong.

As much as I despised being in the kitchen, it was better than sewing. When I first attended school, I was more excited for sewing class than any other. I enjoy sewing almost as much as I enjoy designing clothes. What a disappointment. I quickly learned that the joy of sewing was sucked away when I was stuck in the Land O’ Pricked Fingers. I often had to run out of the room just before blood started flowing. Some days, I’d foresee so many needle pricks that I would skip class altogether. When I was in class, I was so focused on studying the future of my classmates, searching for any possibilities of needles piercing the skin, that my own stitches were slow and uneven, and I had an irritating tendency to snap needles. The teacher hated me.

Mix in 1 egg, 1/2 cup milk...

I flung ingredients into the bowl, not watching what I was doing. Instead, I flipped through images of the near future. Edward warned me to watch out for Emmett in the hallway last hour. He wasn’t having a good day. We hadn’t hunted in a week, and the thirst was affecting all of us. Mostly, it just resulted in snapping at each other more frequently, but ever since Emmett’s slip-up last year, he had much more difficulty resisting.

If a week’s abstention from hunting made Emmett’s control this tenuous, I didn’t see how Jasper would ever be able to handle school. Despite the occasional accident, Emmett’s control was excellent. Not as freakishly good as Carlisle, Edward, and Rosalie, but impressive nonetheless. It was better than mine. If I couldn’t foresee situations where I’d be tempted by blood and remove myself from them in advance, I’d have far more accidents than I did.

I watched the future of Emmett and everyone around him. He was slumped in his chair, staring at the teacher. No movement other than arching his chest forward every few seconds to look like he was breathing. I flipped through the rest of class. Was anyone going to walk too close to him? Was the teacher going to call on him, forcing him to take a breath in order to talk? Would anyone get a papercut? If I foresaw anything troubling, Edward or I would find a reason to get him out of the room before it happened. So far, I saw nothing. But humans are always making little, instantaneous decisions that can have big consequences for thirsty vampires, so I kept watching.

1/2 cup brown sugar, and 1/2 cup sugar...

I blindly spooned large scoops of sugar into measuring cups. A flicker appeared before me of a girl getting up to sharpen her pencil and brushing Emmett’s shoulder as she walked down the aisle. I stiffened.

Edward! Do you see that? I called out to him. He was watching my visions closely from his classroom upstairs. We had one minute before she left her seat. Edward decided to go get Emmett, but I kept watching to see if it would actually be necessary. I saw Emmett’s muscles tensing when the girl touched him, but no movement towards her. Was that the only possibility? I pushed my visions, double-checking every angle. He would either sit entirely still or put his head down on his desk, using the wood to cover his mouth and nose. I saw the girl sharpen her pencil and walk back to her seat using a different aisle without incident. I think it’s safe, Edward. But maybe you should stand outside the door just in case something changes.

A quick image flashed of Rosalie coming over to me hissing about something. I looked at her with suspicious eyes just as she was walking towards me from her spot two ovens over.

“Watch what you’re doing!” she whispered. “You just poured a half cup of salt into the bowl! And now you’re stirring it in. Don’t tell me you can’t tell the different between salt and sugar.” I picked up the spoon I was using to mix the ingredients and sniffed at it. Sure enough, the scent of salt was overwhelming and the individual crystals were the six sided cubes of salt. Sugar and salt may look and smell identical to humans, but to me they were very distinct. Salt has an earthy smell that always makes me think of oceans and sweat. Sugar smells cloying to vampire senses, but something about it reminds me of the sweetness of human blood. I can understand why so many humans crave the taste.

I put the spoon down back into the bowl and look at the ingredients on the counter. The containers of brown sugar, white sugar, and salt were sitting next to one another. I must have grabbed the salt instead of the sugar.

“Whoops.” I shrugged. “Guess I ruined another recipe. Oh well.” I turned my back on Rosalie, hoping she would return to her station. But her mood was as bad as mine today and she wasn’t willing to let her irritation go.

“Didn’t you see yourself screwing up?” she sneered. “For someone who’s practically omniscient, you sure - “

“You’re right, Rose. I wasn’t watching the damn bowl,” I interrupted in a harsh whisper, spinning around to look her in the face. “Instead, I was watching your Emmett’s every move. While you’re stirring away at your perfect little recipe, Edward and I are making sure he doesn’t do anything that will have us packing our bags. Since you’ve made it clear that you hate moving.” I practically spat out the words. I could see my black eyes, glistening, and narrowed with anger, reflected in Rosalie’s eyes. The girl at the oven next to me turned to stare. Our voices were too low and fast for her to understand the words, but she still shrank away when she noticed the fierce look on my face.

A guilty expression flashed on Rosalie’s face for an instant before being replaced with a familiar hardened look. “Well, you should have told me that earlier,” she said dismissively. “I could have helped you. But now it’s too late to fix anything.”

“Yes, it’s too late. So just leave me alone and let me get back watching your hus- boyfriend.”

“Do you want me to - “ She spoke in a smaller, slightly guilty voice.

“No! Go away!” I was tempted to give her a shove, but didn’t see her reacting to that well. Rosalie turned on her heel, flicking her ponytail in my face, and walked back to her station. I spent the rest of the hour flipping back and forth between images of Emmett and my cooking stations. Emmett’s face would alternate between a blank, bored expression and brief flashes of pain as the fire in his throat flickered. But fortunately the class would pass without bloodletting. My banana bread came together with no further incidents. It looked normal enough, but I’m sure it would taste inedible to humans.

Rosalie came back to my station just before I put the bread in the oven, carrying her pan of unbaked bread. Her head was down and her shoulders slumped slightly. “Switch pans with me, Alice,” she said quietly.

“What?” I asked. My voice was harsher than I meant it to be, but I was still annoyed with her.

“Let me bake your bread instead of mine. That way your grade won’t suffer.”

“It’s fine, Rose,” I said resignedly. “I really don’t care about my home ec grade.”

“Please, Alice.” Rosalie had a slightly desperate look in her eye. “Look, I’m sorry that I snapped at you, and I’m sorry that you’re stuck watching over all of us. I can’t help you with that, but this is something I can do.” An apology from Rosalie. That was about as rare as a penguin in Florida. I’m sure Edward was enjoying the moment as much as I was.

“Okay,” I said slowly. “If that will make you feel better. I appreciate the gesture.” She smiled, happy to have a reason to not feel guilty anymore. We set our pans on the counter next to one another. When no one was looking, I grabbed her pan and put it in the oven. She took my salt-laden bread back to her station to bake.

The bread took an hour to bake, so our teacher took the loaves out of the oven and tasted them later that day. Rosalie and I came to class the next day with bright, golden eyes. We all hunted the night before. The difference in our thirst and our moods was significant. Emmett’s thirst was dampened enough that I could stay in the present all day long, or at least to the extent that I was naturally capable of doing so. Rosalie even laughed when Edward teased us about the bread-switching incident.

Just before we walked into the home economics room, I handed Rosalie a handkerchief.

“What’s this for?” she asked.

“You’re coming down with a cold,” I responded. She stared at me in confusion. “Trust me.” Rosalie shrugged and took the handkerchief. She threw herself into a dramatic coughing fit as we entered the room. People turned to stare. She kept up the act with sniffles and sneezes once we sat down at the table we shared at the back of the room.

“This is kind of fun,” she whispered. “Better than having an actual cold.” I wouldn’t know. Being sick didn’t sound very enjoyable, but I was curious how it would feel to have a stuffy nose and a sore throat. I wondered if the sore throats that humans had during a cold felt anything like the razor-slicing, hot coal pain I felt every day. I doubted it.

“Rosalie Hale!” Our teacher glared at Rosalie. “Come up here, please.” Rosalie stood up and walked meekly to the front of the room. The teacher was standing at a table with two identical-looking loaves of bread, both with one slice missing. “One of these loaves is the bread that you baked, and the other is one that your classmate baked. I want you to take a bite of each and tell me what the difference is.”

The teacher handed Rosalie two bite sized pieces of bread. Rosalie put one piece of bread in her mouth and then immediately sneezed. She brought the handkerchief to her mouth, quickly spit out the bread, and hid it in the folds of the fabric. She did the same upon eating the second piece of bread, only coughing instead of sneezing.

“I don’t know what the difference is, Mrs. Murphy,” Rosalie said innocently. “I came down with a terrible cold this morning. I can’t taste a thing!” Mrs. Murphy sighed loudly, frustrated that her teaching point was thwarted.

“All right. Let’s see if one of your classmates can tell the difference. Who wants to come up here and taste the bread?” No one moved. It was obvious that something was wrong with Rosalie’s bread, and none of the girls wanted to volunteer.

“I’ll do it,” I said and skipped to the front of the room. Rosalie looked at me sympathetically. I didn’t have a handkerchief to spit out the bread. I was stuck with chewing and swallowing the nasty human food. But since the salty bread was my fault, I figured it was worthy penance. It was easy to distinguish the two breads from their scents. When I put the sweet bread into my mouth, I hid my grimace when the foul, bitter taste hit my tongue and gamely swallowed. I shivered slightly as the lump slid down my esophagus toward my stomach where it would sit until I threw it back up. I didn’t bother hiding a grimace as I chewed the salty bread. It tasted the same as the sweet bread did to me, perhaps even a tiny bit better. I suppose I could have spit it out as part of the act, but if I was already throwing up one bite of food, I might as well throw up two. I kept the horrified look on my face and said, “I think this one has too much salt.”

“That’s right,” the teacher said, smirking in satisfaction at her attempt to humiliate Rosalie. “How many times have I told all of you girls to double check that you’re adding sugar and not salt? If you,” she raised an eyebrow at Rosalie, “had been baking this for your future husband’s business colleagues, you might have caused him a great deal of embarrassment and maybe threatened his career. I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to be a competent baker. You girls will all be baking things for your husbands, your children, your neighbors, your children’s classrooms. It will bring shame upon your entire family if people choke upon the things you make for them. Is that what you want?”

“No,” Rosalie grumbled, staring at the ground. Her good mood evaporated the instant foolish, self-righteous Mrs. Murphy brought up the idea of children and family.

“Rosalie’s an excellent cook, Mrs. Murphy,” I spoke up. “You have nothing to worry about her. I’m the one who usually screws up, you know.” She nodded slightly, remembering my past failed assignments. “I baked gingerbread for my family last weekend,” I continued. “I accidentally added soy sauce to the dough instead of molasses. This salty banana bread tastes a lot better than the gingerbread did.”

Mrs. Murphy looked shocked. “How in the world did you manage to mix up soy sauce and molasses? They’re completely different.”

“I don’t know. They’re both dark, I guess,” I shrugged my shoulders and grinned like a typical flighty teenager.

Mrs. Murphy put her hands up to her temples, squeezed her eyes shut, and groaned. “All right, girls. Since you both clearly need a lot of practice, I am giving you a mandatory extra-credit project. You will both make your family a full dinner, bake a cake, and a loaf of yeast bread. You will bring back a note from your mother next Monday verifying what you made and that it was actually edible. Agreed?”

We nodded glumly and shuffled back our seats. This would be great fun. Already, images popped into my head of the three of us sitting at the dining table pouring over cookbooks from the library. We’ll be laughing as we come up with the most elaborate meals possible. I can hardly wait. I’ll make sure Esme includes in her note what a wonderful bonding experience this was for her and her two little future housewives.

What do you think? If you like it, let me know. If you think it sucks big time, I appreciate lying too. :-)