Elephant Keeper -- pt. 1

They are always watching.
I stand among them. Watching me with their soft eyes. Sluffing the ground with their trunks, brushing around me, so close I could reach out and touch one. Their hard, many-folded hides, with all their years tucked away inside the valleys and trenches of skin. The folktune of their whispers, their secrets. They converge around me like gossipers, the flies weary couriers between ears and eyes. They are there, and then they are not. Close your eyes and they are speculations in the dark. They are possibilities. Great hulls shifting around you like continents. You breathe them in. You breathe in their history and the old african soil leftover in the grains of their skin and the lunar dew of stories and legends, related in tongues longforgotten.
You breathe in their softness.
They are always present in the dark.
How is it that a creature so large can possess such grace and dignity? Their trunks outstretched with all the daintiness of an unkissed hands of a duchess. Their eyes royal and captive. Strange courtship dances. Moving silent and brushing and divesting. I am a mere footman among them. Ancients, sag-eyed druids surveying the world from behind the bars of a circus cart.
They speak no words. They have no need to speak. They communicate through the wormholes of a dream. Talking through the recycled, communal memory of sunsets on a red african plain. The natives in the tallgrass narrow and black and wavery, like ghostly stewards of the broken-lipped land. The birds in their treelimbs shaking out their parted plumage and screeching prophesies, like frenzied witch doctors. The trees bump-stomached and cantankerous. The water holes gaped and sucking.
I take a page out of their book.
I speak not a word.
I tread through the world of men as a mute. Words in my pockets like loose change. Words and dead words in the air. A stifling pollution. Words everywhere, but not a scrap of thought.
Seen, but not heard.
Suffer the little children.

*

It is a terrible day for a funeral at sea.
I stand at the dockside with Mira's body in a traveling suitcase. The clouds are lidded above us, threatening, like heavy-bellied bombardiers, and the water is a gray shoulder. Seagulls toss and cast their tuneless shrieks along the pier, marching along the boardwalk like orange-footed commandants. Wistful-eyed. They fly searching for their true voices, lost somewhere under the tongues of water. I stop and set the suitcase down beside me. Departing tugboats sigh seaward, moving in the salt-sheared veil of mist and sea-fog, in and out, like fever dreams. Troubled horns in the distance. And the sea pushing, always pushing at the dockside. Many-handed, overturning.
I think I can hear her.
A single finger tapping against the suitcase.
Joseph?
Joseph, have you given up the game?
no child,
i have not.
I can't help thinking about her, crammed in the suitcase, limbs bent and rearranged and her eyes in wide shock and her mouth red and waxy as a broken seal. The blue dress she wears, and the hay in her hair. Stifled, withheld breath. Blue around the lips and the eyes and the fingernails. Chinabones. She is counting. Unfound in a otherwordly game of hide-and-go-seek.
have you given up the game?
Buoys stand out in the sea like hunkered obelisks. Naked without worshipers, nodding their heads sleepily, bells in their throats. A girl in every port, is what I have. At least, it seems that way. In every port, a girl with rocks around her ankles, underwater fishfood, fish friend. Staring with their lovely, pillaged eyes. At night, they sing a seasong and the little tin fish come out of the gray ocean and nibble on their anklebones. Sometimes, I can feel their clammy hands on my forehead, tugging on my pantleg, holding my own hand. Sometimes, I see them all, the purest little children, following me in the crowds, watching me along with the elephants.
The elephants know. They see everything. With their silent, rumored eyes they record and account for every girl and every name. I find it ironic – they keep me, not the other way around. I merely feed them and keep them healthy. They are my whisper-keepers. They are my dream-keepers.
I sit down and put the suitcase on my lap. The clasps gleam dully and the sun hangs its pale head like a sorry child. I smell the sea and the knot-haired kelp and the rot of the oceanside. Steady pulsebeat of the sea. Taxing up the wishes and secrets and the bottles along the beaches, harvesting them away, seceding from the beach like a confederate state. I take a deep breath. I can see her smile, if I close my eyes. I can see her smile as she reaches out to touch the elephants.
they sure are big, aren't they?
they sure are.
The waves are white nightcapped sleepwalkers.
I flip open the clasps and open the suitcase and I see Mira there with her head curled into her stomach and her eyes naked bulbs, wide and all-seeing and fading. She has black hair. She is delicate as a whispered word. Her bones brittle, her chin dismayed. I look away and bite my lip. Big rust-kettled ships cupping forward like faces in earnest prayer. Ministry of seagulls, calamitous choir. oh lord, lord. suffer the children,
suffer the little children.
I take her out and hold her.
I hold her for her mother and her father. Who must be frantic. Who must be breathless for their little daughter. Their little bluebell.
I tie the weights to her ankles. I look at her again. I have nothing to say.
She sinks into the gray water.
Another girl in another port.

*

The tomato plants peel their sticky leaves over the green, faceless heads of their fruit and Joseph can feel his hands itching as the sun plays the same tune of light in weary recital. The tomato plants have always made his hands itch and his eyes water. But he sits among them as his mother works on the pepper plants. He sits and holds Alice. He can feel her heartbeat against his chest. Rapid, pedaling, hurried. Her ears lay flat against her back and her nose sniffs in speculation. Eyes beaded and black, bulging like the belly-body of a black widow. Joseph strokes her ears and watches his mother. The quiet districts of plant and insect. A few reddening tomatoes hanging close to the plants, a secret, bluffing royal flush. Petunias dropping their petals in agreement, like amens.
His mother hums. There is an old radio sitting next to her with its antennae bent in salute.
Joseph smells Alice.
She smells of woodshavings and fear.
Rabbits always smell of fear.
Fear and piety.
Flop-footed, he sets her down. She sits hunched and mute. He whispers to her and listens to the ants nibbling at the old, squash-faced vegetables lying around the bases of the plants. The corn shuffles its leaves. Raises its nestled heads skyward like narrow astrologers.
His mother sits up. Wipes her brow and drinks out of her aluminum flask. Joseph can smell the gin from his outpost among the tomatoes. He itches. His mother looks around.
Joseph?
I'm here, ma.
Joe, hand me that trowel over by the sprinkler head, will you?
He picks up the trowel and walks over to his mother and squats down beside her. She looks sideways at him and smiles.
Godawful weeds are sure being ornery today. Gimme that.
The music sleazes and dwindles. The clouds hold their scrimmages across the sky, big and masted as warships. She hacks at the neck of a thistle-plant, its head purple and crowned, like an heir apparent.
We landed on the moon today. What do you think about that, Joe? Buzz and Neil, regular national heroes. Some guys get all the breaks, huh? You wanna be an astronaut, Joe? You wanna fly to the moon? You think you'll ever amount to enough to even unstick yourself from this crummy, two-horse town?
She smiles at him again. Her teeth perfect. Her eyes hard.
Nah. Nah, no son of mine'll be able to leave this place. It's in your blood, you know. Dust of the roads. The air. The buildings. Four generations, kid. Four generations of rotting skin and dusty bones in the soil of this godawful place. Live and die. Plant the seeds, harvest, eat the vegetables. Again and again and again.
She pulled a few more weeds. Her knuckles were black and crusted with dirt. Sweat causes her blouse to stick to her chest, spread and wrinkled, like the wings of a fruitbat. She looks at Joseph. Joseph avoids her eyes. She smiles again. Wither-cheeked blossoms bend themselves groundward, looking like little, aging popes topped with papal casques.
C'mere.
Joseph looks around for Alice.
C'mere, kid. Gimme a hug, will you?
She reaches for him. He turns his head and she grabs him around the waist and pulls him into her chest. Dirt and sweat in his mouth. His mother rocking back and forth and holding very tightly. She kisses the top of his head and whispers words in his ears that funnel down his ear canal. Holding him so tight he can barely breath. Holding him until little cultures of purple light break across his vision. Tiny breaths released like hostages. Whispering. Fingers digging into his back.
Oh, baby, baby. Stay with me, will you? Stay forever. And don't you go growing up either, you hear? If you grow an inch, I'll cut an inch off, I swear. I swear it.
oh baby baby.
Bees embezzle from the humble-headed flowers.
Alice moves among the tomatoes.

So, Kylan, here I am, as duly promised.

So, I think the first two parts of this are pretty good. You need to work on your character voice, as we discussed already. Other than that, I don't see much of a problem other than maybe trimming back a little bit of description. Not too much, but there seems to be a slight excess here that begs to be fixed a little.

The third part I could not make heads or tails of. This sudden change to third person, plus the addition of a new character, plus a change of setting, all combine to make it a little jarring. You might consider putting it back in Joseph's first person perspective, and maybe cutting back on the descriptive stuff here as well. That ought to clear up a good deal of the confusion.

A good effort as always. You just need to tweak this story a little. As always, you can PM me if you have any questions or comments. Good job, and good luck.

-Conrad Rice

Thanks for your input!

The character in the third section is Joseph as a child. I guess I'll just have to mention his name more in the other two sections, so it's clear that it is the same person in both sections. Or was it unclear that the character was a child in the third section? If that's the case, I guess I could make that more evident, too.

All this evident-ing though...makes me feel like I'm telling...


-Kylan

Hey Kylan!
I just happened to stumble across this, so...

Well, I've always found it difficult to critique your works, 'cause you're "up there" and I'm "down here" in terms of writing XD
But like Conrad mentioned, there did seem to be a little too much description. Nevertheless, in excess or not, I've always liked the vivid imagery you're able to give your readers (or me, at least). The pieces I've read from you all seem to have a subtle, enigmatic quality to them and this doesn't stray far from it either. I also think it'd make an excellent monologue, for some reason

Oh, and one other thing, you used the word 'sluffing' at the beginning of the story, and I was looking through a couple of dictionaries for both the American and British spelling, but the definitions don't seem to fit in comfortably with your sentence. It could just be me, though.

Have a great day!
~Meep(:

Hey Ky, you asked, and so I answer.

On a general note, I haven't read The Elephant Boy - by the time I began seeing it pop up, it was well too far ahead for me to try and catch up and besides, I have a policy of following stories from their beginning or not at all. So I apologise if I miss some crucial meaning or am confused, it's probably not to do with the writing and more to do with my ignorance. I am of course assuming this is some sort of sequel? If not, ignore all that haha.

Sequel or not, this does not work well as a first chapter. At all - it's far too slow, turgid even - there's such an overload of description and such a lack of action (movement, dialogue, etc) that it really becomes difficult to stay focused and keep going, despite how lovely that description is.

They are always watching.
I stand among them. Watching me with their soft eyes.

First sentence, great. Strong hook. The next two however are confusing. Read all three at once, aloud. It just doesn't flow well because you switch from second to first to second person perspective so quickly. I suspect you only put in 'I stand among them' just to avoid rapid repetition. In this case, however, I think its best to do that or better yet get rid of the third sentence. It really doesn't add much. So, with a slight reshuffling of the opening sentences you get:

They are always watching.

Sluffing the ground with their trunks, brushing around me. I stand among them, so close I can reach out and touch one.

What do you think? I think it reads much better.

related in tongues longforgotten

Much as I've come to accept the merging of words as part of your style, this does nothing. Not even on a poetic or artistic level. Separate.

Their trunks outstretched with all the daintiness of an unkissed hands of a duchess

Awkward sentence. The quick fix solution is to change 'an' to 'the' or to make 'hands' singular. However, though the sentence becomes a little more smoother and grammatically correct, it's still an awkward mouthful of a sentence and so:

Their trunks outstretch with all the daintiness of a duchess's unkissed hand.

Better?

The water holes gaped and sucking.

Now, my confidence in tenses has recently been shaken due to my own endeavours in that area of late, and it's made me a bit unsure of what I would normally be sure of, so I could be wrong here but whenever I read sentences like the above, I pause.

Should that not be 'The water holes gape and suck'? - You have similar sentences elsewhere and always the odd mix of tense; it is because, I think, a lot of your sentences are fragments. Perhaps I'm just tired and confused, lol.

I take a page out of their book.
[s]I speak not a word.[/s]
I tread through the world of men as a mute.

The struck out sentence is the weak link here. It's absence alone shows what you tell us with its presence. Delete.

Words in my pockets like loose change. [s]Words and dead words in the air.[/s] A stifling pollution. Words everywhere, but not a scrap of thought.

As with before, the struck out sentence is the weak link. What exactly do you mean by dead words? It's a strange sentence. In any case, the section flows better without it. Okay, so we come to the end of the first section and as far as I can tell, nothing's happened and all I've learned is that there is a particularly poetic individual standing among a lot of elephants. Good for him, lol. But you spend a helluva lot of time establishing that and yes, a man is allowed a certain leeway in such things, to establish atmosphere and setting. But you took too long in my opinion. Trim a little. Tighten it up.

--

It is a terrible day for a funeral at sea.

Why? There are thick, moody clouds and an uneasy, heaving sea - what more kind of setting could you ask for a funeral? In fact, it's a perfect day for a funeral at sea, hah. That's just a personal issue though - I'm interested to know what you would consider as being the right setting for a funeral at sea.

The clasps gleam dully and the sun hangs its pale head like a sorry child

I have an issue with 'dully' here. It's such an ugly word - I know, I know, excuse me for being picky here but it also doesn't seem to fit with 'gleam' though I understand the image you're going for. *shrug*

So, this second segment is tighter than the first. Almost as little happens but there are, I suspect, a few references to the text that came before and a little more insight into the character.

--
Just a quick side note: On the published page, this third section comes up as un-italicised, bar the opening paragraph but in the little review panel it comes up as entirely italicised? Which is it supposed to be?

He whispers to her and listens to the ants nibbling at the old, squash-faced vegetables lying around the bases of the plants.

He can hear ants? Really? Beetles, I'll grant you. Ants is stretching it a bit too much.

We landed on the moon today. What do you think about that, Joe? Buzz and Neil, regular national heroes. Some guys get all the breaks, huh? You wanna be an astronaut, Joe? You wanna fly to the moon? [s]You think you'll ever amount to enough to even unstick yourself from this crummy, two-horse town? [/s]

That last sentence ruins what is otherwise great dialogue. It's unnecessary. In saying 'You wanna fly to the moon?' - In articulating that impossibility, and letting it hang, the rest is implied. It's in the nuance. More importantly, it just doesn't feel like something that would come out of her mouth, given what
comes next. Look at it now:

We landed on the moon today. What do you think about that, Joe? Buzz and Neil, regular national heroes. Some guys get all the breaks, huh? You wanna be an astronaut, Joe? You wanna fly to the moon?

She smiles at him again. Her teeth perfect. Her eyes hard.

Nah. Nah, no son of mine'll be able to leave this place. It's in your blood, you know. Dust of the roads. The air. The buildings. Four generations, kid. Four generations of rotting skin and dusty bones in the soil of this godawful place. Live and die. Plant the seeds, harvest, eat the vegetables. Again and again and again.

That my friend, is a fantastic little passage. Just listen to what you're characters are saying and more importantly, in what they're not. It shows as much, if not more than what is articulated. You grasp that nuance, those little intuitive moments and you will own this space you've chosen to occupy in fiction. [Although I do hope it will prove to be but one of many spaces - I still want to see you elsewhere! :p]

Oh, baby[s], baby[/s]

Is it very wrong that when I read this certain lyrics from a Brittany Spears song burst into my head? Yes, it is. It really is. But nonetheless, I sort of giggled in reading this. Cut the one. And in the repetition that follows, do the same. 'Oh baby,' says it all really. On the whole, I really enjoyed the last passage more than the others. And can I just ask, during that second passage, did he actually have a body in his suitcase or did I miss something integral? Lol. PM me, yo, or let us organise some other method of communication - one way or another I demand answers for my questions! :p

Good stuff.

I'll just reiterate that you need a better balance of action and description, especially given this is what I assume is the first chapter.

Cheers

Meep(: wrote:
Well, I've always found it difficult to critique your works, 'cause you're "up there" and I'm "down here" in terms of writing XD

I feel the same as Meep. But in terms of hunting down places that sell good corn muffins, rounding up a battalion of Elves and Trees, and hunting down the one known as "the Shady Lady", I pwn you all

Anyways, I swear I am not reviewing this because I read your blog and you asked! I am doing it out of sheer love of elephants.

I'll be playing critic today, so I'll annoy you about little things that you probably don't care about since this review is long overdue.

I. Nitpicks

They are always watching.
I stand among them. Watching mewith their soft eyes. Sluffing the ground with their trunks, brushing around me, so close I could reach out and touch one.

Okay, after a few days of letting this sit, I've noticed a lot of things I didn't when I first read it.

This is repetitive. If the elephants are close enough that the narrator can reach out an touch them,
then the readers already know the narrator is "standing among them." I'd probably scrap the second line, because it breaks the flow between sentence one and three.

The problem between sentence one, two, and three is sentence two. You go from the elephants, to the narrator, back to the elephants, and I had to reread several times to understand the third sentence.

The repetition of "me" bugs me. Delete one of them, probably the second one because "brushing around me" makes it seem like "so close I could reach out and touch one" seem redundant.

Their hard, many-folded hides, [s]with all their[/s] years tucked [s]away[/s] inside the valleys and trenches of skin.

I thought this was wordy, but it might just be me.

The parts I crossed off are redundant.

The folktune of their whispers, their secrets. They converge around me like gossipers, the flies weary couriers between ears and eyes. They are there, and then they are not. Close your eyes and they are speculations in the dark.

This is where it gets too descriptive for me. The last two lines feel like they should be one or the other.

You breathe in their softness.

I think you mentioned this earlier, about elephant's "soft eyes."

Their trunks outstretched with all the daintiness of an unkissed hands of a duchess.

xD I thought you never had typos, Kylan. I caught this one.

Also, the wording got me tongue-tied. You can't just say "Their trunks outstretched with all the daintiness of a duchess' unkissed hand" ?

Moving silent and brushing and divesting.

Maybe I'm more alert when midnight is near, but you mentioned "brushing" earlier. I know Connie and Meep already mentioned that you're being too descriptive in some places and some of it is repetitive, but I thought I'd be specific for you. I've never seen you get a full-length review.

They speak no words. They have no need [s]to speak[/s].

I think I'm murdering your word count.

Words in my pockets like loose change. Words and dead words in the air. A stifling pollution. Words everywhere, but not a scrap of thought.

The first sentence doesn't seem to connect to the rest of it.

They fly searching for their true voices, lost somewhere under the tongues of water.

This is one of my favorite lines

no child,
i have not.

This sounds like your personality, the "hide behind Mama's skirt(s), Sachi dear" Kylan
*random reference* But back to the review---


I

can't help thinking about her, crammed in the suitcase, limbs bent and rearranged and her eyes in wide shock and her mouth red and waxy as a broken seal.

You know, you can use commas instead of "and." It's a bit of a mouthful.

A girl in every port, is what I have. At least, it seems that way. In every port, a girl with rocks around her ankles, underwater fishfood, fish friend. Staring with their lovely, pillaged eyes. At night, they sing a seasong and the little tin fish come out of the gray ocean and nibble on their anklebones.

xD The nibbling on their ankle thing makes me laugh. The first line threw me off, so I had to reread a few times. I think it's the word "have" and its tense because later you say that there's a girl in every port underwater, but the narrator has the girl? And he's on dry land?

Sometimes, I can feel their clammy hands on my forehead, tugging on my pantleg, holding my [s]own[/s] hand.

Once again, murdering your word count.

End review-----

I had to cut the review short because I'm not sure if I was being helpful and also because my mother is forcing me to sleep to practice for sleeping early for school. O__O It's midnight.

Everything else was mentioned, just a lot of repetitive things, a bit too wordy, but I'm interested to hear why an elephant keeper drowns people after stuffing them into suitcases. It makes me wonder how you think O__O Do you like stuffing people into suitcases?

Anyways, I have to go =__=

Hope that was helpful even a little bit!

-Shina

Hello Ky!

Haven't read anything by you in a while. The Elephant Keeper! Is this a sequel to The Elephant Boy?

If it is, shame on you for not telling me that you working on a sequel. Okay, okay, I'm on to the critique.
Note: I purposely did not read the other critiques, so sorry if I repeat anything.

They are always watching.

Great hook!

I stand among them. Watching me with their soft eyes.

Meh, I don't like the underlined sentence. I'd nix it. Also, couldn't you combine the other two sentences, so it will be: "They are always watching me with their soft eyes."

Their trunks outstretched with all the daintiness of an unkissed hands of a duchess.

I love this sentence, and the sentences surrounding it, but 'an' should be a 'the'

Words and dead words in the air.

This reads funny. Maybe it's the repetition "word" that's bothering me?

Suffer the little children.

I love the way this part ends.

Overall, I really enjoyed this, as always. The imagery, the word usage, beautiful. The beginning was a bit choppy in my opinion. The second part was by far the best one in this entire piece. And the ending was great, emotion-wise.

Great job and PM me if and when you post part 2,

~ Angel

Hey Kylan! June here!

[I know, I need to review Yellow. Will do, will do, I promise.]


Alright, to begin, I'm kind of short on time [again], so I think I'll have to do one of my boring overall sort of things? I found this heavily reminiscent of The Elephant Boy, and the later part of this reminded me of Holy Rolling; it's absolutely Kylan-esque.


Description --

Good, good. A lot of it here, which is good and not:

Good, because you're not leaving anything else for our minds to fill in. It's complete with scenery and little bits of things that make the story relatable, but! In the same way, it's slightly bad, because you're clouding the story a lot, dear. It's like, all of this focus is on the description, and not enough emphasis on events.

I don't find this necessarily bad, but I'm saying this, because one of the previous reviewers mentioned that you need to work on character voice. There's almost always room for improvement, but I think that your voices are good; your description overrides a lot, and it's getting in the way of letting your characters speak.


Another thing with the description here is focus. In a few places-- I'll grab a random example in a sec-- it seems to waver a little, because you're stretching for setting [which is good] and it takes our mind from the picture. We almost have to play connect-the-dots, with some of these, dear.

I stand at the dockside with Mira's body in a traveling suitcase. The clouds are lidded above us, threatening, like heavy-bellied bombardiers, and the water is a gray shoulder. Seagulls toss and cast their tuneless shrieks along the pier, marching along the boardwalk like orange-footed commandants. Wistful-eyed. They fly searching for their true voices, lost somewhere under the tongues of water. I stop and set the suitcase down beside me. Departing tugboats sigh seaward, moving in the salt-sheared veil of mist and sea-fog, in and out, like fever dreams. Troubled horns in the distance. And the sea pushing, always pushing at the dockside. Many-handed, overturning.

So, if this makes any sense at all, the ideas are kind of staggered a little? It's good, because it's tasty description and not, because it's confusing; a bit hard to understand what's rolling.

I hope I'm clear?

Also, here:

The trees bump-stomached and cantankerous. The water holes gaped and sucking.

Cantankerous? I'm not sure this word goes with the flow of this [speaking on its definition]; it sounds kind of as if it should be cankerous instead of this. Maybe I'm just being picky?

And I'm not so sure I like the ending of the line, dear. Having the past tense of gaped and present tense of suck gives this an iffy read. I think it needs to be tightened a bit.


(Time is short)

Okay, so. There are some issues here, but all of these can pretty much be backtracked to description. For instance, in the case of repetition, it's description that's forcing you to restate a minor detail or such. Same thing with focus, too.

Okay, more importantly, I love this! I have to say it kind of did struggle for an opening chapter in a sense that the vignettes kind of felt disconnected when I feel like they should feel slightly more connected? Not to mention, it was difficult to grasp the focus, and I think this is because the elephants [obviously] have a place in this, but a reader could easily dismiss their importance. If that makes sense? Blargh! What I am saying, is, I think, that ... I mean. Like [this is difficult, explaining. xD] In other words, we come out of this with tasty memories of description and little story.

But it has potential.

We can't judge it now, because, duh-viously it's a chapter. A first one. And the ropes to tie it down will come later (I think? XD). And I was going to say something, I have the feeling it was important, but I can't remember. If I remember, I may just... PM or something.

Great work, Kylan! If you continue to post this, I promise to follow along. Or wait, I'll be away? So long as you don't mind me bumping up threads, I promise to review them all when I get back or something.

Good luck! Keep it up!

June

Thank you all for your reviews!

First, I want to let you all know that this is not, not, not, not, not a sequel to The Elephant Boy. Not. Definately not.

Second, I don't know if I'll continue this. Maybe, maybe not.

-Kylan