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Tap · 07-03-2004, 08:07 PM

On the Morning After

Everything was different now. The morning after you'd stayed up all night was like a bleary epiphany. You were a survivor. For once you had caught the heavens making the switch: pure knowledge.

"Evelyn, I'm not so sure anymore, ya' know?"

"No, I know. No one is." She patted his hand and looked at him. She felt like adding, "anymore," but thought it was too broad. Too dramatic. She knew exactly what he meant though; she wondered where all that certainty could go. Where had it gone in the course of the night?

The sun was still rising. Raindrops covered the windshield; millions of little rainbows covered the windshield. Evelyn thought, 'A million God-smiles: I promise, no more floods.' But that one didn't fit at all: there was too much shame here.

If there had been any certainty, any unanimity at all, she would have closed her heavy eyes and put her head on his shoulder. In her mind, convention dictated that she get out of the car and walk among the corn stalks for a while. She did so, in order to prove that she was afraid of nothing. She could do things without him.

He watched her from inside the car, the low, burning sun causing her hair to glisten. It was the first time he saw it so naked. He saw the stalks shift where she walked. Sometimes they were so tall he couldn't see her at all.

She wanted to pick bits of corn stalk. She wanted to chew on them, like the apostles on Sundays. She wanted him to do this with her and to know what they were doing. She had imagined he might follow her out. 'It could be saved.' The day could be saved.

She waited among the stalks, hoping he would have the will to get out of the car. He didn't, and so she had to come back. There was really nothing else. While she sat down alone on the hood, he was trying to hide his crying. He had started crying when he saw her disappear, and the stalks kept moving.

Then there was nothing else but riding back. The sunlight made them squirmish and squinty, like reformed vampires. By the time he pulled up to her parents house, it was the same again and her hair was just hair and there was nothing ethereal or angelic about her; not at all. 'Don't be fucking stupid,' he told himself. 'Don't just let this fade away.'

As she grabbed her bag from the back seat he noticed her back was scratched - dark and tough like the callus of hard work - probably from the floor mats in the car. Now she was walking up the drive, and they were like small animals, shoved out into the light: opening their eyes for the first time.

americanwriter · 07-03-2004, 11:45 PM

Well, I think it's descriptive. But what's its point? It doesn't seem to be leading anywhere. What's its context?

Biowulf · 07-05-2004, 11:29 AM

Exactly- I may not be great on poetry, but I've been reading two inch novels since I was 9.

A Introduction to the story and characters is (I think) in order please.

Jack Wyvern · 07-05-2004, 12:36 PM

Without a frame of reference, it is difficult to tell what they should be saying or doing. Therefore, I guess it is good. I get the impression they had an all-nighter in the backseat, and now they feel guilty. If that's it, sounds solid.

Savannah · 07-06-2004, 02:46 AM

A beautiful, slim margin of sunlight of a short story. While your writing is the stuff real novels are made of, and better than most of the wanna-bes' Lord of the Rings attemps at this site, it isn't enough to be even a short story. As it is, you could turn it into a wonderful poem, but to make it into a short story, you'd need to give it a clear beginning, middle and end, or at least something more substantial than a succint, if beautiful, summary of a couple's day.

Another option is flash fiction-- some literary journals are taking this sort of thing, short short stories between 200 and 500 words. If you don't want it to be a poem or a short story, you could probably try flash fiction.