Great review. Thanks. The dog makes two appearances. Three would probably be appropriate, you’re right. And thanks for the suggestion about reworking the symbolism of the hole. Now I won’t sleep tonight.
Sci Fi & Fantasy / Nobler in the Mind
Sam’s hand tore open on the shovel handle.
“Dammit.”
His palms, unused to the rub of a shovel, broke into blisters even beneath his gloves. He squeezed his fist, and waited for the sting to peak before fading.
From the corner of his eye, he saw his neighbor, Carl, whose yard he was in, wave cheerfully and finally leave for work. “Hey, thanks again, Sam. My cell’s on if you need anything.”
Sam nodded, and cracked a smile. Eight o’clock. Good. Some peace.
Carl thanked him too much for digging this damn hole. He would come out every half-hour to offer a drink and say “thanks again, Sam,” as though Sam were digging this trampoline pit for Carl’s snotty kids as a favor.
He jammed the shovel into the packed dirt again with his boot heel.
Where had this animosity come from? Carl’s kids weren’t snotty. And Carl was a genuinely nice guy. It’s just that his 'nice guy-ness' had a way of reminding Sam that he had to accept an odd job from his neighbor in order to supplement his own teacher’s income. What he wanted was to just do the job with his mind turned off, take the money and forget it. Pretend he was living just fine in the same economic bracket as the rest of the neighborhood. But who was he fooling? He shouldn’t own a home that didn’t have a rusty trailer hitch.
The shovel clanked so hard on something solid that Sam felt the impact in his back teeth. He slammed the shovel against the side of the pit, but was denied a satisfying crack from the handle. He stomped on it, and slumped to the bottom of the pit, panting.
Good, throw a tantrum, he thought. That’ll make you rich, and happy. Just break something like a spoiled kid and life will be perfect. He was going to make a great father.
Sam pulled off his gloves and let his burning hands fall to the ground next to him. His left knuckles rapped hard against a rock. He winced, but was too exhausted for the moment to even cuss it.
The rock felt cool on the back of his hand. He turned his palm down and it eased the stinging. His right hand searched for a similar source of comfort, but the rocks on that side of him weren’t as cold. He tried several. They all felt like they had just been dug out of the desert earth, which they had. None of them had the smooth coldness of this one on his left. He traced his finger in the mud around the edges of it. Its dark gray surface was oblong, about the size of a large pear. He pulled on it, and it came from the ground with a suck. His finger joints creaked with the impossible coldness of it, so much that he expected to see freezer frost fringing it.
He pressed it to his dripping forehead. Good. He closed his eyes. The cold seeped into his skin, numbed him. A breeze stroked his face and his mind. He relaxed…
#
…He awoke when the rock slid from his hand and tumbled down his chest. He didn’t know where he was.
It came to him that he should be in a hole in his neighbor’s back yard, but the hole didn’t look right. It was bigger, deeper. All around him the sides had been evened out. He stood, his head spinning, and looked around for someone else. He saw no one. He looked again and realized that the hole wasn’t just deeper, it was completely finished. It was the exact width and depth needed to hold Carl’s kids’ trampoline and protect the little squirts from a four-foot fall and broken bones.
Sam’s job was done.
This much work should have taken the rest of the day. He checked his watch. It was not even eight-thirty AM. Frowning, he checked the date. Still July 15. Eight-thirty. He had watched Carl leave for work a half hour ago. The pit was one day deep. He climbed out, his eyes scanning everywhere for the explanation. No one watching from any windows. No footprints but his own in the dirt. No way it could be.
He held his head in his hands and hurried through the gate to his house.
#
When his wife Jeanne got home from the office that night, she asked him how his 'project' went over at Carl’s. “It’s done.” he said, and tried to get into his book, but the words on the page slipped past his eyes without registering.
As she walked past him, she noticed the raw blister flaps on his hands. “Aw,” she said, “poor hands aren’t used to hard work. If you did that more often, they’d be tough and calloused, like real Working Man hands.” She tousled a hand through his hair. One finger got tangled and pulled, painfully.
“Ouch.” He jerked his head away. Real man? What kind of a thing was that to say to a guy? She was joking, he knew, but he didn’t feel like playing.
“Are you OK?”
“I'm fine. How are you?” he said to his book.
Jeanne went quiet, and Sam realized he had slid too far into his slump. Shake it off, he told himself. She’s trying to lighten the mood.
He sat at the kitchen table and heard a yelp. Mocha, Jeanne’s fluffy-muff dog sprang from beneath the chair. The thing had some inbred need to always be under people. Sam swore it tried to get stepped on sometimes just so it could scamper off and glare back at him.
Jeanne asked, “Are you going to make it to the ‘New Dads’ class at five tomorrow? I’ll head straight from the office to catch the nursing class at seven.”
He’d forgotten about the class. Actually he’d probably made himself forget. He’d been to one class three weeks ago when Jeanne first found out she was pregnant. The instructor had decided to ‘break them in’ that night. The film—filled with screaming women aiming their stretched privates at the camera and squishing out watery black-haired balls of slime and blood—was so horrific that Sam had left early, shaking the whole way home. Jeanne, on the other hand had attended her classes dutifully, twice a week.
Sam tended to tune out when she came home to give him a full report. He understood why she wanted to learn about pregnancy. It was just that, well, she was barely pregnant. The two of them wouldn’t even have known about it if Jeanne didn’t keep a stack of home tests on the back of her toilet. But Sam knew a little about pregnancy too. It wasn’t good to get excited too early. Sometimes these things didn’t take the first time.
“You’re not going, are you.” It wasn’t a question.
He acted as incensed as he could, but she was right.
"You’ve skipped every class so far. You’re not taking this seriously.” She started clanking the dishes into the dishwasher.
He tried to protest, but she cut him off. “Oh, excuse me, you went to one class and couldn’t stay because it was gross. How do you think this works, Sam?
The scene had gotten ugly fast. If she pushed any further it would be fight or flight time.
“How are you ever going to change diapers?”
He stomped out the back door before she finished her sentence. On the way, Mocha got tangled between Sam’s legs and yelped. It probably looked like Sam had kicked him.
#
That night, he lay on his side, wide awake as his wife slept behind him. He heard her breathing, exhausted from her day’s work. He should have been tired too. Hell, he should be more tired than any man had ever been in his life. He’d dug a hole today faster than Superman.
He kept wondering if he should wake his wife and tell her what had happened. She’d freak. She’d make him go to the doctor. They’d poke him and scan his brains, just like they did when he started getting migraines. Then they’d tell him the tests show nothing unusual. Yeah, nothing unusual at all. He just blacked out and fell though a wormhole in the space/time continuum today.
He remembered that his gloves and shovel were still laying outside in the dirt. He slid out of bed, pulled on a pair of jeans and a robe, and crept out into the back yard. He lifted the latch and stepped through the gate into Carl’s yard. All lights were off, but Sam could see his shovel in the moonlight right where he had tossed it next to the pit. He crept to the edge of the pit, feeling more anxious than a man should who was just retrieving his tools from his neighbor’s yard. Were his gloves down there? Sure enough. Right next to—
Right next to the real reason he had come out here in the middle of the night. The stone. He'd been thinking of it all day, its cooling, soothing effect on his face and head, the way his concerns had melted away at its touch, his body oozing into a puddle of comfort. It was like a rock from one of those sweet smelling yin and yang stores in the mall. It had aligned his chakra or something like that.
He had fallen asleep and… and what? His ditch-digging job had been done for him in an impossible amount of time, and he went home. And that was the part that scared him, made him think about strokes and brain tumors.
The stone lay black against the gray soil. Sam climbed down and picked up his gloves. Then in one motion, he scooped the stone into the pocket of his robe and hopped out of the pit.
#
The next morning he awoke in his easy chair to the sound of his wife leaving for work.
“Rough night?” she asked. She was still icy from their spat yesterday, but she had communicated.
“Good morning.” Sam stretched and noticed the stone on his lap where it had apparently tumbled from his hands last night. It had happened again, the relaxing feeling. The stone had poured coolness through him from head to toe, but as far as he could tell, nothing funny had happened with time. He felt embarrassed about the rock in his lap and slipped it back into his robe pocket before Jeanne saw it.
“I’ll be back tonight after my class” Jeanne said. She swooped up her bag, and was out the door. No kiss on the cheek.
Fine. She’d cool off by the time she got home. Of course then she’d ask him how his daddy class went. Man, he didn’t want to go to that. Those movies. He’d wait and see how things went today. He had a lot of projects around the house that he needed to get done.
#
He had the garbage disposal disassembled and spread all around the kitchen that evening when he went to wipe his hands and caught the time on his watch. His dad class would start in ten minutes. Not enough time to get cleaned up and make it there. Well, it wasn’t completely his fault this time. He was in the middle of something. Jeanne had been asking him to look at the disposal for days now. She’d be happy it was fixed.
Two hours later at seven o’clock the phone rang. It was Jeanne.
“Hi. It’s me. I’m here at my class. How are things at home?” She sounded pleasant.
“Good. I’m getting lots done.”
“Great, hon. I’m glad!” She was way too pleasant. She must be assuming that he had felt guilty and gone to his class after all. What a horrible thing to do to him. Now he was going to have to tell her that he hadn’t gone. She’d feel like he’d lied to her, even though he never told her any differently. Well, if she got upset now it was her own—
“Hey, thank you.” she said.
“Hm? For what?” She’d never acted this devious before. This was horrible. She was setting him up now. Her next line would be “For proving to me what a putz you are,” or something like that. He should beg off the phone now. Some emergency—
“The sign-in sheet was here for your five o’clock Dad’s Class, and I saw that you’d been here. Thank you, sweetheart. I know that was hard for you.”
Sam couldn’t say anything. He knew he should be responding, but just made agreeable noises as she spoke. What had she seen? Someone else’s signature that looked like his? No. That was silly. She knew his handwriting. Maybe someone had signed in for him? But he couldn’t think of anyone that would even know to do that.
“I’ve gotta go,” she said. We’re doing breast-feeding tonight! Woo-hoo!” She laughed.
“Okay,” he said, still waiting for the ‘gotcha!’ He managed to get out “Have fun,” before she hung up.
Sam looked over the pile of gears and bolts that had kept him home, occupying his entire afternoon. Maybe Jeanne had seen the sign-in sheet from that only class Sam had been to weeks ago. But that didn’t make sense either. The first thing Jeanne would have done when she saw his name would be to check the date and make sure of what she was seeing. She wouldn’t have believed it at first, so she must have made sure before she called to gush ‘thank-yous’ at him. Somebody must have signed in for him. Forged his signature?
A thought occurred to him that hollowed his stomach. He clutched at his socket wrench so tightly that his knuckles turned white. Grease pushed into his open blisters and stung.
This wasn’t the first time this week that logic had wiggled a little bit in order to help him out. He’d wanted the ditch digging job to be over with. He’d fallen asleep, and it was done. Last night he’d wanted a way out of the pregnancy class, but one that would keep his wife calm. Now it had happened. He shook his head. Too much time alone.
In the bedroom he pulled the stone from his robe pocket with grease-covered hands. Its ebony face told nothing. He realized with some surprise that he was hoping that this rock was in fact magical, that it was reading his mind and finding ways to help him out, to give him what he wished for most in any moment.
Because if it wasn’t the stone….
He needed to test it. Try the thing again and be sure that something strange really was happening. He slumped to the floor next to his bed and grasped the stone in both hands.
So far, the ‘bumps’ seemed to happen when he wanted something badly and then used the stone. He picked something that he wanted and concentrated on it. His hands lifted the stone to his face. It touched him. He focused his mind on his chosen desire. Coolness. Calm. Blackness.
#
He woke up an hour later. It took ten minutes to gather the courage to move his hands up his chest and in front of his face. He opened them and gasped.
He shouldn’t have been so frightened by what he saw. It was what he was expecting.
His palms were smooth, pink and as flawless as a baby’s. No blisters anywhere.
#
So, this was proof, wasn’t it? He lay on his bedroom floor, trying to make sense of things inside his foggy head. His grandmother had died after a long battle with Alzheimer’s. He shivered. If he’d just been carrying a rock in his pocket while his mind was slowly rotting inside his skull…. Oh, please let it be the stone! Let it be something impossible. Let me have found something that science can’t explain. Don’t let it be something so common as insanity!
And it frightened him that even this wish made him sound like a lunatic. It was much more likely that he was loosing it, than that he’d found a magic rock in the back yard. He felt sick.
Don’t let it happen to me. Not so young, he pleaded with no one. Not with a child coming! Could he bear to even consider it? A child to raise, and his problem would not be that he wasn’t making enough income to support his family, it would be that he was slowly decaying into a drooling, waste of flesh. He couldn’t be a father. Not ever. Not when he would eventually be a quivering lump that people would pity, even as they were changing his diapers and trying to keep him from cutting himself.
Desperate, he stood and pressed the black stone to his head again. Please be the stone. Please be the stone…. The cold bled into his face and into his mind. It gushed through him to his feet. His shaking stopped. The room slipped past him at an odd angle, and he fell.
#
Nighttime. He awoke on the bed to the sound of his wife climbing in with him. She put her arms around him from behind and hugged him. Sam patted her arm, and with his other hand, slid the black stone out from under him and off his side of the bed to the floor.
#
The next morning, he had a migraine, the kind that was going to last all day. He squinted into the mirror, half expecting to see a knitting needle protruding from his left eye socket.
The clock said that it was 10:15. Way later than he ever slept in, even during summer break. In the kitchen, the phone was blinking to tell him he had a message. Sam hit the button, and poured some milk on his corn flakes, getting only some of it in the bowl.
“Hey, Sam, this is Carl. How are ya’? Hey, I was out in the back yard yesterday, the trampoline pit looks great.”
Sam decided that Carl needed to stop saying ‘Hey’.
“Hey, I finally got a hold of the gas company and they came over, and unfortunately, they say that the pit is too close to a gas line. Can you believe it? And we’re going to need to move it about five feet to the right. Yuck, huh? Of course I’ll pay you for your time, again, but I’m really gonna’ need your help.
Hey—”
Sam smacked the phone off a little harder than he intended to. He may have cracked it. Great start to the day. Of course he would help Carl dig his damn hole again. Mostly because he needed the cash, and Carl must know that.
Sam dropped his breakfast spoon on the table and held his head, ashamed of himself. He threw the rest of his cereal in the sink, and went to take a shower.
After shaving and dressing he felt a little more human. Even his migraine had subsided a bit. He eased onto the couch and found a book next to him. It was one of Jeanne’s parenting books. Surprised at his own curiosity, he picked it up. The table of contents listed chapter 5 as “Just for Dads.” He opened to it, and began reading.
The tone of the book was light, but informative. The diagrams weren’t as graphic as the movies he’d seen before, so he was able to look closely at them. The dad chapter talked about fears that most first time fathers feel. It described things he could do to be useful while most of the attention was going to be on mom. There was even a section on preparing financially that broke things down into manageable chunks. Later in the book there were pictures showing the baby’s growth stages during pregnancy. Full color photographs. Soon now, it would develop a face, fingers. The chemicals and cells would zip about on there own dividing and re-combining, structuring themselves into perfect miniature versions of organs, bones, eyes, a person, a soul….
The phone rang. It was Jeanne at work.
“Hello, love,” he said. “How are you?”
“Um… I’m not so good, Sam.” She hardly ever used his name like that.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m bleeding. A lot.”
“Okay.” He said it like she was giving him street directions. “Are you coming home?”
“I don’t know.” She was getting more upset.
“Did you call your doctor yet?” Sam’s arms felt cold.
“No.”
“Okay, do that. Tell her what’s going on. See if she needs you to come in. I’m sure she can tell you exactly what to do. I’m sure you’re fine.” He couldn’t make himself say that he was sure everything was fine.
“Okay.”
“Is there anything you need me to do here today?”
“No. I’m going to call the doctor now.”
“Okay, let me know.” Sam hung up, took one deep breath and noticed the parenting book in his hand. He hurled it across the room with such rage that it smashed into the CD tower, scattered disks across the room, and dented the wall.
In the bedroom he smacked the pillows. Why now? What wicked joke was this? He clenched his fists until his fingernails cut his palms. What kind of god would take a child from him the moment he’d started giving the idea of fatherhood a chance?
Even in the fog of his fury, though, he knew the answer. He knew who the culprit was. It was himself. The thoughts that had been on his mind last night as he pressed that damn stone to his head again were clear: he’d been thinking about how he didn’t want to be a father.
He'd done it with the stone. While it cooled him and relaxed him into a state of peaceful ecstasy it had once again given him exactly what he wanted in that moment. It made things happen for him. It had caused what he wanted. It had…killed? He collapsed onto his back, gasping. Sparks streaked at the edges of his sight and the patterns on the ceiling smudged and waved.
He had a thought. If he’d messed things up, could he fix them? He let the idea come into him slowly. Could he make everything good again? Wonderful, even? His left arm crept over the edge of the bed and down to the floor. The stone lay there, where he had let if fall, cold and hard. He pulled it up to his face and set it on his forehead. It wobbled there, trying to stay on him. In the past it had fallen away as soon as he’d lost consciousness, ending the spell. Not this time. Sam pulled pillows up next to his face and leaned into them so that even if he relaxed completely, the stone would be able to stay against his face. Already the calm was flowing through him. His migraine shrank away completely. He turned his thoughts to what he had done, and what he wanted. He wanted it fixed. He wanted everything perfect. He wanted Jeanne to…no…, first he wanted himself to be free of the guilt.
A channel opened in his mind. He slipped along it through dreams and desires. The walls of the channel grew steeper, blocking his view of all other thoughts, all other options. His thoughts were pulled towards a life with no guilt, no mortgages, no deadlines. He pictured tranquil scenes, beaches, grassy meadows, fruit-filled trees. He pictured those places as belonging only to one person, accessible only to the first person who ever entered them, then sealing themselves off forever from the world of crowds, trials and duties. One entrance existed, one door to this paradise, and it was near, it was open now, waiting for its one occupant. Then it would seal itself, encapsulating its tenant in bliss for the rest of all time.
His vision cleared. He hadn’t passed out this time. Sam was awake, and could move, but the coolness was still with him, pulsing up and down his body in his veins. He took the stone from his head and sat up, and the feeling moved with him. It more than moved with him, it moved him. It said stand and Sam stood, sure that standing was the best thing he could do at that moment. It said walk toward the bedroom door. It said reach out your hand. It said turn the doorknob.
Sam knew what was behind that bedroom door. It wasn’t his living room. It wasn’t his house, or his neighborhood, or even his country. It was the place he’d wanted. It was the release, the way out, the exit. If he passed though that door, he would have everything he ever wanted, and want nothing he'd ever had. A silence enveloped him.
His left hand moved to the knob, but cautiously. Why shouldn’t he go on? There is no reason not to open this door and step through. He turned the knob and pushed.
A phone was ringing, softly, somewhere outside of him. It sounded strange, like he’d never heard a ringing phone before. How long had it been ringing? What did it want? Why was it bothering him? It could have been a salesman, a wrong number….
It wasn’t, though. He knew it wasn’t any of those things. It was his answer, his reason not to go through this door.
Tears stung his eyes. He pulled back against the coolness. The coolness didn’t want him to. He forced his arm back down to his side, and it seemed to stretch like putty as he moved.
The stone, colder than ever now, sizzled and stuck against his flesh. He saw steam billowing through his fingers.
The phone rang one last time. Sam strained, screamed and opened the fingers on his right hand. The stone fell. It smacked the door just below the knob, pushing it open slightly and tumbled through.
Through the door Sam saw the greenest, softest grass he could ever have imagined. The scent of orange blossoms wafted to him. The sound of a sea lapping buttery sand. Just go to it, Sam. There is no regret through this door, no guilt. You might as well take the last step, Sam. You’ve practically done it already. Now that you’ve seen this possibility, you’ll be no use to anyone here. You’ve already left that life. Start this one. Go!
He screamed again, and stepped forward.
A small blur darted past his feet and through the door. Mocha, Jeanne’s fluffy-muff dog bounded into the grass and snatched the stone up into his needle teeth. The bedroom door banged closed, and sound came back again. Sam felt as though his strings were cut. He slumped to the floor, and wept.
After a time, he opened the bedroom door without difficulty—the door he had both feared and yearned for only moments ago—and stepped though into his living room.
He stood there starring at his own walls, until a dripping sound on the carpet near him brought his mind back. A fresh drop of blood oozed from blisters on his palm, trickled through skin lines, and came to dangle at the tip of one finger.
#
It was six months since fluffy-muff Mocha had disappeared. Jeanne was still pregnant ("First trimester bleeding," the doctor had said). The neighbor's trampoline pit was re-dug over an exhausting three-day weekend. Sam could honestly tell Jeanne that he didn’t know where the dog might be. It wasn’t long before they got a new pet, a friendly boxer. Sam took it on walks every day after he got home from school.
Everyday that is, except Wednesdays. Wednesday nights he went to his New Dad classes. The first time back was rough. He had to look away several times during the film, and he purposely chose a seat in the back of the room next to the garbage can, just in case he needed to make use of it suddenly. He made it, though, all the way to the end.
<<<>>>
You need to log in to urbis or create an urbis account to review this writing.
Reviews
Sort Reviews by Newest | Oldest | Highest Quality | Lowest Quality | Newest Comments |
FrakKevin reviewed Version 1 -
Read 100% of the Item
This 98 word review has not been unlocked.
dcyuelling reviewed Version 1 -
Read 100% of the Item
Jeanne went quiet, – where’d she go?
aiming their stretched privates at the camera and squishing out watery black-haired balls of slime and blood.. – that’s so gross but very well detailed. Really sets a disgusting image.
At 56% of the way so far and I’m completely interested. I wonder what the significance of that rock is. It’s like he’s going through some wormholes just like you mentioned previously. How bizarre. I’m liking it though.
This was a very interesting story. I don’t even have words to describe it. It’s captivating. The stone giving Sam what he wanted. I thought for sure that Sam would be taken away from his wife and life to be somewhere that didn’t exist. Like his own personal world or something. That’s what I thought. The suspense of him walking through that door to find what he was looking for was very well written I think.
- add/view comments (0)
squarehopper reviewed Version 1 -
Read 100% of the Item
First of all, congrats – this is a story I read without really being distracted with any blaring issues except one:
What is with all the #? I always found them to be a lazy way to show transition from scene to scene. Maybe you should removing them and using words for the transitions, IMHO. They are distracting and simply mark you as lazy or, worse yet, as believing your readers can’t figure out transitions.
I can see this being in a magazine or an anthology as it stands. You should send it off. Unless you really want to still work on it.
Oh, if you go through for a final edit, please consider removing most of the extra words that weaken sentences such as : that, just, most, almost, some, such, only, and so on.
I would also ask you to consider doing more foreshadowing with the dog. Show her playing fetch. Maybe have her go after his gloves or tools.
There could be a little more foreshadowing with the hero as well. The whole thing about senility in the family was dropped in too conveniently and hastily and exactly where you need to explain his reaction to the rock. Instead of this obvious device – I would simply show his depression more – delve deeper into his fantasies. Have him think suicidal thoughts and daydream about it. Or use some other device.
The size of the rock and its description should be more deeply explained.
The hole digging – is that symbolic? I would push it a little more – do some comparisons in his reflections of his life to hole.
Good luck.
kizzykat reviewed Version 1 -
Read 100% of the Item
I really enjoyed this and read it through all the way to the end without stopping. Clear, easy to follow, believable and without any serious questions raised about its validity, it was an excellent piece of entertainment and well worth publishing.
My only quibble would be the dog sort of getting ‘punished’ for the protagonist’s dislike of it – and that someone so obviously dissatisfied with his life didn’t have the courage to go through that door and start a new life. Or was death through that door? Perhaps you could have made it a little clearer why he rejected the new life. Love or fear?
Phantom reviewed Version 1 -
Read 100% of the Item
Hm… This is a very interesting piece, but I enjoyed it! I liked Sam quite a bit, he’s just a normal guy trying to survive in the world and do the best he can, a good base for a protagonist in this type of story. The whole mystery behind the stone is very intriging. Over all, this is a great story!
slbynum3 reviewed Version 1 -
Read 100% of the Item
This was interesting. You slip little mysteries throughout the story that give it a sci-fi/fantasy feel. I wanted to keep reading to figure out what was the cause of it all.
I’ve never heard of someone digging a hole for a trampoline. Might be a good idea, but it isn’t common. Maybe he should be digging it for another reason.
I like how you describe the feeling the stone has on Sam. I found myself wishing I could find a soothing stone like that!
Sam is a wonderful character. I especially like how he changed in the end after losing the stone.
I didn’t find many grammer issues with this. Great work!
Jedikid129 reviewed Version 1 -
Read 100% of the Item
“It wasn’t good to get excited too early. Sometimes these things didn’t take the first time.” This statement seems almost hopeful. At this point, for him, a miscarriage would be a lucky break. It’s certainly understandable. I’m pro-life, but I can see myself hoping for that responsibility to be lifted, and then pretending to grieve over the lucky tragedy. While there’s really nothing wrong with hoping for it, having anything to do with it, even indirectly through a magic stone would destroy me with guilt, like it did for your character.
Throughout this piece, we’re made to feel the pressures of this man. But at the same time, I can’t say that I understand what he’s going through. I would have wished for money, but your character has had enough of everything, and doesn’t even wish for wealth, but to get away from it all.
When he resisted the paradise…that was quite manly. All throughout the story, you gave this character pride as a man. He didn’t want to need his neighbor’s generosity—he wants to support his family on his own. I can’t help but think that his wife’s dig at his manliness ”...like real Working Man hands.” was a common thing in their relationship:”For proving to me what a putz you are” (though this was unsaid, the fact that he assumed she would say something this derogatory says volumes about how emasculated she can make him feel.)So when it came down to it, even though he had already fixed the problem with the baby, even when he had seen the paradise…he still felt that it was his responsibility to stay because that was his duty as a man.
Though it’s unlucky for him that the rock was lost, it certainly fits with your themes. If he’d still had it, the idea of the hard working, struggling man would be tarnished by the ability to have whatever he desired with no effort. It would have taken the gravity away from the dilemma of refusing paradise.
Showing 1 - 7 of 7
Review item
Add to favesCreator
Relevant Links
Item Stats
GENERAL
7 Reviews 14 Comments
Version 1
Latest Activity: 4 months ago
REVIEW QUEUE
Appeared in Queue: 63 Times
Skipped: 2 Times
Ratings & Rankings
