Short Story / The Bicycle Courier
The Bicycle Courier
The air around the courier was quicksand, so humid he didn’t know which was sweat and which was dew. Every leaden pedal stroke seemed to carry him backwards, when his bike only knew one direction. Knew it faithfully, stubbornly even. Uphill on the straight-aways, flat on the downs, and I think I can on the inclines. Pull with the hamstrings, push with the quads.
The courier extended one leg to the pavement and took some water. His chest, punctuated diagonally by the messenger bag strap, rose and fell, rose and fell. He debated making one last delivery. Not due until tomorrow, this last trip an agreement between actual and expected fatigue. Checking the address on the parcel, he took two hops with the bracing leg and sped off through the streets.
He arrived at the cigar shop. Outside, children played marbles on the macadam, pecking at the pieces like birds at seed. He hoisted the horizontal support of the bike over his shoulder, and chimed his way through the main entrance. Walking to the counter, he placed the package down and slid the wrinkled receipt forward. The matron of the shop was not behind the counter, as usual. Instead, a younger version doled out change to the costumer ahead of him in line. The courier instantly lost himself in the clerks’s eyes, finding only vertigo in the colorless gray he saw there. She looked blankly through the smoke.
“Would you sign,” he asked her, as if he was in a trance. He stared at her fingers as he handed her the receipt - they were stained in birthmark - then up to her wrists. She pulled her sleeves to her fingers when she caught his stare.
She scribbled something non-descript, chicken scratch really, as she yelled something to the back of the store. She smiled at him, “¿Algo más?”
The myriad of permutations as far as possible responses froze the courier where he stood. All at once he was thinking of wedding marches, broods to provide for, explosions of shattered dinnerware interrupting domestic tranquility, etc. His mind centered around the impossibilities of any such union. His only actual response was to unconsciously scratch one leg with his opposing foot.
“¿Quieres un poco de agua?” she said, “Usted no parece tan bueno.”
Her words broke the trance. He reached for the slip of paper and she smiled. He felt all at once clumsy and swollen. His stomach doubled over. He left the store, remembering her lingering scent long after the doors closed. In his satchel, the slip receipt, in an illegible hand of a shopkeeper too busy to stay within the lines. Tangible proof of the encounter.
He went out of his normal routes to take on any package bound for the tobacco district. To sustain the pretext, he even began to smoke. He tried cloves, menthols, cigarillos, and cigars. He eventually settled on rolling his own. He smiled to himself, for coming to this most obvious of choices after much deliberation. The time it would take to roll the papers into those narrowing cylinders … all the more time spent in the precious shop.
He sat in a corner, looking at her from the corners of his eyes and playing with the ribbons of dried leaf that spilled from his pouch. Her smile readied him for his long day of riding and coughing. With his mood severely lifted, he went about his morning.
The other couriers noticed his good cheer, his new habit. A raven-chested co-worker spied him entering the tobacco shop. He looked through the storefront window and caught the courier placing a bright red piece of thread where he knew she’d find it. He returned with the news.
“See your lady love today?” they squawked when he returned to the station, “Bring her any presents?”
The courier’s cough worsened. His packages were delivered later and later each day. He thought long and hard about the words he wanted to say to her. She, who spoke none of his language. She, who only smiled.
A man grabbed the courier by the arm as he turned the corner on the way to the shop. The back wheel of his bike bucked the air as if a branch shot through it spokes. “Tranquila” the man said, and clicked his tongue until the bike settled onto the pavement. His arms were short and dense, his skin impervious to sun, his smile gap-toothed and genuine.
“You will kill yourself at this rate,” said the stranger, “we both know smoking doesn’t suit you.”
“Excuse me?” asked the courier.
“This flittering back and forth. You dance around this place like a hummingbird on the scent of perfume. Por christo, talk to her.”
“But I can’t. I don’t know how.”
“That is no new problem.”
“You’ve got the wrong idea. I cannot speak to her,” said the courier.
“You are making the assumption that men and women, ever, together or apart, have spoken the same language. This is a mistake,” the stranger said, waving his hand in admonishment.
“The fate of empires has been decided by inflection. If the love is meant to be, the rest will fall in line. I will help you find the words. The rest…,” the stranger shrugged his workman’s shoulders, “you will learn along the way.”
“Where did you come from?” the courier asked. “What is your stake?”
“I have seen you coming and going, and this middle course will be your doom. Sólo quiero ayudar a usted…” the stranger said before adding, with a smile, “to help you.”
“And…” said the courier.
“And I have a letter which I’d like you to deliver. The destination is along your way south. I assume you’ll be leaving when this business with la partaga goes the way it will go. If you consent, I’ll teach you enough to get you going”
The courier reached out his hand without pause. The stranger presented a letter with a curious addressee. The Old Man. A rooftop on a hill.
The lesson was short and productive. Much time was spent on how to hold his lips when he made the sounds, how the roll his tongue, stress the accents. Never once did the courier question the words’ meaning, only concerned with the effect of their proper replication. He bid his thanks and goodbyes to the stranger and went into the shop. He sat on a bench next to the stranger, and learned as a parrot does.
Halfway, that is. The courier paused in the doorway, seeing his love in conversation with a fuller built and masculine specimen, whose words had stronger tones and whose ornaments were many colored and bright.
“Hace frio,” said the clerk, shivering in the gust from entranceway.
“I… lo siento,” said the courier. Wasting half his newfound phraseology with the rival suitor in attendance. “¿Qué puedo hacer para hacerte feliz?” went the other half.
“Cierra la puerta,” she said, turning back to the well-dressed and –mannered rival.
“Soon, I will have to leave. It won’t be long until these roads will be too cold to ride,” he told her. The rival grew notably aggressive, standing partway between her and courier. He wore a scarf of brilliant blues and greens; it enveloped him in his posturing.
“Come away with me. My friends, they’ve gone to work the southern limits. You’d like it. There’s no crime to speak of. I’ll work in the morning and fly home when the sun is high, we’ll drink lemonade and rest easy until the night should fall.” She rang up a customer and looked past him to the door. “The cigarettes are cheaper too,” he added, moving into the temporary path of her gaze.
“¿Perdón? ¿Necesitas mi firma?” she said. He stood there for a moment, but could manufacture only a feeble cough in response to the smoke. Just before walking out of the store for the last time, he left a small present on the counter. A piece of colorful paper that glimmered when it caught the light. He did not see her take it up.
The courier scattered the children at marbles in all directions as he cut through their chalked circle. Arctic geese flew in formation above, honking their way south. His bicycle urged him towards the flock, like a gentle wind followed the geese. The night was clear, but the courier didn’t notice the stars as he pedaled home.
It took him almost no time to pack. What little he had, he collected. A utility knife, some maintenance supplies, the clothes he wore, and that was all. He checked in his pantry and stowed away a handful of cashews, a can of soup, and what was left of a stale loaf of bread. He rolled his blanket, and tied it to the frame of the bike. The relocation took eight days the previous year. He allowed the late start would cost him maybe two more in weather delays. He had food enough for three. He needed no map. He knew the way like he was born to it, like there could be no errant course.
The lights of his summer city faded behind him. The wind and moon at his back. His bike held reflectors and a blinking light, his shirt was bright and shone when shone upon, and his concentration resolute with the darkness.
He camped as the stars set and lit a small fire. Trusting the nuts to last longer than the rest, he ate the bread, savoring each crumb. Lifting his chin and tasting the air, he expected no rain, nor did any fall. He rolled out his blanket, and slept through light’s morning introductions.
He woke just after noon and reminded the embers to flame. He punched a thumb-sized hole in the top of the soup tin and placed it in the pit. The orange and yellow tickled the label to black, the metal gleamed beneath the steam escaping. Clouds threatened the horizon as he ate. After his meal he made his way. He stopped once to patch a flat tire, once to true the front rim, and once for no other reason but to watch the moonrise. He’d only gone forty or so miles before he quit. He was behind schedule. His clothes were drenched in sweat and the sweat conducted the chilling temperatures to pinker underneaths.
“If it gets any colder, we’ll need to go by day,” he told his bike as if it was a horse, as if a horse would understand. He drank from a quick-moving stream running alongside the road, lit a fire, and slept. He dreamt of angry volcanoes and angrier still indigene, painted and feather adorned. Shivering, he woke to meet the dawn. “Let’s get moving,” again to his bike, as he ate the last of his store. He rode thirty miles in just a few hours, stopped to wash in a standing pool, and rode thirty more. The sun set. He saw nowhere better or worse to camp, and glided to a standstill. Sky lighting a hill off the road to the left, he dismounted and climbed for the better vantage. He spied the city of his delivery by the beams it radiated through its own exhaust. He marked it as his next pit to stop and remounted. Two or three broad beats from his textured thighs, and he was off and swift. As he approached, he could see a lighted billboard above a hill top building, and proceeded swiftly as if drawn to this landmark and this city almost south.
As he neared the city, the road became uneven, untrustworthy. His bike slowed to better deal with the potholes that increased proportionately as he neared the city. The roads looked as if they were recovering from some infliction, pockmarks belaying speed. The city was built upon a mountain. Cars were parked along the hypotenuses, building foundations hewed at right angles, reckoning gravity’s dominion over slope. In seeking the building on the hill, he didn’t notice the rats’ nests in every corner, cold and abandoned.
The air grew thin and the courier dismounted. The bike creaked in accord, as if its metal were tired and finally at rest. Walking up a hill towards the building at its peak, a foreigner to this strange city, the courier looked upwards and towed his steed.
He parked his bike next the building he took to be the address on the stranger’s letter. Alone upon the hills apex sat what looked to be a pharmacy. Upon closer examination, it had some age to it. The words on its siding faded and nondescript. Its entrance barred in such a way to suggest permanent closure. The words in graffiti on the door seemed at odds with each other, rivals in two angry fonts. He grabbed his tattered bag, stashed his bike out of sight, and proceeded around back. A fire escape to climb. Travel-sore, he reached the roof and immediately fell asleep to the ambient drone of the city. This music accompanied his dreams.
He awoke to a rumbling jerk. The earth stopped shaking, and the courier heard a quiet chuckling. An old man bore a sledgehammer, unsteadily raised it high as he put all his feeble mass into the downward thrust. The rooftop rattled. The courier stood up and saw much of this lofty perch pockmarked as the road to town had been. The old man kept swinging. The dew cleared from the courier’s eyes and he saw the object of the old man’s frustration. A grid work of roads, buildings, and the rest of the town lay about the roof. The sledgehammer met a highway. The sledgehammer met a bridge.
“I see you found rest in the garbage district,” said the old man. “I’m surprised you weren’t warned off by the smell.”
He had nested the night before amidst heaps of miniature refuse, thimbles of Styrofoam containers and graying plastic, stacked high to the edge of the rooftop.
“Good thing you’re a light sleeper,” said the old man, “one wrong roll, and you would have been in the compost heap.” He pointed towards another pile of trash, this one marked by waste of a different kind of human consumption.
“Welcome to my city,” he told the courier, “please forgive the renovations.” With that, he brought the hammer down softly and it became a cane. Or rather, he used it as such. He hobbled over to continue his introduction. He told the courier his name.
“Once upon a time, I built train tracks here. Depots and stations, carriage and cargo, all of it steam powered and automated. Back when I cared about trains. Back when anyone cared. It was quite a bit ago. That tiny mill to your left used to be quite the hub.”
The courier took a closer look at this clockwork city. Steam evaporated through the fine-mesh grates of a sewer system as intricate and small as a capillary network. Fist sized houses, rolling parks like mislaid carpet, Lilliput reimagined, with all the modern industry of the time. The work was of careful hands and patience.
“How long have you been up to this…?” the courier searched for the proper word. This work seemed more than hobby.
“Play?” the old man smiled, “I can’t think of a better term myself. Been trying to make a plausible excuse for it. I guess you could say this is my way of making sense of the city. He gestured with his arm arching across the horizon. It was indeed a replica of the greater environment. The courier looked west and saw gulls circling the giant trash heaps in the distance. On the roof, the gulls instead were swarming flies about the re-imagined landfill. His bed from the night before. The scale was perfect, eerie almost, that someone would take the time for such precision. Even the shadows arced accordingly, so that the courier thought of those bygone druids making sense of the heavens with their stone covenant.
“When will you be finished?” asked the courier.
“When the city sleeps,” said the old man.
The courier judged the old man’s limp to be no mere affectation. The hammer, when it wasn’t at its up and down, was indeed a crutch to be relied upon. The old man lifted his crutch and laid waste to the road leading over the precipice, the road from whence the courier came.
“I don’t understand why you’d be at this,” said the courier.
The old man shrugged as he stomped on a children’s playground, crumbling its matchstick swing-set under the boot of his good heel.
“This is no utopia I toil over. Nor is it some rose-colored historical preservation. I only make what I see, and what I see from this rooftop is crumbling. Surely you noticed the sad state of repair our roads have fallen to.” The courier had, and consented to the fact.
“This overpass…,” Crunch. Snap. “Fell sometime yesterday. Pass me that torch, will you.” The old man waited until the red flame turned to blue.
“The school you passed on your way,” the courier looked at the model and then at the living structure beyond the ledge of the rooftop, “burns as we speak.”
The courier looked for and found the pharmacy’s other, in the middle of the display. The whole of it had such detail, such depth, he was surprised he didn’t see a miniature him looking at a miniature building with a miniature expression on his face. The old man read the expression.
“You might not be able to see the people in my city, but I assure you, their testament lives in the growth and decay within the pale. I barely have the time to sleep, with keeping up with it.”
The old man dragged his leg as he paced around this living map.
“An immigrant to this city needed medicine for her colic child. Her doctor prescribed a mild sedative. The pharmacy was closed for the evening, but luckily there existed machines which dispensed medicine night and day. The immigrant filled out her prescription
“ ’Administer once daily,’ said the label on the plastic cylinder in a language she could not understand.”
“I’ve been told that is an easy enough obstacle to overcome…” said the courier.
“With emotions, with intention, maybe I’d agree,” said the old man. “With medicine and science, specific interpretation is paramount. She did her best to figure the directions, and nearly had them right. Once, though became once. One and eleven, spelt the same but with entirely separate meaning, and the little immigrant ninita was administered 11-times the appropriate sedative. See the graveyard outside the city. Look close, and you’ll see a tombstone where one year is both of birth and of death.”
The courier remembered his last linguistic lesson, recalling the letter now in his breast pocket. He read the inscription again.
“You remind me of the man who wrote this,” he handed the letter to the old man, “but I’m not sure why.”
The old man smiled, “You’ve met my brother.”
“That wasn’t part of the deal. I’ve done my part. I have to leave.”
“Would you shelve an important book without seeing it through to its ending?” the old man punctuated his sentence by lifting up the tattered pant leg showing wounds far past infection. “I need you to continue the message. It is a good message, and I can’t deliver it without you.”
“Where would you send me?”
“See that military base across on that peak to the west.”
“No, the smog…” said the courier.
“Look down then, at your feet. Memorize it like you would an atlas.”
“Behind the mess hall there is a young conscriptee preparing the meals for regiment. His back is bent over a cutting-board, he is surrounded by onions and potatoes like you were trash last night. His work is slow due to the bluntness of his tools. Dangerous too, the blunt edge wanders for lack of bite. He cannot leave his post until he is finished cutting and peeling, and his eyes water in the labor. All he wishes is to sleep. All he thinks about is what dreams may find him when he is done. Dreams are dangerous for the soldier class.”
The old man crutched over to a small cabinet nestled in the corner of the rooftop. Several powders and tonics lined the shelves. “Take him this narcotic. It will allow him to forget his fatigue. Too much of this life is spent wishing on the after. These pills will help him focus on the now. Will you deliver this minor comfort?”
“It ’s getting colder, I have to go.”
“Think of that boy in the mess hall, not in camouflage, but for the sadness he harbors. Take him this medicine and he may finish with time enough to sharpen his tools. You can bring him life outside of his work. Take him this small happiness.”
“I will help you, but must be off tomorrow,” said the courier.
The courier descended to make his way through the town. He passed a huge church with a clock in the place of a bell tower. The time was false, set ten minutes fast. Shaming the pious, it would seem, in a counterfeit tardiness. A mendicant lost control of his shopping cart. He chased the clinking mass of empty bottles down the hill. Tricks of light melted the various color, blending the greens and reds and yellows into a streak of brown. The cart hit a curb and for a moment before the crash, the rainbow blossomed and then died in it’s shattering.
The courier made his way onto the base, pedaling with slow and powerful strokes. The sentry nodded him through, accustomed as he was to the messages sent to and from the station. He, the courier, climbed to a windowsill looking into the officers’ mess. On his haunches, he surveyed the scene. The door to the mess flew open, the commander’s figure barely framed by the doorjamb. Backlit as he was by a great fireplace, his features were barely discernable. The base commander sat enormous upon a chair of ornate design. The cushion pieced with oriental silk. He held a turkey leg in the air and gestured with it at his empty wine glass. With his beard gleaming through turkey fat, he had a rabid look to him. “-- have me s’more -- that au gratin,” he chewed through his words.
The courier left his perch as the commander let loose a litany of expletives, peppering the tablecloth with tartar shrapnel. He circled around back to the utility entrance. He tested the knob and found it willing. The kitchen was dank with the smell of earth and potato. The soldier-boy sat between two massive piles, one brown the other white. He took one from the dark pile, peeled it in five strokes, and tossed it onto the other. Like he was rolling a boulder up a hill. He did not notice the courier behind him. Sweat dripped from wrinkled brow. The courier thought it odd, him being so thin in the midst of so much food. The staccato bounce of his blade on the cutting board played percussion while he softly sang.
“Best not to disturb the boy,” thought the courier. With that, he took the vial out of his pocket, and poured its contents into the water jar behind the solider. The soldier drank deeply as the courier hopped out of view. On his way out of the base, the courier took one last look into the dining hall.
“My apologies sir, but there seems to be a delay in the kitchen,” offered the waiter. “May I offer, instead, the tiramisu? It is rich and buttery sweet, garnished with mint and gold flake. We’ve shipped it in, special, from the old country.”
Exiting the base, a police barricade blocked his route. He asked a man sitting on some steps an alternate path. He told the courier wherever sinkholes haven’t struck.
It took him most of the afternoon to skirt the mayhem. He himself witnessed a car riding buoyant abreast a rolling street, the asphalt undulating as some cosine wave. He watched as the road wave grew tired of this bobbing ornament, and swallowed it whole.
“I’ve done as you asked,” the courier said, as he alit on the rooftop. The old man had been hard at work, keeping up with the chaos in the streets. His hammer met a driving wedge; the old man split his makeshift city like chords of wood.
“That errand took longer than I expected,” the courier arched his back, yawned, and sat. “Nothing comes easy here, does it? I’ll stay the night, but I’m off first thing in the morning. I have to make my way south to the other couriers. They are probably warm and laughing, no doubt at my expense. Any more delay, who knows what I’ll be riding into.” The courier wanted nothing more to do with this old man and his toys. He wanted only to distance himself from that cigar shop and all who reminded him of it.
“Eat now. You need your energy. This tea will make you warm, and put you to sleep. Tomorrow, we will share our goodbyes.”
The next day came, and the courier woke to the smell and sizzle of fried eggs. He wondered where they came from, looked at a row of pigeons sitting on the ledge of the billboard, and tried to wonder on other things.
“Sit, my boy, sit,” the old man to the courier, “I have a story to tell you while you breakfast.” He set a pot of coffee next to the boy and began.
“A professor at some city university has had a brilliant notion. He fixes to explain to the world, in scientific principles, the human condition. He is just nearly to the mathematical proof whereby he posits on the why’s of the universe, the inanity of the divine, and the permutations of love and the lesser emotions. Ambition, lust, pride - and all the universal congruencies in politics and government – can be factored down to zeroes and ones. Math is the only universal language, and he has boiled down the whole of it, in theory anyway, to one binary equation. To it’s very soul.
“After holding a press conference with the beginnings of his research, he became wildly popular. The professor is as charismatic as he is austere, and the people listen. He travels the country, appearing to audiences of every ilk - young and old, fat and thin – the only thing common in their makeup is in the fact that they are audience, and their money spends the same. He gives them answers.
“On finding this success, the professor has had no time to continue his research. He has instead appointed his brightest student to maintain the investigation. She, a graduate student, works tirelessly to finish the proof. She is no threat to steal the limelight from the professor. She speaks with a thick and jagged accent. She looks nothing like an hourglass.
“There is a slight problem, however, in the setup. She has found a flaw in the foundation of the great hypothesis. The flaw, minute, a misplaced decimal point, is working to unravel the entire foundation. She works day and night to rethread this errant strand that threatens the very basis of the research. In her efforts, her own studies have fallen by the wayside. Her grades, her very thoughts, have become encumbering jetsam, weighing her down in that academic sea. She considers abandoning the good of her person so that she may prop up the bogus of the other.”
The courier thought about this as the old man paused to sip his coffee. “I fear that this is less fiction than you first purported, and that soon I will be factored into this equation.”
“You are indeed correct. Your sight is better than I first conjectured. The student is real. The professor is real. The equation is dangerous, worse still if she fixes it.”
“I imagine you have a solution,” said the courier.
“That I do. I have here a strong medicine, the last of its kind. These pills,” the old man took the penultimate bottle from his cabinet, “I call, affectionately, Evanescence. For a time, I thought them to be wholly placebo in effect, they offered very little in the way of clinical results. However, I found their workings to be, upon rigorous investigation, like some potion Merlin fed his reluctant Arthur. Once taken, they wipe out all ancillary misgivings. Just as Arthur proceeded to run his kingdom without consideration for the cuckolding infestation that was Sir Lancelot, the graduate student will be able to proceed in her research. Her apprehensions will wash away as footprints do from sand.
“Will you put aside your travels for one day longer, and take for me this Evanescence to the conflicted student?” asked the old man of the courier.
“The days are growing short. It is cold here above the city. Colder still, when I descend. I will help you, but I must be gone tomorrow.”
The courier delivered the potion without circumstance and told the old man what he had done. He did not stay to witness his results, but the old man assured him the mission was a success. The courier felt himself warmer after that task, even as he spoke his breath was visible in the night.
“This is because you are at noble work. The good we do, it washes us of the grime that seeps through this city.” The courier began to think on this, and in doing so drifted off to sleep. He wondered if the pills he handled affected him in his tactile exposure. For the first time, he worried not about the changing weather or the miles he’d still to go.
The next day, the courier arose, descended, and mounted. “This is our last day in this northern city. Let’s find some gifts for our coworkers. Some proof we were here.”
The courier thought of what proof he had of the girl in the tobacco shop. Nothing but memory of heartbreak. Something that would be tragic, if it weren’t so common a theme - love lost through prophecies self-fulfilling. It wasn’t his destiny to end up with the girl so thin she s swayed like a reed in the wind. He had this ache in his gut for tobacco, that was proof. His senses perked when he passed someone in the street with a cigarette. He had to go south. He had to do it that day, or else he would be stuck here in this crumbling experiment.
He rode into the market district, but it seemed to be swallowed just as the car had been. The sinkhole there, even as fast as it appeared, was not quick enough to suck the flow of capital. Tents of every color had sprung up around each hole. The merchants, backs to the abyss, shouted their wares like some centrifugal experiment in sound. The sinkhole widened, the mongers pushed outward, always on the edge. Like ants on a balloon inflating, the distances between tents increased, yet the individual peddlers stood their ground. Imported produce, foreign satins.
He circled the market turned bazaar, but found nothing. He drove rode to the top of the hill. This time, his ears didn’t pop. The old man waited for him.
“Dear courier, I fear you must be off. Snow is in the air, and that bike of yours dislikes this cold. Will you take one last delivery from me? I assure you, it’s on your way.”
“I will. I only hope I can. The city, it crumbles,” said the courier. He looked into the old man’s eyes, and they were sad, bereft of promise.
“I’ll hold it up, long enough for you to make your way. Take this message to the northern limits. You’ll find the bridge in that direction mended. Precarious, but passable. This message, you’ll drop off just before. The house is of stone. You will know it by these words. The door will be open.”
“I wish you well. In all your endeavors, big and….” This time, the courier smiled, and left the end of the statement with a smirk. The courier looked over the city on the city, tried to sum its parts but couldn’t, could only focus on that northern bridge. His ticket south.
With this, the courier went on his final task. On traveling away, finally away, a sinkhole appeared unexpectedly, transforming the flat pavement into a bottomless crater, rimmed in concrete stalagmite. Had he not swerved in time, he would have hit the rim head on, catapulting himself into the unknown. Impact was not avoided, however, only transferred. The glancing blow left the front wheel contorted and gruesome in three-dimensions. A bicyclist cannot ride where the earth rebels beneath the road. The sinkholes were spreading. The courier thought the old man either unwilling or unable to hinder their advance.
The courier made the rest of the way on foot, the machinery parts of his bicyle bleeding oil over his shoulder. The city was in chaos. In the distance, he saw first houses disappearing beneath the landscape, followed by this odd woosh of wind that seemed at once to be coming from and going towards the void. Back and forth, his hair whipped along his face. It rested a moment over his eyes.
When he cleared his face, he was at the house of stone. The void was closing fast, yet this house and the property it stood on was as yet untouched, as if sacrosanct. The courier thought of the old man’s future, what he would do with his model when left to this house alone. How he would fill his days, tending to its brickwork. The door was indeed open.
The courier went in and understood that it would be the stranger sitting there in the darkness.
“Your brother has sent me.” said the courier, turning to leave as he placed the bottle on table, “take this with water.”
“With this medicine, I doubt it matters what I take it with. You are in a rush, I know, but listen quickly,” said the stranger. “You may go north to the bridge, and make a broad circuit around this cesspool, sin trabas. My brother and I will sleep along with this city, but you must ride on. The story of your life may be with la partaga or it may be to the south. Decide what you will, but decide quickly. Antes de la nieve.”
The courier made it to the bridge, just in time to see it fall into an abyss. A tattered drunk walked past with a board writ in shoe polish preaching the gospel of the void, “Repent sinners, as this earth forgets you,” and on the back, “for the monuments you raze.”
A light snow began to fall. He walked the miles back to the old pharmacy. He wondered what would be left when the city and its people disappeared. He slipped twice, but did not fall. He climbed to the top of the building for the last time. His clothes were stained black from the bike. The old man walked around the edges of the roof. Step, pull, step, pull -- an oddly twinned track left in the powder as he surveyed the remnants of the city, both cities.
“Our time together is just about over, but I want to ask you a question,” said the old man. “If the bridge was there, and the choice still yours, would you have gone north or south?”
“Does it matter?”
“Certainly it does, for the stories you’ll tell after.”
The city sunk and the old man fell asleep. All that was left was the courier and his bicycle. He would not leave it broken. The courier went about what was left of the dying map. He found copper and tin amongst the disorder, he found rubber and cord. His fingers went numb, yet still he worked to fix his bicycle. Patching here, replacing there. Messenger or no, he was nothing without it.
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This is very well written, you can tell that you spent a lot of time working on it.
The story itself was interesting, and a pleasant destraction from math class.
I really hope this goes somewhere. Writing this good should be shared beyond a website.
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Air and quicksand don’t mesh for me. Quicksand is mire to which one sinks down into. I believe you could find a better description for air. If it was damp and kind of oppressive you could say heavy or laden.
“they were stained in birthmark.” Do you mean they were “stained with” a birthmark. What kind of birthmark. What did it look like?
I speak Spanish but what of the other readers who do not know the language? Might you translate a little in English so they will know what the chracters are saying? It would make the story more meaningful.
“The courier scattered the children at marbles ..” i absolutely love this mini paragraph. I can see the imges of the children so plainly. Good description are a must for any story. You do so well with them.”
“orange and yellow tickled the label to black,” Could you add “flames?’
Excellent prose, descriptions of the roof, refuse, the city, the man on the roof. A very interesting piece.
Please check this for repeat pages. I think page 11 is a repeat.
After holding a press conference with the beginnings of his research,. I think this could be plainer. After holding a press conference concerning his research proposal and findings….Would this be better or not.
“She looks nothing like an hourglass.’ If not an hourglass then what? Most women do not really look like an hourglass. I am not sure how this description fits. Say what she favors then.
Some very powerful images. Here is the problem i have . Where does the woman he first met fit into the story? It seems she is lost to the reader. What happened to his learning of the Spanish language to impress her? The mathmatical proof or equation seems out of place here. I do not know why. It seems that you have come to a standstill with many loose ends. I am enamored with this piece. You have made me care about the city and the old man and his brother, and even the nameless courier. Please don’t confuse the reader with mathmatical proofs unless you can tie this in with the origional plot. I wait for more of this. Good fiction is so hard to find on here. Please keep this simple just as you started it. Remain consistent and tie up loose ends with the girl who spoke Spanish. Make sure to let the reader know why the equation is important and how it ties in with the city. Good luck, Sandi.
I really enjoyed this, you have a very good grasp of language and your similes never seemed forced to me.
It seems as if your story has some spiritual meaning behind it. For me, that was my reason for turning every page…trying to get to the climax of the story, but…alas, your story lacked a climax, and the end was altogether a downfall. Also, you should learn to better translate your thoughts to paper. It seemed as if sometimes you were struggling to type the story out exactly as you saw it in your head, and the end result was a mixed up sort of gibberish type paragraph. I wish you good luck, and keep trying.
I get the impression that courier’s belabored deliveries are symbollic of something deeper. I also got a strong sense of poetic style as I read through the piece. It seems to me that your stronger elements are imaginative descrptions that paint the setting in an almost surreal way.
Your characters are also very colorful. In particlar, I found the Spanish girl/the courier crush very memorable. In some ways, I think the use of Spanish in the dialouge works to draw in the reader, but I’ll add more on that in a bit. Among the other characters, the man in the garbage dump stood out to me too; the ways he used that sledgehammer created a very clear image in my mind. Of course, I identified the most with the courier. By the end of the story I still did not have a very specific image of what he looked like, and normally I’d suggest to add some description toward this character. But for some reason I feel that the story still works even without it.
Now, I’ll caveat that I might not be an ideal reader for this piece since I’m not the most poetic person. Overall, I struggled to understand the overarching themes behind the courier’s journey. I could see some of the pieces coming together, but I had trouble connecting all of the dots together.
My difficulties started with the Spanish dialog. I’m guessing that you were using it to show the language barrier between the courier and the girl. But as their conversations continued, I was left wondering what exactly is she saying. I couldn’t really understand what was her response to his invitation, or even if she understood it at all. Next thing I know, he’s packing up.
Also, in regards to that relationship, I was wondering if they would reunite at some point toward the end, after all of the courier’s deliveries were done. He was obviously so fond of her at the beginning, so I wasn’t sure if something changed within that dynamic over the course of his journey.
Over the course of his journey/deliveries, I was trying to see some transformation within the courier. But I couldn’t really see it. I had the impression that the deliveries were more and more burdensome along the way, but I couldn’t really tell if he learned something or changed in character as a result of his interactions with these people.
I don’t know. I’ll readily admit that I might be missing something within the symbollism, but I don’t quite get it. Am I taking the story too literally? Or is there something more existential here?
This quite complex and pensive in the best of ways. I love your constants and inner battles. Good going on the Spanish- is pretty warm and believable for the most part [I speak it myself]. The one Spanish dialogue line that sound troublesome though, “¿Quieres un poco de agua?” she said, “Usted no parece tan bueno.” I suggest wording it differently like:
” Usted no tiene buena cara.”
” Se ve cansado.”
” Se siente bien? Parece que tuviera usted una calentura.”
Otherwise when I read it, to me in Spanish, It sounds like “You don’t look like a very nice guy.”; and I know you are referring to fatigue – not demeanor.
Exellent job. Captivating short.
1. First paragraph is present tense then the 2nd is both past-tense/present-tense which is not a good transition for any reader. I’d suggest making 2nd paragraph as much present tense as you can w/out compromising your style.
Perhaps instead write: The courier extends one leg to the pavement and takes some water. His chest, punctuates diagonally by the messenger bag strap, up and down, up and down. He debats making one last delivery. Not due until tomorrow, this last trip an agreement between actual and expected fatigue. Checking the address on the parcel, he takes two hops with the bracing leg and speeds off through the streets.
Then the 3rd paragraph is cool to go all past-tense with as time has passed.
2. Confusion with page 2’s 2nd paragraph being contradicted by the 4th paragraph. ”He left the store, remembering her lingering scent long after the doors closed.” Then you write some more in paragraph 3 and then paragraph 4 starts with him in the corner looking at her? I thought you left the store. Suggestion is pretty much obvious. either don’t have him leaving the store yet or if he does leave the store fix paragraph 4 where it says, “He sat in a corner, looking at her from the corners of his eyes and playing with the ribbons of dried leaf that spilled from his pouch. Her smile readied him for his long day of riding and coughing.”
3. “You are making the assumption that men and women, ever, together or apart, have spoken the same language. This is a mistake,” the stranger said, waving his hand in admonishment.” I’m not understanding the (women, ever, together) part of this sentence. If you mean to use the word, lose the comma. I myself would rather read: ”....that men and women whether together or apart….”
4. slight error: ”...how the roll his tongue,....” either write “how the roll OF his tongue… or how TO roll his tongue
5. page 4 last paragraph is overly confusing! you wrote: “Halfway, that is. The courier paused in the doorway, seeing his love in conversation with a fuller built and masculine specimen, whose words had stronger tones and whose ornaments were many colored and bright.”
First you don’t start a paragraph with an incomplete sentence that links to previous dialogue. Next, I’m confused because I’m now not at all sure if he’s still in the store, or at the courier office. Please describe more if he’s still in the store, why other couriers are in there. ie, This was the hang out for most of the couriers on that side of town, etc. I was under the impression at the beginning of the page that he was back at the courier office. IF he IS back at the office, how can he see his “love” there? This really needs to be polished. If it’s the next day or week later, then state that with heading or something. :)
My advice, make your character dialogues more plain and save the stylish writing for story content. I’m not saying change a lot.. just simplify it to keep the reader from writhing in their seat or constantly back tracking to see if they are reading this correctly. Needs polishing. You are soooo talented so don’t get me wrong! I love your style and you paint the picture well enough for the reader to admire the story and it’s author. You just need polishing. It’s not unheard of to have polished a work 30 times. Go back and re-read it as if it’s your first time. I’m reading on but I don’t want you to spend 1000s of points to read my review. So rest assured I’ll keep reading and then email you any other thoughts or changes when I’m done. Great job. Keep on writing and re-writing!
I wanna say first off, I don’t speak spanish so I don’t know how much of a help I will be.
“A rooftop on a hill…”—you have a break here and other parts of the story that don’t seem nessicary. In fact, if they were intentional you should replace with more description of where the character is because I have a hard time imagining where everyone is in the story. My mind jumps to very vague descriptions of kind of random places almost.
You also have ”/>”s at some parts…I don’t know if it’s you or urbis but you should delete those ;)
Other than that there’s not much about your writing I dislike. I love the plot and you kept my attention. Very well done.
I am glade that you: fixed teh Spanish. That’s the kind of fixes I make
I liked your detail – but sometimes it affects the pacing. For example, He passed a huge church with a clock in the place of a bell tower. Why not just say he passed a church with a clock. You are getting into the old Fitzgerald/Hemingway controversy. Which is better – a run-on sentence or a short one. I say use the approach that best affects the pacing that you need. I think you ignored the pacing – but it could be key to your story letting it build in tension. Other details were great, like: She scribbled something non-descript, chicken scratch really. Again: The fate of empires has been decided by inflection, is a very insightful statement that makes the story intriguing. You have interesting symbolism with the city set on a hill. The old man working the railroad reminds me of the song, Buddy can you spare a dime? The gulls surprised my, I had no indication this was near the sea. The pacing about losing the girl was done well and simply. Your bicycle rider is mostly an observer. The story would be stronger and the ending of him being nothing without his bicycle is you emphasized that he wasonly an observer
Powerful words. I liked how you said “achademic sea” it really makes people think about how students feel. good work.
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