A short story (10k)
Eskreetor
Just want to see if I can hold your for 10,000 letters.
STEPHANIE
Dried blood in blond hair, like the ruby sealing wax of some
ancient codicil, some document of rage; poor Stephanie's skull
was stamped in anger and in fear.
The flies began to cluster shortly after he had left. There
would have been no flies except that he had left the door ajar in
his haste to get away.
Stephanie now lay like a Vermeer girl in a perfect rectangle
of brilliant sunlight. She lay directly before an eastern facing
window from which she had often watched the sea. From any number
of angles she might have appeared to be sleeping, as if she had
sought out the bright patch of warmth on the floor boards while
in some somnambulistic state and would at any moment awaken, look
around and shake her head smiling, see, I've done it again, she
might have thought.
The tang of salt air that lifted the curtains and swirled
about the house was the same she had breathed the night before,
less metallic though, for the smell of air changes when it mixes
with the sun.
Those who knew her, genuinely, as a person and not the girl
who lives at the end of Birch Lane, in the big house, with that
dog, and that car, the blond, the quiet one; they would have
noted that this new stillness was characteristic of her. She was
capable of appearing lifeless for hours at a time, seated before
the large picture window, watching waves as they tumbled
ceaseless and with unrelenting force, the watching of which
seemed enough to sustain her. Some called her doll and not just
because she was delicate and pretty, but because she was so
still.
When she spoke to people, she seldom turned her head to look
at them. Her attention remained dedicated to the thing she watched, for what
they had to say never seemed as important as the things she
set her eyes upon.
Once her doctor asked her, after she had hobbled bloodily into
his office, with no shoes, how in the world she had cut her feet
so badly. After staring for a full minute at the potted ficus
in his examination room she finally answered in a barely audible
exhalation that it was, "The broken shells, yet perhaps too, some
glass." He bandaged her soles, gave her a pair of slippers that
he had just bought for his wife and told her to be more careful.
He shook his head as she hobbled out of his office. He had a
nurse clean her crimson footprints and noted in himself a sadness
for he would have liked to taste them first.
In time the rectangle of sunlight began to migrate in an
easterly direction across the floor, across inert Stephanie, like
a blanket pulled benevolently beneath the chin of a sleeping
child. What followed the sunlight was a kind of umbrous blue-
grey shadow. Already a portion of her body was out of the frame,
being overtaken by that shadow. Soon she will be half-in, half-
out and the flies will gather on the sunnyside of her wound.
The flies make a collective sound like the hum of electricity
at the juncture of a neon tube. The ocean can also be heard
intermittently as the breeze opens and closes, but never
completely, the front door. It bangs occasionally against
something, but Stephanie doesn't jump as you might expect if you
were viewing her from one of those angles where she appeared to
be sleeping.
She is lying before an enormous fireplace that is missing one
of its andirons, the one with the fluer de lis shaped head at the
end of a long and heavy shaft of bronze. The handle was a little
green around the edge where Stephanie's salty touch had started
oxidation. This missing iron will, in a matter of years, be
heavily encrusted with microorganisms from the sea bed where it
now rests. The blood was rinsed before it settled into the sand.
It will lie languid and heavy with its power, the power to speak
of where it has been and what it has done, but it cannot now for
it has joined the world of silent things.
Below Stephanie's head, where the flies gather in her wound
forming a perfect fluer de lis mold of dark flymatter, is the
blond maple wood floor who's solid planks hold her up like some
funereal litter, like an offering to some not quite indifferent
other, but one who clearly cannot hear the urgency with which she
rests.
There is a spot between her head and the fireplace where her
blood has puddled, away from the sea, which Stephanie would have
found a marvelous inconsistency. Water seeks its own level, and
yet her blood is reluctant to return to its own origins. She
would have ignored explanations concerning the physical
dimensions of the floor itself, always more interested in the
sublime was she.
Above the fireplace are two bright rectangles where once two
paintings hung side by side. The one on the right had been a
landscape, by Blakelock, a preternatural setting bathed in pale
moonlight. The first time Stephanie saw the painting she cried
for she believed there was no man alive who understood light
better than he and since he was dead there was no hope except for
the brashness and torpor of regular sunlight and the occasional
moon in the trees. The other painting was a stuffy uninspired
19th century portrait of a woman by an unknown artist. Her
cheeks were unnaturally red and her flesh more resembled the sex
of a peach than that of a woman's skin. She abhorred the
painting for its refusal to see. For Stephanie the two paintings
represented what was wrong and what was right about the whole
world.
He took both paintings with him when he left. It's probably
why he couldn't shut the door, hands full, heart racing.
Now the empty spaces where the paintings once hung stare out
over inert Stephanie like a pair of unblinking eyes.
Half of Stephanie now lies in darkness and the flies seem to
be loosing interest. Her flesh is not yet putrid enough for
their tastes, but they will wait patiently and uninterrupted for
months have gone by in this house without contact from the
outside world. Stephanie would have noted that flies knew such
things, had such tastes, had herself watched them for long
periods of time. She'd come to understand the black and white of
their needs, the simple equations of household insects, their
predictability, their easy math.
When her parents died, Stephanie let everything but this house
go. She sold it all, let the rapacious estate attorneys divide
the spoils. She only wanted to maintain her uninterrupted
separateness.
Some men made pacts with one another regarding Stephanie. Her
unavailability was maddening to them and drew them even closer
and with greater intensity. She was no Siren, no Circe and
possessed merely a simple unadorned beauty, made slightly more
luminous perhaps because of the purity of her blond hair which
sometimes seemed almost to glow with its own light. She had a
voice that was so quiet, that when she spoke, from a distance you
might see people leaning toward her to hear, as if she were a
magnet and they were iron filings tilting toward the paradox of
her attraction and unavailability.
That she was strange was rarely disputed. That she remained
solitary made her the unwitting object of many men's dreams.
They would wake suddenly from sleep, next to their wives and feel
the urge to walk down the beach to her house, if only just to
hear her talk, for when she could be heard, she often said the
most beautiful things, though they seldom made sense to others.
"You don't use much gas, Miss," the gas company man said to
her one morning while reading her meter.
"The smell of it interrupts my memory of things." She said.
She watched the tendons in the surface of the man's hands as
he made notations in his gas book.
"Your hands, they seem independent of you," she said before
returning to her house where she closed the door on him.
The man carried the memory of her breath in his face, the
taste of it, the sound of it, to the next twenty houses and
everytime he smelled gas after that. It ruined him a little.
There is now barely a sliver of sunlight still on Stephanie's
head. The blood is almost all dried and there is a crust forming
on its surface. It will harden first like some black pitch and
then a legion of bacteria will begin the decomposition process
with a vigor that might suggest they'd been waiting in the wings
for just this day.
If she were not so dead she might note the irony that paint
lasted so much longer that blood, than flesh. The strangest
things made Stephanie sad.
By the time she is unrecognizable with rot, Stephanie's
paintings will have been furtively transported to another wall,
perhaps over another fireplace where the andirons are a complete
set. This wall will be in a place where there are mountains, or
maybe tall buildings, or maybe just another ocean which after all
is the same ocean really.
Perhaps he will find no takers for the paintings. Perhaps his
clients will smell the copper tang on his hands and know that it
signifies someone's blood. He may throw them away, and not
because they're worthless, but because they cost him so much to
take and money doesn't feel like it used to for him. It doesn't
cleanse anymore.
Stephanie's door will bang constantly until the wind is strong
enough to shut it. Stephanie will slowly disappear into a
separateness that is more profound than any she had achieved in
life. Two more paintings will disappear from down the beach, but
there will be no one up at that hour wandering about that house
as Stephanie had been.
Two lights will burn in Stephanie's top floor until their 720
hours of life are up and then they will go out and winter will
come and the gas man will show up to read the meter again, only
this time, having been haunted by her comments and the loneliness
he feels, he will want to talk with her. He will knock on her
door and he will see that it is unlocked, and he will push it
open out of curiosity and because there is a touch of larceny in
us all. He will enter the house and he will call out and he will
walk into the library with the fireplace and the paintingless
wall and the stain on the floor, the bones, and he'll know that
they are hers, becau
spell on him will be broken.
E
MzNomer
>From: eskr...@aol.com (Eskreetor)
>Date: Tue, 14 September
> The flies began to cluster shortly after he had left.
Cut 'had'.
>There
>would have been no flies except that he had left the door ajar in
>his haste to get away.
Cut 'had'.
>and would at any moment awaken, look
>around and shake her head smiling, see, I've done it again, she
>might have thought.
..and would at any moment awaken, look around, shake her head and smiling,
think, "see, I've done it again".
>Some called her doll and not just
>because she was delicate and pretty, but because she was so
>still.
Just a snippet of some finely crafted characterization. Her presence in the
world imparted from this distance reinforces her absence, what is now missing
from the world she occupied.
> "The broken shells, yet perhaps too, some
>glass."
A bit overdone, I think. I'd suggest, "Broken shells. Perhaps, some glass."
>He had a
>nurse clean her crimson footprints
Instead of 'clean', how does 'wipe away' sound to you?
>he would have liked to taste them first.
And this... slips in the message of her sexuality in a cleverly subtle way.
>but Stephanie doesn't jump as you might expect if you
>were viewing her from one of those angles where she appeared to
>be sleeping.
A little clunky, and you needn't remind your reader about the angles of which
you speak. You spent ample time setting up that notion, so trust it. What
about, '..if you viewed her from one of those deceptive angles'.
In the next graph, I like the sound of 'She lies..' better than 'She is
lying...'. (And it's fleur de lis')
>'The handle was..'
Change to 'The handle is..' to maintain tense.
>where Stephanie's salty touch had started
>oxidation.
Cut 'had'.
>The blood was rinsed before it settled into the sand.
'Was' violates tense, again. This line seems clunky to me, too. Your style in
this piece has a poetic lilt, so what about something like, 'The blood long
since settled (or rinsed, but not both) into the sand'.
>It will lie languid and heavy with its power,
For a moment, I thought you were referring to the blood. It's the andiron, of
course, but I believe you need to clarify, somehow. You needn't settle for
wording that pulls the reader away from the image, for even a second.
>forming a perfect fluer de lis mold of dark flymatter, is the
>blond maple wood floor who's solid planks hold her up like some
>funereal litter,
'forming a perfect *fleur* de lis mold..., is the blond(e) maple wood floor
*whose* solid planks hold her up like some funereal litter,'
>like an offering to some not quite indifferent
>other,
It's the 'not quite indifferent' that I don't like. You, as the writer, hold a
more specific sense of this deity. More precise description is called for here.
> concerning the physical
>dimensions of the floor itself,
Again, more precise wording will sharpen this thought. You must mean, by
'physical dimensions', some engineering term (I'd love to be more precise,
myself, but I've got one mother of a head cold...).
> He took both paintings with him when he left.
Cut 'with him'.
> It's probably
>why he couldn't shut the door, hands full, heart racing.
Clunky, and there's no need for a 'probably'. State what happened. What about
something like, 'His hands full, heart racing, he couldn't shut the door.'
>stare out
>over inert Stephanie like a pair of unblinking eyes.
I'd cut 'inert'.
>the flies seem to
>be loosing interest.
'losing'
>Her flesh is not yet putrid enough...
I'd replace 'putrid' with 'ripe'. Ripe reminds me of the phrasing you used when
describing the woman in the painting, and would carry with it Stephanies
impression of a scene, an image, that is wrong.
>but they will wait patiently and uninterrupted
I'd replace 'uninterrupted' with 'undisturbed' as it is a better fit, and you
use the word 'uninterrupted' again a few lines later.
>She'd come to understand the black and white of
>their needs
I'd revise with 'She came to understand..'.
> Some men made pacts with one another regarding Stephanie. Her
>unavailability was maddening to them and drew them even closer
>and with greater intensity.
The use of 'pacts' brought me to think the men were drawn closer to each other,
instead of Stephanie.
>The blood is almost all dried and there is a crust forming
'The blood is nearly dried and a crust begins to form..'
>If she were not so dead she might note the irony that paint
>lasted so much longer that blood, than flesh.
Had to laugh at, 'If she were not so dead..'.
>This wall will be in a place where there are mountains, or
>maybe tall buildings, or maybe just another ocean which after all
>is the same ocean really.
I'd take out both instances of 'maybe'. Comma before 'really'.
>He may throw them away, and not
>because they're worthless, but because they cost him so much to
>take and money doesn't feel like it used to for him.
Taking great license, I'd suggest:
'He may throw them away. Not because they're worthless, but because their cost
was so dear. For him, money doesn't feel the way it did: it doesn't cleanse any
more.'
>until the wind is strong
>enough to shut it.
What about 'seal' instead of 'shut'?
>Two more paintings will disappear from down the beach, but
>there will be no one up at that hour wandering about that house
>as Stephanie had been.
> Two lights will burn in Stephanie's top floor until their 720
>hours of life are up and then they will go out and winter will
>come and the gas man will show up to read the meter again, only
>this time, having been haunted by her comments and the loneliness
>he feels, he will want to talk with her. He will knock on her
>door and he will see that it is unlocked, and he will push it
>open out of curiosity and because there is a touch of larceny in
>us all. He will enter the house and he will call out and he will
>walk into the library with the fireplace and the paintingless
>wall and the stain on the floor, the bones, and he'll know that
>they are hers, because
>spell on him will be broken.
>
>E
Bravo! How nice to experience a story primarily through setting... most vividly
drawn. Your approach to characterization reminded a little me of the movie,
"Laura".
Thanks for a good read on a day otherwise full of kleenex.
Deb
Ubi ignus est?
Eskreetor
Still smacking my head. How do we miss those things? Carelessness.
Best
E
Pamela Mitchell
eskr...@aol.com (Eskreetor) wrote:
> Only posted novel snippets. Thought I'd put up something whole.
>
> Just want to see if I can hold your for 10,000 letters.
I'm assuming the word "attention" was left out of the sentence above.
Either that, or there's an extra "r" in it. Yep, you can.
Was the end supposed to look like this?
> He will enter the house and he will call out and he will
> walk into the library with the fireplace and the paintingless
> wall and the stain on the floor, the bones, and he'll know that
> they are hers, becau
> spell on him will be broken.
--
Pamela Mitchell
pmit...@1stconnect.com
ICQ: 43339430
my writing: http://pamelam.cjb.net
Oh, and, btw, stories are typically described by word count and not letter
count. This one was 1814 words.
Jabelson1
>they are hers, becau
>> spell on him will be broken.
I thought it unforunate that this tale, written with care, got broken at the
end. I think it's "because her spell" but there's no way to know!
jeffl
Eskreetor
You were right Jeff about the ending. When I pasted the text from my wp prog.
it got jumbled. Pissed me off when I saw it.
Best
E