Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Misc. Post 8
I wonder if I can write two hundred and fifty words in four minutes. I highly doubt it, and it is evident that I'm going to fail this assignment anyway, but one extra point can't do any harm. So here goes. My name is Pat Loup. I was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on Sunday, November eighth, nineteen hundred and ninety two. I grew up in the suburbs of Baton Rouge and in the country outside the city. I split time growing up between my grandparents' house and the house that my parents lived in in the country. When I was six years old, I moved to Lima, Ohio for the first time. I then moved all over Ohio before moving back to Baton Rouge and then to Hurley, Mississippi. I moved back to Lima again, and then back to Baton Rouge. Eventually, after moving several more times, I moved back to Lima and stayed throughout high school before moving to coastal Mississippi for college and then back to Lima after a year of college. Now I attend class at Rhodes State College.
The Secondhand Bookseller Reader Response
<p> This passage from Marina Nemat's book Prisoner of Tehran dealt with a young girl finding a new world literary enjoyment. The story opened well and started strong with the help of the introduction.
<p> I felt that the story that Nemat told was very engaging and full of feeling. Her description of things such as the used bookstore and the bookseller himself added greatly to the story. The way she presented her home life and the way her parents interacted with her added to her personal character development. She could have simply told us what it was like growing up as a bookish girl in Tehran but she instead made an effort and showed us what it was like.
I found the story entertaining and somewhat sad. It reminded me of the Kite Runner both in setting and mood. The introduction added a foreboding feeling knowing that the author would be sentenced to prison for speaking out against government ideas.
Her use of dialogue also added to the story and, thanks to her description of the book seller, was very powerful.
<p> I felt that the story that Nemat told was very engaging and full of feeling. Her description of things such as the used bookstore and the bookseller himself added greatly to the story. The way she presented her home life and the way her parents interacted with her added to her personal character development. She could have simply told us what it was like growing up as a bookish girl in Tehran but she instead made an effort and showed us what it was like.
I found the story entertaining and somewhat sad. It reminded me of the Kite Runner both in setting and mood. The introduction added a foreboding feeling knowing that the author would be sentenced to prison for speaking out against government ideas.
Her use of dialogue also added to the story and, thanks to her description of the book seller, was very powerful.
Miscellaneous Post 7
This story has not been completed. It is a work in progress that I began after taking a break from the single-character story. I began writing stories with many characters and then took a break from that to get back to my roots by writing a character with one main character.
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Lost
We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through
our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're
not alone.
- Orson Welles
She was
invisible, curled up beneath a pile of leaves. Only the seldom passing animal
may have caught the scent of something out of the ordinary. As if to signify
change, a stiff breeze blew over the leaves, uncovering her position. In her
sleep, she shivered. It would be nightfall again before she woke up.
The woods
around her were all black. She opened her eyes while still lying down and saw a
tilted view of the land around her. She righted herself and immediately
realized she was somewhere unfamiliar. She turned her head, looking around for
something recognizable but saw only blackness. The pale moonlight was the only
thing that afforded her a faint glimpse of the trees very nearby. Slowly, she
stood, the leaves crackling under her. In the distance, she thought she saw a
shimmer in the moonlight though it was gone as soon as she saw it. From her
leafy indentation in the ground, she went straight forward. After she had
walked five hundred feet, she again thought she saw a shimmer in the distance. Following
the direction she thought it went, she turned to the right and saw a faint
yellow light far off in the distance. She followed it, drawing slowly closer
only to watch it grow smaller and then move further to the right. She turned
again to follow it. As she was almost close enough to touch it, it again changed
places and distances. Determined to catch it, she took off running.
Condensation puffs were coming out of her mouth, and until then she hadn’t
realized how cold it was. She could see the yellow spot. It was close; close
enough to touch. She dove at it but it disappeared and she hit the ground on
her stomach, sliding into the indentation that she had woken up in. As her body
cooled down after she had stopped running, she began shivering. She pulled her
brown jacket closer around her but it was too thin to repel the cold forest
air. She crawled back into the indentation and pulled the leaves on top of her.
She looked up into the tree that stood behind the indentation and again saw the
barely visible shimmer. She closed her eyes and noticed the deep earthy smell
of the leaves and ground around her. As she was nearing sleep, she felt
something fall on top of her – something heavy. She jumped up and scrambled,
shedding away any tired feelings she may have had. She couldn’t see what had
fallen on her but in the distance, she heard a voice. It was barely audible but
she did hear it.
“It’s okay. It’s safe to go back over, I assure you.”
She began to frantically look around, seeking out the origin
of the voice. A vestigial part of her brain told her the sound was coming from
behind her. She turned around only to see a large tree. She looked around it
only to see dark endless forest.
“I’m sorry to say that you won’t find me, but I mean you no
harm. Go on, back to your spot. There’s something there you’ll want.”
She walked back over to the indentation and saw a large
brown clump lying where she had been. She poked at it with her foot and it gave
way. She picked it up, seeing in the darkness that it was a thicker dark brown
coat. She shook it off and then shrugged off her jacket to replace it with the
coat.
“There you go. Sleep now and we’ll see what tomorrow has to
give us.”
She felt tired despite having woken up just a short time
ago. She lay down and quickly drifted off to sleep.
When she
awoke, the sun was just coming up. She looked around again and saw that she was
still in the forest. It was much thicker and deeper than she had thought the
night before. Again, the voice spoke to her from nowhere.
“I see you’re up. Good. Time to get going; it’s going to get
very cold here soon.”
She stood up and immediately felt a stiff breeze blow
against her.
“You’re going to want to follow the wind. It will show you
the way.”
She turned and started walking with the wind to her back as
she buttoned the coat. As she was walking, she saw that the forest seemed to go
on forever. There was no visible thinning out of the trees. She stopped walking
and began looking around. She couldn’t see anyone, not even the shimmer she had
seen in the forest the night before. The wind was still blowing and seemed to
get stronger the longer she stood there, to the point that she was almost
buckling under its force. The voice was as clear as it had been back by the
indentation in the ground.
“Come on. I had told you it was going to get worse if we
stayed.”
She turned to face the voice. Her voice was almost
completely lost to the wind.
“Who are you? Wh-where are you? Where am I?”
The wind changed direction, blowing with the same strength
into her back.
“So you do have a voice. Use the strength it took to speak
to me and keep moving. Go on, same way you’ve been going.”
She stood with her back to the wind, placing a foot in front
of her and bracing herself.
“I won’t move until you tell me something.”
“Hmm…I can tell you that it’s snowing.”
She looked around to see specks of white whipping past her.
“It’s only going to get worse the longer you stand here. The
snow will only get heavier, the winds will only get harsher, and the
temperature will continue to drop. Think of how much time you’ve already
wasted.”
She put her head down and stamped her foot onto the ground
to get a better footing.
“NO! Tell me what I asked! Where am I? Who are you?”
She had yelled, and with her back to the wind her voice was
much clearer.
The voice that had been talking to her changed. It was no
longer stern and emotionless but instead warm and hearty.
“Now, now, I can provide you with these answers and more
when you get to where you need to be. That place you need to be is down off of
this mountain and out of the snowstorm that’s about to hit. You don’t want to
be up here when the snow really starts falling.”
She looked around again, looking for the shimmer but saw
nothing but driving snow and bending trees.
She turned
around and continued walking in the direction she had been going. The wind
seemed to have let up slightly but the snow kept falling. It had created a ring
of glare around the sun which she could see a small bit more of through the
trees. The forest was thinning out with every dozen steps. She could see bright
sunlight and blue sky far from where she stood at what appeared to be the end
of the woods. She tried to run but the wind pushed her back as she lifted her
feet off the ground. She pushed harder as she walked and sped up. When she
could finally see the light through the trees, she looked out to see low
ground. As she got to the end of the forest, she looked out at low grassland
covered in yellow flowers just below a two hundred foot drop.
She heard the voice again, the warm
voice that made her feel strangely comfortable.
“You’re going to have to slide.”
The drop wasn’t vertical and it was also snow-covered. She
looked down at the steep white incline and looked behind her. The view behind
her receded back into dark forest slowly being taken over by snow. She again
looked down to the bottom of the drop. The snow ended and turned to hill. She
would have to tuck and roll upon hitting the grass hillside. She took one last
look into the forest before jumping. She hit the snow that covered the hillside
and slid halfway down before abruptly going onto the grass. It wasn’t as smooth
as the snow had been and she quickly shifted sideways before tumbling the rest
of the way down. As the terrain leveled out, she bounced harshly upward before
coming to rest by a small stream. She looked around for only a moment before
blacking out.
Miscellaneous Post 6
I wrote this short story this summer. The idea came to me when I thought about what it would be like if the characters I created came into the real world.
Between the Pages
Tomas stepped into the eerily quiet apartment, alert to
intruders. The door had been kicked in and the desk just inside the door had
been gone through. From the kitchen, a small tomato rolled through the archway.
Tomas grabbed the candlestick which had been knocked over on the desk and was
about to mount the stairs when he heard the shot. It was a pistol, from the
upstairs bedroom; Clara, his daughter. Tomas raced up the stairs and barreled
through Clara’s door. Over her lifeless body stood a man. He immediately looked
up to see Tomas holding the candlestick. The man raised the pistol and aimed it
at Tomas. The hammer was back. He pulled the trigger.
I stopped typing. A noise had startled me from my authorial haze, that feeling a writer gets when so engrossed in whatever it is they’re writing. A thud had came from the kitchen, as if a large sack of flour had been dropped from a short height. A rolled away from my computer and went to investigate. There was nobody home and I wasn’t expecting anyone. When I stepped into the kitchen doorway, it was then that I saw him leaning over the sink. He was about six feet tall with combed back dark brown hair. He was dressed in a nice grey overcoat and black dress pants. I noticed something red dripping down the counter. It was a dark crimson color; blood. I asked the obvious question, the only thing I could think to ask,
“Who are you? Where did you come from?”
He turned and faced me. His white oxford shirt was brilliant save for the spreading dark red stain on the right side of his abdomen. He had been drained of most of his color. He managed only three and a half words before collapsing onto the floor,
“My name is To...”
I struggled getting him into a fireman’s carry but when I finally succeeded, I rushed him out to my car. He came to slightly in the car, enough to ask where we were. After that, he passed out again.
At the hospital, I waved down an emergency nurse who ran hurried to get us a wheelchair. At registration, they asked him for his identification. He pulled his wallet out of his left coat pocket and handed it to them. The nurse at the desk opened it and asked him
“This is a French driver’s license. Your name is Tomas Rougir?”
My mind stopped. This was a dream. I had been writing all day, since morning. It must have been six o’clock in the evening. I had fallen asleep at my desk and this was all a dream. I had been so engrossed in Tomas’ story that I had begun dreaming about it. This wasn’t possible. I turned to walk out of the emergency waiting room. I heard somebody yell ‘Stop him!’ and an armed security guard grabbed my arm. I shrugged it off, assured that it was a dream. The guard wrestled me to the ground and drew his pistol, pointing it at me. I went again to stand and walk out. Another guard struck me in the stomach with his baton and I hit the floor. I wasn’t dreaming.
The police were called since Tomas had a gunshot wound. I told them that I didn’t own a gun but all they could get from Tomas was that his daughter had been murdered. Clara. She had been shot by a burglar who I created. She was as much my daughter as she was Tomas’ daughter and I had allowed her to be killed. Tomas had been hit by a bullet that I created fired from a gun I penned. When they finally got through to him enough to ask if it was me who shot him, he said it wasn’t. He said that the man who did was still in Paris, probably selling whatever he stole from the apartment. The doctors and police wondered how a man with a gunshot wound which had bled as much as it did made it from Paris to Washington without dying. It was improbable. I couldn’t tell them the truth. With the bleeding stopped and Tomas stitched and bandaged, they tried to find out more about him. He had no passport and no record with the French government. Tomas Rougir did not exist. His drivers license was a very well-made fake. With no real and verifiable identity to speak of, nothing could be done with him. He was turned loose as he persistently said that it was not me that shot him. He shambled back to the car. It was then he asked me,
“Who are you?”
I could either tell him who I was and with that, every last detail of his entire life, essentially rendering his pseudo-existence meaningless and me his ultimate creator, or I could lie. I lied.
“I’m Michael Wolf. I’m a writer. You’re...Tomas?”
I knew everything there was to know about Tomas. When I had first written him, he was 17 and a kid without a care. At 22, he married a beautiful girl with dark hair and grey eyes but her lack of care for the relationship was what finally drove it apart after two years. Out of the tumultuous relationship came Tomas’ one reason for living; Clara. And Clara was beautiful. From her mother, she got her dark hair and fair skin. From her father she received her love of reading and an ability to connect with people. Through the occasional unpredictability of genetics, she got violet eyes.
Tomas had graduated from the University of Paris with a Master’s degree in history, though he had never really done anything with it. He came from a fairly well-off family and had been coasting on a family trust since he turned 18. He picked up substitute teaching jobs now and again but was content to stay home with Clara more often. He and Clara had been together since he received custody of her when she was two years old. That was twelve years ago.
Tomas replied to the question I already knew the answer to,
“Yes. My name is Tomas Rougir. How did I end up in your kitchen?”
“I’m not sure. I was writing when I heard a thud in my kitchen. I went to investigate and found you there bleeding.”
I made the mistake of asking the next question.
“What’s the last thing you remember?”
Tomas’ breathing changed. His breath became shallow and spread out.
“I came home. The apartment had been ransacked and...Clara. She was upstairs. That was when I heard the shot. I ran up and burst into her room. That was...when I saw him. Standing over her with the gun. There was blood on the bed and wall and...”
Until then, I hadn’t seen things through Tomas’ eyes. I had envisioned what would make a good story, what would be compelling, not what the result would be if my character was presented to me in living and breathing reality. Tomas continued.
“He turned to me, standing there with a candlestick in my hand, and pointed the gun at me. After that, I barely remember the shot. And then I was in your house.”
Clara was dead. Tomas was not. We had arrived back at the house.
Tomas sat down on the sofa and took his wallet out of his pocket. In it was a small photograph of a girl with a hair the color of black coffee in a pixie cut and eyes like morning glories. He sat staring at the photograph, trembling. I went to the kitchen and used a wet rag on the blood, though there wasn’t much. I pulled a porkchop from the refrigerator and put in in the microwave for a handful of seconds. I went to take it to Tomas but he wasn’t sitting on the sofa anymore. I walked down the hall and checked the bathroom and both guest bedrooms. The last room I checked, the one room I hoped he wouldn’t enter, was where I found him; my office. I hadn’t minimized my work. All the stories about Tomas were in one file, which was still open. Tomas was reading the last line of the latest story:
The man raised the pistol and aimed it at Tomas.
Tomas looked at me. He had read snippets of the other stories. He had read things that only he would know. He knew this because I knew this. Tomas realized who he was, that he was a figment of my imagination. It was the only explanation, logical or not. Tomas had never met me before and I had never met him because he was a literary character.
“You took everything from me.”
I took a notepad and pen from my pocket and wrote:
‘Before the two men, a young girl with short hair and violet eyes materialized. She stood alive and full of health with the sweetest of smiles upon her face. Clara.’
I looked at the floor between us. Nothing happened. Clara didn’t appear. Tomas asked what I was doing and I handed him the notepad.
“I tried...I’m sorry.”
Tomas threw down the notepad and it fluttered to a page where I had drawn a sketch of a daffodil.
“You tried and succeeded at fabricating the existence of a now-very real human being. You tried and succeeded at killing my daughter. Get to your computer and set to rendering me lifeless. Drop me off on the surface of the sun. Whatever it takes, writer, just end my suffering.”
It dawned on me that Tomas was feeling like less than nothing. I had created and destroyed his entire world in a handful of keystrokes.
Tomas stood and walked out of the room. I heard the front door open and close. I looked down at the notepad, open to the doodle of the daffodil. I sat down at my computer and thought of the various ways I could try to bring Clara back. I began typing,
‘Clara awoke, completely unharmed by the burglar. The burglar himself had since fled the apartment. Clara felt herself transported into another world; the world in which the creator of her story world resided. She appeared before him, fully aware of her once fictional life.’
I looked beside myself, awaiting the familiar thud of her arrival. Nothing happened. I went to get Tomas. He was outside, standing beneath a tree in my backyard looking up through the branches at the sky.
“How many stories have you written about me alone? I saw the books on your bookshelf. All of them had to do with me. ‘The Violet Child’ was all about Clara. A New York Times bestseller too. I suppose I should be proud of her but it’s your work. How many other lives have you created? How many people have you killed?”
“I tried again to bring her back but nothing happened. Don’t make it seem like I don’t care. I never expected any of this to happen. This isn’t even possible but look where we are. I feel just as bad as you. In a way, Clara was my daughter too. Read ‘The Violet Child’ and you’ll see. I poured a year and a half into making her the sweetest person on earth and three hundred million people fell in love with her.”
Tomas looked at me with what almost looked like a smile.
“That’s not what I asked you writer. I asked you how many people you’ve killed.”
I didn’t want to answer. A lot of the stories I had written in my free time, just for fun involved nuclear war and the earth being destroyed by alien lifeforms. I couldn’t tell him an exact number and I didn’t want to give him an estimate.
“B-billions. If every single person in your world was alive then...”
“They were. Adalbert Grumman was a brilliant man until he was assassinated.”
Adalbert Grumman was a college professor turned senate candidate. He had taught at the University of Paris when Tomas was there, but in none of my stories had they ever interacted, they merely existed in the same fictional universe.
“So billions. How many of them that you killed did you give consideration to, like you did Clara and Adalbert? How was I going to die?”
I had never planned to kill Tomas. He was my flagship character though in a number of occasions he had faced death.
“Several. Maybe six counting Adalbert and Clara. And you. Remember when the building collapsed with you in it? And you made it out alright.”
“I made it out alright but twelve other people didn’t. Twelve people died. And my ex wife. What about her? Were you going to kill her too?”
Compared to Clara and Tomas, Fabienne received little development. Hardly any really; she was only in one book and that began with her and Tomas meeting and ended with their divorce. She was apparently still alive.
“No. Her part in the story ended and...”
“Did it? Did it ever occur to you that perhaps Clara would have liked to see her mother? That she may have wanted to spend more time with her? It didn’t because if I were just some regular family man, my life wouldn’t have made you rich, would it?”
Tomas picked up a piece of a tree branch which had broken into an eight-inch piece and threw it at me. I was absorbing what he had said when one of its ends hit me in the chest. It knocked me back, and as I realized what had happened, Tomas had the front of my shirt in his hands. He had lifted me eight inches in the air and threw me to the ground. His voice lost its sadness and gained in anger.
“Your wordcraft has real-world implications, writer. Do something about it.”
It was then that Tomas grabbed his abdomen where he had been shot. His stitches ripped and a new patch of red was spreading on his shirt. I stood up and held my hand out to him, wanting to guide him back to the car and hospital. He at first refused, but then looked down at his wound and took my hand. We walked through the side yard and down the hill to the car. Tomas was still wearing the blood-stained shirt he arrived in.
When we arrived at the hospital, they were quick to stitch Tomas back up. I again handed the financial spokesperson my credit card and signed away some bewildering amount of money. Tomas hadn’t seen me do this the first time but he saw it this time.
“You just...why?”
Even in his story world, he was aware that American healthcare costs were high. That may or may not have been in one of the stories, I can’t recall.
“You’re what’s kept me alive for the past sixteen years. If you die, I die. It’s only fair.”
That was true as well. The advances and royalties I had received for the books I’d written about Tomas were what had put me in the economic standing I was currently in. What I had told Tomas about Clara was true. Her feature book, The Violet Child, had spent 14 weeks atop the New York Times bestseller list and sold something like 250 million copies. It flew off of the shelves and got passed around among friends. An hour in an emergency room and Tomas was re-stitched and bandaged. I looked at him. He was a wreck. His once-stark white shirt had a roughly circular bloodstain on it that, if he were to lay the shirt flat, would have been two feet in diameter. His overcoat had a similar stain though not as dark or wide. His slacks also had lines of stained blood on them as well. His dark hair had become tousled from its original combed-back style.
We drove back toward the house but instead of going back home, I pulled into the mall. Tomas at first refused to go in, citing his dirty appearance, but he relented and followed me in. It was then I realized it was essentially me who had dressed him since his creation. He had always been wearing smart clothing: button-down shirts, nice slacks, and good shoes. Inside one of the clothing stores, he saw theme t-shirts and jeans. He looked down at his attire.
“Oxfords and khakis. That’s all I’ve ever worn isn’t it? And these shoes. These incredibly uncomfortable shoes.”
It was all he had ever worn. It never occurred to me to change his appearance every so often but now I knew how he felt. He took a dark purple shirt with a white screen-printed dragon on the front off of a rack and handed it to me. Then he went to the wall of jeans and took a pair of faded stonewashed down. He then walked over to a table full of shoes. He looked down at his faded and worn black leather dress shoes. They looked as if they were fifteen years old by the wear on the soles, though the uppers were still in fair condition. He grabbed a pair of bright blue Converse All-Stars.
When we got back to the car, Tomas looked at me and then looked down and away. He turned his face back to mine and told me,
“You didn’t know. How could you have known? You were doing your job. And like you said, at least she brought joy to millions of people. It’s what she would have wanted.”
We got back to the house and Tomas made it inside before I did. I had stopped because of something I hadn’t seen when we left. In the yard by the sidewalk leading to the front door was a single daisy, the flower of purity and innocence; the flower of Clara. Inside, Tomas had settled down. He was flipping through The Violet Child. Within was most of Clara’s life and a slice-of-life view of her and her father’s daily doings. Tomas let out a soft chuckle.
I stopped typing. A noise had startled me from my authorial haze, that feeling a writer gets when so engrossed in whatever it is they’re writing. A thud had came from the kitchen, as if a large sack of flour had been dropped from a short height. A rolled away from my computer and went to investigate. There was nobody home and I wasn’t expecting anyone. When I stepped into the kitchen doorway, it was then that I saw him leaning over the sink. He was about six feet tall with combed back dark brown hair. He was dressed in a nice grey overcoat and black dress pants. I noticed something red dripping down the counter. It was a dark crimson color; blood. I asked the obvious question, the only thing I could think to ask,
“Who are you? Where did you come from?”
He turned and faced me. His white oxford shirt was brilliant save for the spreading dark red stain on the right side of his abdomen. He had been drained of most of his color. He managed only three and a half words before collapsing onto the floor,
“My name is To...”
I struggled getting him into a fireman’s carry but when I finally succeeded, I rushed him out to my car. He came to slightly in the car, enough to ask where we were. After that, he passed out again.
At the hospital, I waved down an emergency nurse who ran hurried to get us a wheelchair. At registration, they asked him for his identification. He pulled his wallet out of his left coat pocket and handed it to them. The nurse at the desk opened it and asked him
“This is a French driver’s license. Your name is Tomas Rougir?”
My mind stopped. This was a dream. I had been writing all day, since morning. It must have been six o’clock in the evening. I had fallen asleep at my desk and this was all a dream. I had been so engrossed in Tomas’ story that I had begun dreaming about it. This wasn’t possible. I turned to walk out of the emergency waiting room. I heard somebody yell ‘Stop him!’ and an armed security guard grabbed my arm. I shrugged it off, assured that it was a dream. The guard wrestled me to the ground and drew his pistol, pointing it at me. I went again to stand and walk out. Another guard struck me in the stomach with his baton and I hit the floor. I wasn’t dreaming.
The police were called since Tomas had a gunshot wound. I told them that I didn’t own a gun but all they could get from Tomas was that his daughter had been murdered. Clara. She had been shot by a burglar who I created. She was as much my daughter as she was Tomas’ daughter and I had allowed her to be killed. Tomas had been hit by a bullet that I created fired from a gun I penned. When they finally got through to him enough to ask if it was me who shot him, he said it wasn’t. He said that the man who did was still in Paris, probably selling whatever he stole from the apartment. The doctors and police wondered how a man with a gunshot wound which had bled as much as it did made it from Paris to Washington without dying. It was improbable. I couldn’t tell them the truth. With the bleeding stopped and Tomas stitched and bandaged, they tried to find out more about him. He had no passport and no record with the French government. Tomas Rougir did not exist. His drivers license was a very well-made fake. With no real and verifiable identity to speak of, nothing could be done with him. He was turned loose as he persistently said that it was not me that shot him. He shambled back to the car. It was then he asked me,
“Who are you?”
I could either tell him who I was and with that, every last detail of his entire life, essentially rendering his pseudo-existence meaningless and me his ultimate creator, or I could lie. I lied.
“I’m Michael Wolf. I’m a writer. You’re...Tomas?”
I knew everything there was to know about Tomas. When I had first written him, he was 17 and a kid without a care. At 22, he married a beautiful girl with dark hair and grey eyes but her lack of care for the relationship was what finally drove it apart after two years. Out of the tumultuous relationship came Tomas’ one reason for living; Clara. And Clara was beautiful. From her mother, she got her dark hair and fair skin. From her father she received her love of reading and an ability to connect with people. Through the occasional unpredictability of genetics, she got violet eyes.
Tomas had graduated from the University of Paris with a Master’s degree in history, though he had never really done anything with it. He came from a fairly well-off family and had been coasting on a family trust since he turned 18. He picked up substitute teaching jobs now and again but was content to stay home with Clara more often. He and Clara had been together since he received custody of her when she was two years old. That was twelve years ago.
Tomas replied to the question I already knew the answer to,
“Yes. My name is Tomas Rougir. How did I end up in your kitchen?”
“I’m not sure. I was writing when I heard a thud in my kitchen. I went to investigate and found you there bleeding.”
I made the mistake of asking the next question.
“What’s the last thing you remember?”
Tomas’ breathing changed. His breath became shallow and spread out.
“I came home. The apartment had been ransacked and...Clara. She was upstairs. That was when I heard the shot. I ran up and burst into her room. That was...when I saw him. Standing over her with the gun. There was blood on the bed and wall and...”
Until then, I hadn’t seen things through Tomas’ eyes. I had envisioned what would make a good story, what would be compelling, not what the result would be if my character was presented to me in living and breathing reality. Tomas continued.
“He turned to me, standing there with a candlestick in my hand, and pointed the gun at me. After that, I barely remember the shot. And then I was in your house.”
Clara was dead. Tomas was not. We had arrived back at the house.
Tomas sat down on the sofa and took his wallet out of his pocket. In it was a small photograph of a girl with a hair the color of black coffee in a pixie cut and eyes like morning glories. He sat staring at the photograph, trembling. I went to the kitchen and used a wet rag on the blood, though there wasn’t much. I pulled a porkchop from the refrigerator and put in in the microwave for a handful of seconds. I went to take it to Tomas but he wasn’t sitting on the sofa anymore. I walked down the hall and checked the bathroom and both guest bedrooms. The last room I checked, the one room I hoped he wouldn’t enter, was where I found him; my office. I hadn’t minimized my work. All the stories about Tomas were in one file, which was still open. Tomas was reading the last line of the latest story:
The man raised the pistol and aimed it at Tomas.
Tomas looked at me. He had read snippets of the other stories. He had read things that only he would know. He knew this because I knew this. Tomas realized who he was, that he was a figment of my imagination. It was the only explanation, logical or not. Tomas had never met me before and I had never met him because he was a literary character.
“You took everything from me.”
I took a notepad and pen from my pocket and wrote:
‘Before the two men, a young girl with short hair and violet eyes materialized. She stood alive and full of health with the sweetest of smiles upon her face. Clara.’
I looked at the floor between us. Nothing happened. Clara didn’t appear. Tomas asked what I was doing and I handed him the notepad.
“I tried...I’m sorry.”
Tomas threw down the notepad and it fluttered to a page where I had drawn a sketch of a daffodil.
“You tried and succeeded at fabricating the existence of a now-very real human being. You tried and succeeded at killing my daughter. Get to your computer and set to rendering me lifeless. Drop me off on the surface of the sun. Whatever it takes, writer, just end my suffering.”
It dawned on me that Tomas was feeling like less than nothing. I had created and destroyed his entire world in a handful of keystrokes.
Tomas stood and walked out of the room. I heard the front door open and close. I looked down at the notepad, open to the doodle of the daffodil. I sat down at my computer and thought of the various ways I could try to bring Clara back. I began typing,
‘Clara awoke, completely unharmed by the burglar. The burglar himself had since fled the apartment. Clara felt herself transported into another world; the world in which the creator of her story world resided. She appeared before him, fully aware of her once fictional life.’
I looked beside myself, awaiting the familiar thud of her arrival. Nothing happened. I went to get Tomas. He was outside, standing beneath a tree in my backyard looking up through the branches at the sky.
“How many stories have you written about me alone? I saw the books on your bookshelf. All of them had to do with me. ‘The Violet Child’ was all about Clara. A New York Times bestseller too. I suppose I should be proud of her but it’s your work. How many other lives have you created? How many people have you killed?”
“I tried again to bring her back but nothing happened. Don’t make it seem like I don’t care. I never expected any of this to happen. This isn’t even possible but look where we are. I feel just as bad as you. In a way, Clara was my daughter too. Read ‘The Violet Child’ and you’ll see. I poured a year and a half into making her the sweetest person on earth and three hundred million people fell in love with her.”
Tomas looked at me with what almost looked like a smile.
“That’s not what I asked you writer. I asked you how many people you’ve killed.”
I didn’t want to answer. A lot of the stories I had written in my free time, just for fun involved nuclear war and the earth being destroyed by alien lifeforms. I couldn’t tell him an exact number and I didn’t want to give him an estimate.
“B-billions. If every single person in your world was alive then...”
“They were. Adalbert Grumman was a brilliant man until he was assassinated.”
Adalbert Grumman was a college professor turned senate candidate. He had taught at the University of Paris when Tomas was there, but in none of my stories had they ever interacted, they merely existed in the same fictional universe.
“So billions. How many of them that you killed did you give consideration to, like you did Clara and Adalbert? How was I going to die?”
I had never planned to kill Tomas. He was my flagship character though in a number of occasions he had faced death.
“Several. Maybe six counting Adalbert and Clara. And you. Remember when the building collapsed with you in it? And you made it out alright.”
“I made it out alright but twelve other people didn’t. Twelve people died. And my ex wife. What about her? Were you going to kill her too?”
Compared to Clara and Tomas, Fabienne received little development. Hardly any really; she was only in one book and that began with her and Tomas meeting and ended with their divorce. She was apparently still alive.
“No. Her part in the story ended and...”
“Did it? Did it ever occur to you that perhaps Clara would have liked to see her mother? That she may have wanted to spend more time with her? It didn’t because if I were just some regular family man, my life wouldn’t have made you rich, would it?”
Tomas picked up a piece of a tree branch which had broken into an eight-inch piece and threw it at me. I was absorbing what he had said when one of its ends hit me in the chest. It knocked me back, and as I realized what had happened, Tomas had the front of my shirt in his hands. He had lifted me eight inches in the air and threw me to the ground. His voice lost its sadness and gained in anger.
“Your wordcraft has real-world implications, writer. Do something about it.”
It was then that Tomas grabbed his abdomen where he had been shot. His stitches ripped and a new patch of red was spreading on his shirt. I stood up and held my hand out to him, wanting to guide him back to the car and hospital. He at first refused, but then looked down at his wound and took my hand. We walked through the side yard and down the hill to the car. Tomas was still wearing the blood-stained shirt he arrived in.
When we arrived at the hospital, they were quick to stitch Tomas back up. I again handed the financial spokesperson my credit card and signed away some bewildering amount of money. Tomas hadn’t seen me do this the first time but he saw it this time.
“You just...why?”
Even in his story world, he was aware that American healthcare costs were high. That may or may not have been in one of the stories, I can’t recall.
“You’re what’s kept me alive for the past sixteen years. If you die, I die. It’s only fair.”
That was true as well. The advances and royalties I had received for the books I’d written about Tomas were what had put me in the economic standing I was currently in. What I had told Tomas about Clara was true. Her feature book, The Violet Child, had spent 14 weeks atop the New York Times bestseller list and sold something like 250 million copies. It flew off of the shelves and got passed around among friends. An hour in an emergency room and Tomas was re-stitched and bandaged. I looked at him. He was a wreck. His once-stark white shirt had a roughly circular bloodstain on it that, if he were to lay the shirt flat, would have been two feet in diameter. His overcoat had a similar stain though not as dark or wide. His slacks also had lines of stained blood on them as well. His dark hair had become tousled from its original combed-back style.
We drove back toward the house but instead of going back home, I pulled into the mall. Tomas at first refused to go in, citing his dirty appearance, but he relented and followed me in. It was then I realized it was essentially me who had dressed him since his creation. He had always been wearing smart clothing: button-down shirts, nice slacks, and good shoes. Inside one of the clothing stores, he saw theme t-shirts and jeans. He looked down at his attire.
“Oxfords and khakis. That’s all I’ve ever worn isn’t it? And these shoes. These incredibly uncomfortable shoes.”
It was all he had ever worn. It never occurred to me to change his appearance every so often but now I knew how he felt. He took a dark purple shirt with a white screen-printed dragon on the front off of a rack and handed it to me. Then he went to the wall of jeans and took a pair of faded stonewashed down. He then walked over to a table full of shoes. He looked down at his faded and worn black leather dress shoes. They looked as if they were fifteen years old by the wear on the soles, though the uppers were still in fair condition. He grabbed a pair of bright blue Converse All-Stars.
When we got back to the car, Tomas looked at me and then looked down and away. He turned his face back to mine and told me,
“You didn’t know. How could you have known? You were doing your job. And like you said, at least she brought joy to millions of people. It’s what she would have wanted.”
We got back to the house and Tomas made it inside before I did. I had stopped because of something I hadn’t seen when we left. In the yard by the sidewalk leading to the front door was a single daisy, the flower of purity and innocence; the flower of Clara. Inside, Tomas had settled down. He was flipping through The Violet Child. Within was most of Clara’s life and a slice-of-life view of her and her father’s daily doings. Tomas let out a soft chuckle.
‘Clara ran to Tomas with a look of both shock and sadness
on her face. He asked her what was wrong and she replied “They stuck to the
ceiling! I’m so sorry!” Tomas smiled and knelt down to talk to her. “Now dear
Clara, what happened?” She guided him into the kitchen and pointed to the stove
which had a skillet on it and a pancake which was now cooking on its other
side. Tomas took the spatula and turned the pancake over. The other side was
also cooked to perfection. It was then that Tomas looked at the ceiling above
the stove. There he saw a circular ring of batter. Clara had tried to flip the
pancake by twitching the skillet but used too much power, flinging the pancake
batter-end up to the ceiling. Tomas smiled and poured more batter into the
skillet.
“Now watch. It’s all in the wrist.”
Tomas waited a moment for the
bottom of the second pancake to cook and then, after loosening it with the
spatula, flipped it. It made one rotation and landed batter-side down in the
skillet. They spent the rest of the morning making pancakes with Clara flipping
most of them herself.’
Tomas looked at me and smiled.
“It took the longest time to get that batter off of the ceiling. By the time we were finished making and eating them, it had dried. Those were good times, and they may not have happened without you Michael. Thank you.”
“And what little happiness I’ve found in my life wouldn’t have been possible without you either.
Tomas sat there for a while before getting up and walking down the hallway. It was then that I heard the clacking of a keyboard. I went to my office and saw him sitting at a computer, typing in a new blank word document. I only saw the bottom.
‘And Clara, a single flower among weeds, stood beside her father once again.’
Tomas said to me,
“If what is written is true, maybe somewhere out there, we are standing together. In another world perhaps.”
We both left my office and returned to the living room where we sat in silence. Tomas sat with a smile on his face, consoled in the fact that somewhere, Clara was OK. I got up to take Tomas’ new clothes into the guest bedroom and after placing them on the bed, I turned around and was face to face with a pair of violet eyes. These eyes were peeking out from behind small oval-rimmed glasses set just below dark bangs. Clara. I did all I could think to do. I yelled and Clara scrambled down beside the bed.
“Tomas!”
Tomas didn’t come running as I expected him to so I returned to the living room where he was still sitting and smiling. I pulled on his arm and he stood, then I guided him back to the room. Clara was gone. I ran to search the other rooms and Tomas began walking lackadaisically to the living room. It was then that I heard the softest squeak as if a mouse had stubbed its toe. I looked under the bed and saw the violet eyes peering out from between the bedskirt and the dustbunnies. I grabbed Tomas and pulled him down to floor-level. When she saw him, it was as if she flew from under the bed. They threw their arms around one another and tears flowed unimpeded from their eyes. They stayed locked together for what seemed like an eternity.
When they let go, I didn’t bother asking Clara who she was or what she remembered. I had hoped she didn’t remember anything. Tomas did ask.
“Clara, what do you remember?”
She stood for a moment and thought,
“A light. And before that, nothing. You had left.”
The rest of the evening, we sat together. Tomas knew not to tell her who I was other than that I was a writer, though something told me she was aware that there was more to me than could be seen. Her eyes could see into people, past the physical and into what lies beneath. It was nearly midnight by the time we all turned in.
The following morning, I awoke as usual at 7:30. I went to the room Tomas had been using but found it empty, his old clothes still in the bag he had placed them in. I then checked Clara’s room but also found it empty. There was no noise coming from the any of the bathrooms or the kitchen. After I had thrown some clothes on, I checked the front and back yards but found no sign of either of them. The living room was empty as was the dining room. I went into my office. The notepad which had remained on the floor all the previous day was placed on my desk. A text document was open and it read,
‘Michael, I must thank you. Though outwardly, Clara and I are no more real than Santa Claus or the boogeyman, you know the truth. Without you, I never would have had Clara, and without you, neither would the entire world. I read in one of your chapters something that was entirely too true: Clara is my reason for living. Keep us forever in mind and remember as I said; your wordcraft has real-world implications, no matter how big or small. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. We are forever between the pages.’ Signed, Tomas Rougir.
Taped to my monitor was a sketch of a daisy; a perfect picture of the perfect girl.
I opened a new text document and began to write.
Tomas looked at me and smiled.
“It took the longest time to get that batter off of the ceiling. By the time we were finished making and eating them, it had dried. Those were good times, and they may not have happened without you Michael. Thank you.”
“And what little happiness I’ve found in my life wouldn’t have been possible without you either.
Tomas sat there for a while before getting up and walking down the hallway. It was then that I heard the clacking of a keyboard. I went to my office and saw him sitting at a computer, typing in a new blank word document. I only saw the bottom.
‘And Clara, a single flower among weeds, stood beside her father once again.’
Tomas said to me,
“If what is written is true, maybe somewhere out there, we are standing together. In another world perhaps.”
We both left my office and returned to the living room where we sat in silence. Tomas sat with a smile on his face, consoled in the fact that somewhere, Clara was OK. I got up to take Tomas’ new clothes into the guest bedroom and after placing them on the bed, I turned around and was face to face with a pair of violet eyes. These eyes were peeking out from behind small oval-rimmed glasses set just below dark bangs. Clara. I did all I could think to do. I yelled and Clara scrambled down beside the bed.
“Tomas!”
Tomas didn’t come running as I expected him to so I returned to the living room where he was still sitting and smiling. I pulled on his arm and he stood, then I guided him back to the room. Clara was gone. I ran to search the other rooms and Tomas began walking lackadaisically to the living room. It was then that I heard the softest squeak as if a mouse had stubbed its toe. I looked under the bed and saw the violet eyes peering out from between the bedskirt and the dustbunnies. I grabbed Tomas and pulled him down to floor-level. When she saw him, it was as if she flew from under the bed. They threw their arms around one another and tears flowed unimpeded from their eyes. They stayed locked together for what seemed like an eternity.
When they let go, I didn’t bother asking Clara who she was or what she remembered. I had hoped she didn’t remember anything. Tomas did ask.
“Clara, what do you remember?”
She stood for a moment and thought,
“A light. And before that, nothing. You had left.”
The rest of the evening, we sat together. Tomas knew not to tell her who I was other than that I was a writer, though something told me she was aware that there was more to me than could be seen. Her eyes could see into people, past the physical and into what lies beneath. It was nearly midnight by the time we all turned in.
The following morning, I awoke as usual at 7:30. I went to the room Tomas had been using but found it empty, his old clothes still in the bag he had placed them in. I then checked Clara’s room but also found it empty. There was no noise coming from the any of the bathrooms or the kitchen. After I had thrown some clothes on, I checked the front and back yards but found no sign of either of them. The living room was empty as was the dining room. I went into my office. The notepad which had remained on the floor all the previous day was placed on my desk. A text document was open and it read,
‘Michael, I must thank you. Though outwardly, Clara and I are no more real than Santa Claus or the boogeyman, you know the truth. Without you, I never would have had Clara, and without you, neither would the entire world. I read in one of your chapters something that was entirely too true: Clara is my reason for living. Keep us forever in mind and remember as I said; your wordcraft has real-world implications, no matter how big or small. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. We are forever between the pages.’ Signed, Tomas Rougir.
Taped to my monitor was a sketch of a daisy; a perfect picture of the perfect girl.
I opened a new text document and began to write.
In-Class Crime Story
Detective Perspective
--
The victim, twelve year old Bess Jones, was shot to death in Wal-Mart. Her attacker fled the scene in a white car and was seen driving east on Birch Road. Bess was standing in line when her attacker, a white male, entered from the east entrance, drew a pistol and fired at her. He fired twice, hitting Bess once. It is unknown who her attacker is or why he may have shot her.
Coroner Perspective
--
The victim is a twelve year old white female identified as Bess Jones. Time of death is 1:06PM. Victim sustained a gunshot wound to the neck which severed the carotid artery. The bullet was stopped by her spine and was identified as a .40 caliber round.
Prosecution Perspective
--
Keith Martin stands accused of murdering 12 year old Bess Jones. He was seen on numerous video cameras entering the Wal-Mart where Bess was shot, drawing the pistol used in the murder, firing it, and fleeing the scene. The pistol, which has been confirmed as the one used in the shooting, was recovered from the defendant's apartment. No motive has been found, though we believe that the shooting was at random. The prosecution seeks the death penalty.
--
The victim, twelve year old Bess Jones, was shot to death in Wal-Mart. Her attacker fled the scene in a white car and was seen driving east on Birch Road. Bess was standing in line when her attacker, a white male, entered from the east entrance, drew a pistol and fired at her. He fired twice, hitting Bess once. It is unknown who her attacker is or why he may have shot her.
Coroner Perspective
--
The victim is a twelve year old white female identified as Bess Jones. Time of death is 1:06PM. Victim sustained a gunshot wound to the neck which severed the carotid artery. The bullet was stopped by her spine and was identified as a .40 caliber round.
Prosecution Perspective
--
Keith Martin stands accused of murdering 12 year old Bess Jones. He was seen on numerous video cameras entering the Wal-Mart where Bess was shot, drawing the pistol used in the murder, firing it, and fleeing the scene. The pistol, which has been confirmed as the one used in the shooting, was recovered from the defendant's apartment. No motive has been found, though we believe that the shooting was at random. The prosecution seeks the death penalty.
In-Class 7
After being freed from the stomach of the wolf, Red Riding Hood and her grandmother looked to see that the basket of goodies had been ruined. The woodsman who had slain the wolf informed them of a quaint Italian restaurant he knew of in Georgia that sold delicious spaghetti. Red Riding Hood looked at him perplexedly. The woodsman was clearly not of this earth, seeing as how it was 1720 in Germany. Red Riding Hood had no idea what or where Georgia was, let alone how to get there.
The woodsman kept on, insisting that they must get to Georgia. He held his ax above his head and cleaved it through the air. A portal opened and on the other side was a field. The woodsman stepped through and waved the others on to follow him.
The woodsman explained that this was Georgia in the year 2003, where he was from. Across the field was a city street. Amid the small shops was an Italian restaurant. The three went in and enjoyed their meal. After dining on spaghetti, the woodsman reopened the portal at the edge of the field and let Red Riding Hood and her grandmother step back through to their own time.
The woodsman kept on, insisting that they must get to Georgia. He held his ax above his head and cleaved it through the air. A portal opened and on the other side was a field. The woodsman stepped through and waved the others on to follow him.
The woodsman explained that this was Georgia in the year 2003, where he was from. Across the field was a city street. Amid the small shops was an Italian restaurant. The three went in and enjoyed their meal. After dining on spaghetti, the woodsman reopened the portal at the edge of the field and let Red Riding Hood and her grandmother step back through to their own time.
How I Met Your Mother In-Class
The show we watched in class was funny as is to be expected of 'How I Met Your Mother'. I had never seen the episode before even though I have been watching the show since it first aired. The episode follows the signature format of the main characters all relaxing at the local pub, chit-chatting about a story from their past. This is often used to advance the plot in the form of flashbacks or to convey additional meaning to the story. In this episode, talk of one of the character's girlfriends leads to the discussion of the cast's past expectations of the future. Two of the characters, Ted and Marshall, talk of how they had always hoped for success or positive change in the future while one of the other characters, Barney, wished that things would always stay the same.
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