Thread: A Jealous Sea part one (quite short) [Warning: Language]

The sunlight shone through the curtains and, filtered through a gin-and-tonic haze, assailed Konage's bloodshot eyes as he lay on the couch.

The hangover that had accompanied him to sleep last night reasserted itself in his head, the pit of his stomach and all over the floor

"Shit."

It was good that today was his day off. It would take as long to nurse himself back into drinking condition.

He clutched the couch's arm and hoisted himself to his unsteady feet.

But he'd have to clean this mess up, lest Sayuri see it. It was bad enough that she believed her father to be a drunk. She didn't need to know he was an unkempt drunk.

He had begun throwing out the empty bottles and vomit soaked tissues when he heard the door to Sayuri's room open. She came out, slouched over and dragging her feet behind her, but straightened up when she smelled the alcohol.

"Good morning father, have you made breakfast?" She asked him dryly, knowing full well that he hadn't and that he didn't intend to.*

That was one thing she had inherited from her mother: the ability to make words seem almost hollow, and the meanings of phrases- the things anyone else would say out of habit- seem elusive. And more often than not, those hollow spaces, those gaps in meaning, would be filled with spite. But he couldn't exactly blame her for it.

"No, I haven't," Konage said, avoiding her gaze.

"Drunk bastard," he heard his daughter whisper as she headed into the kitchen.

"T-there's shom cereal in the cupboard!" His speech was lopsided and slurred as he felt the rancid warmth of vomit creep up his throat.

"So, how's s-school?"

Konage tried to focus, but his mind kept drifting in and out of that state where there exists only a throbbing headache, omnipresent and inescapable; and the desire to placate that thrashing and shrieking beast that is a hangover.

"Fine, father."

Those two words were the default answer to anything Konage ever said to Sayuri. The gulf between them was filled by a million "fine, father"s, each one of them jagged and grey and expanding as to widen the gulf between them.

Konage wished Sayuri wouldn't be so distant. He was going through a rough patch, and the alcohol was just a way of putting to sleep, if temporarily, the nagging worries and stresses that were constantly picking and pinching at his conscience.

Besides, he was the one who was paying for her to go to that damned private school. If anything, the girl should have been grateful.

"Y-your grades are good, I trust?"

"I showed you my progress report two days ago."

...

Every day seemed to be the same as the last. Every experience, every face, was a piece of the same bland narrative that dissolved with the stroke of midnight, only to reassemble and disintegrate again.

Is today today? Or is today yesterday? Maybe today is tomorrow.

Sayuri wondered as she struggled to stay awake, struggled against the droning squeal of her biology teacher, and struggled against the thoughts that were rising up from somewhere in her brain. If she were paying attention to what the teacher was saying, she might have known where.

She touched her pencil to a bruise on her forearm. A few weeks ago, it had been as close to black as any purple could be, but it had since lightened to a deep lavender. One of many, the bruise had been a souvenir of one of her father’s more drunken rages.

She wished her mother was still around. Her mother would have known what to do. Her mother, a wellspring of the brightest warmest brand of maternal love and possessing a smile that could deflate the blackest of anger and diffuse the moodiest of moods, would have known what to do.

But she had been gone, let’s see, three years. Three years of living with her father, three years of living in a constant state of unease because of her father’s alcoholism. It was a monster in the shadows that seized him every time he picked up a bottle. And the bastard seemed to possess neither the will nor the desire to tame that monster. He couldn’t keep his alcoholism at bay long enough to be a father to his daughter.

And he wondered why she hated him, why his very absence from her life framed her very hopes and aspirations for the future. She hadn’t told Izanami about what her father had been doing to her. How could she? She was supposed to be strong. She was one of the only people she knew whose parents had separated. Whenever she recounted her life- her cherry blossom childhood, and the divorce- to anyone, praise was sure to follow.

“You’re so strong.”

“You have an emotional strength that is rare among young ladies of this day and age.”

The fact that she retained a very high academic ranking despite her family situation was supposed to be impressive. She wished people would stop praising her.

She felt that familiar feeling of her gut twisting up in sheer anger, she felt the warm flood into her face. Anger.

And then there was the the future. The future she had been promised. She had already seen it stretch out in front of her, everything in it’s place. She had seen herself standing at the other side of the future, and she had liked what she saw.

She would be accepted to and attend Tokyo Imperial University with Izanami, where they would study biology. After they graduated, they would both be accepted into the Faculty of Medicine at Osaka Imperial University where she would study neurobiology, and he would study pediatrics. They would intern at some hospital (they had not decided on it yet), after which they would be granted their licenses to practise medicine. They would move to some smaller city, perhaps Kyoto, to work at a hospital. After they established their careers, they would have two children. A boy, and then a girl.

She allowed herself to smile ever so slightly, and felt the anger in her gut dissipate and the warmness drain out of her face, as she recited her hopes, one by one.

I enjoyed reading this! There were some awkward spots that could use polishing, but there were also some rather well-written parts. Good use of sensory imagery with the vomit rising in his throat. I do wonder who the main character will be, though. He came first and seems more interesting, she came second and seems more sympathetic. It could work from either, but as a fan of unreliable, crazy, or non-sympathetic protagonists, I hope he is the main character.

You also have a large amount of poetically grand philosophizing, some of which works very well and some of which feels like too much to me.

The gulf between them was filled by a million "fine, father"s, each one of them jagged and grey

I'm willing to bet that's not how you pluralize a quote, but this is otherwise my favorite sentence of your story. It fits well.

Is today today? Or is today yesterday? Maybe today is tomorrow.

This does not work for me at this point. What little meaning it has to me is redundant with the preceding lines, and I need more specific actions by this point anyway. Make something happen. Also, maybe set the setting sooner -- I didn't even realize we had switched scenes until a paragraph later when it mentions her being at school.

Why is she at school anyway? Not a single piece of action in that scene requires her to be there. Something to consider.

Keep it up.

Hi Moops

I'm not sure where you're going with the story, or how long the planned final story will be, but it seems strange the way in which you reveal the daughter's life plan near the end. There's an element of an info-dump there, I think, and maybe it would feel more natural if I were to read about such life plans through conversations she had with the as yet unseen Izanami, for it is he, I understand, who Sayuri will spend her life with and have children with.

So, here's an example of where I think your dialogue does tell a story:

"Y-your grades are good, I trust?"

"I showed you my progress report two days ago."

It is so blunt in all its simplicity, and the reader gets from this that the father is in quite a terrible state. To convey so much with so few words is a worthy skill indeed.

I'm not too keen on the head hopping, particularly in such as short space of time as:

But he'd have to clean this mess up, lest Sayuri see it. It was bad enough that she believed her father to be a drunk. She didn't need to know he was an unkempt drunk.

He had begun throwing out the empty bottles and vomit soaked tissues when he heard the door to Sayuri's room open. She came out, slouched over and dragging her feet behind her, but straightened up when she smelled the alcohol.

"Good morning father, have you made breakfast?" She asked him dryly, knowing full well that he hadn't and that he didn't intend to.*

And in the final sentence here, how can she know what his intentions are. She can presume, or predict, or expect, but she can't know.

In one scene it is better perhaps to stick to one point of view. It is natural this will shift throughout a longer story, but if it happens within too short a time frame it can make the story appear jumpy, as opposed to allowing it to flow naturally through the eyes only of one person.

I'm not a fan of the omniscient narrative:

He had begun throwing out the empty bottles and vomit soaked tissues when he heard the door to Sayuri's room open. She came out, slouched over and dragging her feet behind her, but straightened up when she smelled the alcohol.

It's not wrong per se, just my preference, though I think here it is too much. Again, might be PoV thing. At least with the omniscient narrator, give the two actions separate paragraphs. I'm far from an expert on this aspect, but it doesn't feel right.

I think, allowed enough time and work on style, there is loads of potential here. She has a dream, or a life plan, and there is clearly a potential obstruction, so plenty of scope for things to go wrong and to be put right.

Good luck with this.

Scott.

^^thanks for the reply, you picked up a lot of shit i messed up.