theredpen
August 25th, 2004, 09:52 PM
Okay, this is my first story excerpt submission online. If I made any mistakes or step on toes thusly lemme know in a nice way. The story you can tear to shreds if you like, just don't swipe it. Since I skipped the beginning obviously it interrupts the flow a little, sorry.
This is toward the middle of a 5,600 word story I have to cut back to under 5,000. I intend to submit it somewhere very soon, as it is finished except for fine-tooth grammar grooming and cutting back. (it is not paragraph indented yet) -It is about a sixties (years old)something 'woman' who is either crazy or is seeing what are essentially fairies or plant spirits running in and around her apartment complex.
Enjoy?
-theredpen
-------------------------------
In the first years of her solitude, Vera began to witness strange things. She had frequently awakened at odd hours with bouts of insomnia, and would wander about the apartment trying to get back to sleep. Sometimes she would stand at the windows and stare out at the night.
Across the street from her bedroom window, there existed the small remnant of an ancient almond orchard, about the size of a single lot, hemmed in heavily at the edges with billowing seedlings of acacias. One summer, when the full moon illuminated the small field, she began to see soft colored lights floating around in the long grass under the trees.
She spoke to the doctor on the phone about her medication, but he wanted her to come in for a visit, so she shut up and didn’t mention it again. The hallucinations continued, but only in the summer. A few years after that, she began also to see the strange children, or, began to see them for what they were.
They look much like the other children, even dressing like them. They might be of any apparent race. Their clothes changed slightly over time, although they day after day always wore the same colors or some variation of them, -monochromatic children.
She dressed in her walking clothes and looked out the windows, judging if the time was exactly right to emerge for her evening walk. She took a different route every day.
When she determined that it was close enough to nightfall to be technically an ‘evening’ walk; Vera opened the door, listened for a moment, and then went out into the courtyard. She turned and locked the door, then crossed the small space to inspect the grapefruit quickly, -just a glance, then proceeded out the archway that led into a wide paved alley. The alley was long and lined with the windowless sides of one-story places like hers, there were a few terrace gates onto it but otherwise it was stark and featureless. The air was cooling off but still too warm for what she was wearing. Her insecurity often drove her to bundle up in spite of whatever weather happened to be going on.
Her apartment was at the southeastern edge of the Shangri-la Garden Apartments, - a huge sprawling development built in the early ‘50’s. Originally designed as a sort of Hollywood vision; with a well maintained but rather confused landscaping plan, suggesting old romantic movies of the era: date palms, bamboo, pampas grass, lily of the Nile, and bird of paradise predominated. Many of the original imports from exotic climes were perfect for L.A. but could hardly be expected to survive the Sacramento winters. Eventually, as the more tender specimens died out, and the management hired fewer and less interested gardeners, and the complex slowly changed into a lower income, family type place, only the largest and the toughest plants remained. What were left of the gardens were only confused remnants of the designer’s lavish concept.
There was a dead pigeon sprawled near the storm drain. She was used to that; there were ever so many of them thanks to the date palms that loomed like swishy towers throughout the complex. On stormy winter days, rarely, she would sneak out and stand between the buildings; in places such as here where she knew there were no windows overlooking; and watched, while the wild winds gripped the palms and tossed their huge fronds like seaweed in a boiling tidepool.
There were many garden corners left within the complex that were still interesting to visit; the original designers had put in little features that caught one by surprise; cement fountains and fishponds for example, all dry now of course.
The evening was far too hot. She considered taking off her coat, but changed her mind. Ahead was a place she didn’t like, and she decided to get past it first, -a narrow side alley that was once a garden feature. It had been a rather fussy and contrived Japanese-themed garden complete with a little cement moon bridge, painted bright red, now flaking and weathered, over a dry watercourse of stones, surrounded by knee high weeds. Against the back wall a tall clump of yellow bamboo still grew, and with it lived the Bamboo girl.
Vera passed the gateway and looked sideways into the garden briefly. There she was, a slight little Asian girl, about seven maybe, wearing a simple sundress of yellow ochre and green. She stared at Vera without smiling as she walked by, from her usual place, standing in the middle of the empty, aqua blue waterless pond. Vera was pretty sure the bamboo girl was lonely, since she never ventured far from her bamboo. She was one of the few odd ones that gave Vera the creeps.
Vera disliked going that way except in the dead of winter, when the child was nowhere about. She reached the end of the alley and paused to remove her coat, tossing it over her arm.
Blackbirds were calling, mixed with the scattered cooing of hundreds of pigeons. She walked slowly along her chosen route, down a narrow parking lot, past a laundry room, and over a green lawn crisscrossed with sidewalk-like pathways. This area led to the center of the complex, where the buildings were taller and the tenants tended to be younger.
She passed a large planting bed overrun with mature and unkempt pampas grass, the ground below was scattered with children’s toys. Giggling and squealing came from behind the clumps, and some of the tenant’s children ran between them involved closely in some game. Most of them were the ‘real’ children. Anyway, that’s how she thought of them now, -the real flesh and blood children that stayed through the winter, huddled in the rain at the bus stop, being called in at night to do their homework. They had no respite from the material world such as the strange ones seemed to have. As they wound back and forth, she noticed two of the strange ones with them; one of the Palmetto girls and one she wasn’t sure about.
The Palmetto girl appeared about twelve, unusually old in appearance for one of their kind, and was slender with light brown skin, her hair thin and in a spiky teenage ‘Do’ of some sort, a string of wooden beads round her slender neck. Her face, however, was typical; it had that sense of simplistic joy just under the surface, -so much so they had to hide it from those around them, like a child for whom it was always secretly Christmas morning.
The other she had never seen before, a little boy, no more than five, maybe younger. He was cute in a homely way, pudgy, short-legged, with ridiculously buzz-cut hair on his round skull.
Vera steered to give the children a wide berth.
The game reached some sort of reconciliation, and the tenant children parted ways with the others saying they had to go have dinner. The Palmetto girl watched them wistfully for a few moments, and then wandered off, pulling at her tank top strap so it snapped against her shoulder. The boy seemed unaffected by the children’s departure, and ran off a little ahead of Vera, grinning at her as he went by.
This is toward the middle of a 5,600 word story I have to cut back to under 5,000. I intend to submit it somewhere very soon, as it is finished except for fine-tooth grammar grooming and cutting back. (it is not paragraph indented yet) -It is about a sixties (years old)something 'woman' who is either crazy or is seeing what are essentially fairies or plant spirits running in and around her apartment complex.
Enjoy?
-theredpen
-------------------------------
In the first years of her solitude, Vera began to witness strange things. She had frequently awakened at odd hours with bouts of insomnia, and would wander about the apartment trying to get back to sleep. Sometimes she would stand at the windows and stare out at the night.
Across the street from her bedroom window, there existed the small remnant of an ancient almond orchard, about the size of a single lot, hemmed in heavily at the edges with billowing seedlings of acacias. One summer, when the full moon illuminated the small field, she began to see soft colored lights floating around in the long grass under the trees.
She spoke to the doctor on the phone about her medication, but he wanted her to come in for a visit, so she shut up and didn’t mention it again. The hallucinations continued, but only in the summer. A few years after that, she began also to see the strange children, or, began to see them for what they were.
They look much like the other children, even dressing like them. They might be of any apparent race. Their clothes changed slightly over time, although they day after day always wore the same colors or some variation of them, -monochromatic children.
She dressed in her walking clothes and looked out the windows, judging if the time was exactly right to emerge for her evening walk. She took a different route every day.
When she determined that it was close enough to nightfall to be technically an ‘evening’ walk; Vera opened the door, listened for a moment, and then went out into the courtyard. She turned and locked the door, then crossed the small space to inspect the grapefruit quickly, -just a glance, then proceeded out the archway that led into a wide paved alley. The alley was long and lined with the windowless sides of one-story places like hers, there were a few terrace gates onto it but otherwise it was stark and featureless. The air was cooling off but still too warm for what she was wearing. Her insecurity often drove her to bundle up in spite of whatever weather happened to be going on.
Her apartment was at the southeastern edge of the Shangri-la Garden Apartments, - a huge sprawling development built in the early ‘50’s. Originally designed as a sort of Hollywood vision; with a well maintained but rather confused landscaping plan, suggesting old romantic movies of the era: date palms, bamboo, pampas grass, lily of the Nile, and bird of paradise predominated. Many of the original imports from exotic climes were perfect for L.A. but could hardly be expected to survive the Sacramento winters. Eventually, as the more tender specimens died out, and the management hired fewer and less interested gardeners, and the complex slowly changed into a lower income, family type place, only the largest and the toughest plants remained. What were left of the gardens were only confused remnants of the designer’s lavish concept.
There was a dead pigeon sprawled near the storm drain. She was used to that; there were ever so many of them thanks to the date palms that loomed like swishy towers throughout the complex. On stormy winter days, rarely, she would sneak out and stand between the buildings; in places such as here where she knew there were no windows overlooking; and watched, while the wild winds gripped the palms and tossed their huge fronds like seaweed in a boiling tidepool.
There were many garden corners left within the complex that were still interesting to visit; the original designers had put in little features that caught one by surprise; cement fountains and fishponds for example, all dry now of course.
The evening was far too hot. She considered taking off her coat, but changed her mind. Ahead was a place she didn’t like, and she decided to get past it first, -a narrow side alley that was once a garden feature. It had been a rather fussy and contrived Japanese-themed garden complete with a little cement moon bridge, painted bright red, now flaking and weathered, over a dry watercourse of stones, surrounded by knee high weeds. Against the back wall a tall clump of yellow bamboo still grew, and with it lived the Bamboo girl.
Vera passed the gateway and looked sideways into the garden briefly. There she was, a slight little Asian girl, about seven maybe, wearing a simple sundress of yellow ochre and green. She stared at Vera without smiling as she walked by, from her usual place, standing in the middle of the empty, aqua blue waterless pond. Vera was pretty sure the bamboo girl was lonely, since she never ventured far from her bamboo. She was one of the few odd ones that gave Vera the creeps.
Vera disliked going that way except in the dead of winter, when the child was nowhere about. She reached the end of the alley and paused to remove her coat, tossing it over her arm.
Blackbirds were calling, mixed with the scattered cooing of hundreds of pigeons. She walked slowly along her chosen route, down a narrow parking lot, past a laundry room, and over a green lawn crisscrossed with sidewalk-like pathways. This area led to the center of the complex, where the buildings were taller and the tenants tended to be younger.
She passed a large planting bed overrun with mature and unkempt pampas grass, the ground below was scattered with children’s toys. Giggling and squealing came from behind the clumps, and some of the tenant’s children ran between them involved closely in some game. Most of them were the ‘real’ children. Anyway, that’s how she thought of them now, -the real flesh and blood children that stayed through the winter, huddled in the rain at the bus stop, being called in at night to do their homework. They had no respite from the material world such as the strange ones seemed to have. As they wound back and forth, she noticed two of the strange ones with them; one of the Palmetto girls and one she wasn’t sure about.
The Palmetto girl appeared about twelve, unusually old in appearance for one of their kind, and was slender with light brown skin, her hair thin and in a spiky teenage ‘Do’ of some sort, a string of wooden beads round her slender neck. Her face, however, was typical; it had that sense of simplistic joy just under the surface, -so much so they had to hide it from those around them, like a child for whom it was always secretly Christmas morning.
The other she had never seen before, a little boy, no more than five, maybe younger. He was cute in a homely way, pudgy, short-legged, with ridiculously buzz-cut hair on his round skull.
Vera steered to give the children a wide berth.
The game reached some sort of reconciliation, and the tenant children parted ways with the others saying they had to go have dinner. The Palmetto girl watched them wistfully for a few moments, and then wandered off, pulling at her tank top strap so it snapped against her shoulder. The boy seemed unaffected by the children’s departure, and ran off a little ahead of Vera, grinning at her as he went by.