A woman is sent on a study to a small village with a 10000 word assignment. There she engages with the community and really gets involved in everything and starts to write about them not only from an anthropological viewpoint but from a personal. She spends 10 years with then and She writes and she writes until the 10000 becomes 100,000 and her publishers ask her to cut it down because it is too long. And so she does, but when editing she can't stop. So 100,000 become 50,000, the. 20,000 then 10,000 and her publishers let her go because the content isn't good anymore. And so she cuts it even more to 5,000 and submits it into research journals and is rejected, then the 5,000 becomes 1,000 and short story competitions reject her. Then even more cutting and editing and its rejected as a poem until there is nothing left except for a line and its on the back of a postcard sold in the local shop. And now she faces the daily cruelty of children she once wrote about, the police brutality she once satirised, the inevitable ostracism from the local community she predicted.......
It was a beautiful story. It was painful to hear a story which captured that feeling of loss of such great scale, the fact that ten years were basically wasted. The ultimate rejection from the people she cared so deeply about. It influenced this next story; and yes I did submit it to my storyteller lecturer. He loved it.
Seeing Nothing
The key slid into the lock with a slight click and turned smoothly for the first time in a long while. Nicely surprised the owner of the key smiled a small smile, pushed the door open with the bottom of her palm and entered the house. The hallway was dark and the morning’s mail had not yet been picked up. She slowly lowered herself to the ground by bending her knees as the doctor had instructed to ease the pain in her lower back and quickly glanced over the envelopes. The envelopes held tickets to a better more rich life, junk mail from people that urged you to believe in the power of magical numbers. She stood up slowly careful not to strain her back and dropped the envelopes into the small wicker basket she used for paper recycling which sat on top of the hallway dresser – an antique inherited from her late aunt – and entered the front room.
The curtains were closed, blocking out the fading sunshine she had just come in from but the windows were still open allowing air to circulate in the stuffy room. Dishes and crisp packets littered the low table which normally held an array of carefully laid out coffee table reads such as: a book on fashion illustration, a book about uses of light in photography beneficial for both still and moving camera, a thin volume of Indian art and sari patterns and a few back copies of Private Eye. Carefully laid out so those that came to visit could look through them without any difficulty and the choices, she thought, shed so much light on her personality. But now they were scattered on the rug under the table uncared for, unloved.
She looked sadly around the rest of the room. There were damp clothes hanging on the backs of the chairs she had hand painted herself. Other clothes littered the floor. A pair of jeans sat beside the kitchen door as though the owner had only moments ago stepped out of them. Dust swirled and danced in the slits of light that forced itself in from under the doors and above the curtains. The air held a smell of a mixture of sweet and sour, attractive yet equally repulsive. She put her bag down onto the soft faded pink charity shop armchair and continued to stand absolutely still. Minutes or hours could have passed; it was the sound of a soft shuffle which aroused her from her thoughts. A dark shadow appeared in the part of the hallway she could see from the open door of the front room. It grew until a body accompanied it. A tall, uncouth man stepped towards her wearing a scruffy t-shirt and a pair of union jack boxer shorts. Her boyfriend. He stared at her bleary eyed and smiled a tight smile. She refused to return the forced acknowledgement and instead remained standing still as possible. Trying not to engage with her he side stepped her and headed towards the sofa pushing crisp packets onto the floor as he sat down. He put the TV on which had been purposefully left on standby and flicked through the channels jabbing the remote control with his thumb. Out of respect to her he kept the volume on mute knowing no other person who could create so much tension in a room when they wanted to speak. He glanced at her sideways and saw her gulp. She would speak now. He breathed deeply.
‘I heard something today,’ she said and then paused. He looked at her now, squarely. She looked in his direction but was busy looking through him so he studied her carefully. Her face looked thinner than he remembered, some would say gaunt. Her long hair had been left uncut for many months – a fact he knew because he noticed all those small changes. Her long caramel coat was buttoned up tightly although the weather had been unusually warm and her scarf did not match properly- indication of her recent distraction. He looked at her eyes- they bored him with their show of lifelessness. He turned his face back towards the TV but his eyes as though on their own accord began shifting from crisp packet to dish, absorbing the mess. The rug needed a good vacuum, he thought, I should do that. I’ll do that.
‘It was a story,’ she said suddenly breaking the silence as though she hadn’t paused. ‘A beautifully tragic story.’ He looked at her once more. She had said these last words in a dramatic whisper as though demanding his attention and although he knew that was not her intent he felt angry. Her eyes only moments ago so dull began to fill with colour as though an imaginary syringe was injecting a myriad of warmth in her. Tears glistened on her bottom lashes, some latching onto the top. Her mouth was slowly but firmly shaping words but the accompanying sounds went unheard. He was simply looking at her, for the first time through eyes of a stranger. He wanted to hit her. She was so large. So full of everything that this room dwarfed her. The dishes and the crisp packets, even him sitting around in his union jack boxer shorts were too small for her. Her lips moved slowly into what looked like a smile but then snapped back into nothingness.
‘She spent ten years writing about them. That is a whole decade, an entire memorable childhood. She spent it all on them. About their ways, about their lives.’ The words were difficult to get out in the same way she had heard them earlier that day. They sat in her throat refusing to come out seeming detached, thus she appeared as though close to tears.
‘But it was too long and she began to cut the story down, but she could not stop. And then it was rejected and more rejection followed. All that time, all those ten years cut down to a mere single sentence on a postcard. She lost everything and she had so much to share.’ Her voice broke, she stopped fighting the tears and let them fall.
‘Don’t you see?’ she asked into the room. ‘Don’t you see, that kind of nothingness is everything. She spent ten years only to be forgotten, what is her name? I heard this story and the pain just… it just stretched across everything. Don’t you see? That is us. All of us are this woman. This infinite sadness or whatever – that is her and it is us. Don’t you see?’ She was sobbing now, openly. Her shoulders hiccupped to her sobs, a strange way her body kept in time with itself. She did not wipe the tears away just let them drop ugly onto her coat making the fabric darker.
He stared at her open display. She never did this, she never reacted to anything. A part of him wanted to comfort her but another relished in watching her pain. He looked down at the dishes and wanted to scream. Don’t you see, he screamed silently looking at her, don’t you see? This pain? This! You never see anything. He scratched his nose and stood up. She was still crying. He slowly began to move towards her careful not to break eye contact with her bent head, betting his entire life on not blinking.
‘Sometimes with pity, but almost always with awe,’ she said, gulping to get the words out so they seemed distorted and unrelated. Her eyes began to blur and at that moment she saw the front room in both past and present state. She saw herself the way she stood now crying over nothing and everything and tried to look back and remember something, anything in particular and failed. Instead the room faded slowly into a park. The sofa became the park bench and the crisp packets were dandelions determined to grow through cracks in the paving. Upon the bench sat a lady often referred to by the children as bag lady or a witch depending on what game they were playing. She sat there silent, unmoving head slightly bent. On top of her head sat the present with its deep despair and inexplicable grief: a lead weight. In her lap sat her past, childlike looking up at her reminding her of what she had, just moments ago. The children’s screams of laughter and cruel taunts go unheard – her pain comes from the postcard which sits beside her.
He stands watching her stare at the sofa softly crying and moves beside her. He looks at the sofa and reminds himself of what she had said and tries in vain to look through her eyes. His gaze begins to soften with unshed tears and he breathes deeply. She stands as though a statue. He looks at her and moves towards the door. Quietly he dresses himself in the bedroom in a pair of jeans and a clean enough t-shirt. He pulls on socks and slips his feet into much loved trainers. He looks around the bedroom and sees nothing. Surprising himself he picks up her eye pencil and scribbles down a near illegible note and leaves it deliberately on the dresser. Slowly he moves towards the hallway.
She blinked and wiped her face but the tears had long dried leaving dry track marks on her cheeks. She looked around the front room – now dark - at the dishes, the crisp packets and the clothes littered on the floor and hanging on the backs of chairs. There was an eerie feeling as though time had stood still and was now moving faster to catch up. She looked around, her vision sharp and unfocused at the same time. Time hit her with full force and she suddenly knew what had happened. Slowly she walked into the bedroom and without looking for it saw the note placed on top of the dresser. She picked it up and absorbed the rough marks of the eye liner pencil. His writing resembled a doctor’s, only special people could read it. She always had been able to. She slowly took in the words:
Neither of us saw and neither of us will ever see.
I’m sorry.
X
She smiled a small smile and replaced the note back onto the dresser and walked back into the front room. In the darkness she picked up every crisp packet and dish and took them into the kitchen. She put the crisp packets into the recycling box for plastic and put the dishes into the small bucket in the sink which she filled with warm water from the tap letting them soak for the night ready for the morning. She picked up all the clothes that littered the floor and folded them carefully into a large bin bag ready for the charity shop. She closed the window and locked the front door. She walked back into the bedroom and unbuttoned her coat throwing it onto a French style armchair. She sat on the edge of her bed and slowly undressed letting the clothes slip onto the floor. She quietly got under the duvet, pulled it up to her chin and lay flat on her back. She tried to remember where they had met and realised she had forgotten. She had forgotten what she had first thought of him and why she liked him. She tried to remember the last time they had kissed. Nothing. She thought of the last line in the story: sometimes with pity, almost always with awe.
She slept.
iThink iLike this one the best!
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