short story
okay, so english short story. i want some final feedback. people, criticize me.
Mirror - Jeannie H.
Agnh... Agnph... Where?
The telegrams of thought that ran through Karl's mind were nearly impossible to process. Of course they were - two bottled strangers named Jack Daniels and Jim Beam had kept him up all of the previous evening in some kind of sickening frenzy, and all he could remember was pencil on paper - write, write, write, swig, write, swig, write, write. He'd never met them before, but somehow they seemed too familiar. With each gulp, the clear copper would massage his fears away... How was he supposed to have any idea that the morning after would bring such headache, this nausea?
Karl swung his legs over the side of the bed and positioned his back perpendicular to the wooden floor. A drop of clear liquid slid down a strand of his ash brown hair and fell to his bare knee. The mid-August air seeped in through the open window, and the room was ferociously sultry - yet he could feel a frightening chill about him. Something... Happened. Last night. Karl looked down at his palms to realize they were covered in dozens of tiny paper cuts. He cringed. Yeah. Happened.
He pushed his pale, lanky body off of the bed and tightly gripped the headboard for balance. All he needed to do was get himself a cold water from the kitchen... He let go of the headboard. Sway, sway, sway... Okay. He could stand on his own. He dragged each bare foot away from the dank bed and towards the kitchen door. Water.
"Aaaughhh," Karl moaned slowly. Never... Jack and Jim. No party. Again. However, somehow he managed to pull his unusually heavy self to the kitchen sink. Too delirious to remind himself to find a glass, he opened his mouth under the spout and twisted the knob. The water tasted older than himself. If Karl had been in any more of a conscious state, he would have noticed. After he had filled his belly with the stale fluid, he turned the faucet off. He shook his head, attempting to rid his face of the water which had touched his face. It only made him dizzier.
I wonder... Inside, he beamed at his ability to finally begin a comprehensible thought. I wonder why I didn't care. About the water. The glass. This was true. Usually, Karl was extremely meticulous about neatness and etiquette. Perhaps he had just been that tired.
He looked down at his hands again - ivory acres of sky dashed with skinny scarlet clouds. At the sight of his self-inflicted scabs, he curled down to the ground. Forehead on his knees, his mind shrieked to himself, I'm a wreck... I have a wife. A kid. A family. Karl thought of his estranged wife and the daughter she had gained custody of. How could they see him like this? The father figure, a starving artist-type - and now, a drunk - living alone in a four-room apartment right outside the slums. Whenever anyone called on the phone, he would usually be writing. If he didn't pick up - which was rare - he was most likely taking his wads of napkins and pages torn from notebooks to publishing houses. Of course, he could never call anyone himself - months of failing to pay the telephone bills left the public telephone outside of the apartment building as Karl's only means of remote communication.
The pressure sent his mind from delirium to unusual panic. "Aspirin," he gasped as he stumbled to the living room from the kitchen, to the bathroom from the living room. "Advil. Aspirin. Something."
Karl gripped the bathroom sink with his left hand and pawed at the door to the medicine cabinet with his right. He needed the drug, whatever it was, and he needed it now. But as his hand brushed through the air, he discovered something that diverted his attention entirely away from the knob of the medicine cabinet door.
Where am I? He emitted an "Nnnnnghhhhhh?" of confusion. A pause doused in perplexity, then: "Really... where am I?"
He expected, quite obviously, to see his visage in the mirror on the wall. Locks of greasy mat brown would shade his steel blue eyes from the reflection of the bathroom light. The bags under his eyes would have been a deeper indigo than usual. The silver glass would have tossed his delirious despair back at him just as it was - adding a hint of water spot frosting and a streak of light from the bulb hanging from the ceiling.
Karl saw nothing.
Just the canary yellow door, with his damp white towel hanging from the hook. He waved his hand in front of his face - yes, the scarred star was still there. Was the mirror lying to him? Or was he just too hung over to comprehend what it was telling him? But judgement was beyond him now. He could not find himself in the mirror, and he was drunk, depressed, and determined - no, desperate - to get to the bottom of this.
"Other mirrors," Karl heard himself whisper. Yes. Survey other mirrors. He dashed from the bathroom to the bedroom to examine the oblong full-length mirror. Nothing - the only image he could see was the postcard from Santa Monica his aunt had sent him thumb-tacked to the beige wall, encircled in old mahogany. He furiously slammed his fist into the reflection of the photographed California skyline. Left in its place was not blood, but a bolt of sunrise of the same color peeking in through the open window. Karl looked to the ancient grandfather clock placed perpendicular to him: 4:52. Morning. Outside he heard the chirping of birds, harbingers of a new day. A new day potentially full of change. Change. The thought shot through his brain, and Karl's lips tightened to a grotesquely bright smirk. He liked change. In fact, he could feel a bill and some coins to the left of his heart - a treasure box in his pocket T-shirt drenched in perspiration. Sweet, sweet change.
The thought that it was August outside remained absent from Karl's mind as he instinctually pulled his sweatshirt off of the coat rack. He stumbled through the door and down the stairs to the phone booth. Thank you, God, for Pacific Bell. He thrust a coin into the machine and punched in his ex-wife's number. "Eleanor," his whisper demanded. "Eleanor, pick it up, pick up the damn--"
"Hello," mumbled a voice sleepily. It was the kind of voice that must have normally sounded like a fallen angel's - fragile as glass, durable as leather, soft as pillows.
Karl recognized this heavenly tone immediately. Yes, Eleanor! "Eleanor. I -- need to see. You. And Lena."
Eleanor shifted her body on the other end. "Do you have any idea what -- it's five in the morning, Karl."
"You don't ever have to let me come ever again, El'nor. Just today -- this morning. Just. This once. Please."
Her voice flexed. She knew he was in trouble. "Okay, Karl, I don't know what the hell happened, but you can come by. I think you need it. I guess it'll be good for Lena, too."
"Thank you so much -- Eleanor. I knew you would underst--" His ex-wife hung up. But she had consented to his visiting. It was okay. Karl dashed to the corner of the street and impatiently wished for the bus.
Finally, the rusty box covered in white paint and graffiti lurched towards the intersection. This old metal clunker emerged as nothing less than a messiah to Karl. He scrambled onto the bus, stuffed a dollar bill into the gadget, and took a seat across the aisle from a tiny, elderly lady. Her resin hair was pulled back under a violet handkerchief and she mumbled to herself in what sounded like Russian.
The town flew by in a flurry, and yet each and every detail of it seemed to lunge out at Karl: the sparkle of dew on freshly mowed lawns, the scattered cars on the distant freeway, the scabs on the stray cats that wandered from garden to garden. However, no matter how much he changed his focus on the tinted window, no matter how many rear-view mirrors of the vehicles outside he scanned, Karl still could see no trace of himself.
At last, the bus driver's monotone voice claimed, "Baker Street." Karl gathered his jacket in his arms and fled out of the open doors. To the left, around the corner, two doors down. His mind directed his feet, and in moments Eleanor's white door greeted the tired man sternly. He stepped up to the angry wood and knocked.
The portal creaked open. Eleanor's jet black, full bangs sprung into view. "Karl," she stated. "Good morning."
Heaven had struck him. "Thank god, Eleanor." Karl stared into Eleanor's dark jade eyes through her thick-rimmed glasses, hands clasping her soft shoulders, then embraced her with all the appreciation he could muster.
"Um." Eleanor's pupils shifted to one side. "You want some coffee?"
He realized how awkward he was making it for her, and let go abruptly. "Oh. Yeah, please. Thank you."
He followed her into the kitchen. "Your hands," she observed.
Karl's eyes dropped to the streaked pale skin. "I have no idea, Eleanor, I just -- Last night, I started -- Life is so demanding, you know -- It just -- Oh, I d'know."
She raised an eyebrow. "I don't either. But you look really different, almost --" Eleanor paused in disbelief. "Are you hung over?"
"Erm, yeah, might be, I don't know. I've never been before." He pulled out a seat at the kitchen table and sank into the cool metallic.
"You drank last night?" Karl's head bobbed. She poured some black coffee into a mug, then peeled open a small plastic cup of cream and dripped it into the stimulant. Just how he liked it. Eleanor set it in front of him. "How much?" She poured herself some hot water and plopped a teabag into it.
He scanned the room. Dust had settled onto an angular liquor bottle on top of the refrigerator. Pointing, he confessed, "About two of those."
"Jeez, Karl!!" Eleanor took the chair across from him. She fiddled with the spoon in her teacup. "You haven't had an ounce of alcohol since my dad made you sip some wine at our, um."
"Wedding," he completed.
"Yeah." More stirring. Karl sipped at his coffee. The clock decelerated with every tick.
Eleanor's voice shattered the silence: "So basically, last night you got sick of yourself and went on some kind of drinking binge and put gashes all over your hands and now you don't know what to do?"
Karl could do nothing but stare into the half-empty mug on the table and the brown liquid in it. He saw something flinch - was his reflection returning? But no such luck, he didn't see the flicker again.
"Karl, you can write. You are one of the most talented geniuses I have known. Have you ever realized how much emotion you pack into those stories?" Pause. "All I ask is that you don't let it run your life. You can't make a living off just writing. You know this. You know this the hard way. Come on. At least wait tables, or something -- You do need to eat."
Karl's messy head dropped, a hydraulic elevator overloaded with guilt. "... I'm a... Wreck, Eleanor. I'm totally bashed up right now. I always have been - I can't hide it now." With each word, his voice rose. "Who the hell am I kidding, anyway? I know I'm not happy. Sure, it's hip and Bohemian to live in an apartment with shitty runny water. Maybe now I don't want to be hip and Bo--"
Karl noticed a silhouette in the doorway and cut his voice. "Mom," the shadow sighed, walking into view. Fine strings of ash brown slashed through emerald eyes set into a porcelain visage. "What time do you think it -- Is that Dad?"
"Lena," said Karl under his breath. "I haven't seen you in forever."
"Dad," his daughter responded inquisitively. "Dad."
Karl's hair, shimmering with grime, hung over his blemished forehead. Swollen eyelids melted over exhausted blue eyes like syrup over day-old pancakes on puffy bags of periwinkle. His cracked lips were shattered glass, and his tongue was stale red dusted with the previous night. His teeth were jagged and slightly yellow, to match the whites of his eyes. Karl's face drooped from his skull, a stretched mask hanging from a wall.
For the first time since he had boiled over, Karl saw his reflection, and he saw it in his own daughter's eyes. Nothing had ever tortured him more.
Mirror - Jeannie H.
Agnh... Agnph... Where?
The telegrams of thought that ran through Karl's mind were nearly impossible to process. Of course they were - two bottled strangers named Jack Daniels and Jim Beam had kept him up all of the previous evening in some kind of sickening frenzy, and all he could remember was pencil on paper - write, write, write, swig, write, swig, write, write. He'd never met them before, but somehow they seemed too familiar. With each gulp, the clear copper would massage his fears away... How was he supposed to have any idea that the morning after would bring such headache, this nausea?
Karl swung his legs over the side of the bed and positioned his back perpendicular to the wooden floor. A drop of clear liquid slid down a strand of his ash brown hair and fell to his bare knee. The mid-August air seeped in through the open window, and the room was ferociously sultry - yet he could feel a frightening chill about him. Something... Happened. Last night. Karl looked down at his palms to realize they were covered in dozens of tiny paper cuts. He cringed. Yeah. Happened.
He pushed his pale, lanky body off of the bed and tightly gripped the headboard for balance. All he needed to do was get himself a cold water from the kitchen... He let go of the headboard. Sway, sway, sway... Okay. He could stand on his own. He dragged each bare foot away from the dank bed and towards the kitchen door. Water.
"Aaaughhh," Karl moaned slowly. Never... Jack and Jim. No party. Again. However, somehow he managed to pull his unusually heavy self to the kitchen sink. Too delirious to remind himself to find a glass, he opened his mouth under the spout and twisted the knob. The water tasted older than himself. If Karl had been in any more of a conscious state, he would have noticed. After he had filled his belly with the stale fluid, he turned the faucet off. He shook his head, attempting to rid his face of the water which had touched his face. It only made him dizzier.
I wonder... Inside, he beamed at his ability to finally begin a comprehensible thought. I wonder why I didn't care. About the water. The glass. This was true. Usually, Karl was extremely meticulous about neatness and etiquette. Perhaps he had just been that tired.
He looked down at his hands again - ivory acres of sky dashed with skinny scarlet clouds. At the sight of his self-inflicted scabs, he curled down to the ground. Forehead on his knees, his mind shrieked to himself, I'm a wreck... I have a wife. A kid. A family. Karl thought of his estranged wife and the daughter she had gained custody of. How could they see him like this? The father figure, a starving artist-type - and now, a drunk - living alone in a four-room apartment right outside the slums. Whenever anyone called on the phone, he would usually be writing. If he didn't pick up - which was rare - he was most likely taking his wads of napkins and pages torn from notebooks to publishing houses. Of course, he could never call anyone himself - months of failing to pay the telephone bills left the public telephone outside of the apartment building as Karl's only means of remote communication.
The pressure sent his mind from delirium to unusual panic. "Aspirin," he gasped as he stumbled to the living room from the kitchen, to the bathroom from the living room. "Advil. Aspirin. Something."
Karl gripped the bathroom sink with his left hand and pawed at the door to the medicine cabinet with his right. He needed the drug, whatever it was, and he needed it now. But as his hand brushed through the air, he discovered something that diverted his attention entirely away from the knob of the medicine cabinet door.
Where am I? He emitted an "Nnnnnghhhhhh?" of confusion. A pause doused in perplexity, then: "Really... where am I?"
He expected, quite obviously, to see his visage in the mirror on the wall. Locks of greasy mat brown would shade his steel blue eyes from the reflection of the bathroom light. The bags under his eyes would have been a deeper indigo than usual. The silver glass would have tossed his delirious despair back at him just as it was - adding a hint of water spot frosting and a streak of light from the bulb hanging from the ceiling.
Karl saw nothing.
Just the canary yellow door, with his damp white towel hanging from the hook. He waved his hand in front of his face - yes, the scarred star was still there. Was the mirror lying to him? Or was he just too hung over to comprehend what it was telling him? But judgement was beyond him now. He could not find himself in the mirror, and he was drunk, depressed, and determined - no, desperate - to get to the bottom of this.
"Other mirrors," Karl heard himself whisper. Yes. Survey other mirrors. He dashed from the bathroom to the bedroom to examine the oblong full-length mirror. Nothing - the only image he could see was the postcard from Santa Monica his aunt had sent him thumb-tacked to the beige wall, encircled in old mahogany. He furiously slammed his fist into the reflection of the photographed California skyline. Left in its place was not blood, but a bolt of sunrise of the same color peeking in through the open window. Karl looked to the ancient grandfather clock placed perpendicular to him: 4:52. Morning. Outside he heard the chirping of birds, harbingers of a new day. A new day potentially full of change. Change. The thought shot through his brain, and Karl's lips tightened to a grotesquely bright smirk. He liked change. In fact, he could feel a bill and some coins to the left of his heart - a treasure box in his pocket T-shirt drenched in perspiration. Sweet, sweet change.
The thought that it was August outside remained absent from Karl's mind as he instinctually pulled his sweatshirt off of the coat rack. He stumbled through the door and down the stairs to the phone booth. Thank you, God, for Pacific Bell. He thrust a coin into the machine and punched in his ex-wife's number. "Eleanor," his whisper demanded. "Eleanor, pick it up, pick up the damn--"
"Hello," mumbled a voice sleepily. It was the kind of voice that must have normally sounded like a fallen angel's - fragile as glass, durable as leather, soft as pillows.
Karl recognized this heavenly tone immediately. Yes, Eleanor! "Eleanor. I -- need to see. You. And Lena."
Eleanor shifted her body on the other end. "Do you have any idea what -- it's five in the morning, Karl."
"You don't ever have to let me come ever again, El'nor. Just today -- this morning. Just. This once. Please."
Her voice flexed. She knew he was in trouble. "Okay, Karl, I don't know what the hell happened, but you can come by. I think you need it. I guess it'll be good for Lena, too."
"Thank you so much -- Eleanor. I knew you would underst--" His ex-wife hung up. But she had consented to his visiting. It was okay. Karl dashed to the corner of the street and impatiently wished for the bus.
Finally, the rusty box covered in white paint and graffiti lurched towards the intersection. This old metal clunker emerged as nothing less than a messiah to Karl. He scrambled onto the bus, stuffed a dollar bill into the gadget, and took a seat across the aisle from a tiny, elderly lady. Her resin hair was pulled back under a violet handkerchief and she mumbled to herself in what sounded like Russian.
The town flew by in a flurry, and yet each and every detail of it seemed to lunge out at Karl: the sparkle of dew on freshly mowed lawns, the scattered cars on the distant freeway, the scabs on the stray cats that wandered from garden to garden. However, no matter how much he changed his focus on the tinted window, no matter how many rear-view mirrors of the vehicles outside he scanned, Karl still could see no trace of himself.
At last, the bus driver's monotone voice claimed, "Baker Street." Karl gathered his jacket in his arms and fled out of the open doors. To the left, around the corner, two doors down. His mind directed his feet, and in moments Eleanor's white door greeted the tired man sternly. He stepped up to the angry wood and knocked.
The portal creaked open. Eleanor's jet black, full bangs sprung into view. "Karl," she stated. "Good morning."
Heaven had struck him. "Thank god, Eleanor." Karl stared into Eleanor's dark jade eyes through her thick-rimmed glasses, hands clasping her soft shoulders, then embraced her with all the appreciation he could muster.
"Um." Eleanor's pupils shifted to one side. "You want some coffee?"
He realized how awkward he was making it for her, and let go abruptly. "Oh. Yeah, please. Thank you."
He followed her into the kitchen. "Your hands," she observed.
Karl's eyes dropped to the streaked pale skin. "I have no idea, Eleanor, I just -- Last night, I started -- Life is so demanding, you know -- It just -- Oh, I d'know."
She raised an eyebrow. "I don't either. But you look really different, almost --" Eleanor paused in disbelief. "Are you hung over?"
"Erm, yeah, might be, I don't know. I've never been before." He pulled out a seat at the kitchen table and sank into the cool metallic.
"You drank last night?" Karl's head bobbed. She poured some black coffee into a mug, then peeled open a small plastic cup of cream and dripped it into the stimulant. Just how he liked it. Eleanor set it in front of him. "How much?" She poured herself some hot water and plopped a teabag into it.
He scanned the room. Dust had settled onto an angular liquor bottle on top of the refrigerator. Pointing, he confessed, "About two of those."
"Jeez, Karl!!" Eleanor took the chair across from him. She fiddled with the spoon in her teacup. "You haven't had an ounce of alcohol since my dad made you sip some wine at our, um."
"Wedding," he completed.
"Yeah." More stirring. Karl sipped at his coffee. The clock decelerated with every tick.
Eleanor's voice shattered the silence: "So basically, last night you got sick of yourself and went on some kind of drinking binge and put gashes all over your hands and now you don't know what to do?"
Karl could do nothing but stare into the half-empty mug on the table and the brown liquid in it. He saw something flinch - was his reflection returning? But no such luck, he didn't see the flicker again.
"Karl, you can write. You are one of the most talented geniuses I have known. Have you ever realized how much emotion you pack into those stories?" Pause. "All I ask is that you don't let it run your life. You can't make a living off just writing. You know this. You know this the hard way. Come on. At least wait tables, or something -- You do need to eat."
Karl's messy head dropped, a hydraulic elevator overloaded with guilt. "... I'm a... Wreck, Eleanor. I'm totally bashed up right now. I always have been - I can't hide it now." With each word, his voice rose. "Who the hell am I kidding, anyway? I know I'm not happy. Sure, it's hip and Bohemian to live in an apartment with shitty runny water. Maybe now I don't want to be hip and Bo--"
Karl noticed a silhouette in the doorway and cut his voice. "Mom," the shadow sighed, walking into view. Fine strings of ash brown slashed through emerald eyes set into a porcelain visage. "What time do you think it -- Is that Dad?"
"Lena," said Karl under his breath. "I haven't seen you in forever."
"Dad," his daughter responded inquisitively. "Dad."
Karl's hair, shimmering with grime, hung over his blemished forehead. Swollen eyelids melted over exhausted blue eyes like syrup over day-old pancakes on puffy bags of periwinkle. His cracked lips were shattered glass, and his tongue was stale red dusted with the previous night. His teeth were jagged and slightly yellow, to match the whites of his eyes. Karl's face drooped from his skull, a stretched mask hanging from a wall.
For the first time since he had boiled over, Karl saw his reflection, and he saw it in his own daughter's eyes. Nothing had ever tortured him more.