Short Story / The Cave (Working Title)
Three months, five days, and some random amount of minutes and seconds into my freshman year of college, when I lived on the third floor of a brick tower in the desolate remains of cow pasture, I found a hole underneath my bed. It was a small hole, and I assumed with disgust that it was a rodent’s home. I was not surprised; both my roommate and I had a habit of leaving food out; he ate chips and mints when he was drunk, I horded bananas that I was determined to eat but never did. For several weeks, it smelled like a brewery, but even after removing old bottles, the smell remained. Eventually, I found an old hunk of bread whose yeast had thrived, and had begun to ferment. I was impressed, and it brought me back to the days when my father’s microbrewery used to explode all over the downstairs bathroom, so I left it. Frequently the smell of drastically overripe banana was preferred to other odors, and I would scent the room with it, due to a lasting conviction that air fresheners are carcinogenic.
I couldn’t resist the hole, and while picturing being bitten and infected by a rat, I probed it cautiously. It felt cool, and a little bit damp, and when I accidentally brushed my finger against the edge it crumbled and widened with brittle ease. In ten minutes there was a whole big enough to sit in, and a pile of debris too large to hide in a garbage can or flush down the toilet, as I found out from the angry, androgynous janitor who had to mop it up.
Soon a little cave was annexed, and it became my secret thinking room, for lack of a better name. For humor’s sake, I liked to wear the leopard print loincloth I made for a caveman costume when I went down there. Sometimes I would shiver, but I brought some blankets, and some old clothes down for a pallet.
A pretty girl was talking to me at this point, and although this wasn’t the first time this had happened, I found myself thinking as though she was in love with me, because it was she who had first introduced herself. It was in the cave I sat after I figured out with sheepish surprise to find that she was in a relationship, laughing to myself, and writing angst ridden poetry in part to make the situation funny rather than mundane. The poems were all about the cave, but it was too difficult to keep it from being a metaphor, and the various attempts at poetry became flames that barely illuminated the dig. It was there that I tried on a bra for the first and last time, just to see what the transvestites were going on about.
The cave became a cave mansion, filled with rooms built just for the sake of making spirals, and crannies that I would never use. I had towers, and crude statues of myself in various states of undress. I created mazes and slides and dancing monkeys so that people would see my work, and be endeared to my child-like imagination. Whole cathedrals that sang odes to the forces that drove me build would be misunderstood. By building a series of statues of a buxom woman stripping and gyrating, I developed an exciting new way to exercise: If I ran fast enough, the statue would strip to a rhythm in my head.
It was there that I realized that I was better at longing than loving, and that it was easier to create things in my head than build them, but in the cave it wasn’t too bad, because the material was easily manipulated. I wondered how long I’d spent in the cave, but had purposefully forgotten, so that if anyone ever saw my cave city, and asked me how long I’d spent building it, he or she would be impressed that I was so involved in my work that I had not kept track of the days. After a few days of this image, I changed it to a proper reporter with blond hair asking me the question, repulsed yet drawn to my almost uncouth state of masculine confidence. Sometimes I would work with annoyance, wondering why no one ever came and discovered my cave city. One would think that all the digging, and the dirt on my hands, which I did not wash for this reason, would cause people to be curious, at come to the cave. I could not get them, though, I thought these monuments would be more beautiful and loved if people came to them on their own.
Looking back on it, it was an obsessive, impulsive, and completely pointless enterprise, but I was young, and building such things was easy.
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This is real excellent, I am not too fantastic with meanings, but if I had to guess I would say that this had something to do with how sometimes in life it’s easier to think about how we want things to turn out rather than making them come out that way.
It reminded me of the wonderful music video for I Will Follow You into the Dark by Death Cab for Cutie. If you haven’t seen it I would recommend checking it out. (link for your convince)
The only thing that bothered me, other than the nagging feeling that I have read that thing about saving bannanas before, was this line:
“not kept track of the days. After a few days of this image”
I know how you meant it but it just comes off a little oddly, I think you might want to re-word that, not so the meaning is changed, but so that it doesn’t seem to contradict the other sentence.
In any case I think this is real fantastic, I really liked a few of the lines.
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I interpreted this story as a metaphor for a psychological withdrawal into a fantasy world. You showed good insight to human nature with, ”... I realized that I was better at longing than loving…”
The tone at first seemed disdainful, and then it became matter of fact until I sensed desperation in the line, ”...wondering why no one ever came and discovered my cave city.”
Overall, I considered the story to be a good representation of one person’s nearly allergic reaction to angst.
That’s good. It’s well written and nicely paced. In terms of tone, i think you’ve hit it well. But meaning, i’m not so sure, i think it’s fine up until the conclusion. It’s then that it gets confusing (not much, but a bit). Maybe i was expecting more of a denouement. The Cave seemed so promising and the self-discovery didn’t seem all that enthralling because it’s such a short piece and the reader has little or no time to build up proper affection for the narrator. Maybe make it a bit longer. There seems plenty of detail in it to make this entirely possible.
I would say this is an interesting metaphorical piece. I thought you rushed into the explanation of how the cave came to be, and needless to say, the whole incident is completely unrealistic…which is what leads me to believe that is just a symbolic piece.
I loved the line “It was there that I tried on a bra…” Hilarious!
All in all, I enjoy the sentiment. We all do crazy, pointless things when we’re young and trying to figure out who we are.
Not sure if this is what I was supposed to get from the piece, but I enjoyed reading it. You’re definitely a talented writer.
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