Post by Tash on Jul 9, 2009 19:28:33 GMT -5
Hey there all. I'm taking a lecture on Prose Fiction at the University of Cambridge, Pembroke College in the UK. Here is the first draft of introduction to the short story I am writing for the class.
Enjoi!!!
The Koi Garden[/b]
The house on Esperanza Street was empty. She had rushed to return home, exultant, to find it quiet, dark, and worst of all, empty. Now she barreled through the rooms searching, frantic and on the verge of tears. Her heart ratcheted about in her chest and her palms were sticky with sweat and no amount of deep breathing could calm either. Empty empty empty empty. Her stuttering footsteps first on the floorboards, then the hush of them over linoleum, mocked her with the word. There was a silent screaming in her head, a stubborn refusal to process what was happening. Because this could not be happening. Not now, not when she had been so colossally mistaken. Not now when she had her answers. Not now that she had come back to fix things: to learn to live again.
She had wanted so desperately to make things right, to be happy again. Just like her to botch things up horribly…but she had thought she could fix it. That fixing it was merely a question of going back and mending the broken pieces afterwards. This was what she had thought, up until she returned home to a silent house. She ricocheted about the rooms like a stray bullet, catching herself on the backyard doorframe, jerking herself back to concrete reality and out of her frenzied flight. Both hands braced against the doorframe, her torso lunged forward into the backyard like the figurehead on the prow of a ship. Eyes scanned the backyard relentlessly as she wrestled her nerves back under her control and tried furiously to bring herself back to focus. Her eyes snagged on a blue wisp as she scanned the pool and she was sent spinning off into oblivion again, breath sucked sharply from her lungs. At the pool’s edge, snagged in the profusion of water lilies and reeds that overran its waters, was draped a blue nightgown. Her brain froze, sped, and froze again. Freeze frames of an impossible reality. There was a nightgown in the pool. A terribly familiar blue nightgown in the pool and she could not find her Grandmara.
Enjoi!!!
The Koi Garden[/b]
The house on Esperanza Street was empty. She had rushed to return home, exultant, to find it quiet, dark, and worst of all, empty. Now she barreled through the rooms searching, frantic and on the verge of tears. Her heart ratcheted about in her chest and her palms were sticky with sweat and no amount of deep breathing could calm either. Empty empty empty empty. Her stuttering footsteps first on the floorboards, then the hush of them over linoleum, mocked her with the word. There was a silent screaming in her head, a stubborn refusal to process what was happening. Because this could not be happening. Not now, not when she had been so colossally mistaken. Not now when she had her answers. Not now that she had come back to fix things: to learn to live again.
She had wanted so desperately to make things right, to be happy again. Just like her to botch things up horribly…but she had thought she could fix it. That fixing it was merely a question of going back and mending the broken pieces afterwards. This was what she had thought, up until she returned home to a silent house. She ricocheted about the rooms like a stray bullet, catching herself on the backyard doorframe, jerking herself back to concrete reality and out of her frenzied flight. Both hands braced against the doorframe, her torso lunged forward into the backyard like the figurehead on the prow of a ship. Eyes scanned the backyard relentlessly as she wrestled her nerves back under her control and tried furiously to bring herself back to focus. Her eyes snagged on a blue wisp as she scanned the pool and she was sent spinning off into oblivion again, breath sucked sharply from her lungs. At the pool’s edge, snagged in the profusion of water lilies and reeds that overran its waters, was draped a blue nightgown. Her brain froze, sped, and froze again. Freeze frames of an impossible reality. There was a nightgown in the pool. A terribly familiar blue nightgown in the pool and she could not find her Grandmara.
