Alrighty folks! Seeing as how the Original Works section hasn’t been getting much love since I’ve created it (oops), I’m here to fix that with the fruits of my procrastination on the next part of the Revealing Eden review. And seeing as how II is pretty big on the criticism thing, I think it will be fun to give everyone something completely new to chew on.
So have at it! This is, of course, a first draft.
—
You never know when he will come. He’s silent like that lonely night his screams rose louder than the rush of flame devouring your secret world. He’s fickle like the winds that blow when no one else is around. Just you and him. But you had left.
He had always been a strange one. Talked of spells and magic like they were real. You thought he was just pulling everyone’s leg, thought it was a joke he played on everyone to get their attention. You were wrong, and you were right, but mostly wrong.
The only reason you befriended him was to get your mother off your back. She’d been pushing you to make new friends, be less “aloof”, go over to other children’s houses for play dates. You didn’t want to make new friends. You were still mad and sad and lost about the moving and leaving and no more visiting. But your mother was persistent, and you finally got fed up with her pestering and guilting and worrying, and so you told her you were friends with him because your mother always said that the people with the fewest friends needed friends the most and he had none.
And then your mom called his mom up to invite him over, or tried to because he had no mom. He had no dad either. Just a great uncle once removed, and the best thing your mom who always had something nice to say about people could say was that his great uncle once removed was very “eccentric”. She invited them both to dinner anyway.
His great uncle refused. Said your house was full of fakes. Your mom didn’t like that. Said you should be extra nice to him and his great uncle just because. She never explained why even though you asked. Just told you to be nice (or else).
He came up to you the next day at school and started talking at you about magic and spells like you’d been best friends forever and you believed in that stuff too. You didn’t really believe it, not just yet. But you pretended to.
You started going over to his house some days after school. Met his great uncle once removed whom he called Grunkle (like the creatures that protected people’s lawns, only not as bitey). Grunkle took a liking to you, gave you molasses cookies he baked himself and listened to your every word like you were an important adult. Sometimes told you about the battles he fought against monsters that drained people’s blood to take showers in and creatures that peeled off toenails to snack on them like chips. He always won and lost, won and lost, he said. Won the battle, lost his friends. Won the war, lost everything else.
Can’t win without losing something, Grunkle would say before he’d go quiet and stay quiet for the rest of your visit.
You asked your mom once about Grunkle and his stories. She got mad. Said that it wasn’t right for people to be telling children such horrible things. Got on the phone and yelled at Grunkle for a long time. Grunkle never told any more stories after that.
Even so, most days after school now you’d go and visit Grunkle and him and go on adventures in the woods behind his house. Some of them were even real adventures, like when you went to slay the snapping dragon and found it too pretty to hack to bits. One day, a Monday, he dragged you all the way to his house because Grunkle had made the greatest secret ever just for the two of you and he couldn’t wait to share it. It was a tree house perched above the snapping dragon’s den and he’d already filled it with crumbling pillows and tattered blankets and candles and cards.
He said it was your magic place, the strongest, most magical place in the whole wide world, and that anything either of you wished for in that place would come true (if you cast the spell right). You didn’t really believe it, not just yet. But you wanted to.
The first spell you cast together was The Spell of Eternal Friendship. Eight candles lit in a figure eight, and you sat facing the other in the opposite loop, left hand holding left, right hand holding right, hands crossing at the center. You asked him if the spell was really needed. He told you of course, and then you both recited the vow to remain friends for all eternity, no matter what. And that was it. The spell was complete, and your souls were bound together forever he said with a gap-toothed grin. Then you blew out the candles and went back to the house for molasses cookies and milk and to tell Grunkle about the success of the spell.
And the spell seemed to work perfectly, for a time. You were the best of friends all through the rest of grade school (which was only a year) and almost all the way through middle school. It was the summer before eighth grade that the things people had been saying about him for years finally got to you because they got to your mother first, and she was worrying and guilting and worrying and fretting about his unhealthy obsession with fantasy and magic. And as much as you wanted to believe in his magic and spells and his fantastic creatures and adventures, you knew those were things only little kids believed in, and you weren’t a little kid anymore. And neither was he.
You tried to explain this to him the one evening you snuck away to meet him, tried to explain that it was why your mother wouldn’t let you visit anymore. He refused to listen. You tried to get him to be serious about things for once, and he got angry. You got angrier. You were the one risking a whole year’s grounding, and he didn’t even care. It was your first real argument, and by the end of it, as far as you were concerned, you were no longer friends.
Your mom was waiting for you when you snuck back home and grounded you for the rest of the summer. And he never called. So when school started and he tried to talk to you, you ignored him and kept ignoring him, and suddenly you were part of the popular crowd and everyone wanted to be you. It was easy to forget him in all the attention your new friends brought to and demanded of you, and you had almost forgotten about him entirely when you heard about the fire in the woods behind his house and knew, just knew, that he’d been trying to cast a spell to bring your friendship back, only it had gone horribly, horribly wrong.
You don’t remember much after that, except for things falling apart. And they kept falling apart all the way through junior year when your mother finally married the reason your dad attempted murder.
The first time he came, you were out camping with your stepdad who insisted you call him “Dad” with what you were sure was a capital “D”. You hated it, hated him, and hated your mom for marrying again and for marrying him. You hated pretty much everything, including yourself. You could almost even hate him. Almost.
So when he appeared in the embers of your campfire, you threw a log at him.
He looked hurt, almost offended, and you were immediately sorry, but it was too late because he was gone, and you weren’t sure anymore if you’d just imagined him or not. You wanted it to have been real, more than you’d wanted anything else before, even as every iota of reason informed you that of course you’d imagined it because dead people simply do not appear in campfire embers, it’s just your brain seeing familiar forms where there are none. And so you kept it to yourself, a precious secret, and endured the rest of that horrid camping trip.
You never did take to calling your stepfather “Dad”.
The second time he came was Grunkle’s funeral. You’d taken to visiting after the fire and never stopped, and pretty soon you’d all-but moved in because your stepfather had all-but moved you out. But Grunkle was old and old people die and that’s what Grunkle did the year before you graduated. Before he did, he gave you the house and everything else because blood wasn’t the only thing that made family and the only other blood he had was a great niece and nephew he never saw. So you sat there in the family pew at the front of the church alone and staring at the box that held your now decaying Grunkle, and then you saw him in the candle flames ringing the casket looking sadder than you and happier too in a way that made no perfect sense. But then you were feeling sadhappy too and pretty soon you started laughing, laughing, laughing and your mother lead you out of the church because you couldn’t see from all the tears.
People began wondering if you’d turned out like Grunkle and him after that.
But you didn’t care and went on with your life, though you took to keeping candles lit in every room just in case, and it paid off because he came again and again, though you never knew when he would come.
He was fickle, fickle, fickle like the wind that no one else heard, but he’d always come when you needed him most, even when you didn’t know you most needed him then. Until one day he stopped coming and never came again. No matter how you cried for him, no matter how you called, cajoled, or prayed. He never came again.
And though you cared, you still went on with your life, though you never stopped keeping those candles lit even though people always shook their heads and warned you about how dangerous they were. It was always worth the risk. Always. Even now, with the flames dripping down around your head as the ceiling caves in.
You almost made it to the staircase. Almost. But you’d inhaled too much smoke while you were asleep, and now all you can do is choke and cry and fail to crawl. But it doesn’t matter because in a moment a beam comes crashing down from the ceiling and blocks the stairs. The heat of it sears your eyebrows away, but there’s nothing you can do except lie there and bury your face in your arms as the house burns apart around you. Soon what’s left of your hair and your clothes are aflame and you can’t even scream, can only squint through too-dry eyes at all the light. And then you see him standing right in front of you, in the embers of your life.
He looks straight at you and smiles.
Finn on 24 October 2012, 13:01 said:
:O Wow! That was really good! And in second-person, too :)
There are some run-on sentences, though, and I’m not sure if they’re on purpose or not. But still, It’s very good. I like it :)
Oculus_Reparo on 24 October 2012, 15:59 said:
It’s got a creepy, haunting quality that kinda stays with you. Well done!
I don’t know if you mean to expand it at all, but I do find myself wondering about the characters; I’d be interested to know, for instance, maybe a few more hints about “him” and Grunkle’s backstory—or even the main character as well.
Danielle on 24 October 2012, 20:37 said:
Wow.
I loved it.
I had to keep reading until the end—and that hardly ever happens to me with short stories.
I loved the creepiness of it, and I thought the second-person narrative made it even creepier.
The only real criticism I have is that parts of it were somewhat confusing. Like when the boy accidentally starts the fire—does he die, or does he vanish for fear of being charged with arson? When the narrator sees “him” in the campfire, is it the boy, or is it Grunkle?
Tim on 24 October 2012, 22:44 said:
Um, what boy? It was Grunkle who set the fire, he was trying to do another ritual and burned himself to death.
Danielle on 24 October 2012, 23:19 said:
That boy. The one the narrator abandoned….
….who tried to (literally) rekindle the friendship….
….and appeared to the narrator at Grunkle’s funeral, which happened some time after the fire….
….the one that the whole story was about.
Tim on 25 October 2012, 00:25 said:
Hm. There’s a lot of ambiguity in the wording there and I assumed “he” was generally Grunkle rather than the boy, especially since I scanned and missed enough “he” to think it was about “you” befriending a lonely old man rather than a rather undefined boy. Something harmless but the guy’s creepy enough that people would automatically assume the worst.
Tim on 25 October 2012, 03:03 said:
Just to go through more thoroughly now I’m home and not working from reading it right before bed.
First thing is the beginning “You never know when he will come” doesn’t really agree with the ending, where there isn’t really going to be any more time for him to be coming in.
Second thing is this stands out as odd:
You’ve got three three-pointed statements there in a very short space and I can’t really see why. Also can’t see where “worrying” would come into it when she’s trying to convince her daughter or son to befriend someone.
Third point is that as noted above, Grunkle and the boy are very hard to tell apart (particularly since the boy is only “he” and sometimes Grunkle is the “he” being talked about) and it would probably work better if there was just one of them, since they’re basically the same character at two different ages. I personally think it works better as a kid befriending a lonely, strange old man, thinking she or he has grown past him and regretting it when it’s too late to change anything (but it isn’t).
Just as an example of a place where it’s confusing:
I read that as imitating the old man’s way of talking (that he said something like “Old Grunkle’s made the greatest secret ever just for the two of us”) rather than being about another person. Now I’m reading it more carefully I can kind of see it, but it still flows better the way I originally saw it.
Fourth, for some reason the reference to being “part of the popular crowd” makes me explicitly picture “you” as a girl, which actually works fairly well with my misreading. It makes sense that mom is getting skeeved at her daughter hanging around with a creepy old man and talk of spells and rituals, even though it’s actually essentially harmless.
Fifth:
I don’t really understand why that’s casually thrown in there and not elaborated on; who did the character’s father attempt to murder and when? I’d think that would be some factor in all of this.
Kyllorac on 25 October 2012, 13:27 said:
They were.
Not really.
About the ambiguity in general: It’s mostly deliberate, especially the specifics of certain events, since I wrote this story using an unreliable narrator. The Grunkle/boy confusion was not intended, but I’m actually quite liking the dimension it adds.
I read/wrote it more as “even though you’re dying and hoping he’ll come, you don’t know for sure he will”.
The first two three-pointed statements deal with the rough when of the murder attempt and how you felt about it. The who was the man you’s mother married, i.e. you’s stepfather. The why is alluded to with Grunkle’s refusal to come over for dinner (house full of fakes). Basically, you’s mother cheated on you’s father with the man who later became you’s stepfather. It’s also one of the reasons why you and you’s stepfather don’t get along, and why you resents you’s mother.
The third was there for repetition and to be echoed later on.
Because most mothers I know worry like crazy when their children have trouble making friends, especially if their child doesn’t want to make friends.
Tim on 25 October 2012, 18:00 said:
Hm…I don’t really get that, it just comes across as a messy divorce where the kid’s been told they can’t see their father anymore, and the presentation makes it seem like the father attempted murder some time around when it’s mentioned, not that he did it right back before the events of the story. Either mentioning he’s in prison or dropping the murder part (since right now it doesn’t really do anything anyway) would probably fix it, right now it’s just kind of a “huh, when did that happen?” thing.
NeuroticPlatypus on 25 October 2012, 23:20 said:
I would agree with this. I didn’t make any connection to the beginning when I read the murder part. I thought that the attempted murder would come up again and play a bigger part in the story, but it didn’t. I didn’t think divorce during the first part, though. I guess it does make sense, though, rereading that part (divorce, I mean). I think that the stepdad existing and not getting along with you is fine, though.
I really enjoyed the story overall. It has a ghost story quality to it. It reminds me a bit of this book Surrender, just a quality it has.
Anyway, I also agree to an extent about not needing both him and Grunkle. If you only kept one, then I would keep Grunkle. I think that it could work with both of them, but right now they do seem to serve the same purpose. I also did not realize that the fire had killed “him” until you said that dead people don’t appear in campfire embers. It seems like I should have realized he died right when the fire was mentioned.
I can definitely see this and did not have a problem with the worrying mother. I also never thought “you” were a girl. I thought you were supposed to be a boy (it’s really weird writing about characters with no names, even though I like that they don’t have names). And I think that the second-person worked nicely here.
Pryotra on 26 October 2012, 11:34 said:
This is probably the best use of second person that I’ve seen in a very long time. It had a nice haunting quality that held until the end. I like the fact that the reader is never completely sure of what their seeing is magic or not and, after a while, it doesn’t seem to matter anymore.
I would agree with Tim about the murder thing. It seems a little vague, and maybe unnecessary for the story. It’s a little distracting.
I also like the fact that the candles in the Eternal Friendship spell play into the fact that that ‘he’ always appears in the fire yet it keeps a kind of ambiguity.
I’d say it’s a good Halloween story.
RandomX2 on 26 October 2012, 23:12 said:
I liked the writing style.
Works fine for me, honestly.
The murder part read well for me. I didn’t necessarily think the narrator’s mom cheated on the father (leading the father to want to kill the stepfather), but I got the gist of it. If anything, this line:
… confused me. It feels like a disconnected sentence and caused me to stop reading the story. I decided to continue because Danielle mentioned that she had to keep reading, so I figured it got better.
It was definitely interesting enough to make me want to keep reading, so nice job!
Kyllorac on 28 October 2012, 00:24 said:
Apparently my email alerts for II are broken, and so I had no idea more people commented until just now. D:
So, I’ll be killing the murder and replacing it with divorce, but I’ll be keeping Grunkle and him as they are because I really do like the confusion they generate in both you and the reader, and I think it acts as another clue for the unreliability of the narrator.
I’m also really happy that the use of second-person has gone over so well. It’s actually one of my favorite persons to write in, and it’s woefully under-appreciated and -utilized. Probably because it’s so painful to read when used badly.
That. Sentence. And the next one. They both drive me up the wall. But it wouldn’t be a first draft if I went and polished it, now would it. >.>
I’ve been poking at those sentences in the revision though.