huitzil

Hey, this is cut down from what I originally intended to be a longer story, but I think it works better this way, I'm a little unsure, don't really know were I'm going with this, but I'd like to know what you think. Thanks.

Jane’s Inferno

I was my mother’s consolation prize. She named me Jane because it went well with the big red bow he wrapped me in. It was my dad’s gift after Jeremy followed by four years premature excitement and two miscarriages. My real mother was some good kid caught in a bad situation so her parents convinced her to give me away and go to college. Smart girl. My new mom put me in dresses and mary-jane shoes until Jeremy took his test and she started crying. But she could fix it she said and then she stopped tying ribbons in my hair. It was okay, I never really like them. Jeremy got bigger, but his eyes stayed the same and even though I was younger I would always beat him at games, until my mom told me it wasn’t nice. It was three trips to the hospital since dad left when I got my scar. The first one, that is. The second one is mine. It happened just before I joined the fire academy in the aimless months I spent washed up in my feelings and prescription antidepressants. They said it was stress related and that I should drop out of med school. I did, but not because of that. I figured if I couldn’t cut straight enough to kill myself I probably would not make a very good surgeon. I stopped taking the pills the day I saw my first fire, but I only traded one addition for another. Since Angel boy flew away I had nothing left in my fingers but when I would hear a cry, a yell in favor of life the blood would flow back in and I was real again. I spent my three days working a demented personified death complete with yellow jacket and an axe for a sickle, my three days off I turned back to stone and remembered every day I spent floating in a sea of paxil and hospital grade jello. Tell me about your childhood, and I would stop. Pony rides and fishing trips nothing traumatic, except, and they would ask more. But to whom did my feelings belong to? I had every right to keep mine refrigerated on a shelf. But I remember it anyway. Most people don’t die in fires from being burned; it’s the smoke that kills. Dad had already left when I found mom too tired to play with me and I went outside careful to step over the broken glass. Angel boy was playing baseball. He and his friends were old enough to walk to the end of the street, but I stayed by the fence. I once told a girl the name that I gave to him. She said angels have blond hair and are older, but I still called him that anyway. When he looked over I turned red and with great conviction that I had intended to, I walked to the back of the house. Jeremy crouched beside our junkyard fort holding a handled glass. He stared with no direction at the hill while its inhabitants ran erratically in great streams to get away. I realized what was happening and fell to take the magnifying glass. I was almost noon. I could never keep a functional relationship and chose people based on their varying degrees of insanity. A doctor one told me it was because I never knew my father, but he was wrong. I only ever loved one man. But Angel boy and Death do not make a pretty couple. Because he lived in heaven I just know hell, so we could only meet on earth. I meet him years later and he touched my scars, well he said, at least now they’re symmetrical. He saved me from the anthill, but not from myself. Tell me Jane, tell me about your brother. My brother, my brother and his oversized hands, my brother and his constant wet lips, my brother pinning my arm angling the light beam to burn a line, my mark, straight and focused down to my wrist. Most people don’t die from burns though I wish I did but then an angel flew from our junkyard fort and we soared back to his house. He held my hand while too many paramedics rushed in, but it’s only a burn, she’ll live. The second time I saw a real fire I stopped, there were no screams, no people, no smoke. The bible doesn’t mention a fire and brimstone hell. Christians didn’t even believe in it until they started to preach Dante’s Inferno. The perfect red circles and sterile orange water cleans everything lapping up my memories and I think of Angel boy, and that this might not be hell, but it’s close enough.

Chris Miller

Hi huitzil,

This was a different read. Since you seem to know what you're doing, I just let it rip. Once I did, I really enjoyed it. Interesting: kids burning ants and then a girl getting her arm held and burnt by a magnifying glass, and later scarring herself, and being in love with Angel and Death, a failed suicide attempt in med school (her other scar?). This is in a technique I call “emergent” in that you have to sort of let the story emerge after you’ve read it. I’ve read it twice now and it’s still taking shape. It strikes me as a mature work. I like the way you play with style. I like the psychology here. I’ve got a strong feel for the narrator, she's a very real person to me now.

I’m hesitant to offer edits since it’s hard to tell what’s you bending the rules and what’re mistakes. But you seem to omit a lot of pretty important commas. For example:

“It was my dad’s gift after Jeremy followed by four years premature excitement and two miscarriages.”
“years” = year’s (I think)
This is crying out for a comma, maybe after “Jeremy” but since I have no idea what “premature excitement” is, it’s hard to say. What did you mean here?

“I was almost noon.”
It

“but I only traded one addition for another.”
addiction

“When he looked over I turned red and with great conviction that I had intended to, I walked to the back of the house.”
Typo or word missing or something.

I agree that this technique works best with short pieces. It's hard work for the reader, but very efficient.

This kind of style demands careful attention to detail/edits so that you do not lose credibility and just come across as kind of whacko, which you are not. I love this kind of thing. A little technical tightening and you’ve got something great. Thanks for the read.

__________________
the fairwriting blogs

Barcelona Review story: http://www.barcelonareview.com/64/e_cm.html

huitzil

Thanks so much for the feedback. I was totally unsure of the idea and needed another pair of eyes to know if it actually worked, or if it did come off as the ramblings of a whacko. It was written really fast and in one chunk so it definitely needs some work (I see the problem with the commas and weird sentence structure). I'll get on fixing that. Your praise is lovely and hopefully deserved, thanks again.

aliceedelweiss

i liked it but...I think it was kind of scattered. The way it was scattered almost helps it, but personally I would have liked to know more than what was told, I would have liked it to make sense. Either way though, it was a very good read

Alice

__________________