Instead, you get the most recent draft of my continually-revised and reviled short story "Allison Lost," which is just the worst story I've ever written. Emotions are hard for me to write, and even more so when I originally wrote this story (I think the first draft was spring 2014?). Of course, a lot of WH people have read this before - or at least a very similar version of it - so if they stumbled upon this trash heap, that wouldn't be any fun.
Which is why I have chosen to also include the notes I sent to my workshop leader when submitting this as my final portfolio. Interesting? Not really. But it does give you a sense of how I approached the revision of a story I really, really dislike on a personal level. And maybe that's of interest to someone. I don't know, I don't judge whatever floats your bizarre boat. Also, sorry about the lack of tab formatting; that's what happens when you copy-paste into a box on the internet I suppose.
And so here it is:
Allison Lost
Later Johnathan Johnson would remember that moment. It wasn’t the first time he saw her. It wasn’t the last. But that day, sitting on the cold slate steps, staring out at the frosted yard and the road beyond the hill, he remembered in perfect detail.
Suddenly he was back there with her, could smell the sharpness of the air, taste a hint of snow on his tongue along with the lingering flavor of the Scotty-O’Mally’s bar he had had for breakfast. Mrs. Treacher hadn’t caught them outside yet.
“I told the counselor I wanted to be a painter,” John said. His breath formed ephemeral white shadows in the air.
“What did she say?” Allison asked. She was busy drawing on a step with a piece of chalk, one she had stolen from an empty classroom.
“She said I was being silly. She said that no one paints anymore, and I should spend more time on math.”
The short piece of chalk broke in Allison’s mittened fingers. She left both halves lying where they were. Settling next to John, she laid a hand on his shoulder.
“It’s not silly, Johnny. Don’t listen to her. She’s just mad that she looks like a toad.”
They both laughed.
# # #
When John was seven years old, his class took a field trip to the art museum in the City. He stopped in front of one of the paintings for a moment. His friends and classmates continued past. Most did not bother to look up from their whispered conversations.
“What are you lookin’ at?” one called back. Their group slowed as they noticed John lagging behind.
“It’s a road and a field, and those are people and there’s a big church, and-”
“Fields aren’t blue,” another said, a tinge of childish contempt in his voice. “And roads aren’t all yellow like that. And those people don’t even look like people, they’re just far-off blobs.”
John mumbled something in response. His friends shrugged and moved on.
# # #
Only when she moved up beside him at the railing did he really notice her. It was one of the girls from his class; he didn’t quite remember her name. Amy? Emily? Lauren?
“It’s pretty, huh,” she said after a few moments. “You can almost imagine you’re back there.”
“Back where?” he asked. He realized that he was annoyed; this girl, whatever her name was, had intruded on something.
“France, I think,” she said.
“It doesn’t look like France,” he said immediately. “Fields aren’t blue, and the people are blobs.”
“It’s not supposed to look like France, it’s supposed to feel like France, I think,” she said, suddenly sounding uncertain. John had never heard something like this, and paused for a second to digest its meaning.
“Oh.”
“My name is Allison,” she said. He peeked at her from the corner of his eye, but she didn’t take her eyes off of the painting.
“John.” He couldn’t think of anything else to say, so he remained silent. She was silent with him, and they both simply looked at the painting for a while. That’s how Mrs. Jones found them, half-an-hour later.
She took each by the hand - John’s a little more roughly than Allison’s - and began to pull them towards the exit of the exhibition tunnel. John resisted for a moment, tugging back, and Mrs. Jones looked down, scowling.
“Wait, Mrs. Jones,” he insisted. “The painting? Do you know?”
She sighed, and looked up at the piece. “It’s called - uhm - Geelee Blanch - Ate Dela Saint Martin.” Her voice wobbled as she tripped over the pronunciation. “Happy now, Mr. Johnson?”
He saw Allison smile at him from the other side of Mrs. Jones.
* * *
John doesn’t like to think about what came before. Before the treatments.
Passing headlights catch stacks of paintings, spreading different wavelengths ricocheting around the room. Green is the color that appears most tonight; guess he had her on his mind. He wonders what ever happened to her. Then he remembers. John rolls over in his bed.
# # #
“Hello, John. My name is Doctor Floyd.” He was tall, John remembered; even now, when he can’t remember his face, he still looms large and thin.
“I’ve brought a gift for you, if you would accept it. It’s the kind of work we’d like you to do for us, one day. I do hope you enjoy it.” He wiped his glasses - had he always had glasses? - and moved to speak with John’s parents.
Two large men carried in a tall, flat box, and placed it just inside the doorway. Within moments John had it open. Inside was the framed painting which had caught his eye four months earlier at the museum. Inside was a card: “Gelee Blanche - Ete de la Saint-Martin, by Alfred Sisley,” along with a certificate of authenticity. It was, he later discovered, the original.
# # #
“John,” said Dr. Floyd, “do you know why your government wants your help?” John responded with silence, as often did around the doctor.
“Tell me John, what do you think of my outfit today?”
“It’s gray,” John said. “Really gray.”
“Go on. What do you mean ‘really’ gray?” John began to panic. He looked down at the bright tile floor, then up to the equally bright ceiling. Everywhere he looked he could see Dr. Floyd gazing at him expectantly.
“Don’t worry about getting in trouble. I want your honest opinion.”
“It’s lifeless.” The words popped out of his mouth, and unleashed a torrent of other, related words, rearranging themselves at the last moment before they squeezed through the doorway and tumbled into the open air. “You look like someone sucked all the color out of you with a straw. Like you don’t really exist. You feel like a shadow, Doctor Floyd.” He clapped his hands over his mouth as the last words rang throughout the bare white office.
“What do you mean I feel like a shadow, John?”
“I... I’m not sure, Dr. Floyd,” John stammered. “I just said it but I don’t know what it means, really.” Floyd leaned back in his chair, writing quickly in one of his many brown notebooks.
“You see John, that is why your country needs you. This treatment is something to help you - a program designed to help people like you bring out their full potential. It will demonstrate just how important you are to this country’s future.”
“What’s it do?”
“Nothing that wouldn’t happen eventually, John. It will just speed up the process a little.” Dr. Floyd smiled at him; John wondered if it was supposed to convey warmth.
“Sir, I mean, I don’t think what I do is all that special.” He wrung his hands together in his lap. “There’s an-” He stopped. Dr. Floyd arched an eyebrow at him. John had almost told him about Allison.
* * *
John lays awake. He’s facing the window, but staring through it, to somewhere else. He pretends he can see the stars, though no one in that part of the world has seen stars in decades. His eyes remain dark, and reflect the darkness surrounding him. Within those reflections are paintings, dozens - maybe hundreds - of them, stacked atop each other like pallets. The batch from the past month. Someday soon his brother Mark will come by to help move them; he tells John that he donates them to a gallery downtown. John is fairly sure he destroys them. Not that it matters. They weren’t important anymore. They were finished.
# # #
“You two again? Do I have to write you both up?”
“No Mrs. Treacher. Sorry, Mrs. Treacher,” John and Allison said in unison. They both got up and dusted off the seats of their pants. Allison was first inside, her scarf billowing behind her. Before she disappeared, she turned and smiled at him, the gap-toothed grin which so often shattered the dismal brown gloom of Mt. Sinai Elementary.
In later years he became used to seeing her leave, always like a breeze sighing through an open window, even when she was angry. Even when she was frightened.
* * *
Then she really was gone, with her green scarf trailing behind, always the last to wave goodbye. In John’s memory she always had a scarf on, though that doesn’t make any sense.
Now that I think of it, John thinks, laying on the twin bed in his old blue room, the paint long faded to gray, that scarf was really more a forest green.
He has never remembered that before.
He rolls over, straightening his undershirt. The calendar in the corner of the room says July 2048; John hasn’t touched it in years, but he liked the way the word ‘July’ is written. The mattress is bare and dirty, and he pulls his single, soft yellow sheet tighter against the chill from the open window. Like every night, he considers getting up and shutting it. Like every night, he does not.
The cold gray fog prowling the streets outside reminds him of snow standing in the shadow of a mountain. John used to take Allison up to the mountains every year, so she could ski and he could try and rest, though the scenic blues and greens were often too much to ignore. The last time they had gone – they must have been thirty-two – may have been the last time he had seen her happy.
Before that she had always been quick with a joke, always had a giggle ready to lighten the mood. John had needed that as the treatments intensified, and Camp got tougher. Looking back on it, it seems to him like her light had shined brighter as his shadow grew darker. He had been worried when they moved in together, that the things which seemed to so upset his family might put her off too. They hadn’t, at first.
Then it changed. The program was defunded; the other students had been showing eccentricities, they said, but John had noticed the ones who disappeared. Even once he had started seeing the world as runny paint on a filthy canvas, he had noticed them, spoken to them. They had frightened him.
He lost his government stipend once the program was officially shuttered. They still provided him with the drugs, but he didn’t have the money to help pay rent. John began to sell his work, opening a small studio downtown, but his style ran against modern trends, and his income was sparse. Allison hadn’t complained, but John was sure it’s what drove them apart. Not the days spent isolated in his studio, or the way he’d sometimes forget things – her birthday, their anniversary, a relative’s wedding; her name. Not even the violence, though he didn’t remember the violence. He never had and he never would.
John doesn’t quite remember when she had left, but isn’t sure he had noticed right away. He does remember the letter she had written him; she knew he wasn’t good at listening to words. Allison had asked if he remembered the other students, how some of them had scared him. She said he scared her in the same way, but John knew she was overreacting. She often did.
# # #
By the time he turned ten, John’s friends wouldn’t speak to him anymore.
Allison Lost Notes
Soooo... this one. The name of the story has changed so many times – now it’s called “Allison Lost,” which I think is worlds better than the last few but still not quite there – and the body of the story also has changed a great deal. It’s probably the most any story of mine has changed from first draft to most recent, though of course I’ve revised it more than any other story (I think), so that makes some kind of sense.
I thought I was completely sick of it, honestly, and I kind of was. Which is why I’m glad I took some distance on it and didn’t have to think about it for a month or two. I still wasn’t happy working within just the confines of the story as it stood. I know we talked about this, and you suggested revising a scene (which I kinda did?), but I’ve known from the very beginning that the story just isn’t finished; the reason people have such a hard time determining the conflict and the real plot is because I had set it up as a longer story and just never finished it. Even if I had finished it and then still stripped it down to its current length, I feel like it would have been much better, since I’d have a start and end point.
So, I began to revise a scene towards the end, and about halfway through I realized I was just adding stuff. So I changed the scene that stuff was added to – I didn’t really want to make a whole new scene for it, at least not right now – and worked through some of that. It’s really just an exposition chunk, like a brick, and I’m not at all sure that it’s where it should be right now. Or even if I shouldn’t break it up into tinier pieces and sprinkle them around the story. But I do feel confident with the way the plot is now, and it provides a lot more structure for me to work within. Maybe it could go earlier, to have that looming over the whole thing...
Either way, this addition is (like in my other story) the way I found to wring something new and interesting out of it. You can’t always add things to a story for a revision, I know, but at least the case of these two stories, I wanted them to approach the original ideas I had for them. In some form or fashion, anyway. Now that it’s all on the page, I can mutilate them as I see fit, but just having them down is a relief.
So, back to this story specifically. I italicized everything but the scene I was editing/adding to, to make it easier to see. I also used a fair number of footnotes to ramble as I am wont to do. Again, this is by no means a finished draft, but the story – like the actual plot – is coming pretty close to being set in my mind. I can’t help but think, now, that keeping the brevity of the piece but focusing it more on the later years – which are the ones that would have the most conflict – might be a pretty good idea.
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