[Fiction] Untitled, possibly spec fiction "thing"
I had been hunting around for story ideas I could resurrect for the upcoming Phil. Grafiction Awards, when I came across this passage I wrote...maybe a year ago. I do have a previously formulated idea of where to go with the story, but I am considering a complete revamp. In that connection, kind person, can you please tell me the first thing you think of after reading the passage? If you don't mind my picking your brain, long-distance, that is.
On the twenty eighth of May, a Friday night, Dan Rosales lay on his bed, unable to sleep. Two floors below, his fiancée Marie dreamed of holding a Spanish Colonial themed wedding. In the dream, she floated down the aisle swathed in bolts of fine pineapple cloth and white lace. Her former college professors stood agape at the church pews, watching her disloyalty and lack of national feeling with dismay. To dress in the manner of the colonizer: shameful! Her Philippine history professor, a married woman-but in the dream, she was a spinster, and an emaciated one at that; a spindly spinster-clutched her shoulders and shook her hard. Marie, head bobbing back and forth, wondered what it all meant as she drifted away to another dream.
Dan thought of no such complications as he shifted in the bed that was not his. The previous tenant left it because it wouldn’t fit through the door-Dan had tried to get rid of it. His unpacked boxes were piled here and there, serving as makeshift tables. The bed, an old wooden affair, and a black and white television set were all that was left of the previous tenant. The mattress was Dan’s own. It was worn thin in several places, and where the stuffing was completely eroded, Dan could feel the wood against his bones. Still, there was no use getting a new single mattress, with the wedding only a month away. He would have to make do with this one.
Dan rose to turn on the TV. Sputtering to life, the set revealed only static at several local channels. Dan consulted his watch. 2:46 am. He sighed.
On the twenty eighth of May, a Friday night, Dan Rosales lay on his bed, unable to sleep. Two floors below, his fiancée Marie dreamed of holding a Spanish Colonial themed wedding. In the dream, she floated down the aisle swathed in bolts of fine pineapple cloth and white lace. Her former college professors stood agape at the church pews, watching her disloyalty and lack of national feeling with dismay. To dress in the manner of the colonizer: shameful! Her Philippine history professor, a married woman-but in the dream, she was a spinster, and an emaciated one at that; a spindly spinster-clutched her shoulders and shook her hard. Marie, head bobbing back and forth, wondered what it all meant as she drifted away to another dream.
Dan thought of no such complications as he shifted in the bed that was not his. The previous tenant left it because it wouldn’t fit through the door-Dan had tried to get rid of it. His unpacked boxes were piled here and there, serving as makeshift tables. The bed, an old wooden affair, and a black and white television set were all that was left of the previous tenant. The mattress was Dan’s own. It was worn thin in several places, and where the stuffing was completely eroded, Dan could feel the wood against his bones. Still, there was no use getting a new single mattress, with the wedding only a month away. He would have to make do with this one.
Dan rose to turn on the TV. Sputtering to life, the set revealed only static at several local channels. Dan consulted his watch. 2:46 am. He sighed.