Some time ago, we did a speed writing session for one hour. Actually, compared to the usual fifteen minute writing practices here, an hour might seem glacially slow. But we all know how fast an hour can speed by, especially when we're wandering around aimlessly in the land of social media while our cursor blinks wistful and lonesome on our WIP in the background, buried multiple browser windows in.
Today, we're going to do it again. I'm asking you to squeeze, pull, extract one sacred hour of time from your busy day and devote it purely and completely to your writing. But this time we have a theme. That theme is PAIN.
Before you click away from this page, worried that writing about pain will weigh down your bright and shiny day, think about it for a nanosecond. What is it that most great stories have?
CONFLICT.
TENSION.
Antagonist (force) pushing the protagonist to evolve, grow, learn, progress, or erupt in gratuitous fill-in-the-blank.
Pain is part of conflict and part of life. Embrace it.
Photo courtesy of Adedotun Ajibade
Pain in Four Elements
Pain comes in all shapes, sizes and intensities. It can be the root canal, the bullet wound, the torn Achilles tendon. That's the physical, bodily type that still gets splattered across too many movie screens because Hollywood thinks that's what we want to watch. We'll call this one EARTH.
It can be the break-up, the betrayal, the loss of a loved one. That's the emotional, heart-wrenching type that makes you want to curl up in bed forever—or reach for that weapon of mass destruction you've framed so lovingly above your fireplace. We'll call this one FIRE.
It can be the effects of abuse, war or violence, the lifelong trauma seeded in childhood. That's the psychological type that carves lines in your psyche and runs deeper than the Marianas Trench. This one is WATER.
It can be the existential crisis, the identity crisis, the loss of faith. That's the spiritual type of pain that can haunt us for a lifetime or give us a new purpose in life. Yep, you guessed it: this one is AIR.
You can call on one, several, or all four of these elemental types of pain in your work, as your characters go through conflict and navigate the peaks and valleys of your narrative. In life, of course, the archetypes of pain often come blended one into another, tough to disentangle and even tougher to resolve—the more true-to-life you can make this in your writing, the deeper you dare go, the more your literary truths will resonate with readers.
Pain-ted.
There is beauty in pain. Pain hurts, but it also makes us feel. It reminds us we are alive. It makes us drop to our knees in gratitude for freedom if we've been in whatever kind of prison, for love if we've finally found it, for joy if all we've known is misery. I will never forget the scene I once read in a book where a character had just escaped some brutal medieval battle and woken up near a barn somewhere. The color of the sky was more intense, the green of the grass and trees more lush, the air more fragrant than ever.
I can relate—there was an episode of similar intensity in my life. Not a battle, but something equally life-changing. I could literally feel the color of the sky.
Behold the photo above. What's your first, instinctive reaction? Would you hug this tree? Would you climb up and slide down its trunk, or would you be quite content admiring its studded, er, stunning beauty? Flip it: how would the tree feel if you cut it down with a chainsaw? And you if you sold it to a lumber company knowing you'd just cut down the habitat of a rare animal or bird species?
Use the power of pain to paint beauty.
One More Thing
One of my fellow writers once told me he hates (yes, hates) writing the first draft. “It's painful,” he told me, grimacing. “I'd much rather edit.”
I blinked at him, unable to absorb the strangeness of what he'd just said. For me, the most exhilarating part of writing is that virgin creation, those first coherent thoughts, those fresh words upon the page that you call from somewhere deep within our collective human soul (or beyond if you're writing sci-fi) and make them rain down upon your screen in a spinning torrent of literary ecstasy. Of course sometimes it's nothing but a trickle, but hey. Sooner or later the magic sparks, and you've got a manuscript. Pain for me is writing that last word and finishing a manuscript, because in a way, the initial journey of that book has concluded.
This happened recently, in fact. I finished a novel I was working on for six intense months. (Somebody get me a mojito!!) I felt a physical knot in my chest when I wrote that final word. I can't wait for the publisher to send me back their edits so I can drop back in again. Such a fish out of water…
So stand up tall and straight, chest out, chin up, and go on! Brave those undulating seas of pain.
PRACTICE
Take an hour in your day and focus on the pain or conflict your characters are going through, and intensify it. If you don't have a WIP you want to work on, whip up a random scene. Use dialogue, action, background, weather, whatever will paint your story a richer, deeper, truer color.
Post here, and be sure to critique your fellow writers. You know the drill: praise is fine, critique is better.
Before I launch into ‘pain’ and it’s infinite contortions I’d like to say thank you Birgitte for a superb, well considered, and beautifully written, practice and prompt. Fabulous.
Ok … off to explore the creative rapids…
What an extraordinary compliment, thank you humbly Dawn. I fear I haven’t done the topic the best justice but glad it resonates!
Creative rapids, that’s a great analogy … I ran from this post for most of a week. But I finally did it tonight.
Going across the monkey bars, hand over hand, like a playful chimpanzee, was supposed to be fun. The St. Vincent de Paul playground had the longest set of monkey bars in the city, and the students held bragging rights over all their non-Catholic friends.
Katie Carmichael put on the same smug face and hid under the same braggadocio, but secretly she hated the monkey bars. Dangling in the middle, moving to the other end like a sloth, she tried to tune out her friends egging her on. They thought she was a super hero, and loved to throw things at her. They especially loved to make her jump from crazy heights and fly off the merry-go-round at full speed.
Her friends weren’t mean. No, no matter what they did to her, Katie couldn’t feel pain. CIPA, her parents called it. Lucky as shit, her friends called it. They’d sit in a circle and talk about how Katie would fight crime; she could take a bullet and not feel a thing. Katie smiled and joked with them and talked about how she was the first real X-Man.
But she wasn’t a super hero. Every stupid day when she got home from school, Katie had to be examined from head to toe. Her parents learned exactly what to look for, searching for bruises, cuts, broken bones, and especially anything that could signify internal bleeding. At first, Katie hated it, and complained and moaned every time. Until her parents found the broken ankle. Two months later they discovered the huge bruises on her leg.
How was she supposed to grow up to be a superhero when she wasn’t predicted to live past sixteen?
Her appendix could rupture and she wouldn’t even know it. All the disks in her back could explode into her spinal cord, and she’d keep on going as if nothing happened. She was told she could suffer a heart attack and experience nothing more than a tingling down her arm before dropping dead. While her friends expressed nonstop jealousy, Katie cried before every examination.
All these thoughts flew thru Katie’s head as she grabbed for the next rung, trying to act fearless while carefully checking to make sure the paint wasn’t chipped or sharp. Her young life was like some two-faced exercise in cautious stunts.
The taunting got louder. They told her to go faster, faster, faster. They told her to pretend she was heading to the scene of the crime. They called her Supergirl. Then Batgirl.
Caught up in it all, Katie skipped a bar, her thin arm barely seizing the twelfth rung. Then she tried to skip two bars. Swinging way back, she launched herself forward and grabbed at the fifteenth bar. The tips of her fingers latched on, and Katie felt her legs swing up with the momentum.
Then she slipped.
Her body continuing its somersault, Katie fell six feet and landed on her back with a huge thud. Now, most people would have lain there, bawling and gasping for breath. Katie simply sat up, brushed herself off, and stood.
The crowd made gasping noises then went wild, and Katie couldn’t help but smile, while mentally running through a horrific list of what her parents might find tonight. More two-faced exercises. Still, she couldn’t let go of being the class hero and, not one to ignore the jeers, she climbed up, grabbed the first bar again, and swung forward.
I really enjoyed reading that. That is such an interesting and sad condition and I think your narrative well summed up the two sides of it and how Katie felt about it. Well done. I would read that book. 🙂
I broke my wrist when I was in elementary school, after dropping from the apex of a geodome. When the weather changes, or when I read something that reminds me of it, my wrist just kinda goes weak. It doesn’t hurt, exactly, but it’s like my bones remember. Let’s just say my wrist is a limp rag right now! 🙂 Excellent description of Katie and her condition. It’s not something I’m familiar with so I appreciated the way an explanation of her condition was woven into the story without sounding too academic.
“Hey, can I grab one of your old tees from your closet?” I gestured to the unfortunate strawberry splotches all over my favorite shirt. With a frown, I tugged at the edge of my shirt and tried to scrape the remnants of my sorbet off with my fake nails. Nope, it wasn’t going away.
“Chet,” I said again. “Do you have a shirt I can borrow? Maybe even one that you only wore once that doesn’t smell too skunky? Just kidding. All your shirts smell so good that you could lock me in the closet overnight and I wouldn’t complain.” I looked over at him.
Chet stood rooted to the center of the room, a pallid shade of gray. The last time he had looked that awful, I had to rush him to the emergency room. He had appendicitis.
I ran over to him and grabbed his arm. “What’s wrong, babe?” I asked. “You are scaring me. Sit down. Please, sit down.”
“I don’t want to sit down,” Chet said, his voice a hollow, wispy shell of the tough guy who had muscled his way into my life. He sounded indifferent, almost as if he was expecting me to make him sit down and was too tired to fight it.
“Baby, what is wrong?” I asked, anxiously trying to get him to look me in the eyes. I turned his face toward mine. I might as well have been looking into the eyes of the stuffed bear in the corner of Jim’s Quik Mart & Tackle Shop. He wasn’t looking at me. He didn’t even see me.
“Chet, what is wrong?” I asked again. I stood on my tiptoes and leaned in to kiss him. Every other time, his eyes lit on fire and he pulled me close. This time, he stepped back. “Go home,” he said.
“Chet, I can’t just leave,” I said. “You have to tell me what’s wrong!”
He looked at me that time. His hands tightened into fists. “Lacey Bryant, go home now!”
I cringed like he had slapped me. “Chet,” I whimpered. “Since when have I been Lacey Bryant to you? My name is Bry, Chet. Bry. Please, tell me what’s wrong. What did I say?”
Chet grabbed my arm at the elbow. He hustled me to the front door and flung it wide open. “Go,” he said. He shook his arm away from me and stalked across the room. I watched him go, still too shocked to cry. The strong arms that had always promised to hold me were throwing me out the door. Suddenly, I ran toward him. I pressed my head to his back and hugged him around the waist. “Chet, I lov-”
He stood stock still, like a dog freezes when it is listening to a strange sound. Then, he whirled around, yanking me off him. His fingers separated into claws, and he hoisted me up by my neck. I hung there, too scared to even think about breathing. I felt the skin around my eyes starting to tighten. With a deep, gurgling growl emitting from deep inside, he shoved me against the wall.
“CHET!” The hands around my neck released me. I started to fall forward, a limp noodle, my broken heart a blubbering glob of spaghetti sauce. Chet surged forward and pressed me back against the wall. A deep sob racked him, and he pressed his lips to my hair. “I’m sorry Bry,” he whispered.
Then someone pulled him off me. I watched in horror as Ben, his roommate, punched Chet right in the gut. Chet didn’t fight back. He staggered into his room. The door closed softly.
“Are you alright?” Ben tried to help me up, but I kicked at him. Then I curled up in a little ball and started shivering and crying and moaning. Kneeling beside me, Ben patted my head. “Leave me alone!” I screamed. “Get out of my face!”
Ben backed away, but then he started to pace in front of me. “What did he do?” Ben kept asking. He checked his phone over and over, pacing like a manic animal.
Goaded beyond my tears, I sprang to my feet. “I’m leaving,” I said, a cool, angry snarl warning Ben to keep his distance.
“You can’t,” Ben said. “I need to know what he did to you.”
“What he did to me?” My hysterical tone returned. “How about what I did to him?” I shoved my hair out of my face and stared back at him, my chest heaving.
“Okay, well what did you do to him?” Ben asked.
“I don’t know!” I stamped my foot. “Do you think I’d be here if I knew?” I started babbling something-I don’t even know what.
“What’s going on?” Chet’s brother Vlad here too! What, did the whole complex have to show up and watch me cry? I crossed my arms, not even bothering to wipe my tears away.
“What happened?” The intensity of Vlad’s eyes only made me angrier.
“I don’t know!” I screamed.
“I got here and Chet was holding her against the wall by her neck,” Ben blurted out. “I got him off her-”
“Where’s Chet?” Vlad’s voice made me shiver.
“In his room,” Ben said sullenly. “She won’t tell me anything.”
Vlad held out his arms. “Bry, come here,” he said.
“I don’t want to come,” I said.
Vlad pulled me close anyway. The tears started pouring, and I clung to him. “I don’t know what I said,” I sobbed. “We had sorbet and watched basketball, and then I got some on my shirt and asked him if I could borrow one of his. His whole face changed. He told me to go home.”
“What specifically did you say?” Vlad’s eyes were so intense that I shivered.
“I just asked him for a shirt,” I said. “I said he could even give me a dirty one because all his shirts smell nice.”
“Anything else?” Vlad sounded suspicious.
“I joked that he could put me in the closet and-”
“Put or lock?” Vlad’s voice lowered to almost a growl.
“Lock, I guess,” I said. Ben’s dirty mind caught on fast, and he snickered.
“Shut up, Ben,” Vlad ordered. He gently twisted the hairs at the nape of my neck into bitsy curls. “How long did you offer for him to lock you up?”
“Overnight,” I shrugged. “What does that have to do with-”
“So he told you to leave,” Vlad interrupted. “Did you try to leave?”
“He dragged me toward the door and went toward his room,” I said.
“What did you do?” Vlad’s voice grew soft; almost a whisper.
“I hugged him,” I said.
“From behind?” Vlad sounded upset.”Haven’t you noticed that he doesn’t like anyone coming up behind him? Why do you think that all his furniture is pushed against the wall? He’s like a watchdog, Bry. He needs to know where people are.”
Our last date, the hostess tried to seat us at a booth in the center of the restaurant. Chet dug his heels in the ground and demanded a table against the back wall.
“Yeah, well that’s no excuse-”
“Shut up, Ben,” Vlad said again. “Why don’t you close the door or something?”
Ben looked over at the front door. “It is closed,” he said.
“Then go open it, and close it with yourself on the other side,” Vlad said. He watched Ben as the guy trudged across the room and out of the apartment.
“I guess Chet didn’t tell you much,” Vlad said. He guided me over to the couch and smoothed a blanket over me. Then, he sat on the floor at my feet. “He’s not much of a talker.”
“So he doesn’t like hugs from behind?” I said. “And that is why he slammed me against he wall by my neck?”
“He doesn’t have a closet,” Vlad said. “There are no closets in this apartment.”
“Well, he didn’t have to get upset over that,” I said. “It’s not like I care all that much about closets.”
“He does,” Vlad said. He got the same grayish color on his face. “Hates closets.”
“Why?” I threw the blanket off of me. “Why would he hate a closet?”
“Ask him yourself,” Vlad said.
There Chet stood, his hands shoved deep in his pockets. He stared at the floor, his shoulders all hunched up.
“Tell her,” Vlad said. “She deserves to know, buddy.”
Chet’s eyes darted around the room. Minutes ticked by. “I used to have a sister,” he said at last. “She and I were playing around the house, making a mess. We were locked in the closet. It was really hot. They forgot about us at a party. When I woke up, she was cold, even though the closet was still hell-hot.” He looked at me, and he was crying. “I couldn’t save her.”
I may or may not have broken out into a cold sweat reading this! Great job capturing Bry’s fear and insecurity. I thought that Chet was going to end up having PTSD from being in a war zone, so the sister in the closet was a nice twist for me. I was a little overwhelmed by the number of characters, though. Is this a WIP? If so, maybe the characters were introduced earlier, but having four people suddenly show up in one apartment (or house?) was a lot to keep track of, on top of trying to figure out what was going on with Chet.
In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have stuck Ben in there. It would have made more sense, but I just wanted to post the thing:) This isn’t directly a WIP. It is more of a personality study.
Ah. It was really suspenseful. Somehow though I though Chet was a werewolf, and by biting her, had turned Bry into one too. I also associate the word Vlad with vampires and werewolves. Is this where the storie’s going.
Sorry, but I am so not a vampire/werewolf person, so definitely not. I met someone the other day named Vlad, so I figured I’d stick the name in here. Glad the suspense held out.
Elise you might use Vladimir and Vlad, interchangeably depending on who’s talking. That might help.
I think the retelling of the incident in the conversation between Vlad, Ben, Bry and Chet goes on too long. Perhaps that could be summarized in part and have it between only Vlad and Bry.
Really like this Elise. I’m still struggling with conversations in my writing so its interesting for me to see how you captured the moment and let the conversation flow. Interesting subject choice too. I can feel the pain of the characters.
You managed such a big piece as well! Highly impressed!! 🙂
Hi Birgitte! Another challenging blog! Here is an exerpt from a current WIP:*******
Billy and his spouse paced the road beside the wounded deeer. All their efforts to find help were frustrated. The animal’s leg was nearly severed by the fence it had tried to jump.She lay in the grass, deep brown eyes simply staring, and made no sound.Her soft fur pulsated with each breath. Billy and Jessie Mae knew they could not provide or pay for medical help. They awaited the wildlife man.
“I don’t know what to do,” Billy said breathing hard, “She looks perfect except for that leg. I just can’t leave her. Those eyes haunt me.”
His wife of many years reached for his calloused hand and held it.
In a spray of gravel the wildlife fellow pulled up and stepped from his mud-splashed truck, his hand on the pistol at his hip. He looked without emotion at the deer. “Not much hope for these animals,” he said, “What do you want me to do?”
The two seniors walked a few paces to talk. They felt the responsibility of having found her and couldn’t bare to see her suffer, but the options were few.
Fighting tears, Jessie Mae whispered, “I think we have to do this.” The decision weighed heavily on both. A few words with the man and the couple departed, their hands holding tight.. A single gunshot exploded and echoed through the woods. The bells of St. Peters church softly pealed the hour.
This is sad Ruth. Could we have more “deer” please. I think that would make it more painful.
Hello Ruth, yes I aim to challenge! 😉
“Wildlife fellow” — since this is a WIP, is there a reason to use this term as opposed to a more accurate or specific one? It lessens the credibility of the narrative.
I think you can tighten this piece up by pulling out all the mundane phrasings… like “looked without emotion at the deer.” How about “He threw a cold glance down at the heaving deer.” Something like that, more active, more fierce which intensifies the drama.
Also the dialogue, at times feels stilted… namely, Billy’s first dialogue here. “She looks perfect except for that leg” is just too obvious, and we’ve already seen the leg. Infuse more emotion into him.
Hope that helps!
Thank you, Birgitte. All very helpful. I wonder if you would consider doing a blog on critique? This would be helpful to all of us looking again at our own writing as well as others’. What do you specifically look for? What flaws jump out at you more than others? Does the heart of the piece overshadow smaller corrections? Thanks for all you have offered us. I copy most of your blogs for reference 🙂
That might not be a bad idea, Ruth. Then we can all critique the critique. 🙂
Because all writing is so subjective at the end of the day (apart from structural issues like grammar and tense etc), what I look for may differ from what other authors do. The foundation has to be solid however: if you do not have good grammar, or the rules of grammar broken beautifully, if you do not have spelling, tense, and voice, you can’t really go much further. Now, of course a first draft will have little things to correct—I’m talking about the final.
To answer your question about what jumps out at me most, it’s the basic errors like grammar etc, but also metaphors and imagery that grate against the story, that don’t work.
Because I’ve been an editor as well as writer for so many years, I proofread as I write. It’s become second nature. So by the time I’m done with a first draft there isn’t a whole lot to “correct” — in terms of grammar, punctuation and spelling. But that’s just the way I work.
So assuming you have the foundation down, then you can soar. I’ll think about that piece on critique…
Thanks, Birgitte! Knowing your work, you could develop this into a stunning blog, one that inspires growth for every author.
Synchronicity! Brigitte – your prompts always come at the right time. They never fail to move my boundaries. Off to climb a thorn tree… back soon!
Haha, that’s great! Always a pleasure to move boundaries. Or burst them altogether. 🙂
Here it is – it’s from my WIP about a woman who goes to the Thai-Burma border and wakes up with amnesia. This si the scne when she remembers what she’s been trying to forget …
In her dream, Maman has silenced the bickering generals and United Nations delegates. “Except for the Lord Jesus, it is never… never the case … that one man should die so many can live,” she’d screamed into the hall, a Valkyrie in her Vietnamese court ao-dai.
And yet, Nina says to the night, her son had died. And yet, despite that, she’d allowed another boy to die …
The weight of the thorn tree pricks at her. She wants to wake and run away from the memory, but can’t.
Pain, blood, pain, fire, pain, pain …
This is their third upslope and every step is an effort.
Her feet hurt. The mosquito bites around her ankles are throbbing. Her water bottle is empty, has been empty since the last hill they scaled. That was before sunset. But How long ago was it? Two hours? Three?
“How much longer?” she flashes her halogen beam up and away from the path towards the boy.
“Soon,” he replies, patient as ever, as if this is not the fifteenth or fiftieth
time she’s whined the question.
His skeletal silhouette, outlined against the thorn trees, turns. In the dark, she feels his eyes sliding over her, taking in her slumped shoulders and trembling legs.
“We will stop for awhile,” he says. “Over there,” In her flashlight’s arc, she sees him shift his arms to rebalance the iron box on his head, then life a delicately arched foot to point toward the spiny trunk of a nearby tree alongside their path.
This is Saw Enoch’s best boy, the one who’s survived incarceration in a
Tatmadaw prison, who tells everyone he fears nothing, who claims he possesses the magic that allows him to see through mountain fog and black night, who has conquered fatigue and even sleep. She’s grateful beyond relief that he’s acknowledged her weakness.
“You lead the way,” she says, her flashlight wavering now with relief, cutting a shaky path through the night and towards the tree he’s indicated.
He sets his foot down, rebalances the box with its precious papers and steps forward. Then, suddenly, he turns around once more. In the second before Nina drops the flashlight, she sees the surprise on boy’s face, then his lips shaping a silent plea …
She does not know she can be so strong. The box, which she grabs from the boy’s hands and off his head, feels no heavier than a consignment of feathers. And the boy, whom she pushes pass and onto the first mine, is simply air. She moves faster than she ever has. Her feet have stolen the magic from the boy’s eyes. She races through the mine-field, her
swollen ankles missing every single one. It’s only at the end that the boy’s magic, fading as he breathes his last, fails her. She does not see the trip wire. The web of counterweights holding the thorn tree shifts. The pyinkado falls, pushing her into blessed oblivion.
But now caught in the nightmare’s web she remembers that moment when Saw Enoch and his other boys had come and dragged her out, scratched and bleeding, from under the thorny branches. When she’d gone to look at the boy, or what remained anyway —the boy with only one kidney left, who told everyone he feared nothing and claimed he possessed a magic that allowed him to see through mountain fog
and black night, who had conquered sleep.
LOSS
The pain of loss comes back. It never goes away permanently.Sometimes remembering brings sadness, sometimes joy, and sometimes pain. The realization that so many who were once in my life are gone pounds with the force of a tree hitting the ground. Once more I go through an array of emotions, wishing I had said this or that, done this or that. Father, mother, brother-in-law, people I have known well and those who were only acquaintances. Over the years too many losses. I don’t want to count them. It hurts to
remember, but it would hurt more if I forgot them, if I tried and couldn’t picture my mother smiling as she stitched me a dress, my father whistling as he made the Christmas dinner, Archie as he smoked his cigar and sipped a scotch, Herman as he sat at a picnic table laughing with my son. I have to accept what comes with remembering, the pleasure and the pain, for when I think of those who have gone they are not totally gone, but are still here with me.
daffodils
remembering again
when to bloom
Adelaide
Adelaide, I relate. I think we all relate. There is nothing more cruel or vivid than the conscious awareness of another life, extinct.
Love your daffodils. A poetic ending to your prose.
p.s. you could do a series of these… each on a primal emotion, each ending with three lines of free verse. Wrap it up into a nice little book. Go for it!!
Thank you, Birgitte, for your comments. What I wrote is a Haibun, a Japanese short poetic form which uses prose, usually written in the present tense and more poetic than ordinary prose, combined with a haiku at the end. In longer haibun, other haiku are often interspersed within the prose.
I like your suggestion for a series with the theme of
emotions. I’ll have to think about this.
Adelaide
Thanks for teaching me about Haibun, I did not know about it at all!
Hi John,
If you want to read more of my haibun, there are several on my haiku blog, along with haiku. http://www.adelaide-whitepetals.blogspot.com
Yeah!
There is so much emotion from reading this. Putting into words the bitter sweet contrast of remembering. I love your ending.
I certainly relate, yes. Remembering does bring sadness, and joy, and pain, at different times, and sometimes all at once.
A day late, but here is mine… Only managed to find 30 minutes though 🙁
If only I hadn’t spoken to him. If only I hadn’t seen him while I
was standing outside on New Years eve last year.
I was drunk as you might imagine, or indeed hope with it being the
biggest global party night of the year. Chunky flakes of soft,
swirling snow were falling underneath the street lamp while muffling
the outside noises. It could have been at the only bar open in the
city.
His six foot three shadow instantly caught my attention.
Conversations were exchanged between him and one of the group, he
planned to go to a party and wouldn’t be back. There was with a
friend with him, although if I’m honest, I couldn’t tell you who,
even now.
My night progressed. My gaggle of friends grew as it neared the
magical midnight witching hour. I’m not sure it was even me who
noticed that he had returned and was standing at the bar, one of my
friends pointed it out to me, but I was the person to make the first
move. Did he want to dance with me in the twenty minutes before the
new year ? Yes. Did I understand that if we were still dancing when
the first clock chimed we would have to kiss? I guess that would be
right.
I can remember the kiss it as though it were yesterday. If at any
point in my life I could believe that I lived in a fairy tale that
was that moment. Deep and passionate. When the clock reached the end
of the twelve bell ring we were still kissing. The last on the dance
floor and I knew I would love him. Even then in that brief moment.
And now? Now I sit beside him 42 years later. I loved him and
still do. I moved to the other side of the word to be with him. We
built a house together. Had three beautiful and amazing children and
now two grandchildren.
The doctors have just told me that he will probably never wake
from this. For the first time in years I feel alone. I’m not, but I
soon will be.
My heart is breaking.
I was not clear as to the time element in this piece. From the beginning I thought this was the present; it is only at the end did I realize that all that went before was the past. I think you need to make it clear that you are remembering the past.
Adelaide
Hmm, I don’t necessarily agree with that. I think it’s more touching, more poignant—and painful, if the past is not alluded to in any way until it’s time (pardon the pun).
What I would work on is sentence structure and voice. That needs work here!
I know I’m supposed to be writing, but that is the coolest tree I have ever seen! I hope no one gets chased by a wild animal and that’s the only tree around!
Isn’t it? I’ve seen these kinds of trees up front and personal. Fascinating what Nature is capable of, and this is just a small tip of the thorn… er, iceberg.
So how’s the writing coming along?
Eh, I spend more time creating plots and outlining then writing. It’s weird, but I love to create new stories, outline the heck out of them, and throw them in a drawer. 🙂
Sara’ pain
Sara’s pain felt like a ball
of hot lead sitting right in the middle of her chest. She found it hard to
breath and hard to move. Her arms were heavy as if she had on a suit of lead.
She couldn’t concentrate on anything. Her own mind seemed to be against her. Visions
of Kelly’s dead body tormented her. The mess that was what was left of her
friend hovered just behind her eyelids, reminding her of what happened every
time she blinked. Whenever she began to smile or forget about what had happened
her mind snapped her back. She was back to that night standing in the rain,
looking down on her friend. She would remember how she had failed to help her
best friend.
She felt lost and alone. There
was a foot of grey fog between her and the rest of the world. And no matter how
hard she tried she couldn’t reach through it. She couldn’t feel the sunshine on
her face. She couldn’t taste food. When
someone asked her a question, it took a long time for her to understand that
they were even speaking to her. If someone brushed against her arm, Sara
couldn’t feel it. It was as if they were touching an arm already dead. Sara’s face
was still, like stone. Even her skin started turning grey like the fog.
Everything she did wasn’t
good enough. Not anymore. How could it, how could anything be good enough now
that Kelly was dead. So what if Sara got an A in biology? She still couldn’t
save Kelly. What did it matter if the milk was stocked or that old lady needed
help finding the shampoo, Kelly was dead and Sara hadn’t saved her.
She stopped going to work at
the grocery store. She spent her time at school counting the seconds until she
could go home again. Back to her bed, where it was safe.
She began to pull away from
everyone. She didn’t know what else to do. While other people laughed and made
small talk, all Sara wanted to do was scream. She wanted to scream in all their
faces, “Kelly’s gone and it’s all your fault!”
She wanted to punch all of
their happy smiles until they were nothing more then blood and meat and bone,
like Kelly had become.
Birgitte, thank you so much for this post. I obviously dodged it for a week, but I came back to it tonight. Here is my effort:
Will Grauman was a lucky man, and he told himself so several times that morning as he stood on the rafter in the huge dairy barn, attempting to catch the young pigeon that stood, one eye blinking at him and inching sideways away from him on its higher perch next to the nest. Will had not had to go to war like so many of his buddies, even if now, after Pearl Harbor, he sometimes wished he was with them, fighting the bloody Japs and the lousy Krauts. His good fortune had been to elope with Melanie, the love of his life, just after she graduated, and now they had a five-year-old daughter, Wendy, whom he loved more than he could ever find words to express. He wanted to capture this young bird and take it home to Wendy for a pet. If the little guy would just . . . quit . . . inching away . . . .
He took one step closer . . . and his boot glanced off the board and into space. His co-worker would state later that he heard Will say, “Oh, shoot.” His balance lost, he plunged quickly to the hard-packed earthen floor of the barn, landing on the top of his head. Bright blue-white agony exploded inside his cranium, a shearing sensation wrenched his neck, pain such as he had never known, JE-sus — but it’d take more than just a knock on the head to knock Will Grauman out. He was all right, he’d get up, stand, walk on, go on with life. He struggled up on his knees, and then, wobblingly, to his feet. Took a slow, shaky step. His co-worker, approaching, saw and flinched from the blood dribbling out of the corner of Will’s mouth, and asked him, “Will, you okay? Just take it easy, now.” The man started to reach out for Will.
Will lost consciousness, fell to the dirt again, and never knew the hospital bed he would occupy for two days before he slipped away, wanting so badly to return, and still telling himself, Lucky.
*********
Melanie looked around the cabin’s small den, taking in the smiling faces of her two sisters alight with love as they talked and giggled with their husbands. They’d come to get away for the evening, to have some fun, to enjoy themselves again the way they had on dates, before the advent of the children, all in Momma’s care tonight. Melanie looked, and the agony of the empty place where Will no longer was tore a sudden jagged raw hole in any attempt to join the fun. She slid back into the dark-grey depression that had enveloped her when Momma had had to lead her step by step up and down the stairs at the hospital.
She heard an incoherent wail, and the others heard it too, because their chatter died suddenly and they all looked up.
At her.
She was the source of the keening wail.
She ran outside into the woods.
********
She married Big Jim, the guy who had been in love with her in high school, when he got home from The War. She had begun writing to Jim after she lost Will. Jim’s love was more ardent than ever, even as he comforted her in her loss, his embraces fiery with the passion of love previously despaired of.
But she was not the girl he had loved, and would never be again.
Beth Ann was born in ’46, a great joy to her father, who immediately began calling her Punkin. Melanie smiled and cared lovingly for the baby, but she hung back, did not give herself to this child as completely as she had to Will’s Wendy. Now was it with Beth Ann, or seven years later with Little Jim, that they had to induce labor, and the doctor used the forceps? It was all so confusing in the haze of her still-shocked memory.
Jimmy arrived three months after his due date in December, Big Jim making nervous jokes the while about wanting that tax break for ’53. Big Jim and Melanie had spent the months of this pregnancy arguing. About, of all things, religion, of which Big Jim had gotten a large dose recently. He had two daughters, he’d adopted the first one and viewed her as much his own as Beth Ann. And now, with all of himself, he wanted a son. A son to teach about the right path in life, a son to grow up and follow in Big Jim’s corrected footsteps. So no more cigarettes, no more beer, he was looking for the right church for them to join and they were going to start daily family devotionals in their home henceforth, and he would keep his family from the ways of the world. He would shelter his children from Satan’s wiles until they were instructed and came to know the Right Path for themselves. . .
Melanie just could not share her husband’s religious enthusiasm. Oh, she believed, all right, she believed in God and the Bible. But another, mostly unacknowledged Melanie, Melanie of the torn heart that could never be mended, sometimes both shrank from, and cursed silently at, that same God.
Li’l Jim came out blue around the edges, under his fingernails and toenails, and for the first few hours, the doctor Just Didn’t Know. The first twenty-four, he said, would tell. Melanie looked at his sweating, nervous face, this doctor she’d trusted with two pregnancies (and who within ten years would lose his license to practice medicine due to his abuse of drugs), and a flinty defiance came into her eyes. She thought, I’ve lost a husband, I’ll be godd– I’ll be damned if I’m gonna lose this baby.
She sat in the maternity ward and held and gently rocked the baby boy for two days without moving from the chair except for trips to the bathroom, silently telling her son, Don’t you dare. Don’t you even dare. You are going to LIVE.
He lived.
********
Jimmy relaxed in the semi-darkness and let the music surrounding him come inside him more completely, waiting for his turn to fill behind the singer on the song’s bridge. The Long Rear-View, as he thought of it, never quite left his thoughts, and at moments like this, when everything just sort of comes together, with the band and with sort-of Everything, well —
Jim plucked three strings together, then e-a-s-e-d down on the volume pedal, the steel guitar fading in on a rising cadence up to the four-chord that began the bridge, soaring with the music of the heart, and wrapped all of the past into his part of the tapestry of music.