The Inkwell

Rip it to bits.

Prologue - When He Wrote Back (And, Quote-unquote, He Wrote...)




One bleak afternoon, nervously,
(Not in any place which can be found on the map)
3:00 PM, Richmond

Her fingers trembled on the desk in front of her. She closed her eyes, breathed in.

Come on, she told her hand, write it!

Her pride and her fear of rejection swallowed down, the tip of the pen slid across the paper with ease.

Later that evening, unexpectedly,
In her grandmother's house,
6:01 PM, Richmond

A messenger boy came to the back door, holding out an envelope to her. She signed the slip he handed her, and left. Her heart was pounding. It was a reply! She rushed upstairs, almost tripping on her long nightgown; shut herself inside her room. Her hands were clammy. She checked herself in the mirror. She looked pale.

She opened the letter.

The only thing written in it was the word "Why?"

Nowhere particular in time,
A recollection of the previous events,
∞, In her thoughts

She met him one afternoon, before the clock struck one, and it was snowing. White was scattered everywhere.

So were the papers she had been holding.

It was windy. She didn't mean to be careless. Her hands were feeling too numb.

She chased after each page - her life's work, her treasures - rescuing them from being dampened by the moist ice crunching beneath her feet. She was ignorant of the surroundings - the sweet, crisp air, the charm of the dead trees, the dog barking at her leg, people giving her strange looks - she was damn intent on snatching back her manuscript, as you can see.

She also didn't mean for it to land on his coffee.

She ran towards him, stuttering out an apology as he stared at the wet piece sitting on the mouth of his mug.

Cursing, the man lifted the caffeine-soaked paper out of his drink and, to her surprise, straightened it out on his table, careful not to tear it apart. The next thing he did turned her surprise to utter shock.

He read what was written on it.

Her story.

And he laughed, amused and somewhat dismayed.

She didn't notice that she was unconsciously edging closer, then, part of her wanting to snatch that miserable piece away from his sight and run of with it, to oblivion, and part of her wanting to linger there for a while longer, just to see what was he found so amusing in her sentences.

Her shock morphed into chagrin when he looked up, spectacles gleaming in the pale sunlight as he spoke.

"Is this yours?"

She nodded, her breath hitching in her throat.

"Needs a lot of work, doesn't it."

She felt her cheeks burning; in shame or in admiration, she couldn't quite decide. She lowered her head, her hair partly covering her reddened face, giving him a meek stare. In this situation, it was the most natural defense to be outraged, or at the very least, annoyed, but the man's blatant arrogance - dare she call it confidence - struck a note in her, and something else that she couldn't quite grasp.

His voice woke her up from her trance. His tone was that of an adult talking mildly to a little child.

"Come sit down. I'll be glad to point things out."

Obediently, she did.

They discussed the contents of the page for the whole afternoon.

Here was where it began.

This is amazing

Hi there! You're new, aren't you? Welcome to the site.

I really liked this story, Rose (I hope it's okay for me to call you that)! First I'll talk about your style. I love it! It's so refreshing to read such an original approach to prose. The unconventional line breaks, the abstract way of telling a story... it's all very poetic. Actually, it strikes me as sort of a blend between prose and poetry, which is an brilliant idea and which you've pulled of excellently. Beautiful! It reminds me a lot of Markus Zusak's The Book Thief, which is quite possibly one of my favorite books ever. Have you read it? If not, I highly recommend you do. As for the actual story, I like that too. But in my opinion that's not where the genius of this piece lies--anybody could have come up with the plot; the magic here is in the telling. Well done.

I'm not going to do the line-by-line, nitpicky you-should-change-this-comma-to-a-semicolon kind of stuff because: for one thing, I don't think you need that; for another thing, your word choice and style seem so intentional and well-thought-out that I would feel guilty to impose on them.

All that said, I do think this piece could be improved upon. Firstly, I wonder: is this supposed to be complete, or is this the prologue/first pert of something bigger? You say it's a prologue, but it almost stands alone. If you want it to stand alone, then I suggest you clear up the beginning a little bit. I love the mood and the atmosphere in the beginning, but I'm having a rather hard time of fitting it in with the rest of the story. I see that there's a flashback, but what prompts that flashback? It feels like there is a bit of a disconnect between the part before the flashback and the part after it. But this isn't a huge deal because I assume that since this is just a prologue, you'll explain that later on.

What bothers me more about that disconnect is that it's not just in the plot, but also in the telling. Before the flashback, the writing is more unconventional and quirky, with the odd line spaces and the time/place thing which is wonderfully odd. But after the flashback it reads more like a conventional (albeit gorgeously-told) narrative. I'm lead to think that this is probably intentional, but I'm not really sure what you were trying to achieve with it.

Now I'm going to be really annoying. I don't really understand how the paper got wet. I mean, I'm imagining a normallish coffee cup, with an opening that's about, I don't know, four inches in diameter? And I'm also imagining a normallish piece of paper, eight and a half by eleven inches. Unless the coffee was really up to the top of the cup, or unless the paper was badly crumpled, I don't really see how more than a corner of the paper (if that) could get wet. Sorry. I know that kind of nitpicky thing is annoying, but I couldn't help myself.

Also, when you say "His tone was that of an adult talking mildly to a little child." It makes me wonder what their ages actually are. I was imagining her as being around eleven or twelve or some reason, and him as an adult, so it didn't seem that odd to me that he would talk to her like an adult talking to a child. Is she supposed to be an adult as well?

I'm sorry I couldn't be more helpful! I really like this piece, and I look forward to seeing where it goes.

Feel free to PM me or write on my wall if you need anything at all or have questions/comments about anything I've pointed out.

Beamishly,
a

P.S. This is posted in the Fantasy Fiction Short Stories forum. Would you like me to move it to the Fantasy Fiction Novels forum? If so, let me know.

You write in an interesting style, one I haven't seen before. It might work, it might not - personally, I was a little bit confused by the way the events progressed (maybe that's my old-fashioned way of thinking, who knows). It starts over here, then it continues elsewhere at a different point in time, then it goes on to mention something that happened before the story even started. It's like Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, except there it was justified - the main character randomly travelled in time to different points of his life.

Almost seems like you opened the story the way you did as a hook for the reader. It did not hook me - there was not enough going on for me to be hooked. What hooked me was, in fact, the third part, the part where you explain how this all started. That made me want to start reading. The other two bits were way too short. There's a girl writing a letter, there's a girl receiving a letter. She's anxious to read it. I know that providing other details would be spoiling the rest of the story, but I'd like just a little bit more.

There were no technical issues that I found. The prose was a little bit dry for my taste, but then again, most prose is a little bit dry for my taste. I'll give you the same advice I give to everyone, but, as always, it's up to you whether you want to follow up on it or not: try varying your sentence structure a little bit. That makes the text a little more fun to read.

As for the story itself: well, there wasn't much to go on, but as I mentioned, the last part there got me interested in reading more. Looking forward to the continuation of this piece!

Your servant,
cC

I really liked it rose, i was a bit lost but I believe I understood it well enough. i love it and hope to keep up with it so I may read more hehe. Good Luck and Happy Writing!!!!!
Soulkana<3