Scrum Outline

Now that I no longer have to write for any classes, I decided (at the prompting of a friend) to once again begin to write in my free time. Which is something I used to do sometimes when my head was feeling big enough and I believed I might not be a terrible writer, but that stopped once I began taking creative writing classes. Because really, what kind of loser does extra schoolwork in addition to their normal amount, am I right?

The problem was that, since this is not a school assignment I'm scrambling to complete three hours before the deadline, there was no pressure and heat to forge my scattered wisps of ideas into a semisolid reality. Instead, I decided on the very time-inefficient method of writing an outline of what I knew I wanted to have in the story first, and proceed from there.

Since I didn't have many ideas fully-formed yet, however, and as I do have just so much time available, I ended up turning the outline into a story itself, sorta. I knew I wanted to make the story first-person, but after i thought through the history of the setting and what the reader might need to know I realized this could end up being a very, very long story indeed. So to get the general plot and several details squared away beforehand, I ended up working on an outline written in a fairy-tale style. It uses repetition and simple language and really just serves as a kind of proto-draft, so I can see what's happening and where changes need to be made.

I'm not finished, but I needed to update the blog and thought this might interest some people. Or not. I will say that I enjoy the fairy-tale format and think it still holds a place in fiction, and can be used to tell certain stories in a uniquely effective way. This post might also help me to finally finish the outline, since I've left it languishing for a week or two now. As always, chalk the crudity of the writing and story up to a pre-first-draft and a bad storyteller.

Scrum (very much a working title)

Once, in a time like now or maybe before, there was a beautiful woman chained atop a great marble pillar. This pillar sat in a cave, its roof open to let the sky in, and for forever she could only see the stars, and the sun, and the rain and the clouds and the walls of the cave. Near that cave was a spring, single and lonely in the desert. In time a group of travelers found the spring, losing many people, and established a town. In their tongue they named it Scrum, and though living was hard, their ingenuity and the crystalline spring allowed their village to thrive.

It wasn’t long before a group of young villagers found the cave with the beautiful woman, chained atop the great marble pillar. They shouted up at her and asked her questions; she spoke in return, and the sound traveled down to the villagers as clearly as if they were next to her. They asked who she was, and why on Earth she was up on that pillar, and if she would like it if they got her down. She said she would very much like to come down, and that she had been up there so long that she had forgotten why she was there or who she was; the only things she knew were the stars, and the sun, and the rain and the clouds and the walls of the cave. She knew a great deal of these things, however, and the villagers learned much from her.

Every man and woman who left that cave did so under the woman’s enchantment. Whether that was her intention or not, I cannot say; in any event, I do not believe it was magic or slyness that had bound the villagers so tightly, but rather her knowledge and her naiveté, her vulnerability and her strength. Each one made a vow to themselves to rescue her from that pillar, to be the one who freed her from a life of only the stars, and the sun, and the rain and the clouds and the walls of the cave.

So they worked, each alone. I cannot say why they worked alone; perhaps the young villagers felt they were in competition, or perhaps they knew that this was something each must do of their own strength. Either way, each made a valiant attempt to reach the woman: some constructed wooden ladders which rose for hundreds of feet; others cut stone from the quarry and stacked them atop each other; still others attempted to climb over the mountain and reach her through the great opening at the top of the cave. The woman spoke to each, encouraging each one in their efforts, and this made the villagers work even harder. And while they spoke the villagers learned much of what she had seen of the stars, and the sun, and the rain and the clouds and the walls of the cave.

One by one the ladders broke; one by one shoulders spent lifting and stacking stones gave out; one by one those who sought the mountain skylight did not return. And one by one the villagers abandoned their quest, leaving their tools and their failed attempts. The woman saw this happening, but did not despair; for though she had dared to hope, she had never truly believed she would be free. She had just been happy to, for a brief (to her) time, she had gotten to know more than the stars, and the sun, and the rain and the clouds and the walls of the cave.

As the young villagers returned to their lives in the village, the knowledge the woman atop the marble pillar had given them - and the skills they had developed trying to reach her - enabled them to live better lives, provide more for their families and the other villagers alike. Soon their children were of an age to wander, and discover, and once more found the cave of the woman chained atop the marble pillar. And they also spoke to the woman, and were spoken to, and fell under her enchantment, and vowed to rescue her. And so the story went, and the village of Scrum obtained knowledge known to no one else about the stars, and the sun, and the rain and the clouds and the walls of the cave, and so became profitable and wealthy and comfortable.

In time visiting the beautiful woman chained atop the great marble pillar became a rite of passage for the children of the village. They would see, speak, build, and, eventually, destroy their attempts to reach her. She did not mind this cycle; it was something new to her, events which served to punctuate her conception of time much better than the stars, or the sun, or the rain or the clouds or the walls of the cave. The woman knew that no one would ever reach her, yet still remained hopeful that someone would.

There was a child born to the village called Mok. He was quiet, and thoughtful, and adults often said he had an ‘old soul.’ He grew up, like all children did, hearing the stories of the beautiful woman atop the marble pillar. But Mok was also rebellious, and stubborn, and when the time came for him to travel to the cave, he refused. Mok saw the wasted years spent pursuing the woman on the pillar, and heard the adults talk of the enlightening but painful memories of their own youth.

The elders resolved that, if Mok would not go to the woman on the pillar to learn strength, and commitment, and knowledge of the stars, the sun, the rain and the clouds and the walls of the cave, then he would spend his time learning in the village. And so he did. Mok was a voracious learner, and the first true student the village of Scrum had ever seen.

When his friends returned from their days spent at the cave, Mok would listen to their stories and think them fools. He would tell them, in turn, of his own days, spent learning and building, creating works of engineering mastery and intellectual creativity, but they seemed unimpressed, occupied by their own endeavors to reach the beautiful woman atop the marble pillar.

Finally his friends grew tired of their efforts, and returned to their lives in Scrum. With their quests finished, they were amazed and envious of the things that Mok had done while they had worked and talked to the beautiful woman atop the marble pillar. Mok not only knew almost as much as they about the stars, and the sun, and the rain and the clouds and the walls of the cave - though he had never seen the walls of the cave, of course - but he had pursued other knowledge as well, the knowledge which the villagers of Scrum had created once they had learned from the beautiful woman atop the marble pillar. He was acquainted with science, and theology, and medicine and mathematics and literature.

Mok’s friends had learned also, though, and while they praised Mok for his vast stores of knowledge and marveled at the numerous ways he excelled, they also looked at him the same way the other villagers had for all those years: with pity. He had learned to recognize that gaze from his instructors; it’s what drove him to work so hard for so long, and he hated it. Yet now he recognized it on the face of his colleagues, his friends, whose own achievements were far inferior to his. At first he tried to ignore the looks, yet they pressed upon him each day, pressing in and smothering him until he could no longer stand it and he exploded. He demanded to know what made them look at him in such a way, what right they had to place themselves above him, Mok, who had surpassed so many so quickly.

Those he demanded answers from could give none. They only replied that his accomplishments were truly amazing, and averted their gazes and whispered in corners where he could not hear. Mok, who had never belonged while those of his age were at the cave, still did not belong now that they had returned. And he grew hateful, and suspicious, and bitter. He stopped speaking to his friends, and locked himself away from his teachers, and remained alone all day and night.

Until one night, when Mok was granted a flash of inspiration. In his dreams he saw Scrum as it once stood a small, impoverished village. Slowly the village began to expand, and grow, and the tiny hovels were replaced with larger homes, the few rows of struggling vegetation with vast fields, the crooked people with villagers tall and strong. And amidst all of this change, a monument was begun. And as the homes become larger, and the fields expanded, and the people became stronger and more beautiful until they seemed almost as the gods, the monument grew, and revealed itself to be a statue. Mok had never seen the woman it portrayed, but he knew who she was, for she sat atop a great marble pillar.

However, just as the great monument was finished, so large that it seemed to dwarf even the great constructions of the future, it began to shake. It was blown in the wind, and waved from side to side, and began to swing so violently that Mok was sure that it must fall. Which it did. And as it fell, it crashed into the buildings of Scrum, and the fields, and the people, and by the end not a person or place remained in Scrum that was not reduced to rubble, to its component parts.

Mok awoke gasping and trembling. He told himself that it was just a dream; that it meant nothing; that it was only a result of his fears and insecurities about the shared experience the others had had, one which he could no longer participate in. He even told himself he believed that. But he spent the next day restless, unable to focus; he would begin daydreaming and find himself facing towards the cave, and the woman sitting on the marble pillar inside. Or so he figured.

Three days of this and Mok was ready to do whatever it took to regain his peace of mind. He attacked the problem from every angle, analyzed what exactly he had seen in his dream and how likely it was to come to pass. He made this discovery: the woman in the cave atop the marble pillar had too much power over Scrum. She was, he realized, the one thing everyone in the village had in common. This singular experience, this singular source of knowledge, was what bound Scrum together and made it strong. Yet it was also Scrum’s greatest weakness. Mok had been to other towns before, had seen the disorder and lack of cohesion there. But he had also seen the camaraderie, and the unity, and although it was not nearly to the extent of Scrum, it was free from reliance on any one person or thing. Mok feared what might happen if the woman atop the marble pillar in the cave ever decided to wield this power; the damage done to Scrum could be irreversible. She hadn’t yet - or had she? Mok tried to put a stop to those thoughts - but to all appearances the woman was immortal. Who could know the mind of such a being? Had Scrum been merely a puppet the woman caused to move as she willed? These thoughts filled Mok, filled him to the very top of himself, until he finally decided that the woman in the cave atop the marble pillar had to be dealt with. He didn’t want to harm her - he wasn’t sure if she could even be harmed - but removing her from the cave seemed a fine first step to limit her continued influence on Scrum.

So Mok set off for the cave, where the woman chained atop the pillar sat. The younger members who were on their own, mandated quest stopped and stared the first time he stepped into that chamber, with the marble pillar and the roof open to the sky. Even the beautiful woman, who was in the middle of a friendly dialogue with one of the youngsters, felt the force of that hush and followed along in its wake. Mok was not much older than they were, and yet they knew - they all knew - that he was too old to be one of them, and yet too young to be one of the elders in charge of hauling the failed experiments away.

Mok stood in front of the pillar and looked up, to where the beautiful woman chained to the marble pillar was. And he looked at her face and she looked at his; and what he saw was what he had expected, and yet not. He had grown up hearing the stories of the woman; her beauty and wisdom was legendary in Scrum. And Mok found himself… disappointed. All this obsession and ritual over her? he mused.

Mok spent the rest of the day - as the youths were made to leave at night - studying the chamber, the marble pillar, the roof open to the sky, and everything in the cave which was not the woman, who was, after all, the last part of his plan which needed thinking about. He estimated lengths and widths, and sketched the pillar and the walls from multiple angles. Lastly, as the light overhead was growing dim and the other villagers in the cave, having quickly overcome their shock at Mok, began to head home, he brainstormed a few ideas. It was going to be tricky, he admitted; the slenderness of the pillar relative to its height made constructing any time of ramp or ladder questionable at best, and he had long ago discarded the notion of finding a way over the mountains and down into the cave from the top. He stood up from the small boulder he had been using as a seat, stretched painfully, and began to the trip home.

All this day the woman chained atop the pillar had watched him, without stopping her conversations with the others in the cave. She had addressed Mok (though she did not know that was his name) directly a handful of times, but he had paid no heed, and listened only to the dark thoughts inside his head. When he began to hobble home, away from the woman chained atop the marble pillar, the woman exhaled a tension she did not know she had; there was something about Mok that disturbed her, though her conscious mind did not yet know it, it’s as though she could feel he was an agent of change, and both hated and loved him for it.

StoryTime Power Hour: Green Hull

I've been playing a lot of Sunless Sea lately, which is a... game... based around Fallen London, which is another game (apparently) / setting / something. I don't know I'm not a master on these matters. Essentially 19th century London lost a war with Hell, I think, and ended up being carried away by a mass of bats to the Neath, a gigantic underground sea with exactly the kinds of Cthuloid terrors you'd expect.

The strange part of it is that I wrote a story a few months ago - titled 'Green Hull' at random - which is remarkably similar to this, down to the steamship and sickly glow underneath the dark waters. But I really didn't begin playing this game until the last few days, and I want to stress that. It's simply coincidence!

But that has got me thinking about the story I wrote. Unlike most pieces of refuse I dredge up from the shallow scummy pond of my creativity, I think in theory it's not terrible. Written over the course of one day while already late, absolutely. Sloppily assembled? Yes. Yes it is. I also figured out exactly who the characters were (really, I only decided the narrator was the First Mate in the last third of the story) late into the story, and then didn't have enough time to go back through and retroactively add in salient moments of characterization where they really needed to go.

So it's unbalanced and wobbly, and lurches forward like a zombie with only one shoe, but I think the core there is decent enough. It's made me think about going back and editing it. But why not post this very first, very rough draft online? That way, if it does become something I can be less ashamed of, I won't ever be able to get it published. Sounds good, right? It's a good idea, right?

So sit back, relax, pop a 5-Hour Energy and enjoy the descent into hackneyed terror that is the very first draft of the future award-winning acclaimed published second draft of 'Green Hull.' Feel free to post comments here/Facebook/tumblr/twitter/Instagram/snapchat/tinder/MySpace/Skype/Livejournal/xanga/Youtube!

Green Hull

What I remember most clearly is the stillness.

The rest of the crew says otherwise; Peabody says we were stuck in the middle of a howler, pelted by Poseidon as we shivered in our overcoats and held on for our lives. Francis tells it a little different every time, but always makes mention of an island he calls The Wash, where the sun shone down always, even at the darkest hour of night – that is, when he can get to that part of the story, before he ducks his shoulders and hides inside himself and asks to be taken back to his room. The Captain says... well, I guess he doesn’t say much anymore.

What I remember is the stillness, the damnable calm before a storm we never saw coming. It’s an odd thing, a still sea. Because there’s always noise from somewhere, even if it’s just the steady slap of the waves against the hull while the engine chugs over top, a duet which is the closest a man can get to peace and quiet when he’s stuck in the middle of the Atlantic, looking down the barrel of three more weeks on the waves. But that evening it was still, like the water had forgotten how to move, or it had seen Medusa and turned to stone, only the stone was translucent glass and showed us just how far we couldn’t see into its holds.

We hadn’t seen any wind or heard any clouds for a week, as best as I can recall, and we were toasting our luck each night with Peabody’s private reserve, a little secret he kept from the Captain. Did the Captain know? I can’t say. But he never said anything about it, and as it didn’t much matter to the others, it didn’t much matter to me. I remember waking that morning to anxiety and a bowl of oats. The galley was a ghost town, the deck a mourners’ gallery. We all felt it, I think. Seven days of good fortune was a blessing, but another morning with no chop nor gale was beyond strange in that part of the sea. I checked the cargo three times before noon, ensuring the crates were stowed properly. If Lady Luck was about to deliver a comeuppance, I wasn’t going to be the one left swinging in the wind.

Around noon is when it began to change, in fact, and we felt the first breath of a breeze in days, and a fine mist rolled in to smother us whole. Or perhaps we rolled into the mist; it’s hard to say, out there on the water. The mood picked up; Francis began talking to Big Peter about some lady he had ‘made acquaintance with’ in Boston, and even the Captain relaxed a bit, giving me the wheel while went to his cabin to read. He liked his books, the Captain, and not a man in the crew but respected him for it. Hell, Peabody couldn’t even read, and I had to go over the manifest with Francis repeatedly until he could speak it from memory when we reached safe harbor.

Around six bells we came out the other end of the sea mist. Soon after the escorting breeze left us, and we chugged along to the gentle rocking of small cresting hands. I looked behind and saw the fog we had left behind sitting on the ocean, a ghostly wall we had shot through, stretching as far as I could see. The sun was muted by a layer of stationary rain – must have been some low-flying clouds, they do that sometimes – and at first the shade felt pleasant, and we picked up speed. But as it continued, I began to remember my misgivings from earlier. The filtered light began to blur the edges of what I could see, and though I can’t rightly explain it, it was impossible to see far in any direction. The Captain took the helm again, leaning forward slightly as he gripped the iron wheel, knuckles the color of bone underneath. I moved down and stalked the decks, which put the men on edge, particularly Big Peter, who was a superstitious man at the best of times. I watched him shovel coal until he spent more time glancing at me than the furnace. It beat being outside.

Yet somehow at seven bells I found myself on the main deck, staring at the water. Many who know the sea only in parting believe they have her tenor, whether the fishermen of New England or the traders of the Caribbean. I don’t doubt they know their seas, the local divinities which bring riches and ruin in equal measure. Hell, I thought I knew the sea too, before I began making cross-Atlantic voyages. But it’s all bravado, boasts you tell yourself to make sense of the ups and downs. It’s only when a man is thousands of miles from land, when the deeps below him sink fathoms upon fathoms, and the dark of the depth is so black it threatens to swallow you while you stare at it from the security of an iron tub built by men just like you in the span of the few months... it’s only then you can admit to yourself, faced with evidence which admits no denial, that you are small.

That was something like how it went, at any rate, as I stared down there with the sun fighting through overhead, when the quiet came. The ship no longer chugged and sputtered, but glided silently on her belly, a steel-gray seal flowing over ice. The men noticed at once; heads whipped around to the helm, where the Captain stood behind dark glass, his face a dim mask. Affecting nonchalance I made my way inside, where he assured me that we were still moving – the valves and meters and every piece of equipment said we were still moving, the engine still running. I ran down to the furnace to check the fire, and the instruments were right – the fire raged like an angry god; the sound roared as if to make up for the silence above. I couldn’t find Big Peter.

As I climbed the ladder from the engine room, and the fury of the fire faded behind, a madly ringing bell took its place, and I felt the ship lurch to one side. I scrambled the rest of the way up. I saw the Captain, clutching the wheel and straining to turn against the pull of whatever current we had run afoul of. I ran over and added my strength to his, and the iron circle inched starboard, squealing in protest. I glanced outside and saw the muted evening reflected in the black waters, the men holding on to the port railing as they made their way below deck.

The Captain roared ‘Slow Ahead’ to Francis, who had been ringing the bell on the bridge, and he stumbled across the floor to the chadburn. I shouted that Big Peter was missing, but I couldn’t hear myself over the dull roar which had crept up on us as we fought the ship for its life. Instead I stepped towards Francis, shoving him in the direction of the wheel while I half-jumped, half-fell down the hatch leading below deck and, clutching my bruised ribs, lumbered to the galley, where I found most of the men breaking into Peabody’s stash with abandon. I pointed at Young Donald and Jackson, disregarding Peabody’s slouching form, and screamed at them to get to the engine room.

By the time I made it back to the bridge the ship had straightened, for the most part, though the Captain still fought with the wheel. We were caught in the wake of something, whether a current or trade wind or God knows what, and he was having a hell of a time shaking us free. Asking Francis to check on the cargo, I stepped towards the bridge window, peering out at the preternatural gloom, peering right out at Big Peter.

He was tangled up in ropes at the bow. I couldn’t tell whether he was trying to free himself or hold on more tightly; either way, I didn’t like his chances. I slipped on one of the overcoats hanging at the back of the bridge, and tightening a pair of rope-handling gloves, I moved to the door. It didn’t want to open, like all the winds we had avoided on our journey were here in this moment, shouldered up against handle.

As I struggled the ship lurched, leaning harder to port than before. I felt something slam into my back, driving the breath out and away, and as my vision went dark I felt the door under me give way. I managed to keep just enough wits about me to grasp the handle as whatever had hit me slipped sideways along the deck and over the rail. I never learned who it was.

I shook away the stars and my way slowly to the starboard rail, slipping here and there, saved only by a snaking cable which must have popped free during the tumult. I shouted for Peter over the roar of the bubbling surf, but even I couldn’t hear my words as they left my throat. I peered back to the bridge and saw the Captain; it looked as if the wheel was the only thing keeping him on his feet, a friend and foe combined in that terrible moment.

I made it to the rail, discarded the cable and grabbed the sturdy brace with both hands, moving along inch by inch. My feet found purchase where they could. In my slow crawl Peter grew closer, until I noticed his open mouth and wild eyes, and his throat straining with a howl which couldn’t be heard.

The ship seized, and I half-jumped, half-fell into the tangle of ropes which Peter was even now clinging to. I looked down and found my feet dangling free. The deck was nearly vertical, being sucked in by a water darker than any starless night I’ve seen before or since. In a spot about twenty feet wide, a little farther up the ship, the ocean buckled accompanied by a deafening crack, like a tree falling. The surface of the water rose up, pushing out at various places, the surrounding sea stretching to keep it contained, like a great pressure was building underneath the surface that the water itself was trying to keep hidden.

A rough hand grabbed me and held on, and I was reminded of the dull ache in my arms as Peter leaned over and shouted something in my ear. I couldn’t hear a word over the fray, but I turned and looked at him anyway. His face was pale, and shone with a greenish cast, while his arms shook, not entirely due to the exertion of keeping himself on the ship, I think; his red beard stuck wildly out in all directions and made him look more than half-mad, though I suspected I might not look much better. I pointed at the bridge, shouting myself hoarse trying to be heard. He shook his head and let go of me, tightening his grip on the ropes.

I grabbed him and stabbed at the bridge with my finger once more, my fear finally getting the better of me. I told him that we had to get to the rafts, that staying entangled on the bow meant assured death, that it was only a matter of time before the stacks flooded and the ship was gone for good, and us with it if we didn’t move right then. I don’t know if by some miracle he heard me, or if the image of my face screwed up with dread and anger convinced him to move, but he began to climb to the rail above. With once last look at the scene below, where the surface of the water now bulged outwards in half a dozen places, I pulled myself up and over the side of the ship.

On hands and knees we crawled back towards the bridge and the lifeboat beside it. The sun had all but disappeared by that time, and it was slow going over the rails in the greying gloom. Peter would stop sometimes, when the ship tilted or another massive crack echoed up the deck or sometimes for no reason at all, but with a shove and an unheard shout I’d get him moving again. About halfway to our destination smoke began to roll in from underneath us; the stacks had been flooded. If there was any chance of the ship being salvaged, it had now disappeared, and so we grimly continued, coughing and moving more slowly as our path was obscured.

At some point on our doomed sideways climb, with the ship twisting and slipping underneath us, the stacks had been pulled completely under the water, and the smoke dissipated. I looked past Peter and saw, saw that the lifeboat was gone; at that moment I lost hope, for the first time in my life. I continued forward as a mechanical exercise, my body proving more stubborn than my mind, though it, too, was approaching its breaking point, for that at point I slipped and slid down the hull, losing sight of the devilry which had all but slain the old girl who, even now, was putting up as good a fight as she could. As I hauled myself back up, telling my arms to simply let go and end it, I noticed a splash of color off to the side. I turned and the sight of the small boat sitting on the unblemished sea ushered in a wave of relief which almost accomplished what my doomed will had not. It was only a few hundred feet away, by my reckoning, and though I couldn’t see who was aboard, the waving figures told me they had spotted us.

With a loud curse I hauled myself back up onto the side of the railing. Peter hadn’t noticed my fall, and so was about a dozen feet ahead. I rushed forwards, throwing caution away as the possibility of rescue loomed large in my thoughts. I caught up to him quickly, for he had stopped moving. Directly below us was that cursed Hell-spot, and he sat on the rail, looking down. That was when I noticed the light; a flickering green glow had encompassed this side of the ship, casting Peter’s face in a sickly light. I had no time to marvel at monstrosities – I shook him by the shoulders and gestured to the salvation waiting behind him.

He didn’t look, though, or respond to me in any way. He just sat there, staring down, and that’s when I realized the light was coming from beneath the surface, shining through the edges of shattered sea. The fractured water now spread almost the width of the ship, and I had the very immediate sensation that we should be gone from there. I grabbed Peter by the collar and made to slide down the hull into the water, and make a swim for it, trusting to good fortune that we wouldn’t be dragged down in the ship’s wake.

The scar of broken ocean erupted. Light poured forth from the gap as something – something – crept out, and as if Time itself was taken aback at this perversion of the natural and sacred, it seemed like hours as it emerged and unfurled itself, luxuriating in freedom from whatever dark millennium it had come from. Then the sound came, like a scream of something that came before, and the sea fled the opening, and the ship was held in the grip of that nauseating light, and Peter fell forward, and my hand released his collar, and he dropped into the light, and I turned and slipped down the hull, and was torn up by rivets and barnacles on the way down, and I swam hard against a current trying to bring me back, and that’s all I can remember until I awoke on an English merchant vessel alongside Francis and Peabody and the Captain a week and a half later.

Like I said, it’s not the only story. Each of us have one, and that’s mine. I don’t know if it’s the right one; it doesn’t seem likely. It feels like the right one though, at least to me.

What was it? Could have been anything. A man’s mind plays strange tricks, and sailors know that best of all. Sometimes it was a great fish, a winged monstrosity called up from the ancient fathoms of time; others it was the image of a heathen god, brought forth from profane idols to assert its dominance over our race once more; and still others it’s the fetid hand of Lucifer himself, come to snatch a ship of sinners down to his infernal realm. Most often, though, it’s something that can’t be seen entirely, like it exists in the blind spot of reality, the tip of some alien iceberg; an invader of our reality, one which may not even notice the comparatively small, insignificant race of man.

"Allison Lost" and Revision Notes

So I was going to post about the soothing effect the Icelandic Sagas have on my nerves and the pros (and cons) of formulaic - or as I prefer, highly-structured - literature, but then I remembered I said that my next update would be more entertaining than 'not at all.'

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.