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| Gravity; Vastly Revised | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Dec 29 2007, 08:37 PM (133 Views) | |
| Dierdre_the_Sorrowful | Dec 29 2007, 08:37 PM Post #1 |
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Newbieness Training
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Just because I posted the first draft here, I thought I'd post the final draft. I changed...well, I lost track of how many things I changed. The very basics of the scenario and flow of events are, I think, roughly the same. The end was pretty much rewritten entirely. I'd rate it at about PG-13 for violent imagery. The ties that made it vaguely fanfic are now for all intents and purposes gone. Oh well. Gravity “One.” He is tearing, darting, dashing down alleys, over low walls, behind dumpsters, dodging street signs and hobos, broken bottles and rusty bicycles. His mind is, at least. His body does not flee so easily – something the older boys have made sure of. The knot of the blindfold scratches Jordan’s head, rubbing maddeningly against the quarter-inch frizz no razor has ever successfully banished, but he doesn’t take it off. He can’t, or else he’ll ruin the game, and he’s already been punished today for that. Still is. He doesn’t want to know what happens if he messes up while paying for messing up. He clomps hesitantly for a few steps, fighting paralysis. “Two.” The boys love seeing him panic, love it when he runs into walls or slips off curbs, love how they’re more dangerous than anything he stumbles into during the chase. This is one of their favorite games. They’re even giving him a head start, a real one where they count slowly and loud enough for him to hear, a chorus of cacophonous screams that brings a sharp, quivering pain to his ears. He scurries away from their terrifying generosity, tripping over his loose shoelaces, wishing they were playing Volcano Monster Tag instead, because then there would be only one hunter and that’s not as scary. “Three.” They’ve played here before. The tiny, plastic playground behind the Flame of God Evangelist Church is better known to the neighborhood boys as the galley ship of the Pirate Kings, the Crusader’s Castle, or a jail from the Wild West. The hunt had been called this time when their prisoner failed to drown “good ‘nuff” after walking the plank. Jordan had been afraid they’d jump on top of him and squoosh his stomach and make the mulch poke into his neck if he fell over dead, but now he knows he should have risked it. Anything is better than Hide and Seek. But maybe this time he won’t lose. “Four.” He swivels to the left, remembering his plan. After ten pounding steps he swings right, arms outstretched in a V, praying he won’t break his nose. His left fingers crumple, scraping brick. Jordan yips and shuffles to the right, his forward momentum making his movements jerky. He counts ten more steps, estimating the distance. His stomach clenches, waiting for the void in front of him to yield something. It’s got to be there. He can’t afford to be wrong. The urge to shove the ripped, sweaty piece of T-shirt onto his forehead ripples through him along with his dread, but there’s no way to know if they’re watching. He stumbles on, trusting his memory. “Five.” The hand that finds the rusty side of the fire escape ladder clamps down on it so fiercely the whiplash nearly yanks his arm off. He swings around, grabbing the rungs. Come on, come on! He stumbles up the ladder, grasping each rung with sweaty hands, trying to keep shaking legs and arms in contact with the metal. The rust bites into his hands or flakes off, forcing him to grab hold again. He waits for his hand to hit nothing but air. “Six.” The shouting is less distinct now; Jordan wonders if he’s imagining it. They could have sped up and finished, for all he knows. He doesn’t want to think about them creeping up behind him, reaching for his ankles, shouting ‘Gotcha!’ and laughing when he shrieked and fell off. The thought is too much – he has to look. Peering through eyelashes and shadows, he doesn’t see anyone beneath or behind him. He looks up at the fire escape, several sets of metal stairs zig-zagging up a tall, tall building. There are doors at each floor; maybe he could hide in one of those. He reaches the first warped, grimy landing. He draws himself up and tenuously stands, unwilling to test the integrity of his sanctuary by moving further in any direction. Besides, he’s got to get rid of his trail. He knows how. A memory rises up: a deep voice and a big hand stroking his hair, explaining away nightmares full of heat and smoke. Jordan turns, feels for the top rung of the ladder. He heaves. His brain pounds out a word unheard over the squeal of rusty metal and the rush of blood in his ears: Seven. Stuck. It’s stuck. Too rusty, old, warped. He pulls, twists, jiggles, jerks until he thinks his arms are going to pop out of their sockets; his hands scrape themselves raw but all he’s accomplished is a few squealing, squeaking inches that are undone the moment he gives up. He wishes a grown-up were here, or maybe his sister. But Lyssa would yell at him for climbing up here at all and tell him to march right on back home, and make him eat creamed corn, which he hates, and besides, she never protected him from the other boys anyway. She thinks they’re his friends. She always pays attention to baby sis instead and tells him to go out and play, without even thinking. Still, as he hops up the jagged staircase, he’s overwhelmed by the need to run to her arms and give her a big squeezing hug. “Eight!” He can hear laughter and jeers among the chorus, suddenly louder and closer. They’re cheating; no fair! Quickly, he eradicates the signs of his own rule-breaking and scrambles blindly on his hands and knees to the next landing, and the next. If he were Spiderman, he’d get out of this for sure. He’d just spider-crawl to their homes and tell on them or swing onto the roof or wrap them all up in a web and make them all sticky so they’d have to take baths. He’d use his Spidey Sense to see where he was even through the blindfold, and they’d never know, and he wouldn’t be- “Nine!” A new wave of panic hits him. Jordan lurches as it surges through his body. His lips feel plastered to his gums; rapid, shallow breaths dizzy him. He drags his quaking limbs up another set. Now is a good time to try to get inside. He moves cross the landing, bumping into a railing that shudders at his touch. As he springs away from it, his back rams into a doorknob. He yelps, spins, tugs. Locked! “TEN!” No no no no no no no no no. He heads toward the next floor, turns getting more and more reckless as he finds that door locked too, and the next. The structure shakes with the steps of frenzied pursuers, throwing him off balance even more. He grinds his teeth, trying to suppress the urge to sprint just a little faster, praying that the current distance between him and his pursuers is enough. He’s got to be pretty far up by now. How much further until the steps run out? The footsteps and laughter get louder. How close are they? “Ready or noooooooooooot~” Once those words weren’t so bad. He remembers a deep, round voice calling them out, making him giggle from behind his mother’s dresses. A beam of light widening, a strong molasses-colored hand reaching down through floral prints to grab his shoulder and hoist him up, the other hand ready to tickle the refugee. But the image melts into another one, a face snarling at a tearful mother, from a time before she was like that all the time, and then it fades altogether, replaced by his own gasps and the hunting calls of the boys below him. The hyena-sounds are clearer, louder. He is losing ground. He surges onward. One, two, three more sets of stairs then…nothing. No more steps. Just a wobbly bar of metal between him and freefall. Wildly he feels for a door or a window or something – any means of escape from being cornered. His fingers close on another rusty ladder that shivers upon contact. The clamor of sneakers and boots on metal is almost deafening. No time no time no time. Jordan tries to dash up the ladder, but it’s too unstable for rushing. Slowing down is painful; his heart still beating frantically, his breath ragged, searing his lungs. Fingers brush the bottom of his shoes. He almost screams. The ladder convulses even more wildly. This time, a cry does escape his lips. The boys below him laugh, even as Jordan reaches the last rung. He grasps the curved top of the ladder like a drowning man – a real one, not somebody who just jumped off the top of a slide – would a plank of wood, hugging the roof’s edge and heaving himself over to the blessedly solid surface. He drops down onto the building roof and rests against the short wall along its edge. For a moment, the shouts of those below dim to mutters, the Pirate Kings’ quarry temporarily out of sight. The relief is harder to take than the fear. It can’t last, this safety. They’ll follow him. They always do. But they don’t, right away. They’re just talking. Jordan can’t tell if they mean for him to hear or not, but in the sudden quiet, it’d be hard not to. “Crazy kid,” one says, “Who’d come all the way up here?” “Dunno, but that’s why he’s fun, right?” “Yeah, I mean, that time he hid in a dumpster was funny as hell. God, he must have stayed there all day.” “Came out smelling like beer and dead dog, yeah. Bet his mom had a fit.” “If she noticed at all.” Hoots and sniggers rise to Jordan’s ears, making them burn. He covers them with his hands and cradles his head in his knees. It’s mean, so mean of them to talk like that. It’s not his fault his Momma has to work hard all the time. She says it’s so Lyssa can stay in school, but that’s a lie because of baby sis, so she says it’s so they can eat, but school food is better, so she just lays down and yells at him to be quiet because she’s tired and he doesn’t understand anything, and Lyssa grabs his arm and makes him help her make dinner, which tastes bad. “Hey Jordan, get back down here,” a voice says from below as the ladder shudders with someone’s weight. It’s Michael, who the group always uses in tough situations to get the minister or various parents off their backs. He sounds calm, congenial, but Jordan has heard this before. He isn’t fooled. “No!” The rattling jolts his nerves; hypertense, he quivers, still crouched right next to the ladder, unsure about where to go. Unable to see his surroundings, he’s got no chance of outracing the other kid without breaking his neck. The metallic cacophony grows ominously quiet. Jordan scuttles sideways away from the voice that returns above him. “Seriously, come on. We’re not going to do anything to you.” “Yeah, right.” Michael sighs, and Jordan can hear a foot step gingerly onto the roof. Jordan inches further away. “You friggin idiot, the game’s over, okay? I found you, and now we’re all going to go back and play something else. Whatever you want, alright?” He’s heard this before, too. A big smile and a firm hand squeezing his shoulder. A powerful voice booming ‘Whatever you want, son.’ Saying ice cream was perfect, they’d go to the park with Lyssa right after he got back from work. Later, Jordan wondered how many days even a big strong Papa could work nonstop. He stood in the park looking at other papas and kids at the ice cream stand. Eventually he found enough pennies and dimes in the fountain to buy a cone for himself. It tasted sour. Jordan doesn’t move. Michael sighs, and walks over to him. Each footstep makes Jordan curl a little further into himself, even though it doesn’t keep the taller boy from grabbing his shoulder and shaking him enough to pull him upright. “Man, you really are crazy. Climbing all the way up here with this still on.” At first, Jordan doesn’t get what he means. It’s not what he was expecting to hear at all. Then a hand brushes his face, grabbing the rag over his eyes. Jordan screams, pulls both arms in front of himself and pushes. The body in front of him falls backward, unprepared for the assault. The rabble below freezes. The boys watch their comrade fall toward them. The platform quakes as Michael, finally over his shock enough to start shouting, hits it and one of the guardrails, almost falling through altogether. His head cracks against the rail, then he is hidden from sight, surrounded by alarmed friends asking each other if he’s okay. Jordan pinwheels in front of the ladder, afraid of plummeting to the ground along with his enemy, before catching himself shakily on part of the top of the ladder. His neck hurts from the force of the blindfold being torn off his head. His eyes see what happens below him; the eyes he’d forgotten he hadn’t been using. They see the stunned faces looking up at him, see the kids trying to drag Michael back down the rickety stairs, see them trying to figure out if they should tell anyone and who it should be. His ears hear the accusations and death threats flying up at him, the shouts of grown-ups, misguided questions about drugs. His eyes see these, too, matching them up with glares and waving hands and curious hobos. His mind sees something else, a towering, muscular man leaning over a smaller, pale-faced form; a fierce, proud man ploughing big, strong fists into the cowardly ghost-man’s stomach; a mighty, righteous man with large bloody hands giving a limp, fishlike body one last kick. His mind hears a solemn, angry voice telling him ‘Son, don’t you ever let somebody think you can’t stand up for yourself. Grow up big and strong and love your Momma good but if someone ever starts something, you finish it. You fight back. Fight back hard. Got it?’ Jordan begins to run. He jumps back down the ladder and races back down the stairs. He weaves through the cluster of frightened boys, dodges the ones who try to snag him as he passes them. He whips around corners and dumpsters, flies by the Flame of God, pounds past his apartment building where Lyssa is making mac ‘n’ cheese. As he sprints across the park, another, taller figure pulls up next to him. They run together past the ice cream stand, around a clump of bushes, moving west. The reddening sun dips down to greet them. ‘I fought back,’ Jordan gasps, ‘Now what?’ Papa smiles, points at the crimson beaming between the skyscrapers. Disappear. |
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| Holocollector | Mar 27 2008, 06:27 PM Post #2 |
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Christmas is Coming
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quivering pain to his ears. He scurries away from their terrifying generosity, tripping over his loose shoelaces, wishing they were playing Volcano Monster Tag instead, because then there would be only one hunter and that’s not as scary. I know you are using creatve names but this just doesnt work. While this is a creative work it seems out of place to give such a name. Seems too strange to cal something volcano monster tag while names such as the Pirate Kings, the Crusader’s Castle can stand on their own since this is a creative work. Seems not to work here. How much further until the steps run out? The footsteps and laughter get louder. How close are they? I dont like this voicing, this voicing perspective gets too much in the way of the story. I like the subtle aspect of the lines such as it should be. That should not get the way of what you are reading. The resolution felt complete this time, that was an improvement. He can hear laughter and jeers among the chorus, suddenly louder and closer. They’re cheating; no fair! Quickly, he eradicates the signs of his own rule-breaking and scrambles blindly on his hands and knees to the next landing, and the next. If he were Spiderman, he’d get out of this for sure. He’d just spider-crawl to their homes and tell on them or swing onto the roof or wrap them all up in a web and make them all sticky so they’d have to take baths. He’d use his Spidey Sense to see where he was even through the blindfold, and they’d never know, and he wouldn’t be- This was not serious enough, if you are writting a story about a game they are playing this should not be in it. Not the same tone. Anyways this is good work Artemis. The resolution is the best part now, that was what was not woking before. Also you build up tension well. They only parts that did not work are easy to handle. Late post but better late than never. |
| Note: My english writing skills need work so don´t even think of asking me to change it entirely or relearn my english (the impossible). I don´t like the signature, I willl eventually add a picture. | |
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