In Which We Jump Through Time, and a Snippet

One of the best things about writing fiction, hands down, is the freedom to bend the world to your will. Obviously certain rules have to be followed--gravity, for example, does not change whether you're setting is in Elizabethan England or present-day San Diego. Nor does the need for oxygen. However, the realm of fiction--particularly those of a supernatural/fantasy/sci-fi bent--gives you the latitude to do truly awesome things with your characters and settings. You can expand upon real events in history or create your own, new history. You can give different dimensions and sparkle to places with which you are familiar, or you can create your own towns, countries, entire worlds. Your characters and plot are really only limited by your own imagination.
I love to mess with time in my stories. Not necessarily with time-travel or wormholes, but I am intrigued by the idea of extended lifespans. Not immortality, but the aging process slowed down. When I saw the previews for Benjamin Button I was transfixed. I never saw the movie, but the concept it presented was interesting to me--here was a man brought into the world as an infantile old man. The size of the baby, the mentality of a baby, but with the frailty, depth, physicality, and flaws of a very old man. As he aged, he grew younger, stronger, taller, only to become, at the end of his life, an adult sized infant with the heartbreaking flaws of extreme old age: dementia, arthritis, etc.
In my current work, my main protagonists all start out as children. In fact, they are normal up until they are young adults, and put under the knife as part of a scientific project. They do not gain miraculous superpowers--they can't bend spoons or set fire to things by looking at them--but their aging process--at least externally, physically--slows down dramatically. They are young adults in the 1940s, at the height of the second world war. In 2010, they are still young adults--at least externally. Internally is another matter altogether.
What makes age and time interesting to me is the fallibility of it. Immortality is easy--you never age, you never die. I find it very cool in some ways, and a bit too simple in others. Aging, I think, is an important part of character development, even if you can't see it on the character's outside.

And now, completely unrelated to the topic of age, I give you a snippet. I am very (deeply, seriously) dissatisfied with the quality of writing in this first draft, but then I usually am with all my first drafts (there are no great writers, only great re-writers!) So, without further ado:

Were she not so exhausted, so afraid, Margaret probably would have been able to appreciate the splendor of the hallway down which she was led. The walls were papered with a rich, colorful pattern, and the ornate side table and mirror that decorated the hall were made of a warm, well-polished cherry wood. They passed a sitting room, full of beautiful cream and brown furniture, and Margaret could see a small piano on the far wall. Her fingers on her good arm twitched instinctively, longing to run themselves over the smooth ivory keys—it had been ages since she had played.

They passed another room, this one smaller, the door mostly closed. To her surprise, Josef swore loudly, leaping ahead to block the doorway. He spun around, eyes wild, and seized Marcus by the collar.

“Did you go in there??” He growled. To Pieter, who had frozen with Margaret still in his grasp, he snapped, “get her to the bathroom, quickly!” To Margaret, his eyes burning with the same terror she had seen in the forest, he said nothing, but his face gave the order clearly: do not look inside or else.

Margaret quickly turned her eyes to the floor to hide her guilt as Pieter hurried her past. She had already seen what was in the small study. The body of the blond man, slumped over a giant desk, blood congealing on the dark wood, the carpet beneath his feet, and the body of the woman, sprawled across the floor in front of the desk, her hair matted and sticky, blood making scarlet tracks down her neck, under the collar of her dark green suit. Pieter could feel her tense under his grasp, and he hissed, too softly for Josef to hear, “you’re damn lucky Anna said you had to live, or I’d put one in your head right now. Do not look again.”

“Who were they?” Margaret gasped as he propelled her down the hall. She silently admonished herself—fear was making her reckless, Paul would be disappointed—but the boy jerked the bathroom door open, spun her to face him, and smiled coldly.

“Our parents,” he replied calmly, before shoving her into the bathroom and slamming the door.

Please feel free to comment. CC is always welcome!

~Katherine