Revised Version of My Workshop Story

I'm sure I mentioned somewhere that I was at Brain Master's 2007 Creative Writing Workshop (I Wrote. I Learned. I BELONGED.), and wrote a story during the 'write-in' portion of the workshop. It didn't exactly receive rave reviews. Actually, the only real compliment I got was that my writing, at the very least the spacing, was pretty.

Basically the story was my experiment in fusing poetry and the short story together...not a narrative poem, but a poetic narrative. Unfortunately...I went overboard.

So, to redeem myself, I spent the better half of the Monday after the workshop scribbling in my notebook (Corona, 100 sheets, 178 by 254 MM), revising the original draft. And I think it turned out pretty decent.

So...here I go...

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Porcelain

Blue...

An endless circle of sapphire that flashed and faded as I watched, horrified. I watched as that blue bled into ivory, infecting white, which was not supposed to be. I panicked, my hands busy shaking as the blue kept spreading.

White turned to ash gray. I knelt, knees digging into the sand as I frantically scrambled to revive, to shake, to grasp. Still, the blue kept spreading, through veins and lines like the slow spreading of ink. I did not give up hope.

In hindsight, maybe I should have.

The sky was darkening, it was becoming harder to see. My body felt slick with sweat. Everything was conspiring to make me uncomfortable, but I did not care. I did not mind my eyes straining. I focused on what I was doing, my hands beginning to numb with fear rather than with cold from the harsh wind that suddenly started blowing. However, despite my frantic physical actions, my mind was...somewhere else. Though my hands were moving and shaking,I was not...there. I couldn't feel, only see.

In the distance, there was a repetitive crashing that echoed in my ears as my heart beat, panicked. I watched my hands frantically pressing down, shaking, rubbing, clasping, but everything I held vaguely felt like melting ice, cold and slipping through my fingers. I was scared.

No, worse than scared. I was terrified.

My eyes were beginning to flood with desperate tears. The light kept fading, I could barely see. The tears and the dimness seemed to conspire to block my vision. I hastily blinked those tears away so I could see. It was so quiet...only that crashing noise in the distance. I let out an anguished scream.

I have no idea how I noticed so much at that time. It was like I couldn't turn my sensors off. I was focused, but also a bit distracted. I know that sounds hard to understand, but that's the only way I can explain it.

A part of me didn't really know where that scream came from. I'm not the screaming type...and at that point I was frighteningly detached from the situation.

A steady rhythm: in-out, up-down, in-out...growing fainter with each second. Those seconds ticked by and the situation grew more and more grim. I can't quit now! I thought, but by then I wasn't really rational. Any fool could see it was already too late. Yet I kept trying...kept trying to save...this situation had to have some shred of hope. I looked at what my hands were scrambling over. The blue was spreading, leaking into places once roses.

All the color was fading, yet I found it strangely beautiful. It was disturbing...I felt some sort of insanity rising within me. That made me even more scared. This was no time to lose my mind! How could I find this moment...beautiful?

The...the thing (it barely registered in my mind what it was or what it used to be), the broken doll in my hands felt like marble, like glass. The blue was spreading everywhere, like a mold. My hands were numb from the temperature of the water-yes, water-and the fact that fear had sucked all the blood out of my fingers.

Even they were shot through with cold, hard blue.

The sun was setting, cutting the sky into strips of warm color. The rosy light almost fooled me into thinking the blue was gone. But even my tired eyes could see that it was still there. My hands kept moving, my voice hoarse from the cry I kept repeating, over and over. Somewhere, I knew I was simply prolonging agony. The inner rhythm I once felt with each movement of my hands had long since faded.

I took a deep breath and let my hands fall. My fingers twitched as if on instinct, as if still grasping out to push the blue back to where it belonged. My knees hurt as I made to stand up, but I couldn't. I collapsed on the sand and tried to cry.

But I could only laugh, a madwoman's laugh. Tears were streaming down my face as my wail-like laugh echoed to the sky. My hands were sore, numb. My heart felt more than numb...it felt like stone.

I lay there, laughing as the sky began to turn blue, the blue of late afternoon. The sunset sank lower and lower, the pinks and yellows following. Sea birds flew above...and a flash of green threw itself across the sky.

And I was plunged into darkness. Against the sky I saw only the dim blue. I remembered, practically saw it creep across fading white. The final flash (like a camera) that meant the end. I laughed and cried as I remembered, I remembered...

The overwhelming beauty of my sister's cold face when she died.

Fin

---000---

Okay, I'm hoping that was less poetic than the first draft. Currently am at work on another short story so I can relax from the full-time project. Actually, I'm pretty cranky at this point, working on a story called "Presumption" (Nothing to do with the very BAD Pride and Prejudice spin-off). I think it will be another one in the tales of my Holly Golightly-style character who keeps attracting unwanted attention.

I believe writers are sort of reclusive...and I think I have a bit of that reclusiveness.

...But then I contradict myself. If I was a recluse, would I have a blog? Probably not. Obviously this is why I named my blog 'Paradox Park' instead of its former name, 'Chiaroscuro'.

Writers are strange creatures, are we not?

~ Solan of Solea