shiftlet
03-01-2011, 06:12 PM
Hey, everybody. I lurked a bit and, yeah, there are some great writers on this forum. I'm not so confident in my storytelling ability, and I'd rather distribute my work anonymously than have friends read it. Anyway, I'm not just gonna forum-leech; I'ma offer feedback too, I promise. So, if its awful, be vicious. If it's good, I'll post the rest. Here goes:
Andrea ruminated on the concept of a window in a barn, muttering to herself, groggy from not having been to sleep, having depleted her adrenal gland, and having sprinted uphill for a mile. She stared at it, trying to avoid staring out of it. Inevitably, her attention wandered outside. The wind had blown over the shovel that had been leaning against the edge of the farmhouse. Question-and-answer crow caws split the morning. The hay shimmered with dew, twinkling like ghost-lights at random locations and frequency through the fog. All of these details were very important to Andy, but she shook her head and focused, hell-bent on considering the window. Bungled blueprints, she thought. Emergency exit? Secret entrance? A peephole for voyeur farmers? An outlet for exhibitionist grain? Aeration? Probably aeration. Andy mumbled some more and mused into the neck of the wine bottle. So, why no glass in the window, Andy? Why a window in and only in the hayloft? A wisp of air crept in through the aperture, tousled her hair and patted her on the cheek. She sneered at it and it recoiled, loitering around the inside of the window, but keeping at a distance. From her seat on the fodder, among the spiders and stinkbugs and centipedes and mice, she could see for miles, or, rather, she would have been able to had the fog not been so thick. Despite it though, she could pinpoint the location of the bridge, so high was her position, so low was the river that the bridge spanned, so branded was the keening in her memory. It resonated in the back of her mind. If pressed to describe it, say under torture, she’d have mumbled the word “arresting” and have gone mute. Keening, with all of its deathly, unseelie connotations, was the only word she could use to describe the sensation, but it was completely inaccurate. She fixed a bead from her eyes onto the bridge, but her vision blurred and betrayed her. Seven in the morning, and Andy was ****-faced.
Dewy morning mingled with crabapple pulp and leaves and true apples and acorns and propellers, all sorts of autumn windfall, into November slurry that littered the grounds. The aroma of sweet-rot was rushed into the barn by the fall breeze. Andy was rapt; it displaced her senses and stupefied her. She closed her eyes and there was nothing behind them, not darkness, none of the amoeba-pulses of pastel the usually moved behind her eyelids, only the scent of dying woods that coursed through her respiratory system. Inhaling more deeply was the only muscle movement that she could make. Her digestion was halted. She knew that her heart was beating, but she couldn’t feel it doing so. The scent had numbed her limbs so that it was inconceivable to her that she possessed a body. No more was the unraveling hay clawing at her calves. The crows asked and answered noiselessly. Neither the bridge nor the keening existed.
Then, as quickly as it had rushed in, autumn flicked her on the nose and hightailed it out whence it entered, leaving in the wreckage a thoroughly exhausted, thoroughly needy husk of Andy. The itch of thirsty provender again cut into her legs. She tore back at it with nail-biter fingers and rubbed the discomfort away. As she couched back into a haystack, a maddening crow, again, shattered her brief tranquility. She glowered hard at it with her restored vision, sighed, and lit a cigarette. Two figures were rushing up the hill toward her, rendered obfusc by the fog, rendered doubly obfusc by the cigarette vapor, rendered triply obfusc by her intoxication, and rendered quadruply obfusc by distance; Andy however recognized Richard and Amy’s respective gaits and could tell that they were arguing, probably, she guessed, about whether she was or whether she wasn’t hiding in a hayloft atop a very steep, very muddy hill at seven A.M., when most reasonable people were at work or asleep. Andy flashed an uneasy grin toward no one and crawled into the darkest corner of the loft, cigarette dangling precariously from her mouth over the hills and troughs of fodder ready to be set alight.
Andy cowered, her simian face buried in her knees, smoking through an seam between her legs, nervously nitpicking at the hay beneath her. Amy could be heard sniffing outside. There was a farmhound somewhere, Andy knew, and she willed it to come in vain. The barn door creaked open, but not slowly enough, not deliberately enough to save the cowbell hanging above from clanging. Andy arched her shoulders at the sound, hid deeper into her knees, and exhaled smoke into her thighs.
Andrea ruminated on the concept of a window in a barn, muttering to herself, groggy from not having been to sleep, having depleted her adrenal gland, and having sprinted uphill for a mile. She stared at it, trying to avoid staring out of it. Inevitably, her attention wandered outside. The wind had blown over the shovel that had been leaning against the edge of the farmhouse. Question-and-answer crow caws split the morning. The hay shimmered with dew, twinkling like ghost-lights at random locations and frequency through the fog. All of these details were very important to Andy, but she shook her head and focused, hell-bent on considering the window. Bungled blueprints, she thought. Emergency exit? Secret entrance? A peephole for voyeur farmers? An outlet for exhibitionist grain? Aeration? Probably aeration. Andy mumbled some more and mused into the neck of the wine bottle. So, why no glass in the window, Andy? Why a window in and only in the hayloft? A wisp of air crept in through the aperture, tousled her hair and patted her on the cheek. She sneered at it and it recoiled, loitering around the inside of the window, but keeping at a distance. From her seat on the fodder, among the spiders and stinkbugs and centipedes and mice, she could see for miles, or, rather, she would have been able to had the fog not been so thick. Despite it though, she could pinpoint the location of the bridge, so high was her position, so low was the river that the bridge spanned, so branded was the keening in her memory. It resonated in the back of her mind. If pressed to describe it, say under torture, she’d have mumbled the word “arresting” and have gone mute. Keening, with all of its deathly, unseelie connotations, was the only word she could use to describe the sensation, but it was completely inaccurate. She fixed a bead from her eyes onto the bridge, but her vision blurred and betrayed her. Seven in the morning, and Andy was ****-faced.
Dewy morning mingled with crabapple pulp and leaves and true apples and acorns and propellers, all sorts of autumn windfall, into November slurry that littered the grounds. The aroma of sweet-rot was rushed into the barn by the fall breeze. Andy was rapt; it displaced her senses and stupefied her. She closed her eyes and there was nothing behind them, not darkness, none of the amoeba-pulses of pastel the usually moved behind her eyelids, only the scent of dying woods that coursed through her respiratory system. Inhaling more deeply was the only muscle movement that she could make. Her digestion was halted. She knew that her heart was beating, but she couldn’t feel it doing so. The scent had numbed her limbs so that it was inconceivable to her that she possessed a body. No more was the unraveling hay clawing at her calves. The crows asked and answered noiselessly. Neither the bridge nor the keening existed.
Then, as quickly as it had rushed in, autumn flicked her on the nose and hightailed it out whence it entered, leaving in the wreckage a thoroughly exhausted, thoroughly needy husk of Andy. The itch of thirsty provender again cut into her legs. She tore back at it with nail-biter fingers and rubbed the discomfort away. As she couched back into a haystack, a maddening crow, again, shattered her brief tranquility. She glowered hard at it with her restored vision, sighed, and lit a cigarette. Two figures were rushing up the hill toward her, rendered obfusc by the fog, rendered doubly obfusc by the cigarette vapor, rendered triply obfusc by her intoxication, and rendered quadruply obfusc by distance; Andy however recognized Richard and Amy’s respective gaits and could tell that they were arguing, probably, she guessed, about whether she was or whether she wasn’t hiding in a hayloft atop a very steep, very muddy hill at seven A.M., when most reasonable people were at work or asleep. Andy flashed an uneasy grin toward no one and crawled into the darkest corner of the loft, cigarette dangling precariously from her mouth over the hills and troughs of fodder ready to be set alight.
Andy cowered, her simian face buried in her knees, smoking through an seam between her legs, nervously nitpicking at the hay beneath her. Amy could be heard sniffing outside. There was a farmhound somewhere, Andy knew, and she willed it to come in vain. The barn door creaked open, but not slowly enough, not deliberately enough to save the cowbell hanging above from clanging. Andy arched her shoulders at the sound, hid deeper into her knees, and exhaled smoke into her thighs.