Short Story - First Draft

[Lateralus]

This is a little short story I started writing yesterday and finished this morning. I'm going to leave it for a few days before I revise it, but in the mean time I thought I may as well post it here to get some feedback. No title yet.

 

 

 

It's a little bleak, but, like Sinatra says, that's life.

 

 

 

I'd love to evade the censor to keep sentences as I meant them, but rules are rules, and I'm sure you'll be able to work the meaning out.

 

 

 

***

 

 

 

The New House Hotel was where we went every Friday night, Stacy and I. We had no choice; there was nowhere else.

 

It was a terrible place. The hotel was situated in a small clearing surrounded by dense woodland on all sides. The thin dirt road which lead to the building was strewn with tree roots and dog [cabbage]. It was a long way from our flat and we almost always walked, unless it was raining or we were especially tired. The greenery around the building attracted all kinds of biting insects, so you couldn't even stand outside on a pleasant day without the repellent smoke from a cigarette for protection. Not only were the drinks and food cripplingly expensive, they were rotten.

 

For all its faults, the New House attracted a good crowd. My friends and I had made it our social centre for years, and I took Stacy there for our first night out together.

 

I met Stacy a year earlier, in the job centre. I was sitting in the waiting area, preparing for a meeting with a careers advisor. I turned to grab a pen from the magazine covered table and when I looked back Stacy was there. She struck up a conversation, and I was charmed by her simplicity of speech and her lack of pretension. She was pretty in a very ordinary way. Her hair hung loosely around her face as if the wind had been at it, and there was a kind of melancholy resolve in her grey-blue eyes. A few months later we were living together.

 

We shared a flat in an affable but grey part of town, not far from the retail parks that marked its centre. The flat was sparsely furnished, yet the little furniture that there was all clashed. A blue sofa embossed with floral patterns that her parents were going to throw out, a small stained wooden coffee table, a television I had been given as a teenager, my writing desk, and my bookshelf. The desk and the bookshelf looked entirely out of place, and were made almost entirely useless by the chatter of the television. I couldn't read or write when it was on. I tried retreating to the lone bedroom, but I found I could still hear it through the walls.

 

I was sick of Stacy even before we moved in together. She was constantly gently, barely noticeable, but firm all the same pushing me towards some kind of office work, which was something I had no taste for.

 

I could hardly blame her. She supported me with the money from her secretarial job in the times between my unemployment payments and the rare occasions I worked as a day labourer for a friend's father.

 

Many of my friends had told me that they would be very happy with a girl like Stacy. Even so, her simple way of conversation and ordinary but pleasant looks grated at my being, and every time I thought about how I hated her, I hated myself more.

 

We strolled along the dirt road that lead to the New House. Experience and muscle memory guided my feet over the roots that split the earth, but the dominion of the trees was made plain when the toe of my shoe was caught and I stumbled.

 

The evening was in full swing as we entered the side door to the bar. Groups of old and middle aged men occupied most of the tables near the bar. Towards the back of the pub in a slightly raised area the younger crowd sat on a large cushioned horseshoe bench with tables in the gap in the middle. Alcohol and the music blaring from the jukebox raised all conversation to a shout.

 

The pub was decorated in a rustic, country kind of way A tribute to its days as a farm house. Dark wooden panelling rose from the carpeted floor to half way up the wall. Farming implements and brass jugs established the theme on high wooden shelves. There was a painting of a stag, and above the coal fireplace was the taxidermed head of a Highland cow.

 

Stacy went to sit at the back of the room with the crowd in the horseshoe while I waited at the busy bar. The wait was made longer by the poor service of the bar staff.

 

I scanned the room with purpose, my eyes flying over faces and backs of heads, until I saw her The best, and increasingly only, reason to spend any time at the New House. Emily.

 

She was beautiful. It took a special kind of eye to see it, but she was. She had the sort of style that was often imitated but wasn't diminished by it. Her blonde hair was cut short so that it stopped just short of her jaw line at the front and an inch or two higher at the back. The pale skin of her neck flowed graciously to her shoulders, which were covered by a small black cardigan. She wore a blue cocktail dress and sipped on a glass of white wine.

 

Emily had been a patron of the New House for years Only once a month or so when I first noticed her, but more and more often after that. I had only spoken to her around a dozen times, and never for very long.

 

Once I had told her that I wanted to be a writer. She looked around the room disinterestedly. Her eyes were glistening with half a bottle of wine and lazily flowed over the room, occasionally looking back at me to show that she was listening.

 

Oh God, her eyes. She looked at everything, saw everything, and her brow furrowed or relaxed in perfect response to what she saw.

 

Oh really?, she said as she turned back to me. That's lovely. And then she left on a perfumed breeze.

 

I got the drinks and walked to the back of the bar to sit with Stacy, positioning myself so that I could see Emily.

 

Look at me. I'm here. I'm waiting.

 

She didn't look.

 

The conversation my friends were having bored me, so I finished my drink and went to sit at the bar. I ordered another drink.

 

Dave had followed me from the horseshoe area and sat down beside me. He was one of my closest friends, and we had been to school together. He was in my English class and we often talked about books and writers. His mother had moved abroad Spain, I think but he didn't want to go with her and needed an income to support himself, so he left school at 16. We didn't talk about books much any more.

 

How's the writing going?

 

I wiped the condensation from a lager tap with my index finger. Not well. Nobody seems to want my articles, and I haven't had any reply about my short stories. I liked it when people asked about my writing, even if my reply was negative. It made me feel like a writer. That was all I wanted to feel like.

 

That's too bad... Don't you wish you had finished university? You'd be on good money by now.

 

No, I don't wish I had finished. I don't care about the money. At any rate, a business degree would just be a safety net, and that's the last thing I need. God knows I'm lackadaisical enough as it is.

 

I could tell by the way Dave looked at me that he didn't agree. He thought I was an idiot for leaving university and throwing away the chance for a good salary. He had told me once when we were drunk, but I don't think he remembered.

 

Yeah... I guess you're right. At least you've got Stacy.

 

Yeah. At least.

 

Dave looked puzzled. I'd always thought he had a thing for Stacy. He was certainly a great admirer. What do you mean?

 

What do you think? I'm not happy. I'm with her because it's easy and I get the feeling it's better than being alone. Lackadaisical.

 

He gave me another puzzled look, though this time there was a definite note of disgust in his eyes.

 

Anyway, I took a long, slow drink of beer, I'd rather not talk about it. She knows just about everyone in this place. Anyone could be listening. I looked over my shoulder and then turned back to him, smiling with half my mouth. I'm going out for a smoke. You coming?

 

Nah, I've just been. I think he wanted to talk to Stacy.

 

When I stood up I found that I was quite drunk. I looked at the walls as I walked from the bar to the door. The décor had taken on a surreal quality. All subjectivity left me, and things were no longer quaint, or tacky, or rustic They simply were; farming tools used as ornaments on shelves high out of reach, the stuffed head of a dead animal, and most striking of all dozens of people paying no attention to any of it. Experience had eroded their interest at the absurdity of it, and it was just the way the pub was. I continued outside where the damp woodland air would smell like Emily.

 

I tripped as I stepped through the door to the beer garden, and bumped into a man who was standing with two friends, all three of them wearing shirts and ties.

 

Sorry.

 

I tried to keep walking, but he put his hand on my chest and stopped me.

 

Watch what you're [bleep]ing doing!

 

Sorry. I just wanted to get through the door.

 

He sneered at me and spit on the ground.

 

I stood a few metres away from them and lit a cigarette. I felt that the man had been quite rude to me. Wasn't it just an accident after all? And wasn't he standing right in the doorway? I realised that I wasn't sorry at all and that no self respecting person could stand for such abuse in reply to an apology.

 

I walked over to where he was standing, and tapped him on the shoulder to get his attention.

 

I'm not sorry.

 

What?

 

For bumping into you. I'm not sorry.

 

And then my hands were around his throat as tightly as I could manage. His friends were soon upon me and I caught a few solid blows to the head before I was on the ground. They kicked and punched and spat and I bled on the wet cobbled stones. They went back inside the pub and left me lying, coughing in the rain.

 

It felt as if everything was conspiring to deny me of even my simplest pleasures. To try and shake the feeling of defeat I lit another cigarette and held it up in defiance as I lay on the ground. I tried to enjoy it, but the smoke seeped into the cuts in my mouth stinging them harshly, and the filter was quickly covered in blood. It was no good. I flicked it away.

 

The door opened, and two or three people walked past me, muttering their disdain. They thought I was passed out drunk.

 

After some time I turned onto my back to look at the stars. The trees were buckling under the weight of the rain and they leaned in to finger the air above me, obstructing my view, as the dim orange lights on the pub wall polluted the sky. I couldn't see any stars.

 

I stood up, wiped my bloody mouth and nose with my sleeve, and walked back into the pub. Almost everyone had left. Emily and all her friends had gone. Only a few old men remained in quiet corners, with nothing to go home to but memories and regrets and photographs of their dead wives.

 

Stacy was talking to the barmaid. She rushed over when she saw my face, and I batted her hands away and asked her to leave me alone.

 

I sat at the bar and ordered a drink. My head throbbed and my ribs ached. I felt pathetic.

 

I stayed in the pub until it closed and got drunk enough so the thought of going home with Stacy no longer made me want to cry.

[dusqi]

I enjoyed the descriptions which were certainly vivid and engrossing.

 

 

 

 

 

I find it inconsistent that Stacy apparently cares about the protagonist, yet did not go to find him even though he was apparently outside for quite a while as almost the whole bar emptied. Perhaps she does not care about him as much as he thinks? Assuming this wasn't your intention, my point is not that the inconsistency troubles me, but that from my limited experience of the few books we analysed in class, the top top books don't just tell you something, they show you it so that you end up thinking it without realising where you even got the idea from. If you were trying to demonstrate that Stacy is just as rootless as the narrator and no one really cares about anyone, then that would be a lovely way to do it.

[Lateralus]

I enjoyed the descriptions which were certainly vivid and engrossing.

 

 

 

 

 

I find it inconsistent that Stacy apparently cares about the narrator, yet did not go to find him even though he was apparently outside for quite a while as almost the whole bar emptied. Perhaps she does not care about him as much as he thinks? Assuming this wasn't your intention, my point is not that the inconsistency troubles me, but that from my limited experience of the few books we analysed in class, the top top books don't just tell you something, they show you it so that you end up thinking it without realising where you even got the idea from. If you were trying to demonstrate that Stacy is just as rootless as the narrator and no one really cares about anyone, then that would be a lovely way to do it.

 

 

 

It's a combination of demonstrating a point and reality, I suppose. It's easy to lose track of where someone is, whether the distraction is someone else, something else or yourself. I can't tell you how many times I've gone to a bar or a party with a group of people and not noticed that one of them has left.

 

 

 

It's also relevant that Stacy looks after the narrator but doesn't and can't (won't?) always protect and nurse him.

 

 

 

I do know what you mean though, the inconsistency troubled me too, and it's one of the things that I think I'll revise.

 

 

 

Thanks for reading anyway. Always nice to hear from you.

[i_love_burritos]

It's funny seeing your name in green.

 

 

 

 

 

 

:lol:

 

 

 

As for the story, it got so depressingly depressing in the middle I wanted to just stop reading.

 

At first it was nothing more than a collection of boohoo my life sucks. But the ending was better.