Shards: Prologue: Stix and Stones

Needs a lot of work, I know. Feel free to shred. PG 13 for violence.
Shards
[nix]
"We're going to drown." He says, "Take my hand. Up, we need to breathe."
"What do you mean, we?" she says, and pulls.

[and nothing happens, and nothing happens]
It will be a red sky. You won't see it directly; but with your glances nip at the salted, boned cuts of it in the river, the puddles, the rear view mirror skirting the driver's perspex fortress. You'll have no mind to butcher it yourself.

You will be settled on the sidesaddle seats by the front. You will like to think that this is not an act of selfishness, (taking the seats reserved for the disabled and elderly) but out of a deeper chivalry; insuring that no one is behind you so that were there a hostile intruder you'd be able to defend your fellow passengers strategically without being taken by surprise. You'll kid no one.

A citrus veneer will take the edge of the musk of the seat itself. You won't successfully distinguish which was once the seat's original hide, and which the patches. One of the million minute myriads of defeat mortality picks from our proud bones.

The marinade of intimate human excretions sinks deeper into the leather. A few of the fruits its juice lurked within reveal themselves:
Bare legs baked, crossed coyly, salaciously seeping.
Neck laid out of itchy suit lolling, pores drooling.
Honeygrime and scabs of blood-bonds scraped off smaller hands on the corner liberated of its padding.
On a hot day this cocktail stench blossoms, but this is not one of them.

You'll want to bite down on the seat and suck and chew and chew and gnaw; your eyes rolling back ecstatically, your chewed mangled nails bear-trap tight into the padding.

Whether it will be repressed tendencies competitive (of the defeat), carnivorous (the leather), or sexual (the sweat) that perverts you is as much as mystery as the order of patches, but it little matters unless you decide you must act upon such urges and find yourself needing to explain yourself. This is unlikely. If you will, however, perhaps the true cause will not help your case.

Shortly, you might arrange a remark about the sky. You won't associate with Those Other People On the Bus without provocation. You used to subscribe to the "Excuse me, may I sit here?" refrain, but it has been hacked down to a sound akin to an unmilked cow. You'll hope, absentmindedly, it was imbued with a bovine tenderness this time.

Moo-ove over.

[touché]


The lengthy leviathan will hum, chuff, opens wide. A woman will flurry in, all bags and no balance. She'll extract a note from a protruding lettuce.
The driver will grunt.
It will out like unsettled effervescence. "I know, I know, I'm sorry. I just, I've been shopping and I got it cash out thinking I'd need that much for the rest of the week, I never manage to get to an ATM otherwise, and then I was going to break it at the butchers but the butchers was closed, and- None of this is your problem, gosh. I can wait for the next one if you like-"
A faint yowling will ensue from her backmound of progeny.
The driver shall smile beneath his coarse coverlet of stubble,"Settle down, love."
"No, you put up with people all-"
"It's fine. Look. Wait 'till the others get by, they may have something."
The line will burst past her in a caterpillar bunch, whisking their tickets thought the cycloptic machine, their schedules impairing their peripheral consciences. (Windows to the soul, indeed, and double bolted).
"I can give it to you in coins, I guess." The driver will sigh.
"That's fine, I can always do with more shrapnel"
He'll heap the gold into her hands, the ticket lining her palm beneath, cupping his own about them until she's steady. "You right love?"
His touch will be cold, bony, nobbled at the knuckles, half a gnarled thumb misplaced in motor mishaps. A network of cracked crevasses and crevices interlace; porous, raw, prawn-red and bug-eyed vein blue. A sweet touch, an abiding touch, firm at the center and thorny deep.

An obscene naivety will drop her mouth in soft release, contort her brow, laden labour upon her breath as if in orgasm. "Do you know I've been married sixteen years. I've never been touched like that."

He'll not hear it through the swish of the closing door.

She'll be embarrassed.

They'll wait for one another,
settle for sleep,
but receive neither.


[Bereaved/Bye Baby Bunting]

You will go to make an observation about the Touched Woman to One of Those Others, but then you realise they are in little position to judge. There will be a clearly disturbed man who has fashioned himself an armour of cereal boxes, and a young woman who lies down, and seems to be sleeping with her eyes open. This could very well be the wrong bus. Doubt will drop the floor beneath you, but then again, you've never noticed the Other Passengers before. Perhaps it will be you, who is the changeling.

The clearly disturbed man will have worn a hole into the cheek of his Cornflakes helmet, rubbing it against a paler portion of the seat's leather.

The Touched Woman's Backmound Of Progeny will clamber down and start humming in the felted fuzz of child-song.

"I have missed my stop," Clearly Disturbed Man will mutter, "But these things are usually on some kind of loop. Not too late, but too early."

Greed will seethe, and he'll tie the strings of his stares to the Backmound with extravagant double bows. They will be like the bows with which her mother braces her shoes, the shoes too big to accommodate growth, the knots too tight to make up for it.

[Harmless]

Those automatic rubber-webbed lips will admit another, given pause. The man to be admitted will be reassuringly mundane.

"Red sky," The Touched Woman will say.
"Yes. Sailor's delight." Clearly Disturbed Man.
"Is it though? I thought that was for night?"
"Isn't it night?"
"No." she'll lose certainty, "I don't think so. Morning, isn't it? Sailor's warning then."

They're mad, you think. But which is it? Now you don't know, morning or night.

"Well, is that east, or west where the sun is?" he'll say
"I can't see the sun, it's behind the horizon."
"Was it before?"
"I don't know. I wasn't watching. I don't think I have the time to just watch the sun go by." she'll gain the self-righteousness reserved for those repopulating the planet.
"Where is east?"
"Where the sun comes up."
"Why that's useful."

The Reassuringly Mundane Man will have piled his coins on top of one another, in sorted towers.
The Driver will shake his head, "This is New Zealand currency. You need double this."
"I don't have any more than this."
The Driver will sigh, "I suppose I can accept you as a half fare."
"Thank you. So much. I'll pay you back tomorrow I swear."
"Which half?"
"I'm sorry?"
"Which half?"
The Mundane Man will giggle in staccato, "Funny, that."
"Do you want to go or not? Half of you, or none at all."
The Mundane Man will leak weeping.
The Driver will nod, "You. Hold him still"
You'll glance to each.
The Clearly Disturbed Man will glare, "Don't look at me, pal, I went last time." He will thrust your hand to the paler leather he had been caressing. Much paler leather. Much much softer. "We missed our stop. The ticket didn't cover any distance after that. Rather than have me a half fare she took the whole. But she is beautiful, isn't she? Even the pieces of her reused, you can see. You can see, can't you? She was just... she was the seeds of something else. She wasn't late, she was early. Just too early, that's all. Premature."
The Backmound will sit cross legged in the aisle, "He's new. You're new, aren't you? Look, I'll do it, I'll show you." She'll take a chocolate coin from her lap and shoves it in her mouth, foil and all. With fat-cheeked scorch she'll take her anthropomorphized inanimate animal beside, "Teddy that was naughty of you eating up your money. Now you are far too fat, and you cannot pay your fare." She will thrust its head out the window. And Smack! The telephone pole will decapitate it to the child's delirious delight.
The Driver will wink at the girl.

Of course you will never commit such an atrocity. You wonder at the Mundane Man not trying to escape. Quite pitiful really.
"We're late as it is." The Touched Woman will amble up the aisle, and restrain the Mundane Man, extending limb by limb out of the window while the Driver's eye draws the line of her thigh.
The Mundane Man will scream. Smack! Smack! Smack! Down the aisle on his slippery stumps, but he'll quieten up, so you'll not notice him so much.

It will be at this time, that the Young Woman Sleeping With Her Eyes Open rolls over, and her notebook will fall to the floor.
Everyone will seem to hold their breath, then their lips will flutter in breathless lullaby. Fetid desperation.

You'll notice the Young Woman's eyes are closed, but her eyelids are clear, with fine feathery tufts of translucent hair. You'll recall this trait in waterbirds. Two sets of lids, one for swimming, one for sleep. But the woman will hardly swimming...

"She's beautiful." The Backmound will sigh.
"She is, isn't She?" The Touched Woman will sigh also, the petals of their sighs overlapping.

But she won't be, the woman, not what you would call beautiful. Not at all.

"She is our writer. She made you. And me. She makes everything you say and do, and she loves you very very much. But we mustn't even think about Her, She doesn't like that. We have to play by Her Rules, don't we now? Pay our fare." Touched Woman will say.

The Mundane Man is sobbing.

"Mama, why is he sad."
"He's new, he's not used to Her. Sometimes She must do strange things to us, as She's making us. She's always making us. See how She watches us, that means she's writing you all down. But sometimes there's too much of you, or you aren't as special as you might be, and that's why we have Half Fares."
"Like Teddy?"
"Like Teddy."
"If she loves Teddy why would she do it to him?Why would she make me do it to Teddy if it makes me sad?"
"Just as we are bound to Her, and Her fate, She's bound to someone else, she must entertain them. A Reader. They like us to be hurt, it amuses them. They are bored when we are happy."
"Meanie."
"I know, darling."
The Backmound will look up at you. You'll smile. So much of being a parent is theatrical, you'll think.
"Mama, look! It's me!"
"I know it's you, darling."
"No. On the book. One their book."

You'll look down. Your book.

There will be a hush.

"The Reader," The Mundane Man will say softly.

It will be the wrong bus, that morning.

You'll blurt "I'm not the only one. It's.. printed. There are millions."
"Then we won't miss one, will we?" The Clearly Disturbed Man will muse.
"This is not my bus"
"Then you'll not have the right ticket... will you now?" He'll rasp.

[smack]

*************************************************************

Kit, yay! you posted. My only word: space more, makes it easier.

I'll be printing this tonight/tomorrow and editing. Heres to hoping you can read my hand writing...

Hey, Kit!

*dies in the coolness* Yay, something new and avant garde! Eh, writers are supposed to be creative, but you really wouldn't know it *grumbles about certain authors who shan't be mentioned*...this was really awesome to read. Thanks for making me think in the first time in a long while- highly refreshing. ^_^

Avant garde-weirdness needs a special kind of treatment, though- the thing is, you have to know the rules in order to break them. The only way your readers are going to take you seriously whilst you're taking them on this near acid-trip of crazy adjectives is by showing 'em you could write something that's safe and comfortable in the first place.

Readers like comfort.

Here are a few things I thought you should look at (surprising; usually I harp on characters but I loved them all):

- The first section- [nix]. I had no real idea where it tied in; water and buses usually don't mix. If you're going to use those two lines- beautiful, by the way- they need to tie in somewhere in the story. Perhaps we'll have to wait until the end, but you can't leave us hanging.

That's the thing about crazy weird writing that one must get used to- just because you've put things in a different format doesn't mean you get to totally abandon all the traditional fiction conventions. You've still got to establish setting and characters and tie up loose ends.

The drowning people are loose ends- throw them a rope or something.

- Here's one thing most readers don't especially like: having to look up most of the words you use in a dictionary. In a textbook, that's okay- but textbook writers have a prerequisite to be boring, so you really, really don't want to go down that path.

Here are a few not-so-reader-friendly words:

- perspex

- salaciously

- progeny

- anthropomorphized

Yeah, yeah, I know; they're great words. Problem? No one understands what you mean, and they're not put in such a way that we can figure it out from context. Writing's not all about huge words; it's about what your readers can handle and what can challenge them at the same time. It's kind of a psychological thing.

- The ending. Quite frankly: I didn't get it. I don't have much advice for you on the matter besides restating what I said earlier- you can't totally ignore the fiction convention that all the loose ends must be tied up in order for the reader to 'get it'. Your ending makes us go, "Huh?". And not a good huh, either.

*dies* Thank you so much for letting me read something cool- it was pretty sweet, if I do say so myself. Please, don't hesitate to PM me if you've got any questions or want me to look at something else. I'd be honored.

Hey Clau, I've already spoken with you about this lump crap but I still wanted to say have my babies.

Hi Sam. I don't mean to be avant garde most of the time. You know, it's like outsider art, a man doesn't mean to chisel schitzophrenic portents of doom all over his house, but some people may pay to see it. How ever I assure you that while none of the characters in the prologue will appear in the rest of the story, I can promise that the characterization and plot to come will be at least consistently incomprehensible. There's something to look forward too, eh?

If anyone knows the rules, it's an English nerd like me, believe me, and, with that, Papini and Calvino in mind, I set forth this tome to first establish a norm and then deconstruct it.
[nix] is microfiction used as allegoric foreshadowing, appropriating, if anyone's interested, I A Ireland, who only wrote the climax of a ghost story, subverting the genre. Or, perhaps a safer allusion would be the opening of "Cloudstreet" by Tim Winton, whose prologue uses quotes, the collective 'we' , and impressionist portrayal of entities who are later defined by almost characatured specific eccentricities. The style is different from the rest of the work, but is reprized in short bursts throughout the book and later in the Epilogue when it is revealed the entire story is but flashes of a life in the mind of a dying man. There is no more to the drowning people, though there are more micro-fictional segments like them. Like Hemingway's six word short story. Would you suggest I set it apart more, or drop it all together, or be more specific as to how they fit in?

Like I said, English nerd, lol.

I'd be the first to concede my verbose style, but perspex? You don't like perspex? Is that a cultural thing, because everyone knows what perspex is here, we had to learn how to make stuff out of it in like year 7 design and tech.

I do not like talking down to the reader, belittling them, and these are all words that I come across on a daily basis, to dumb down my language seems like a slight upon them. Like Atwood, Atwood always throws in a zillion vaguely obscure words with no context whatsoever, sometimes she'll just have lists of em, like in Oryx and Crake. She's a writer of airport pulp fiction though, which is about as mainstream as you can get. I agree your vocab is not instant merit in fiction, but a zeal for all things lexicographical and etymological is not a sin nor should it be concealed as such. A lot of the time the long words are like Roald Dahl making up words it's as much about the sound as the meaning. What I describe in long words are actually ordinary things, experienced a thousand times. It's characterization as to the over-analytical nature of "the reader" persona, they have to distance themselves from even the simplest links to humanity with abstract metaphors, like "Those automatic rubber-webbed lips will admit another, given pause.", it's just the bus door opening. It's just... trick photography. The plot itself, robbed of its pretenses is simple, if surreal.

A reader gets on a bus, is weirded out by the people on the bus, is murdered by them.

The people are fictional and are murdering him because they resent that characters and writers are effectively slaves to the reader's whims.
Or in more detail,
[nix] foreshadows the twist, but then [and nothing happens, and nothing happens] is just a description of a guy on a bus, no tricks there. The effect intended is to take this safe, mundane situation and take it apart. So [touche] is just a mother falling in love with a bus driver. [Bereaved/Bye Baby Bunting] is just about one of the many 'crazy people' we see on the bus, or at bus-stops, vaguely sinister but broken by loss. [Harmless] sees someone dismembered, so something is up. That's a metaphor for editing, the character, cutting pieces off them. A mother explains that they are fictional characters in a story to her child, but that they shouldn't hate the writer for doing bad things to them, because writers only torture their characters to entertain the reader. The child points out that the reader is reading their story, and they're like "argh reader, must deestroy". Thus the reader dies, is dismembered like the edited man.

A nightmarish surrealism is intended in the last section the ones preceding it leading up to it.

Ironic that you suggest I'm kinder to the reader. This prologue effectively murdered the reader in the last line, so that's not quite its intent lol.

I'd be fascinated to know to which conventions of fiction you refer. It is evident I did not convey my plot as clearly as I know it in my mind, a frequent flaw of mine. Dying to give you feedback myself now, you intrigue and enthrall me.[/quote]

*dance of joy* Difficult things to respond to, but I'll try my best...^_~

Here's the thing- I'm from Nebraska. I'm about the most ordinary reader you're ever going to find; the sort of everyman who'd much rather gobble up aforementioned airport fiction than Cummings or Kerouac, Chekhov or Chaucer. The closest I'll ever get to "new" writing is the Kiddie's Poetry corner at my local library. And usually, you can tell this from my reviews, and in the things I'm usually rambling on about.

The "conventions"...I'm the sort of person who reads a lot and assumes everyone notices the same shortcomings as I, so usually they're just me reading much too analytically. But hey, using "conventions" makes you seem like your own nitpickings have backing and experience behind them, right? ^_~

Here are a few:

- All stories must end somewhere. A good story ends neatly, happy ending not necessary- but still neatly. If I'm sitting there wondering what just happened, and am considering writing a letter to the author to inquire, the author wasn't very good at writing endings.

- A book that brings to mind horrible memories of kindergarten reading lessons in which one pronounced the word 'cat' wrong, much to the amusement of his or her classmates, shan't be a pleasant thing to finish reading.

My thinking with these is thus: if I package up everything I think about writing into neat little two-to-three sentence tips, maybe people'll actually listen. Here in Nebraska, where all there is is an overabundance of airport literature, I don't like most of the books I read- and the ones I do like had best be amazing. So that's pretty much my standard for everyone. Amazing.

The nice thing about your piece, though, is it's long enough to savor but short enough to go back and read through, trying to puzzle through the things one didn't get.

Here's my thinking- just a little bit of streamlining is needed, so that you don't have to write out five paragraphs of explanation in order for me to make sense of it. It's much simpler to add in a sentence here, a sentence there; not so much as to wreck the flow, but enough that some things could be left unsaid.

Wonder why Sparks Notes are so popular? Beowulf is a horrid thing to read when you're not in the mood for thinking:the language is difficult, archaic indeed- and in that, it masks up any remnant of plot besides the obvious. Where I'm from, especially, people don't pick up books to have to think about them. They want a good adventure, a couple of laughs.

It's okay- admirable, actually- to aspire for higher things, but you've got to keep the Cornhuskers in mind. We may not appreciate fine literature, but we do pay a lot of money for it.

</rambling>

I read it again, and it's still pretty. Just so you know. ^_~