PDA

View Full Version : unfinished



kelby_lake
07-28-2008, 10:36 AM
He was on the 12:15 train to Berlin, having left everything in London save for a good amount of money and some clothes, books, and the volume of poetry he was currently trying to write. Alex's German was...acceptable. Not fluent by any means but he was sure he could muddle along.
What had prompted this sudden decision to up sticks to Berlin? It was a nervous breakdown, of sorts. He was inundated with forms and emails in his horrible paper-pushing job, it had driven him to alcohol, and the news that amongst all this chaos he had managed to impregnate his wife was just too much. Alex had confined himself to his room and refused to talk to anyone, believing that they would only add more problems. One day he became so drunk that he knocked over a filled wine cabinet and fell onto the broken bottles. Alex's memory of this event was blurry and warped- all he really remembered was lying amongst the broken bottles hitting his limbs against them in the hope that the blood loss would kill him.
After that awful event, he scribbled a note to his wife and left, before a wish to die became a considered suicide attempt.

But that was the past now and Alex wanted to escape that. Initially he had planned to go to Cornwall but he changed his mind and decided that leaving for a foreign country- Berlin, the birthplace of his grandfather- would be best.

The train was dull, grey, and horribly slow, but at least it was cheap. No one on the train appeared to be English

DickZ
07-28-2008, 11:12 AM
Well, I hope you keep going. It's a good start and you should continue. Too many writers here seem to start stories and never finish them.

Is the term "to up sticks to xxx" a uniquely British term? I never heard it over here in the USA, although I was able to figure out its meaning eventually.

kelby_lake
07-28-2008, 12:38 PM
I think it's just British. Basically, as you probably worked out, it means re-starting your entire life somewhere else.

blazeofglory
09-14-2008, 09:27 PM
Keep going