Taliesin
09-01-2006, 10:47 AM
Well, We participated in the short story competition this time. (we did participate in June elimination too (with a story called "Songs after Summer") but didn't post it last time to this section.)
Any comments would be welcome, since we think of participating in October elimination too (and if there is a contest next year, then in that too) and would like to know what to improve and work on.
The story is here:
Evolution
They buried the snowman into my back yard.
It struck me as peculiar but harmless at first. I had buried small dead animals when I was little and there actually were any small animals left in the world that were worth burying and that was logical – animals had human qualitites in my eyes back then thanks to the influences of fairy-tales and, at that, dead animals stink when left unburied, but burying snowmen! There are the kids for you! Snowmen were not alive, for heavens’ sake! (except in those stupid Disney cartoons and Coca-Cola adverts) They didn’t run or eat or anything and didn’t stink when they melted. They ended their existence on this planet up nicely and cleanly, without any agony, melting into water to be made again the next winter, but well, it was supposed to have the shape of a basic human being so perhaps they considered it alive and capable of dying.
It was the beginning of December when they buried it. You’d have to be an idiot or in real need to dig when the ground is frozen, and those kids were not stupid. They were not strong either and usually they detested physical work, but the grave of the snowman was a good yard deep (although I didn’t see it till the snowman was already covered with dirt). I think they had found a pickaxe from the materialized chaos that I unimaginatively call „the attic“. Lots of strange stuff in there.
The kids were strange too, so they fit right in. They were not mine. I was not married yet, although there were girls I had an eye to. My brother Silver was – had been. (it is so bloody hard too think of him in past. He still seems to be alive. Perhaps you really continue living through your children) He and his wife had also been the strange sort of people that I had trouble understanding, just like their children. „A few screws loose,“ some might say about him. I would say it too, out of the joking grudge that brothers sometimes have, but knew that he was all right in the head. He was just imaginative, dreamy, talented and difficult to understand. He himself wouldn’t say anything about that topic, just smoke his bloody stupid pipe, despite my hundreds of warnings about cancer (perhaps he was one of those who sensed their futures and didn’t want to be like the man in that joke who refuses his last cigar before hanging because he wants to quit smoking) and lazily indagate the texture of the sky.
Then, on one warm April night, there was a fire in that house in where he lived then and I now. The fire was small and it merely burnt down one room before the firefighters came. (I think that the kids called them; who else could have?) The room was the bedroom of my brother and his wife(now, what are the chances of a freak accident like that?). They had slept very heavily, in each others’ embrace and had burned to death. I didn’t live in that house, at the farm then. I was in the city, in the university, studying programming, but I came home as soon as i heard of it. (I finished the course through Internet and managed to graduate. The good thing with programming is that you can work at home and easily find a very well paying job) Darwin stopped believing in God when he saw an insect laying his eggs in another insect so that when they hatch, they could eat the host. I think that the fire had a similar result for me.
The kids had no living relative but me. My father and mother also died young (one might suspect a family curse) so I had to take care of them. They refused to move out of that house; it was like some shrine to them. I hated the place at first – its’ beauty had left with the death of my brother – but grudgingly I settled in and got used to it with the passing of time. I think that I was much more stricter than my brother had been with, but well, he had had eight years more experience than me in raising children. I comforted myself that I would probably learn it as I went along. They did a lot of strange things that I wouldn’t have imagined of, drew strange (and interesting) pictures and told tall tales and everything. I must admit that I was jealous of them for their imagination as I had also envied it in my brother. I probably even punished them for it.
Burying the snowman was one of the wierdest things they did. It was a bit hard to understand why they did it. (they wouldn’t answer, of course) Perhaps there was something Jungian (or Freudian, I was never very good in psychology) in there. Perhaps the snowman symbolized something bad and they wanted to get it out of their sight (on the other hand, why not destroy it then? Snowmen are not very hard to smash to pieces, as I remember from my childhood) Maybe they thought that my brother didn’t get a decent burial and wanted to do it themselves. But Silver had wanted cremation anyway.
The act was strange and it sunk to my mind like a hook sinks into the mouth of a fish. It pained me during my hibernative dreams during the winter (it managed to find a place between the everydayness mashed up with a mixer, brief erotica, horror-dreams of falling and being hunted and the happy fragments where Silver was still alive) It grew stronger through the time in an ominous crescendo, like an itch This kind of a tension usually needs a trigger. Mine didn’t. In one March morning, after I had taken the children to school, well, I just felt that this business was unfinished. I took a spade from the shed, searched for the burial site and, after finding it, I started digging.
I am not very sure what I had expected to find. Perhaps something alike some monster or even my brother, but, who are we kidding, being a believer in Enthropy, I just expected some little amount of remained snow at best and nothing at worst. Still, I had to get it off my mind.
What I hadn’t expected was a snow copy of myself. It was exactly like me, starting from the unkept ponytail to my ingrown fingernails. An exact copy and I could already see the barely noticable pinkening of skin in areas where some blood veins were visible on my body. The copy was naked, its’ eyes were covered with skin like those of newborn (unborn?) puppies and mice and it lacked a bit of colour but, still, finding a sleeping copy of yourself is so strange and syrreal that you don’t even worry but are just taken aback.
And then, with some strange foresight ability that I had probably inherited from some my forefather (because who was I to be given these powers out of blue) I knew. This creature would become more and more alive as spring nearened, more and more me. It would look like me and even be like me a bit. He would probably take my place and I would be forced to take the heavy blanket of earth and move into this grave of the snowman for long, long dreams.
If I had any sense at all I would crush this forming creature apart with my spade and make an end to the story. I raised my spade... and stopped, of course (as anyone can tell from those three dots) Destroying it so soon would be an irreversible action and I had been taught to think before making them. So, I pushed the spade into the ground, leaned on it and thought.
Melting snow fell on me like a vision. I went over the sleeping body of my twin with my eyes and then I saw. It wasn’t exactly like me. There was a touch of my brother in there and also some of my friends and my father and mother and grandparents and the kids themselves and...
This was an amalgam of the better sides of me and my brother and everyone. This was some creature free from my narrow-mindedness and jealousy, from the weeds that tied the feet of the hippies, from my brothers poor contact with reality, from the eternal curse of incapability of showing ones’ emotions and real beauty inside to other people that plagues all mankind. To make it short, this was a revolutionary.
I knew there could be blood in what he would do(although he probably wouldn’t want it. But revolutions always have blood in them). I was afraid that I wouldn’t be his last victim. He would have a vision and visionaries can be dangerous. Perhaps this was the new Stalin or Hitler the children had made out of snow. Perhaps I should myself try to live up to the standards of this creature and free the world from his dangerous ideas. I knew that giving up ones ambitions and dreams and hoping that ones children would achieve them were equalled to giving up, but when you really feel out of spark? Should I really destroy this new me, who I secretly knew was much better than the old one?
So, slowly I took my spade and started refilling the grave so that the creature inside could crawl out when the winter was really over and his transformation was completed. After that, I flattened the ground and shoved a bit of snow on it to cover up that I had been here. Then I went inside to make myself some tea. It made it sweet, with three sugars and went to finish a small program I was working at.
Evolution really isn’t so difficult at all.
Any comments would be welcome, since we think of participating in October elimination too (and if there is a contest next year, then in that too) and would like to know what to improve and work on.
The story is here:
Evolution
They buried the snowman into my back yard.
It struck me as peculiar but harmless at first. I had buried small dead animals when I was little and there actually were any small animals left in the world that were worth burying and that was logical – animals had human qualitites in my eyes back then thanks to the influences of fairy-tales and, at that, dead animals stink when left unburied, but burying snowmen! There are the kids for you! Snowmen were not alive, for heavens’ sake! (except in those stupid Disney cartoons and Coca-Cola adverts) They didn’t run or eat or anything and didn’t stink when they melted. They ended their existence on this planet up nicely and cleanly, without any agony, melting into water to be made again the next winter, but well, it was supposed to have the shape of a basic human being so perhaps they considered it alive and capable of dying.
It was the beginning of December when they buried it. You’d have to be an idiot or in real need to dig when the ground is frozen, and those kids were not stupid. They were not strong either and usually they detested physical work, but the grave of the snowman was a good yard deep (although I didn’t see it till the snowman was already covered with dirt). I think they had found a pickaxe from the materialized chaos that I unimaginatively call „the attic“. Lots of strange stuff in there.
The kids were strange too, so they fit right in. They were not mine. I was not married yet, although there were girls I had an eye to. My brother Silver was – had been. (it is so bloody hard too think of him in past. He still seems to be alive. Perhaps you really continue living through your children) He and his wife had also been the strange sort of people that I had trouble understanding, just like their children. „A few screws loose,“ some might say about him. I would say it too, out of the joking grudge that brothers sometimes have, but knew that he was all right in the head. He was just imaginative, dreamy, talented and difficult to understand. He himself wouldn’t say anything about that topic, just smoke his bloody stupid pipe, despite my hundreds of warnings about cancer (perhaps he was one of those who sensed their futures and didn’t want to be like the man in that joke who refuses his last cigar before hanging because he wants to quit smoking) and lazily indagate the texture of the sky.
Then, on one warm April night, there was a fire in that house in where he lived then and I now. The fire was small and it merely burnt down one room before the firefighters came. (I think that the kids called them; who else could have?) The room was the bedroom of my brother and his wife(now, what are the chances of a freak accident like that?). They had slept very heavily, in each others’ embrace and had burned to death. I didn’t live in that house, at the farm then. I was in the city, in the university, studying programming, but I came home as soon as i heard of it. (I finished the course through Internet and managed to graduate. The good thing with programming is that you can work at home and easily find a very well paying job) Darwin stopped believing in God when he saw an insect laying his eggs in another insect so that when they hatch, they could eat the host. I think that the fire had a similar result for me.
The kids had no living relative but me. My father and mother also died young (one might suspect a family curse) so I had to take care of them. They refused to move out of that house; it was like some shrine to them. I hated the place at first – its’ beauty had left with the death of my brother – but grudgingly I settled in and got used to it with the passing of time. I think that I was much more stricter than my brother had been with, but well, he had had eight years more experience than me in raising children. I comforted myself that I would probably learn it as I went along. They did a lot of strange things that I wouldn’t have imagined of, drew strange (and interesting) pictures and told tall tales and everything. I must admit that I was jealous of them for their imagination as I had also envied it in my brother. I probably even punished them for it.
Burying the snowman was one of the wierdest things they did. It was a bit hard to understand why they did it. (they wouldn’t answer, of course) Perhaps there was something Jungian (or Freudian, I was never very good in psychology) in there. Perhaps the snowman symbolized something bad and they wanted to get it out of their sight (on the other hand, why not destroy it then? Snowmen are not very hard to smash to pieces, as I remember from my childhood) Maybe they thought that my brother didn’t get a decent burial and wanted to do it themselves. But Silver had wanted cremation anyway.
The act was strange and it sunk to my mind like a hook sinks into the mouth of a fish. It pained me during my hibernative dreams during the winter (it managed to find a place between the everydayness mashed up with a mixer, brief erotica, horror-dreams of falling and being hunted and the happy fragments where Silver was still alive) It grew stronger through the time in an ominous crescendo, like an itch This kind of a tension usually needs a trigger. Mine didn’t. In one March morning, after I had taken the children to school, well, I just felt that this business was unfinished. I took a spade from the shed, searched for the burial site and, after finding it, I started digging.
I am not very sure what I had expected to find. Perhaps something alike some monster or even my brother, but, who are we kidding, being a believer in Enthropy, I just expected some little amount of remained snow at best and nothing at worst. Still, I had to get it off my mind.
What I hadn’t expected was a snow copy of myself. It was exactly like me, starting from the unkept ponytail to my ingrown fingernails. An exact copy and I could already see the barely noticable pinkening of skin in areas where some blood veins were visible on my body. The copy was naked, its’ eyes were covered with skin like those of newborn (unborn?) puppies and mice and it lacked a bit of colour but, still, finding a sleeping copy of yourself is so strange and syrreal that you don’t even worry but are just taken aback.
And then, with some strange foresight ability that I had probably inherited from some my forefather (because who was I to be given these powers out of blue) I knew. This creature would become more and more alive as spring nearened, more and more me. It would look like me and even be like me a bit. He would probably take my place and I would be forced to take the heavy blanket of earth and move into this grave of the snowman for long, long dreams.
If I had any sense at all I would crush this forming creature apart with my spade and make an end to the story. I raised my spade... and stopped, of course (as anyone can tell from those three dots) Destroying it so soon would be an irreversible action and I had been taught to think before making them. So, I pushed the spade into the ground, leaned on it and thought.
Melting snow fell on me like a vision. I went over the sleeping body of my twin with my eyes and then I saw. It wasn’t exactly like me. There was a touch of my brother in there and also some of my friends and my father and mother and grandparents and the kids themselves and...
This was an amalgam of the better sides of me and my brother and everyone. This was some creature free from my narrow-mindedness and jealousy, from the weeds that tied the feet of the hippies, from my brothers poor contact with reality, from the eternal curse of incapability of showing ones’ emotions and real beauty inside to other people that plagues all mankind. To make it short, this was a revolutionary.
I knew there could be blood in what he would do(although he probably wouldn’t want it. But revolutions always have blood in them). I was afraid that I wouldn’t be his last victim. He would have a vision and visionaries can be dangerous. Perhaps this was the new Stalin or Hitler the children had made out of snow. Perhaps I should myself try to live up to the standards of this creature and free the world from his dangerous ideas. I knew that giving up ones ambitions and dreams and hoping that ones children would achieve them were equalled to giving up, but when you really feel out of spark? Should I really destroy this new me, who I secretly knew was much better than the old one?
So, slowly I took my spade and started refilling the grave so that the creature inside could crawl out when the winter was really over and his transformation was completed. After that, I flattened the ground and shoved a bit of snow on it to cover up that I had been here. Then I went inside to make myself some tea. It made it sweet, with three sugars and went to finish a small program I was working at.
Evolution really isn’t so difficult at all.