Short Story / Going Nowhere (Analysis)
GOING NOWHERE
I always expected some kind of bright lights, at least. I always pictured a long stairwell rising into some sort of brilliant transcendence, and angels, I always pictured angels, dancing, maybe, but definitely beautiful, and heavenly.
But there wasn’t so much as a cloud. No harps. No music at all. Nothing.
I never thought the void was real but there it was, and there I was, a part of it, after everything I’ve said, seen and done, I was in the void. In the darkness. Alone.
It all happened so fast.
Just like that.
I closed my eyes in Methum, Virginia, and when I opened them I was somewhere I’d never been. I would have liked it to be slightly more inviting.
I enjoyed believing in angels all my life.
I knew right away that it wasn’t a dream. Trust me, you’ll know it, too. It was something much more inventive than a dream. It had more meaning. More truth.
I wasn’t happy, or sad, or even confused. I wasn’t angry, or hungry, or in pain. There was no body or form or skin to hide me. There was nothing, and I finally accepted what I knew all along, that it was all a game, that we’d all be back here when it was over.
I might have gone on drifting forever, existing in a state of eternal thought, or what I think was thought, I’m still not sure, if I didn’t hear a sudden voice of reason acknowledge my presence and bring me into a sort of pristine stage light.
Total darkness but then me up in lights.
“If it would make you more comfortable,” he said, somewhere in the distance where the light did not consume him, “I can make it easier on you.”
“I don’t understand,” I told him, or at least I think I told him, I never actually heard any words.
“Well that’s not true at all. I think you understand just fine.”
And there I was with my eyes, my hair, my skin and my bones. And with my eyes I saw him, the face behind the voice. The welcoming committee. The receptionist. There was something familiar about him. There was that sweet-stale nicotine scent right under my nose.
“Is that the best you can do?” he asked me.
“I…I don’t understand,” I said.
“Is that really how you want to remember yourself? I can still see the cancer in your eyes. The sickness in your skin. You can do better. I’m sure of it.”
“I can be younger?”
“There’s no such thing as age here, Marlon.”
“Marlon? My name’s not Marlon.”
“Yes it is. Now, try again.”
“Try what again?” I asked and suddenly I felt the change, the way the air or breath or death inside me was lifted and I was whole again, the way I was even before the Second World War.
“That’s better,” he told me. “Now, do me a favor, would you…change this scene for me. The darkness is starting to depress me.”
I couldn’t have done it. I didn’t think or twitch or breathe or try. It just happened. It was like a crazy magic act, all a grand illusion.
Suddenly we were fixed at the peak of a mountain near familiar skies I’d seen before. I was sure of it. And he was there with me in the light, close enough that I could make him out, his dark gray suit, his fine gentleman’s hat with polished white stripes around the rim.
He gazed at me knowingly. He enjoyed his upper hand.
“I know you!” I shouted.
“I would like to think we know each other rather well, actually. Don’t look so surprised.”
“So this is it?” I asked him as I looked out over the edge into a hazy backdrop that looked more like the corner of a colorful painting than a strangely real setting.
Nothing was clear.
“This is it,” he confirmed.
“Something’s missing. I’m not sure what it is, but I’m sure it’s missing. Something’s off.”
“Nothing’s missing.”
“Where’s Sarah?” I could forgive no angels in clouds or music through pearly gates. Fine. No imagery to relate to. But I wouldn’t let them keep me from Sarah. “Where is she?”
“You know where she is, Marlon.”
“Stop calling me that. You know that’s not my name. Tell me where she is. I want to know where she is.”
He just stared at me. His eyes were vague and impalpable. He lit a cigarette then let it hang from his thin lips but there was no smoke. No ashes.
“You know where she is, Marlon,” he repeated.
“I should be angry,” I said, more confused than confident.
I knew exactly where she was. Exactly where I left her. “I know I should be angry,” I said again, more confidence.
“Are you?”
“Am I what?”
He chuckled. “Angry,” he said.
I’m not a child.
“No,” I said. “I don’t think so.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t be,” he suggested. “You’re safe here.”
“Safe?”
“Aware,” he added.
“I want to go back to her.”
He pulled on his cigarette but emitted no smoke. “I’m sorry.”
I closed my eyes.
“Hello, Marlon,” she said.
She was suddenly standing right beside me.
“Sarah…”
. She was young and beautiful but without any of the imperfections that legitimized her youth and beauty.
I didn’t reach for her.
The first sign.
“I’m here, Marlon,” she said.
“Marlon? What? Why are you calling me…”
It hit me.
Her eyes.
They were wrong, not nearly lost enough.
Now it was just the two of us.
“Sarah, what’s going on?” I asked her.
“I’m here,” she said. “That’s all that matters now.”
“Why am I not happy to see you? Why am I not smiling?”
“How do you know if you’re smiling or not?”
“Don’t patronize me. I want Sarah to be here.”
Suddenly all the light from the scene around us was sucked into a vacuum and left me in back in that total darkness, that void.
But it didn’t last long.
The light came back and I was on a cloud dangling in a clear, blue sky and I was holding a harp.
“You got to be kiddin’ me,” I said.
Very peaceful.
Serene.
“Is that better?” he asked as he appeared beside me in a flash.
“Something’s not right,” I told him.
“Well, you haven’t been here long, Marlon. It takes some time getting used to…”
“Marlon? Why Marlon? Why do you keep calling me Marlon?”
“What else would I call you?”
I put the harp down and he picked up on my hesitation to answer him.
“Anything? Anything you want me to call you by?”
I should have been angry but I wasn’t.
He had on a contemptuous smile, wrought with arrogant examples of his position there. He was trying not to tell me something, which told me something, there was something I was not supposed to know.
“I was alright before I got here,” I said. “I should be alright now.”
“Everything you want to know is going to come to you eventually.”
Suddenly the clouds and blue sky were coming into static. Everything around, above and below us began flashing black and white and soon it was all out of focus,
“I need you to practice now, Marlon.”
Somehow I understood and closed my eyes.
“What do you see?” he asked me.
I imagined the clouds and the clouds around us came back into focus.
“Good,” he said.
I imagined the blue sky and now it wrapped around the world above us.
He roared with laughter.
I wanted something else. I tried the ocean, saw it clearly and then we were there on the sand but it didn’t feel like sand, it was something else. And I saw the water reaching out into an endless horizon but there were no waves or sounds of waves…there was no scent of saltwater air…
“You’re a natural,” he told me.
So I went home.
I was in my house again but it was empty. No sign of my two sons or daughter anywhere. I closed my eyes tight and instead of picture I thought of scent and for a second I could smell Sarah’s banana nut-bread baking in the oven.
When I opened my eyes I was in the void.
I did not exist.
Nothing did.
Just consciousness.
And company. “Have you decided yet, Marlon?” he asked me.
“Yes,” I told him reluctantly.
“And?”
“This isn’t real,” I said.
“That’s very good, Marlon.”
“I don’t have to stay…”
“Of coarse you don’t.”
“It isn’t over…”
“Tell your wife I said Hello,” he said, echoing.
“What?”
“I said please don’t go,” Sarah told me, pleading with her hands, her deep brown eyes so desperate and lonely from the doorway.
I was outside and the sun was down, my car parked at the sidewalk with all of my belongings and a map on the dashboard.
“Where…where am I going?” I asked her.
She swallowed her tears, too confused to reply.
I waked back to the door.
“Why would I ever leave you, Sarah?” I said and led her back inside.
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“I always pictured a long stairwell rising into some sort of brilliant transcendence, and angels, I always pictured angels, dancing, maybe, but definitely beautiful, and heavenly.” – OK I like the way this meanders as it definately brings home the sense of a mind gone AWOL, but it’s also a definate run-on sentence and there’s probably a way to create the same effect whilst punctuating it properely. Just my take though.
” I never thought the void was real but there it was, and there I was” – vs I never thought the void was real, but there is was. There I was.
“I closed my eyes in Methum, Virginia,” – I think you need more of a hook early doors. You were beginning to lose me as I have a very short attention span (like most agents and publishers I guess). I like this line though. I’d thinik about opening with this.
” I asked and suddenly I felt the change” – The voice tell shim to try which implies he must put thought and effort into making his appearance change. Yet it seems to happen of its own accord. If this was a dream, don’t be a slave to the truth and never let it spoil a good story. If it makes sense people will buy into the fantasy a little easier.
“before the Second World War” – to people involved in WWII it was just The War. Don’t worry thoguh we’ll be curious enough about which war to want to read on. It’s another hook.
“familiar skies I’d seen before.” – if it’s familiar you’ve probably seen it before. Ergo you don’t need to say it twice.
” He gazed at me knowingly.” – english is one of the most complex languages on the planet. We have literally hundreds of verbs and adjeectives, try to avoid using adverbs wherever possible. It irks a lot of publishers.
“Somehow I understood and closed my eyes.” – you might but we don’t and as we’re seeing this from your eeys we feel a little cheated.
Ok. I like it. Against most of the critique and the lack of real application your story had enough pace to pull me in. That said, what I really thing it needs is fleshing out. A lot. There’s the bare bones of the sotry here but it doesn’t really engage me on any emotional level .The reason for this is that I don’t feel attached to your character – you need to give me a reason to cheer for him. The trouble is you need to be able to flesh it out without losing the pace you create so well.
Try Donald Maas’ “Writing The Breakout Novel” and read A Million Little Pieces by James Frey (your work is quite spase and reminds me a lot of Frey’s work. He might lend you some more inspiration). Good luck mate!
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Maybe another two cups of coffee would have given us the ending (if not the caffeine) I crave. I understood (I think) the relationship between the illness and the feeling of limbo and the opportunity to return to life instead of hanging around there. I loved the dialogue and the slightly tongue in cheek, slightly mis-intentioned Godlike ‘Receptionist’ figure. I think you have something here that with a little work could be published. The end is where the work is needed.
I like your writing style as ‘dialogue’ is my favourite pastime and this is spare (NOT a euphemism for ‘the author lacks vocabulary’)and to the point. Slightly too much so in places where the bones show through. After a few weeks you will see the bones showing through yourself so I’m not going to say where they are. How else do we learn?
Needing to try and understand what is clearly designed to not be understood is fine for you, but a reader likes to enjoy ultimate understanding of your work and everything else seems downright disrespectful of your audience. Even if they don’t like what you have to say, they want to hear it.
I liked and thoroughly enjoyed the language you painted with. If you can find a way to end it satisfactorily then let me see it again, please.
Regards,
Bill.
www.billallerton.co.uk
This 138 word review has not been unlocked.
This is very good. It gave me goosebumps while reading it, just for seeing a different ideal of where we go when we’re gone. I noticed some spelling errors, but nothing big. Good work.
Such a lovely exploration of life after death. A look at what may be, and what we as humans sometime want to believe may be. Bravo, I thoroughly enjoyed this piece.
This was very engaging indeed. I thought he was going to be in a crash at the end so I was surprised to see that he was simply leaving…that was a nice twist to make it not so contrite. I only saw a couple of spelling errors. The one thing that I grappled with is the spacing choice. At first, I did not like it. I thought it would be a fine read as regular text and the prose type spacing was distracting and some forced attempt at art work. Then as I got lost in the story which was captivating me, I found that the spacing actually served a its purpose as an art form. It made the reader feel dreamlike or as if she were on a cloud in heaven. It suddenly made sense and I loved the effect. Overall it was so griping to read and I enjoyed it.
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