Nothing is left but ash. The sky above is a bleak abyss hazed with toxic steam created by fire that descends from its emptiness. A tent is ignited and people rush to extinguish the fire in fear that the entire camp site will fall victim to its flames. A girl watches the situation from afar in silence. She is covered from head to toe with a death stained blanket making her face the only visible area of her body. It is coated with cuts and bruises and a stream of blood flows from her chapped lips. Yet, the structure remains stunning. Her eyes are blood diamonds; beautiful in appearance but in depth drift retained images of corruption, greed, and destruction. It is nearly nightfall before the people are able to kill the fire and many cry in pain from injuries they obtained. Impatience grows and the words of a traveling prophet are questioned. “He says this is the year of the outsider. But why should we trust him?” The sky grows darker and begins to clear slightly as the fire storm shifts its gaze toward the mountains of the north. “Look there!” someone shouts. The moon reveals itself through haze as a crimson globe floating alone in a black sea. They could not remember the last time they saw the night’s jewels. The “light of night’s sun” was upon them and the people began to look for signs of the prophet’s outsider. Nothing. “Where is this figure of the night?” The girl releases a gasp while pointing to the east. Others follow her gaze and silence spills over the camp site. In the distance, the dim red light of the moon reveals a figure standing lifeless. Silence remains and only the soft inhaling and exhaling of air can be heard. The figure remains still. Then, it slowly begins to make its way toward the camp site.
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ReplyDeleteThe quote I chose was "This is the year of the outsider." I think the hardest sacrifice was in detail. I wrote the story without concentrating on length and cut it down to 300 words (more or less), which proved really difficult because I felt like there were so many important aspects of the original draft.
ReplyDeleteThis seems sort of sci-fi/other dimension to me. Is that what you were going for? I, being curious, would love to know the situation... like why they're in a camp, etc. :)
ReplyDeleteBut yeah... I like the suspense!
I think the brevity adds a great quality of mystery to the piece. It's an apocalypse of some kind, it seems, but we don't really need to know the source or the outcome. (Is there any doubt with apocalypses?) Really, you've used the notion of the outsider in a very interesting way here, Jordan, though I'm not sure what to make of the phrase "the prophet's outsider." While a certain amount of uncertainty on our part works in the piece's favor, and mirrors, perhaps, that of the characters, you don't want to push things too far toward straight confusion. With that in mind, you want to provide even sharper details throughout. The first couple of lines are pretty generic before you get to the blood images. So work a bit harder to observe everything with equal clarity, equal precison. As we'll see in Calvino's "Lightness," a collection of the smallest details can communicate a broad landscape. It's the precision that does that work, and the juxtaposition of elements, rather than broad, vague terms or ideas.
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