So I just finished a short story I've been writing, and for lack of anyone I know that would be interested I'm turning to you, the collective Escapist community. Would you kindly read through this and let me know what you think?
Basically I'm looking for things I've done well, and what could be done better. If you're planning on telling me I'm crap and leaving it at that, I'd request that you don't bother. Tell me I'm crap by all means, but at least have the courtesy to tell me why.
Anyway, here it is:
Basically I'm looking for things I've done well, and what could be done better. If you're planning on telling me I'm crap and leaving it at that, I'd request that you don't bother. Tell me I'm crap by all means, but at least have the courtesy to tell me why.
Anyway, here it is:
I picked up the small, crumpled can and fingered it gingerly, running my dirty, scratched fingertips over the speckles of rust that were beginning to form on the little scrap of metal. The iron oxide was coarse, rough, unpleasant to the touch. I gazed at the can intently for a moment, then tossed it some way down the path.
The sound of my trolley echoed in the silent air as I trundled slowly through the wastes. I was in no hurry.
When you have an eternity, what's the rush?
The desert is barren, and devoid of life. Tiny scraps of grass emerge through cracks in the sun-baked dirt... but even these are wiry, dead strands of matter. The entire world is like this now ? most of it anyway. The rest is decomposing forest and desolate, sand-swept urban ruins. Monuments to decadence.
It's been centuries now, since the end came. The apocalypse, the rapture, the final hour had come more suddenly than anyone expected. It wasn't even on the news, because the journalists and reporters were going too. Everyone, the entire world, taken by light up into the sky. A glowing white rift had opened up. No ceremony, no sound, no forewarning. Just a white hairline crack across the entire sky that yawned into a glowing maw until you couldn't look at it, and soon you couldn't look anywhere, just squeeze your eyes shut until it was over. And then, as suddenly as it had all begun, the crack fell in on itself and closed. They were gone.
But I remained.
I stopped for a brief rest, allowing my trolley to roll along without me a little whilst I caught my breath. I took this opportunity to attempt speech again.
?Mah... mah naay... sssss... mah nay ssss...? The syllables were clumsy imitations of the words I was trying to form. Even if I could say the first three words, my name had long since disappeared from my memory ? not long before I forgot how to speak.
?Mah nay. Mah... ma - my... nay... my nay...? I sighed heavily, and climbed to my feet. My coat was heavy, and hung off my wiry, emaciated body like a thick cloak on a metal cage. But maybe I only say that because that's how I see my body now. A cage.
I caught up with my trolley, and pulled it close to inspect the things I had gathered. Not long after I had realised my situation ? and very shortly after the many suicide attempts - I had taken to collecting trinkets of interest found on my travels, on my search. What I had now was a paraphernalia of decaying junk. A particularly ornate spoon here, a family photo of people I never knew and will never know there, even a CD with 'Monica - Solo' penned on it in marker. I'd been searching for a working DVD player for a long time (I was beyond desperate for any sign of humanity, even just a reminder of the most shameful aspects of my species) but the coming of the end happened to send out some kind of pulse that more or less neutralised the electronic capacity of anything. Watches were permanently stopped at the moment of the apocalypse, televisions blinked out globally as one, fridges went off and then, eventually, warm. Everything that could be dead, was. I was the last speck of energy on the surface of Earth. I suppose I should be proud, but...
When the light broke through the air, somehow calmly warm and refreshingly cool at the same time, people had begun to rise. Slowly. They didn't seem to notice, just stared at the hole in the sky as it grew more intensely bright. I had to shield myself but they... they just kept gazing up. When they rose to head height I grabbed at their legs, tried to drag them down with me as company in to my eternal limbo but they slipped out of my grasp. They didn't slow down, and I didn't go up. It was like I was being gently pushed away. I screamed and shouted, indignant petulance overtaking any pride I might have had. What is pride without anyone to hold it over? And what's shame without anyone to look up to? I tried everything. And I had plenty of time: it took hours. They ascended slowly, spreading their arms and soaring up on cushions of air. Soon, their crucifix silhouettes turned into vague T-shapes, and then black specks against the burning light. And when they drifted through the breach... it slammed shut against me.
A foul, arid wind tugged at strands of wispy hair that dangled loosely around my head and shoulders. I trimmed it where I could but the more I decayed, the more dead cells I extruded. It was hard to keep up: soon I'd just drag it around with me. I shrank my head into my shoulders, and squeezed my eyes tight to keep the worst of the dust out. Dust and sand was easily swept up off the surface of the barren ground, and it targeted my eyes with malicious fury every time a zephyr stirred the air.
I fell to my knees quite suddenly to the sound of a loud snap. There was no stab of pain or even so much as an itch, but I was aware that my weak angles had finally given way. My tibia had probably broke in two like a dehydrated twig, and the fibula with it. It felt like a strong breeze would just whisk bits of me away.
I sat for a long time after that. My perception of time was so skewed that it could have been as much as millennia and I wouldn't have known. The sun seemed to rise and fall like a thrown ball anyway. I couldn't tell how fast that was to me. And night was total darkness: the Moon had gone at some point. I had barely even noticed, but it had simply vanished from space. To tell the truth, it wasn't even the Moon itself that I had noticed but the ocean. It was completely still, never rising or falling. Stagnant, only occasionally moved by one of the winds that tormented my delicate frame.
When I could no longer sit, I lay. When I could no longer lay, I simply existed, a sad, immobile figure in a fast-decaying coat. That didn't last long either, and my skin suffered the same fate. The world itself eroded me, first my dermis blistering away in a bloodless rot. Then the muscles slowly wasted to narrow brown fibres, and then turned to dust. At last I was bones, until they were picked at bit by bit as the sand in the air wore me down like a stubborn rock. When my physical essence was scattered to the winds of my terrestrial prison, I remained as a consciousness, bound by no mortal form. I stayed in the place I had fallen, drained of any will to travel, and watched as the aeons moulded the world into a smooth, dry mass. When the Sun began to grow and swell in the sky, becoming a distended fireball, I watched that too. When it devoured the Earth in a silent consumption, I watched that. There was, of course, no protest. Even I, the god of these ruins, cared not that it was simply erased from the universe in a comparatively miniscule timespan. But I remained, as galaxies hurled ever inwards and entropy claimed every single star and the universe itself was nought but darkness. And finally, after inconceivable years and yet more unfathomable seconds, it happened.
I remembered my name.
The sound of my trolley echoed in the silent air as I trundled slowly through the wastes. I was in no hurry.
When you have an eternity, what's the rush?
The desert is barren, and devoid of life. Tiny scraps of grass emerge through cracks in the sun-baked dirt... but even these are wiry, dead strands of matter. The entire world is like this now ? most of it anyway. The rest is decomposing forest and desolate, sand-swept urban ruins. Monuments to decadence.
It's been centuries now, since the end came. The apocalypse, the rapture, the final hour had come more suddenly than anyone expected. It wasn't even on the news, because the journalists and reporters were going too. Everyone, the entire world, taken by light up into the sky. A glowing white rift had opened up. No ceremony, no sound, no forewarning. Just a white hairline crack across the entire sky that yawned into a glowing maw until you couldn't look at it, and soon you couldn't look anywhere, just squeeze your eyes shut until it was over. And then, as suddenly as it had all begun, the crack fell in on itself and closed. They were gone.
But I remained.
I stopped for a brief rest, allowing my trolley to roll along without me a little whilst I caught my breath. I took this opportunity to attempt speech again.
?Mah... mah naay... sssss... mah nay ssss...? The syllables were clumsy imitations of the words I was trying to form. Even if I could say the first three words, my name had long since disappeared from my memory ? not long before I forgot how to speak.
?Mah nay. Mah... ma - my... nay... my nay...? I sighed heavily, and climbed to my feet. My coat was heavy, and hung off my wiry, emaciated body like a thick cloak on a metal cage. But maybe I only say that because that's how I see my body now. A cage.
I caught up with my trolley, and pulled it close to inspect the things I had gathered. Not long after I had realised my situation ? and very shortly after the many suicide attempts - I had taken to collecting trinkets of interest found on my travels, on my search. What I had now was a paraphernalia of decaying junk. A particularly ornate spoon here, a family photo of people I never knew and will never know there, even a CD with 'Monica - Solo' penned on it in marker. I'd been searching for a working DVD player for a long time (I was beyond desperate for any sign of humanity, even just a reminder of the most shameful aspects of my species) but the coming of the end happened to send out some kind of pulse that more or less neutralised the electronic capacity of anything. Watches were permanently stopped at the moment of the apocalypse, televisions blinked out globally as one, fridges went off and then, eventually, warm. Everything that could be dead, was. I was the last speck of energy on the surface of Earth. I suppose I should be proud, but...
When the light broke through the air, somehow calmly warm and refreshingly cool at the same time, people had begun to rise. Slowly. They didn't seem to notice, just stared at the hole in the sky as it grew more intensely bright. I had to shield myself but they... they just kept gazing up. When they rose to head height I grabbed at their legs, tried to drag them down with me as company in to my eternal limbo but they slipped out of my grasp. They didn't slow down, and I didn't go up. It was like I was being gently pushed away. I screamed and shouted, indignant petulance overtaking any pride I might have had. What is pride without anyone to hold it over? And what's shame without anyone to look up to? I tried everything. And I had plenty of time: it took hours. They ascended slowly, spreading their arms and soaring up on cushions of air. Soon, their crucifix silhouettes turned into vague T-shapes, and then black specks against the burning light. And when they drifted through the breach... it slammed shut against me.
A foul, arid wind tugged at strands of wispy hair that dangled loosely around my head and shoulders. I trimmed it where I could but the more I decayed, the more dead cells I extruded. It was hard to keep up: soon I'd just drag it around with me. I shrank my head into my shoulders, and squeezed my eyes tight to keep the worst of the dust out. Dust and sand was easily swept up off the surface of the barren ground, and it targeted my eyes with malicious fury every time a zephyr stirred the air.
I fell to my knees quite suddenly to the sound of a loud snap. There was no stab of pain or even so much as an itch, but I was aware that my weak angles had finally given way. My tibia had probably broke in two like a dehydrated twig, and the fibula with it. It felt like a strong breeze would just whisk bits of me away.
I sat for a long time after that. My perception of time was so skewed that it could have been as much as millennia and I wouldn't have known. The sun seemed to rise and fall like a thrown ball anyway. I couldn't tell how fast that was to me. And night was total darkness: the Moon had gone at some point. I had barely even noticed, but it had simply vanished from space. To tell the truth, it wasn't even the Moon itself that I had noticed but the ocean. It was completely still, never rising or falling. Stagnant, only occasionally moved by one of the winds that tormented my delicate frame.
When I could no longer sit, I lay. When I could no longer lay, I simply existed, a sad, immobile figure in a fast-decaying coat. That didn't last long either, and my skin suffered the same fate. The world itself eroded me, first my dermis blistering away in a bloodless rot. Then the muscles slowly wasted to narrow brown fibres, and then turned to dust. At last I was bones, until they were picked at bit by bit as the sand in the air wore me down like a stubborn rock. When my physical essence was scattered to the winds of my terrestrial prison, I remained as a consciousness, bound by no mortal form. I stayed in the place I had fallen, drained of any will to travel, and watched as the aeons moulded the world into a smooth, dry mass. When the Sun began to grow and swell in the sky, becoming a distended fireball, I watched that too. When it devoured the Earth in a silent consumption, I watched that. There was, of course, no protest. Even I, the god of these ruins, cared not that it was simply erased from the universe in a comparatively miniscule timespan. But I remained, as galaxies hurled ever inwards and entropy claimed every single star and the universe itself was nought but darkness. And finally, after inconceivable years and yet more unfathomable seconds, it happened.
I remembered my name.
