Thread: The Nature of a Wanderer

Was challenged to write a short story paying attention to space and how it affects characters. I came up with this as a first draft.
Would gladly appreciate input of any sort.

Thanks

The Nature of a Wanderer

It is a simple rule of nature that a wanderer’s eye will find any object relating to their inner emotive state andmanipulate it in a conveniently selfish way. Landscapes will roll into cityscapes and dawn will fold into sunset. The tiniest breeze will carry a sigh, and the wanderer will be comforted instantaneously by the presence of elements experiencing an affliction such as their own.
Clarissa Montagne’s eyes were experiencing thisphenomenon as they peeked out of the broad window in the cross-country train. There was one bunk bed on one side of the cabin; the top bunk cobwebbed and desolate from lack of use. A sad red bench-like couch stood on the other end creased with the modern fossil imprints of cultured rear ends.
She chose to stand, rejecting the aged furniture for the time being. Feet firmly implanted into the regal red rug, Clarissa paid little mind to the visionary cues and focusedher mind selectively upon the capricious movements of the train.
A small spherical mirror rattled in tango with the engine but never failed to project Clarissa’s features: she had a petite frame and homely brown hair. Her eyes did not see through any sort of rose-colored glasses as they projected twenty-twenty vision through grey orbs.
Capricious and unsteady, the train could not commit to one speed or one motion. It shook and rattled as it skidded through the European countryside. It made the lamps shiver and resonate with crystalline sounds. The music provided a soundtrack to her claustrophobic thoughts.
Clarissa thought of George, her beau, who was waiting for her at home. Tomorrow he would set an alarm, it would ring right after the sun rose. He would follow the customary route to the train station. He would be the determining factor in her homecoming experience. Flowers or a simple hug? A kiss? Perhaps.
“Do you think I love him?” There had been a pause when Clarissa posed the question to her mother earlier that day. Anxiously, she looked at the aged woman and had waited for the response.
“I think you are like me,” her mother had answered, “you get used to it.”
The conversation wasa spectral presence in the small train cabin. Her mother resided in Warsaw; Clarissa was now going back to Minsk. The visit to her parent’s estate had been nothing less than uprooting and had inspired her to put the extra euros in and get a cabin all to herself. The idea of having a stranger in tightly knit quarters along with her crowded and conflicting thoughts was too suffocating.
The rails receded under the powerful circular motions of the train’s wheels, which were pushed by the persistent engine.
The sun set further into the rolling planes of the horizon. Clarissa’s shadow grew and loomed behind her fragile figure.
She remembered the day she met George perfectly. His mother had owned and worked the cash register at the neighborhood supermarket in Minsk. Her own mother frequented the store for useful and obscure commodities, following whatever her heart and the latest cookbook desired.
The two mothers conspired and created their own recipe. Before Clarissa knew it, she was shoved off into George’s talons in the confines of a movie theater. One date lead into another and Clarissa couldn’t help but pay homage to her mother’s romanticized thoughts. She went along with every motion.
Clarissa was tightly screwed into a convenient hole in life and couldn’t exactly find the means to undo the handiwork.
It is a simple rule of nature that man must have his freedom. And he is a man with his freedoms impaled upon an inconsistent crest. He is weary from his travels and sifts through freedoms every time a border is crossed or a city is breeched. The wanderer is sensitive especially in the subject of what he humanly deserves.
Bill was afflicted with the need to not only experience the wonderful and vast freedoms that a lucrative life had to offer, but also to impose, quite audibly, that he possessed them to the fellow population.
He was a traveling salesman and could not find the ends to his means. He could not abort his constant verbal defecation. The earthly teal colored phone that hung in his cabin was not invisible to his hawk eye. He lifted the receiver every five minutes to make sure the party on the other line knew of his displeasure.
The train erratically drummed the European land; unnerved by the wooden planks it had to cross and weary of the time that had already passed. It let out screaming steam from its lungs as it came to a particularly difficult section that was overgrown with weeds and littered with misplaced blooming flowers. The sun had perched at least halfway behind the world and spilled red hues that echoed the train’s interior. The day had almost diminished.
Bill sweated profusely upon the red hues of the rug as he refused to take his suit off until the stewardess came in for the umpteenth time. This time she was to check that the cobwebs were swept completely from every nook and cranny of the premise. A knock came on the door.
“Mr. Morte?”
He made his way determinedly to the cabin door and unlocked the latch, swinging the door open with indignation.
“It’s about time!” he barked.
“I know Mr. Morte but we do have other passengers on the train,” the stewardess reasoned, “but pardon the delay.”
With a sarcastic snort, Mr. Morte, Bill, descended onto his temporary throne, the red bench creaked as his strong frame impacted it. The blonde stewardess assessed the man in one sweep of her eyelashes. Mr. Morte was not a particularly peculiar man. He had beady green eyes, raven black eyebrows and well-groomed, jet-black tufts of hair. He ran a hand through his mane and sighed exasperatedly as the blonde woman got away from the top bunk bed with tissue papers which she later discarded into the trash can located near the exit door.
The train shook up the small compartment of a cabin, the LED letters blinked “Minsk” and counted down from the original ten hours that was the standard trip time.
“Would that be all Mr. Morte?” She politely inquired.
“I’m sure it won’t be. Your transit company can never do anything correctly.”
The young girl shut the cabin door behind her but Bill still heard the faint sounds of her sarcastic remarks trailing through the cracks of the hindering door.
“Who put the stick up his behind,” laughed the blonde who was greeted by the fading laughter of one of the older staff members. Bill reached for the receiver.
It is a simple rule of nature that a wanderer must be attracted to this or that. A simplistic little nothing could mean everything to the wanderer’s spirit. A single rose in a thorn garden is bound to be the idol to a good mood. Wanderers are strangers in someone else’s home. It is their duty to find the symbols and reasons behind the smile in the twinkle of their eyes.
Such was the motto of young Albert. At twenty-one he was bristling with latent potential and exhuming energy from every pocket of his being. A son to poor, but very much enamored, youthful parents, he was the prime example of a bread believer in a “joie de vivre” way of going about his days alive.
He had visited Poland for a short and intensive painting class where he transcribed plump nude models upon rich quality canvas. This opportunity was provided to him by a scholarship that a sales company set up to aspiring artists in difficult times. An opportunity with the backbone deeply rooted in stealthy marketing.
The train crossed a rare vineyard on its way to Minsk. The sun had crept further behind the thundering European setting. Red was fading into a saturated purple hue that was showing no sign of losing color quite yet.
Albert Miller crouched methodically upon the top bunk of the bed in his single cabin room. His cabin was identical to every other housed on the train; however, it was the presence of the youth that colored it unique in a peculiar way. He had the view of the moving outdoors in plain site and at an angle at which he saw the glimpse of the other train cars. He allowed his fancies to run free imagining his fellow passengers in the same setting as he found himself.
His bag was lying distraughtly on the red couch, rolled up canvas was getting unraveled with every meter the train covered by its snakelike visage. The canvases unfurled bright impressionistic colors, which had been swept with carefree brushstrokes. The violet outdoors cast a mystical aura upon the works and a favorable light upon the blue-eyed youth. The circular mirror reverberated the blonde young man much like Homer transcribed a youthful hero into an epic. It didn’t matter that his life was simple and that this vessel was transporting him back into the land of the impoverished.
Much like Albert’s work on canvas, he was a fellow who carelessly believed that everything happens for a reason. Each moment in life can be romanticized and must be out of necessity to feed the imagination.
In the middle of his imaginings, a blonde stewardess knocked on his cabin door. He saw the blur of her colors behind the distorted glass. In one swoop he hopped off of his bed and curiously opened the passage to his meek and homely room. He housed the giggling worker and protected her from the demanding salesman.
It is a simple rule of nature that a wandered must be prepared for the element of loss in life. Whether it be a prized possession, a friend ripped away by distance, or an essential object, loss transverses all planes and all locales.
The sun now only slightly peaked out at the wobbling train. The present moon tinted the purple sky into a natural nightly color. The passengers shuffled around in their cabins preparing for sleep.
The train struggled against the cool rails of its sole companion. Somewhere in the engine room a shot rang out. It cracked and bent the air. The sound was fluent to everybody’s ears and the engineers rushed to the unattended room in pajamas and slippers. Sleep was not on the menu tonight.
Clarissa yipped as the circular mirror in her cabin gave way and crashed to the floor, the crystalline sound exploding and resonating with the engines shots.
Bill’s hand habitually reached for the receiver, which gave no answer. He rose in astonished rage and swung his cabin door open to peak out.
Albert dashed from the top bunk a second time to catch his canvases before they hit the threatening red rug. He secured his pieces and slid the cabin door ajar, peaking out and greeting the other passengers and their puzzled faces.
“Young boy! Go to the front of the train and check on the engine room,” slurred Bill quite pompously.
Clarissa’s eyes were struggling to appear wide in shock; too used to the mundane environment their owner subjected them to. Albert looked upon her as a mother figure in the sea of confused faces. Her calm visage was his proverbial hand to hold through the entire ruckus.
He walked into the hallway and heard the faint slam of his cabin door closing shut. The aisle between cabins narrowed into a never-ending tunnel and he walked the plank of its essence with slow and deaf precision.
“Alright. I’ll go see what is happening” He assured the other faces without looking at them. Clarissa’s eyes watered as she related to the brave youth.
The engine room wasn’t as far as Albert first deemed it to be. The latch closing it off from public access must have muffled the engine’s shot. The train raged against the night, faltering upon the tracks and spitting black smoke.
Albert knocked upon the door and swallowed at the shouting he heard from inside. The door opened to reveal the semblance of a blooming fire and injured workmen. Albert was doe eyed in the face of the scene.
Somewhere behind him a pompous sales man was complaining. Behind him was an unhappy woman stuck in an unfitting role.
The engine roared for a sacrifice, unsatisfied with the burnt men howling in pain in it’s domain. The moon was pale with fright.
And then the engine creaked, a sound familiar to the engineer. Another shot was coming. The twenty one year old youth stepped into the dominion of the beast and with horror and imagination invented a self-image of a savior. He threw himself in the way of the shot and impaled himself upon the injured.
The train rattled on into the night, howling in self afflicted pain. With a jolt it stopped in its tracks and the crowd of faces staggered to maintain equilibrium.
Clarissa looked about the linear hallway in search of Albert. Some workmen and the engineer emerged from the engine room coughing and wiping the soot from their eyes. Bill was the first to speak.
“I am reporting this to every single establishment who will listen to me. Your failures will be pasted on every front page in every paper,” spat Bill, shaking from the very sudden catastrophe.
Clarissa pushed her way past the forming crowd and the jarred salesman. She faced the engineers.
“Where is the boy? Have you seen him? He was going to find out what is happening. There was a shot….” She trailed off.
The engineer to whom the question was directed to averted his eyes from the petite woman’s frame. He fidgeted with his large workers galoshes and muttered in a barely audible tone, “there was an accident. He came outta nowhere…”
The moon began to dip in the sky, bored of the stagnant train uselessly idling upon its tracks. Some inpatient passengers were exiting into the chilly night to await rescue, and some returned to the comfortable confines of the now silent cabins. A rescuing freighter would come by to gather the travelers and deliver them home and away from the scrap of metal.
The wanderers wandered away from the loss, collectively relating to elements relating to them.

I really have no critique to offer you. This was an AMAZING example of writing and storytelling. I loved reading this and I am envious of your talent.

nerot

On second thought...you did an excellent job of developing the characters. This was even more apparent when they reacted to the "shot" in ways particular to your description of each of them individually. I could see each compartment in the train, the train, the sunset and the evening. As far as satisfying the challenge re: space and how it affects the characters, you did an awesome job.

nerot

wow thank you very much for the kind feedback!
It means a lot to me, especially since this is my first "finished" piece in a while. I will still draft it a bit to work on my craft.

Thank you for the support nerot!

Elena