wildie1990
January 2nd, 2012, 02:58 AM
this is the 1st draft of my short story a circle in a spiral enjoy
A Circle in a Spiral
Written By Rick Thorpe
Rainis hitting the moonlit streets hard, water is pouring over the sides of thepavements and onto the damaged roads. The rain water mixes with the oil soakedtarmac to create colourful pools upon an almost grey setting. The streets getmore and more deserted as everybody tries to shield themselves from the rain.Street lights flicker as night draws in, revealing more colour on the rainsoaked landscape.
A dark shadowyfigure of a man, walks out of a residential complex and begins to travel downtowards a local pub. The rain is pounding his long leather coat, as he walkstowards his destination. Water running from his hair down across his face, ashe wipes away the drops, he sees someone standing in the middle of the road.
“Are you ok?” heshouts to the person. He gets no reply. “Hello, are you alright?” he shoutsagain. Still no reply. He then sees a set of headlights drawing closer andcloser to the figure in the road. “WATCH OUT!!!” he cries, but just as the caris about to hit the figure in the road, it disappears. Wiping more water awayfrom his face, the man is stunned at what he has just seen.
“I could havesworn I just saw….” He stops himself mid sentence as he feels he is soundingcrazy. He continues his walk down the rain soaked street towards the pub. As hegets to the end of the pavement he sees that it has only just opened, so hechecks both sides of the road and proceeds to cross. The empty streets seem tounnerve him as he crosses the road but he still proceeds. He walks through thedoor of the pub, takes his usual seat at the bar and orders his usual bottle ofwhiskey.
After a fewglasses, he begins to think about what he has just seen.
“Was it real? WasI imagining it? How can someone just disappear in the blink of an eye?” hethinks to himself as he takes another shot of whiskey.
This isn’t thefirst time he has seen someone ‘disappear’. Two years ago he saw somethingsimilar. He saw a figure of a woman standing on the edge of a bridge. He criedout to her but she jumped, but before her body hit the ground, she disappeared.He tried to tell himself that it was just his mind playing tricks on him. Butbecause of what he saw, he decided to quit his job as the manager of a bigmarketing company, his reasons were because the stress was getting to him andhe needed a break away from what he was doing.
Whilst sitting atthe bar he reflects on his life and tries to rationalize the thing he thinkshe’s just seen.
“It’s just mymind playing tricks on me, I must be tired and my eyes are seeing things thataren’t there. Yeah that’s it.” He says to himself.
After an hour, hehas emptied the bottle of its contents, hands it back to the barman, gets offthe stool he was sat on and heads for the door. He stumbles through it backinto the street. The rain had stopped before he exited the building, howeverthe street is still wet, the air is musky and cold and the man stumbles acrossthe road and heads towards the building where he lives.
On his way home,he sees the figure he saw on the way to the pub again, this time he sees it’sthe figure of a woman. He can’t make out her face, but from the way she wasdressed he seemed to recognize her, just not where from. He goes up to thefigure, just as he’s about to say something, the figure turns and starts towalk away.
“WAIT!” He criesout to her, but she seems to ignore him. He starts to follow her, in hope ofcatching up, but the faster he moves, the faster she does. He begins to run,she begins to slow, as he catches up to her he puts a hand out as if to touchher shoulder, as he does this she disappears again, causing him to fall, facefirst on the pavement.
He gets up,brushes himself down, checks to see if anybody is around, but the street istotally deserted, in fact if there hadn’t been any street lights, there wouldhave been nothing on the street. He begins to walk again, blaming the drink forhis fall and walks home.
As he walksthrough his front door, he heads straight for the bedroom. As soon as he makesit into the bedroom, he falls straight on the bed and is instantly asleep.
Memorieskeep flooding his brain, causing him a restless nights sleep. Flashes of brightlight keep entering his mind. he tosses and turns manically as he tries tofight the torment of memories long gone by. Beats of sweat trickle down hisbody and begin to soak his mattress. After a few minutes, he awakens, sits boltupright, flinging his covers against the wall facing him.
Sittingthere he begins to breath heavily, as if he had been running from something.His breathing begins to slowly decrease when he begins to realize he is in hisbedroom, alone.
Thesmell of the sweat that is seeping out of his pours begins to become pungent inhis nostrils, causing his to feel nauseous. He starts to reach for his bedsidelamp, but he is to far to reach theswitch, this causes him to over reach and knock the lamp off his bedside table,causing it to smash, with little pieces of the porcelain base scattering aroundhis cluttered bedroom floor, embedding themselves into his dark blue carpet.
Hegets out of bed to try and pick up the pieces, a large piece breaks the skin ofhis left foot and as more pressure is placed on it, the deeper it enters hisflesh. He screams a high pitched sound as the piece enters his body. Bloodbegins to trickle out of the seams around the piece of white porcelain, causingit to become stained a deep red. He sits back on his bed and pulls the pieceout, causing blood to gush out of the small hole which was created by the lampshard.
Hefeels the blood creating a pool around his feet, so he decides he needs to getcleaned up and inspect it.
Venturingtowards the bathroom in total darkness, he begins to try and contemplate what hewas dreaming. But the more he tried to remember, the more vague the dreambecame and the blood seeping out of his foot didn't help hiss train of thought.As he limped through the bathroom door, he switches on the light and walkstowards the bathroom cabinet.
Heopen s it up, gets a clean cloth, some disinfectant and begins to clean hiswound. He winces in pain as the disinfectant stings his broken skin. He thentakes out another cloth from the cabinet and begins to make a make shiftbandage to stop the free flowing blood.
Hewashes his hands of the fresh and dried blood which was on his hands. now thatthe puncture in his foot had been bandaged he began to try contemplating yetagain about the dream he had that night. He looked into the bathroom mirror asif to try and see if he can determine what happened just based on hisreflection.
Staringinto the reflective surface, he sees bags under his eyes and his face hasstarted to become gaunt. The longer he stared, a look of realization began tocome across his face. He quickly leaves the bathroom and heads towards a rathertatty looking sofa and picks up a writing pad and begins to frantically write.
Afterwriting a number of paragraphs taking up two pages, he folds them up and putsthem on the small table in his tatty lounge. He heads back towards his bedroomand begins to get dressed. he goes back to the lounge and picks u[p the piecesof paper and tucks them in his trouser pocket. He heads towards his front door,puts on his jacket whilst opening his front door, turns to look at hisapartment, sighs, then closes the door and locks it.
Againthe rain is pounding the street, making the water level rise to the height ofthe pavement. He begins to head towards the bridge where he saw the figureof the woman who keeps disappearingwhenever he came near to her.
Hestands at the point where she disappears, the edge of the bridge which, due tothe age of it, began to crumble and decay. As he stands directly on the edge,he looks up, smiles and says "I'm sorry". After these words arespoken, he leaps off.
Aftera fall of 40 ft, wind rushing past his ears and tears streaming out of hiseyes, his body slams into the ground below, as he lies there, blood tricklingout of his head, spreading across the ground and draining his life slowly awayfrom him, the figure of the woman comes walking towards him, she kneels by hisside, strokes his head and says "I forgive you".
Aftera short time a passer by sees the body of the man and rushes over to him. Hestands in the pool of his blood, takes out a phone from his pocket and ringsfor an ambulance.
Aftermany minutes the ambulance arrives and the crew try to revive the man but theyefforts were in vain, as the light of the mans life had been blown out.
Asthe paramedics lift the man into the ambulance, the note, which he had writtenearlier, fell out of his pocket. The wind blows it open. The passer by noticesit, picks it up and passes it to a paramedic just before the ambulance doorsclose.
"Thisfell out of his pocket, it could be important" the passer by says.
Theparamedic nods before shutting the door. He begins to read and discovers it isthe mans suicide note. As he reads more and more, the paramedic begins to feelsorry for the man who was lying dead in the back of the ambulance.
Thenote consists of the man telling of how he failed to help his wife in herbattle against a very rare and vicious strain of cancer, chemotherapy wasfailing and as her time grew shorter shebecame more and more desperate to end her life. As he drove home from work oneafternoon he saw her standing on the edge of the bridge. As he got out of hiscar to try and stop her from jumping, however as soon as she saw him, shesmiled and leaped to her death.
Heentered an inescapable fit of depression and began drinking so heavily that heeven forgot who his wife was or even who he was. Towards the end he began torealize he was having visions of amysterious woman, who turns out to be the ghost of his wife trying to help himease his pain. When he realized who the ghostly figure was he knew he had toend what he considered torment and so decided to take his own life on the verybridge she did.
Thelast words of the note read "I failed her as a husband, I failed as aworker, I failed in life, I only hope in death that she can forgive me"
End
A Circle in a Spiral
Written By Rick Thorpe
Rainis hitting the moonlit streets hard, water is pouring over the sides of thepavements and onto the damaged roads. The rain water mixes with the oil soakedtarmac to create colourful pools upon an almost grey setting. The streets getmore and more deserted as everybody tries to shield themselves from the rain.Street lights flicker as night draws in, revealing more colour on the rainsoaked landscape.
A dark shadowyfigure of a man, walks out of a residential complex and begins to travel downtowards a local pub. The rain is pounding his long leather coat, as he walkstowards his destination. Water running from his hair down across his face, ashe wipes away the drops, he sees someone standing in the middle of the road.
“Are you ok?” heshouts to the person. He gets no reply. “Hello, are you alright?” he shoutsagain. Still no reply. He then sees a set of headlights drawing closer andcloser to the figure in the road. “WATCH OUT!!!” he cries, but just as the caris about to hit the figure in the road, it disappears. Wiping more water awayfrom his face, the man is stunned at what he has just seen.
“I could havesworn I just saw….” He stops himself mid sentence as he feels he is soundingcrazy. He continues his walk down the rain soaked street towards the pub. As hegets to the end of the pavement he sees that it has only just opened, so hechecks both sides of the road and proceeds to cross. The empty streets seem tounnerve him as he crosses the road but he still proceeds. He walks through thedoor of the pub, takes his usual seat at the bar and orders his usual bottle ofwhiskey.
After a fewglasses, he begins to think about what he has just seen.
“Was it real? WasI imagining it? How can someone just disappear in the blink of an eye?” hethinks to himself as he takes another shot of whiskey.
This isn’t thefirst time he has seen someone ‘disappear’. Two years ago he saw somethingsimilar. He saw a figure of a woman standing on the edge of a bridge. He criedout to her but she jumped, but before her body hit the ground, she disappeared.He tried to tell himself that it was just his mind playing tricks on him. Butbecause of what he saw, he decided to quit his job as the manager of a bigmarketing company, his reasons were because the stress was getting to him andhe needed a break away from what he was doing.
Whilst sitting atthe bar he reflects on his life and tries to rationalize the thing he thinkshe’s just seen.
“It’s just mymind playing tricks on me, I must be tired and my eyes are seeing things thataren’t there. Yeah that’s it.” He says to himself.
After an hour, hehas emptied the bottle of its contents, hands it back to the barman, gets offthe stool he was sat on and heads for the door. He stumbles through it backinto the street. The rain had stopped before he exited the building, howeverthe street is still wet, the air is musky and cold and the man stumbles acrossthe road and heads towards the building where he lives.
On his way home,he sees the figure he saw on the way to the pub again, this time he sees it’sthe figure of a woman. He can’t make out her face, but from the way she wasdressed he seemed to recognize her, just not where from. He goes up to thefigure, just as he’s about to say something, the figure turns and starts towalk away.
“WAIT!” He criesout to her, but she seems to ignore him. He starts to follow her, in hope ofcatching up, but the faster he moves, the faster she does. He begins to run,she begins to slow, as he catches up to her he puts a hand out as if to touchher shoulder, as he does this she disappears again, causing him to fall, facefirst on the pavement.
He gets up,brushes himself down, checks to see if anybody is around, but the street istotally deserted, in fact if there hadn’t been any street lights, there wouldhave been nothing on the street. He begins to walk again, blaming the drink forhis fall and walks home.
As he walksthrough his front door, he heads straight for the bedroom. As soon as he makesit into the bedroom, he falls straight on the bed and is instantly asleep.
Memorieskeep flooding his brain, causing him a restless nights sleep. Flashes of brightlight keep entering his mind. he tosses and turns manically as he tries tofight the torment of memories long gone by. Beats of sweat trickle down hisbody and begin to soak his mattress. After a few minutes, he awakens, sits boltupright, flinging his covers against the wall facing him.
Sittingthere he begins to breath heavily, as if he had been running from something.His breathing begins to slowly decrease when he begins to realize he is in hisbedroom, alone.
Thesmell of the sweat that is seeping out of his pours begins to become pungent inhis nostrils, causing his to feel nauseous. He starts to reach for his bedsidelamp, but he is to far to reach theswitch, this causes him to over reach and knock the lamp off his bedside table,causing it to smash, with little pieces of the porcelain base scattering aroundhis cluttered bedroom floor, embedding themselves into his dark blue carpet.
Hegets out of bed to try and pick up the pieces, a large piece breaks the skin ofhis left foot and as more pressure is placed on it, the deeper it enters hisflesh. He screams a high pitched sound as the piece enters his body. Bloodbegins to trickle out of the seams around the piece of white porcelain, causingit to become stained a deep red. He sits back on his bed and pulls the pieceout, causing blood to gush out of the small hole which was created by the lampshard.
Hefeels the blood creating a pool around his feet, so he decides he needs to getcleaned up and inspect it.
Venturingtowards the bathroom in total darkness, he begins to try and contemplate what hewas dreaming. But the more he tried to remember, the more vague the dreambecame and the blood seeping out of his foot didn't help hiss train of thought.As he limped through the bathroom door, he switches on the light and walkstowards the bathroom cabinet.
Heopen s it up, gets a clean cloth, some disinfectant and begins to clean hiswound. He winces in pain as the disinfectant stings his broken skin. He thentakes out another cloth from the cabinet and begins to make a make shiftbandage to stop the free flowing blood.
Hewashes his hands of the fresh and dried blood which was on his hands. now thatthe puncture in his foot had been bandaged he began to try contemplating yetagain about the dream he had that night. He looked into the bathroom mirror asif to try and see if he can determine what happened just based on hisreflection.
Staringinto the reflective surface, he sees bags under his eyes and his face hasstarted to become gaunt. The longer he stared, a look of realization began tocome across his face. He quickly leaves the bathroom and heads towards a rathertatty looking sofa and picks up a writing pad and begins to frantically write.
Afterwriting a number of paragraphs taking up two pages, he folds them up and putsthem on the small table in his tatty lounge. He heads back towards his bedroomand begins to get dressed. he goes back to the lounge and picks u[p the piecesof paper and tucks them in his trouser pocket. He heads towards his front door,puts on his jacket whilst opening his front door, turns to look at hisapartment, sighs, then closes the door and locks it.
Againthe rain is pounding the street, making the water level rise to the height ofthe pavement. He begins to head towards the bridge where he saw the figureof the woman who keeps disappearingwhenever he came near to her.
Hestands at the point where she disappears, the edge of the bridge which, due tothe age of it, began to crumble and decay. As he stands directly on the edge,he looks up, smiles and says "I'm sorry". After these words arespoken, he leaps off.
Aftera fall of 40 ft, wind rushing past his ears and tears streaming out of hiseyes, his body slams into the ground below, as he lies there, blood tricklingout of his head, spreading across the ground and draining his life slowly awayfrom him, the figure of the woman comes walking towards him, she kneels by hisside, strokes his head and says "I forgive you".
Aftera short time a passer by sees the body of the man and rushes over to him. Hestands in the pool of his blood, takes out a phone from his pocket and ringsfor an ambulance.
Aftermany minutes the ambulance arrives and the crew try to revive the man but theyefforts were in vain, as the light of the mans life had been blown out.
Asthe paramedics lift the man into the ambulance, the note, which he had writtenearlier, fell out of his pocket. The wind blows it open. The passer by noticesit, picks it up and passes it to a paramedic just before the ambulance doorsclose.
"Thisfell out of his pocket, it could be important" the passer by says.
Theparamedic nods before shutting the door. He begins to read and discovers it isthe mans suicide note. As he reads more and more, the paramedic begins to feelsorry for the man who was lying dead in the back of the ambulance.
Thenote consists of the man telling of how he failed to help his wife in herbattle against a very rare and vicious strain of cancer, chemotherapy wasfailing and as her time grew shorter shebecame more and more desperate to end her life. As he drove home from work oneafternoon he saw her standing on the edge of the bridge. As he got out of hiscar to try and stop her from jumping, however as soon as she saw him, shesmiled and leaped to her death.
Heentered an inescapable fit of depression and began drinking so heavily that heeven forgot who his wife was or even who he was. Towards the end he began torealize he was having visions of amysterious woman, who turns out to be the ghost of his wife trying to help himease his pain. When he realized who the ghostly figure was he knew he had toend what he considered torment and so decided to take his own life on the verybridge she did.
Thelast words of the note read "I failed her as a husband, I failed as aworker, I failed in life, I only hope in death that she can forgive me"
End