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Week 97- (September 27th-October 3rd) Stories--- Topic: Imperfect DONE!!
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I've actually begun a story for this prompt! Not sure if I'll get it done by the 3rd, but...
Not my best writing, but here it is: (This story was heavily influenced by the songs "Fear and Loathing" and "Radioactive" both by Marina & the Diamonds.)
Imperfect
By Lydia
Word Count: 562
The mirror never lied. She told herself that as she pulled her dark hair back into a high ponytail and examined her face. Red splotches contrasted with her pale skin and dark purple circles under her eyes made her look unnatural. Make-up littered her bathroom counter, and she glanced over the different brands. Reaching for concealer, she gently dabbed it under her eyes, smoothing it out. Next, she brushed light purple eye shadow over her eyelids, making sure not to mess up her already placed eyeliner. She delicately placed fake eyelashes over her own and dusted her cheeks with a rosy blush. She dabbed her lips with gloss, placed more concealer on her pimples, and added mascara, finishing her preparation for the night. She already wore a deep v-neck long sleeve shirt, beige pants, and black flats. Leaning into the mirror, she carefully placed golden hoop earrings into her ears. A horn sounded outside her house and she jumped up. She rushed out the door, her hair swinging behind her. The car outside was a red convertible, and a teenage girl with blond hair was behind the wheel. All the seats were filled, with the exception of an empty space in the back, reserved for the dark haired girl. She bounded down the driveway, and slid into the car. They took off down the road, the late afternoon sun shining. She hoisted herself up onto the top of the seat of the convertible, keeping a firm grip on the upholstery. Their first stop was a grocery store, miles away from their hometown. The five teenagers split as they wandered through the store. The guy she was paired with had tattoos down his arm that she noticed when he handed her a small item.
“What’s this for?” she asked.
“Not so loud!” he replied. “Stick it in your pocket.”
Feeling guilt clench her stomach, she did as she was told. Several minutes later, the group left the store, laughing over the new gained trinkets. The sun had fallen and clouds blanketed the sky. The teenagers continued the same routine; stopping at stores, shoplifting, and then casually leaving.
“One last stop,” the blond haired girl announced. The car pulled into a parking space in front of a bar, and the gang piled out. The dark haired girl felt sick, but she followed them in, and didn’t complain when they order drinks for her. She didn’t sip, and soon the group disbanded, each finding their own place in the bar to hang out. A loud crash came from her right, and she turned to find a man face down on the floor, his glass shattered. She shuddered, put her drink down, and exited the bar.
A light shower had started outside. She undid her hair and let it fall past her shoulders. As she walked down the unfamiliar streets, the rain picked up. After going a couple blocks, she found shelter under a store’s overhanging roof. She turned to stare at her soaked reflection in the window. The rain had ruined her so carefully planned preparations. Her mascara was running down her cheeks, turning the blush dark. One of her fake eyelashes was hanging down over her eye, her clothes were plastered to her, and her teeth chattered. She stared at herself in the window for a long time, before finally turning away.
Hi, its good to be writing again after getting over the loss of my mum. Hope you enjoy as much as I enjoyed writing again. A MODEL DAUGHTER.
Rosie was proud of her scar. It ran nearly six inches in length, curling from the tip of her dimpled chin before tapering off just above her emerald green eyes.
It remained her of how fragile life could be; how easy it was for God to snuff out your existence like a candle in a storm. A car crash had caused the scar, leaving her imperfect. Her Dad told her it had happened when she was little, a size of a small potato like the one he was having for his dinner.
If strangers stopped and stared, which they did, as only human nature would, she concocted a web of fairy tales of how she was involved in a fight with a wild gang, her frenzied endeavours of bravery escalating with each telling.
But friends knew the real truth, or at least suspected they knew. The truth was far more horrific and brutal and downright sad than any vicious street fight.
Rosie was Trevor’s little girl, even through she had just turned sixteen. Rosie loved her Dad in return, even more so as he was raising her single handled without the support of a mother figure. Rosie couldn’t remember the night her mother had walked out, her perfectly coifed blonde hair wrapped in a bright yellow head scarf as strutted away down the rain swept street.
But Trevor had repeated the story so many times it was engrained into her brain. Every time he had tucked her into bed, her warm body snuggled up against Thomas; her threadbare teddy, minus one eye he told her of the mysterious woman called Mother. The story was so vivid in her mind she could even hear the sound of the heels clicking a beat as she disappeared into the mist.
Sometimes when she was dozing off flashes of red assaulted her eyes. There was something about the colour red. She asked her Dad if her Mother left in a bright red dress. The answer was no. The bright red was mere tiredness, she should forget about it.
Then one day at school, when Mrs Wilkins was explaining about long division, the chalk scratching across the board like an insect she had her first flashback.
She was in another place; her home, the landing at the top of the stairs. She could almost feel the horrible flowery brown wallpaper. Downstairs someone was shouting, no someone was screaming, a blood curdling yell of pure terror.
Just before she fainted clean away she saw red liquid spraying like a fountain up the stairs. Her last thought before her head thumped against the concrete floor was, wasn’t there a stain that Dad couldn’t get out of the floor in the hallway.
In a way Rosie hoped that her mother would walk back into her life. She would inform her in no uncertain terms how well Trevor and her had survived and flourished. But, part of her wanted to find out if she was like her mother. She hadn’t told her father but when she going to become a top model like her mother when she left school, she had the look, all her friends had told her, and they could do amazing things with plastic surgery these days. She was never going to work in a factory like all the other deadbeats.
How wrong she was. The revelation came out by accident one barmy summer night. She was sitting in the garden with her best friend, Alicia. They had both been drinking all afternoon, and were both giggly and merry. When her Dad returned home, his overalls thick with grease, his body tight with the aroma of sweat he went mad. No daughter of his was going to waste her life lounging and drinking.
No, she replied she was going to be a model. Alicia ran screaming so wild were his eyes at what he had heard his little girl utter.
Rosie didn’t know if his tears were tears of rage, or merely tears of anguish at the possibility of losing his little girl.
But that was before her life exploded. She found the faded paper by accident. She had decided to put the ironing away for her Dad, after all he worked really hard. It would give him a break. She found the paper, a local edition tucked inside a men’s magazine, hidden under a collection of worn underpants. The headline screamed at her, ‘Man cleared of murdering wife.’ The by-line informed that Trevor was a jealous husband of his wife’s modelling and killed her in a blazing row about ogling men. The verdict was inconclusive; Trevor was cleared of all charges. The wife had apparently disappeared into thin air, leaving a three year old girl.
She was just finishing reading when she felt the hair on the back of her neck raise. Her Dad was watching her, his breathing heavy and laboured. She had to die; she was a whore, parading herself in front of men.
Then the revelation that really blew her away. He had cut his little girls face with a Stanley knife, making her imperfect and flawed. He had done it for her. So she wouldn’t land up like her mother. He had staged the car crash, and he had got away with it.
That was when Rosie remembered the stain on the floor of the hallway. Forensics was so much more perfect these days.
Wow, Paul! That was really deep.. Nice twist at the end.
Good description, Lydia. At the end of the story I have the feeling the main character is lucky to have escaped the bar, but it seems unlikely she’ll get home safely.Suspensful story, Paul! I can’t help but wonder, of course, what the girl’s father did with his wife’s body.
Imperfect — A Story~1900 Words
It began with a story. But of course that is not unique or even interesting, because doesn't everything begin with story? I would like to think that mine is at least unusual. But doesn't everyone?
Where was I? Right… It began with a story. Well, actually, for the story to be, something had to be, or at least have been before that, and so maybe that that is where I'd best begin — before the beginning.
In the before the beginning the objective was to write a scene from my life told in omniscient third person. This is something that I had a hard time doing, but the teacher was particularly inspiring and filled my heart with the ache of wanting to impress him.
Looking back I am no longer sure that my motives were simply to bask in his approval for my becoming creatively liberated, or to be simply carnally consumed by his spirit made flesh. I did love the flash in his eyes whenever a particular passion in art was discussed. Now, as I look back on it I wonder that my having aged did not bring at least some token of understanding, or even an iota less confusion. Or perhaps it is simply that youth misunderstands what real understanding is, and that is to expand from impossibility what can be true and untrue at the same time.
But let me keep it childhood simple: I had a story to write and an older boy to impress. Thus I strove with all my imagination to be my story's God. For all I know I may even have said a quiet, not really believed by me prayer to that end because I was still a part of my family and heartfelt parental prayer always preceded dinner, groundings and the rare but ever questionable strappings. The important things, I guess, were what needed prayer and boy was this story important.
No one warned me of the dangers of imagination, and so I put imagination into the pre-textual page as God, and that imagination took me to the Biblical adage about sparrows falling, and 'But the very hairs of your head are numbered.' God is in the details, I realized, and that requires omniscience, conscientiously applied.
Oddly enough I realize now that it was my complete lack of imagination that had me begin the story with my sitting in a room — my bedroom, in a rather uncomfortable wooden chair, old oak and without wheels or a cushion. With only some hesitation I wrote that all down, and the details of the desk and its scratches and ink stains too. And then what was on it and under it: books, dolls, a teddy bear, Disneyland ride ticket from when I was young, a photo with me and my dad when he had a long beard, iPod, carpet, dust bunnies. Then more detail. A Wrinkle in Time, To Kill a Mocking Bird and a ragged and stained cloth bound Tale of Peter Rabbit, a childhood favourite; threadbare pale green wool carpet, a single sock with a hole at the toe and in the heal, etc.
After that it got easy. I wrote everything I could see, in as much detail as my imagination demanded of me, down to the number of teeth marks on the plastic end of the pen I liked to chew on to make myself look like I was thinking whenever I heard my father creak down the hallway to surprise me with a 'Homework finished yet, Jen?' check. And I wrote that down too.
I did not write that my ability to see is — was imperfect. I began listing in the morning, Sunday after early morning church. The day had begun overcast and was now wet with a steady light rain. As such it was a perfect day for writing, if what I was doing could be called that.
I wrote steadily, but steadily faster and I remember feeling pleased with myself for when I finished the first scribbler of details around the time mom call 'Jennifer, it's time for lunch!' And I wrote that down. 'I'm busy right now!' I called back to her through the closed door. 'Doing school work! Is it okay if I eat it in here?' And I wrote that down and the details of the next scribbler - red Mead metal coil 200 pages, etc.
That my mother did not question me right then was a warning sign, the dangerous kind because it didn't look like a one. Instead, after what must have been a pause, she called back 'Okay,' and a few minutes later she'd set lunch down in front of me. Homemade mac & cheese. And I wrote that down, and the details of the pasta and the paprika and parmesan cheese in the bread crust and the roasted sliced tomato and pepper and olive oil and the aroma and the taste. I did not write down why she did, but what she did and wore doing it. Even that her hair was bobbed, that she wore glasses and just a hint of make-up.
After lunch my listing seemed to take on supernormality and I went through three scribers and five pens before the call for supper. My details had moved beyond my room — the closet was tough! And encompassed the house, one room at a time. Then the yard, including the trees — four Japanese maples, three ornamental cherries two jack pines and a robin's nest in a pear tree. I was just finishing the street when I was surprised by mom's 'Supper time!'
I stopped, and set my pen down with stiffened fingers. I rubbed them as I rose and then turned to leave the room and screamed when I saw what walked past the large mirror resting on the floor and angled against the wall. I don't remember fainting but the next thing I remember was the sound of my family's voices too close to my face and too full of anxiety. I think someone was slapping my hand.
When I looked over I saw her, just as I'd written down in my book. And apparently she was the one holding and none too gently slapping my hand. I could feel mine in hers, and hear and feel the other one slapping me, but I didn't see her hands! I screamed again, and this time jumped up oblivious to dad's and mom's frantic 'What's wrong?' to re-look at myself in the mirror.
I wasn't there! I saw my dress and shoes and my hands, but nothing else. I had no arms or head, no legs or feet. I turned to look at my parents, and I saw my father's beard, just as I'd described it, and his kind eyes with the noticeable laugh lines, but the rest of his face wasn't written down. When I looked towards the door I could see his hands reaching for me, but where my mother's hands should have been I saw instead the cuff's of her Sunday chores' blouse, blue with splashes of flour and mystery colours. Just as I'd described. When I looked at my mother's face the concern was visible everywhere but in here eyes, which for some reason did not exist, lost in an opaque disk of nothing.
'Wait!' I called, voice cracking to keep tears from being triggered as a moved unsteadily to the books of lists.
'What's wrong?' they pleaded.
'Please, just wait. Please,' I begged. 'Don't move, stay there!'
Frantically I flipped to the first book and looked for where I'd described my father and me in the picture. I gasped in horror when I read what I'd wrote: '… My father standing beside me, his eyes crinkled in laughter as they always are after he'd given me a beard-tickle.' What I'd scribbled, what I'd painstakingly described were the things that I remembered perfectly but I'd omitted the other ones because they weren't important enough to be perfectly remembered. And I'd describe how my hair looked that day, with the ribbon mom had tied into it that morning, but not my face.
My mind was reeling. This is impossible, I thought. And looked again to the faceless image of the mirrored me; and then at my mother and father, and their missing pieces.
I quickly flipped to the front of book #2 to see how I'd described mom. Yup, the mom who was mouthing 'What' wrong, baby?' was the one'd I'd described in scribbled ink. I tried to answer, but my voice box wasn't working. I creaked out a couple of 'I… I… I.. 's before my father said, 'If you're pregnant, Jennifer, we don't care. In fact a new baby would be great for both of us.'
'I'm not pregnant!' I barked back, genuinely surprised that my father thought me an easy and careless lay!
'No, no, I'm sure you're not,' my father stumbled his words. 'I'm just trying to say that even if you were pregnant, we'd take care you you.' He paused. 'You don't have to,' drifted into my panicking brain.
I went to the window, and saw our trees, and the giant neighbour's tree, all of which I'd described. Not so much the neighbour's house, although it did have a big chimney, just like I'd described, and smoke.
I jumped back to the desk, and opened the last book to the last open page, and began to describe the neighbour's ugly red house in as much detail as memory allowed me to. And when I looked at it again, it now was far more detailed, but now the house was lopsided, as if it were some kind of split level / raised level unhappily conjoined twin. 'But that's not my memory!' I cried out loud.
'Whatever do you mean, dear,' my mother asked. And I missed that warning too, the dangerous one. 'You stay here, please, and we'll get you help.'
'I don't need help!' I yelled.
But I did. I needed perfect recall, and a lot more pens and books. Instead my mother called emergency, and while I was scribbling the details of the world back into existence, an EMT had stabbed me in the arm with a drug that knocked me out.
When next I woke, I knew I was in a hospital even before I opened my eyes. It was the smell. In the bed beside me was somebody snoring, loudly. I turned my head to see who was there, but when I opened my eyes I couldn't see. I couldn't see the snorer or anything — 'I'm blind!' I cried which got some of the staff to move more urgently around me. After the staff and other patients settled, I heard someone I couldn't see me tell me that he was a doctor, and that I was now in good hands. 'What hands?' I thought. I haven't described them into existence yet.
This is my kind of story. What an intriguing plot, and very well executed! The world we write can sometimes seem as real--even more real--than the world we’re actually in, but this story explores, in a unexpected and graphic way, a peculiar inversion of the problem in art, that you can’t describe or render what you haven’t found a way to see.
Thanks M, I'm glad you enjoyed it. And caught my nice little comment on reality! (I hope it wasn't too blunt or heavy handed.) But regardless it was fun to exercise my very rusty story writing muscles.
Wow, Guy, that is a very good story! It really makes you think :)
Thanks Kat. Thinking is a good thing, I think. And now that I've finished mine I'm looking forward to reading the others.
Lydia, nice little suspenseful story. And Paul, great twist in yours. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for the comments, your all to kind. Really enjoyed your story Lydia, in fact didn't want it to end. A good sign that. And Guy your story blew me away with its description and prose. Thanks!
Thanks, Paul, glad you enjoyed it. It was fun to write.
Hee hee. It's okay. We all understand. And you are not a terrible moderator!
We all understand - been there done that, and you are certainly amongst the top moderators I've been associated with. Good luck with your studies!
Hope you do well with your studies, Alex!
You’re a wonderful moderator, Alex. You and Stephanie are the only ones who actually do anything, who aren’t there just for looks.
Al, you are an amazing mod! But if you and Steph ever need any help, I am on here every day XD
It’s the very sort of thing a sister would say.
Mine's on the other side of the country, at college.
That stinks. My sister's at college too, but it's only a few hours away. I'd hate to be across the country from her.
Guy's story won; mine and Paul's tied for second.
Guy came in first place!Paul and Lydia came in last.
Thanks for participating, everyone!
Please post directly into the topic and not a link. Please don't use a story previously used in this group.
Your story should be ONLY 300-2,500 words long.
REMEMBER! A short story is NOT a scene. It MUST have a BEGINNING, MIDDLE, and END.
The topic this week is: Imperfect
The rules are pretty loose. You could write a story about anything that has to do with the subject. I do not care, but it must relate to the story somehow.
Have fun!