"Growing Up" short story

turgon

A first attempt at writing in a long time. My problem is that I only write when Ive got some thematic plot to write on, so I don't do much. This uses the age old, oft used metaphor of life = 24 hr day and death = midnight.

Growing Up

Amongst the shadows of her bedroom at night, Katie groped in the dark. It had just turned half past eleven. The curtains had been drawn for many hours already, but only since the sunset was the room fully englufed in the gloom. An endless tapping on the concealed window signalled the immenient coming of a storm.

Katie's hand touched bedside locker, closet and even wardrobe before finally finding a table. She swung her hand once, twice, thrice, and on the third passing she finally heard the rustling of a paper bag, and honing in on that faint sound, she grasped her quarry tightly. Her sight could no longer penetrate the dark that was now fully grown. In the shades of late night the simple act of carrying a bag became nothing less than a toil. She finally arrived back at her bed and sat on its edge, her small legs hanging off. The shadows gave the impression of passive emotion but in reality she was growing in anticipation.

She had been waiting for this moment. Gently opening the bag she placed her hand in and slowly withdrew a medium sized box. Almost silently she removed the bag from her touch, placing it calmly under her bed. The box was on her lap. It had been a birthday present of sorts. For some time now, tradition had dictated she get a present on the day precisely a week after the celebration of her birthday proper. Tradition also dictated she wait to open it for as long as she could hold out. But she needed it now.

Her hands ran over the top lid and found the seal that praised the patience she had exhibited. It was not strong and it quickly peeled off. Her anticipation had now developed into some sort of dull excitement. She took out the inner contents in one pull, and felt what she had only previously known through sight. A plastic container enclosing a doll. She plucked the doll from its prison and, discarding the tray, sat further back on her bed and rubbed the doll all over. Arms, legs, head, plaited dress, she confirmed with her fingers what she had long waited to feel. Bringing her hands down to its belly she felt a hard inside: a large button. She pressed.

“I love you” said the doll in that reassuring middle aged womens voice, the epitomizes all that we want in a guardian: comfort, security and longevity.

Katie raised the doll up to her neck in an intimate embrace, and for just a moment it seemed as if the dark had indeed retreated, giving light to that flicker of superficial emotion between a growing human being and a stagnant plastic doll. Pressed anxiously to Katies chest, the doll again uttered a message:

“Things cant be bad when I'm around for you”


Up in the sky, miles above the reach of Katies feeble influence, the wind smote upon the clouds a little gap, and from within the hollow thus made the waning moon stretched its yellow glow through the thin curtains and onto a mirror standing nigh the bedroom door. Katie looked up to see her night time reflection.

Gray and white hairs spilled from her crown down both sides of her head, down as far her shoulders where a faded night dress continued the occupation of concealment; continuing and continuing until ceasing at her knee, whence her bruised and wrinkled legs completed the caricature of old age. She was 84. She was dying.

Feeling again the doll in her hand, she was reminded of the fallacy that was growing up. For 84 years she had roamed the world imbibing in the fruit of natures harvest, drinking deeply from the well of human intellect and reflecting often amongst the solace of the human mind. And yet now, 84 years passed, here she sat on the edge of a bed waiting for the midnight, terrified once more of the dark, and clutching, without reason or excuse, at a synthetic play doll, savoring in the intermittent silences the guardians voice that spilled indiscriminatingly and without care into the stuffy confines of Katies night. 84 years passed and yet no years grown it now seemed, her fear of the night still requiring the same false reassurances.

Now in some ways more content, and in some ways less, Katie returned to her sleeping pose proper. Towards the ceiling she lay and all seemed timeless and bare in that scene but for a small doll perched near her left shoulder within sufficient distance to caress her heart.


As the clocks tended toward the midnight hour, a distant rumbling heralded the coming of the storm in the east, that upon its breaking would crash the eerie crescendo of silence, loneliness and despair that had marked the daytime hours in a restlessness of bleak anticipation and crude dreams - now sentimentally reminisced; now nonchalantly rejected; now finally clung onto in a terrifying fear of the unknown - of the stroke never heard; of the prayer never said; of the dawn never come.

“I love you grandmother, and I will never leave you.”

All comments welcome

pickarooney

There are a lot of words which seem out of place, wrong even, in the few paragraphs I read, giving the piece a quite clumsy feel.

You begin with 'amongst the shadows'; 'in the dark' is thereby obsolete.
'Turned' sounds strange in the next sentence. Consider 'gone' instead.
Next sentence is a bit pointless. You're basically saying that it only really got dark when the sun went down. 'Engulfed' (typo in your text) also feels a little off here. The verb with 'in' as a preposition is almost exclusively used with fire/flames in my experience.
'immenient' - spelling is wrong and again it feels wrong when used with 'coming'. It could be just me but while 'imminent arrival' is fine, 'coming' works better with no adjective.

'and even wardrobe' - 'even' doesn't work for me. It sounds as though she's touching increasingly bizarre objects.
'Thrice' should really never be used unironically or outside of a poem. There's then repetition with 'third passing'. Why is she swinging her hand instead of patting it? She's likely to knock things over.
'Quarry'? I know it's metaphorical but outside of hunting or mining you might want to use a more direct word.
I don't think sight (perception) can penetrate (outward movement) nor can darkness be fully grown (this implies ageing, incompatible with darkness).
'Shades' (plural) usually means 'colours' or 'sunglasses'. You've mentioned that it's dark about 10 times already.
'A toil' really feels odd. 'Toil' is work or labour and cannot generally be quantified. There is a definition of toil as 'a laborious task', granted, but is a little arcane. You seem to be implying that the darkness makes the bag harder to carry? While it would make naviating the room more difficult it shouldn't affect the carried object.
'The shadows gave the impression of passive emotion'. I don't understand this at all.
Do you mean because it was dark (again with the darkness!) nobody could see her facial expression?
Anticipation/waiting for this moment - repetition.
'She removed the bag from her touch' - physically impossible to remove something from your own touch, I reckon (and even then I would use 'grasp' or similar).
The rest of this paragraph is good.
'The seal that praised the patience'? No idea what this is meant to mean.
'Dull excitement'? A contradition surely?
'Inner contents' - contents are always inside unless you want to distinguish from outer contents, but this doesn't seem to be the case.
'known through sight' - simplify this
'plaited dress' - pleated dress maybe?
'she felt a hard inside' - I think there's a noun missing.

If you want I can look at the rest.

afaphoenix

turgon wrote: »

A first attempt at writing in a long time. My problem is that I only write when Ive got some thematic plot to write on, so I don't do much. This uses the age old, oft used metaphor of life = 24 hr day and death = midnight.

Growing Up

Amongst the shadows of her bedroom at night, Katie groped in the dark. It had just turned half past eleven. The curtains had been drawn for many hours already, but only since the sunset was the room fully englufed in the gloom. An endless tapping on the concealed window signalled the immenient coming of a storm.

Katie's hand touched bedside locker, closet and even wardrobe before finally finding a table. She swung her hand once, twice, thrice, and on the third passing she finally heard the rustling of a paper bag, and honing in on that faint sound, she grasped her quarry tightly. Her sight could no longer penetrate the dark that was now fully grown. In the shades of late night the simple act of carrying a bag became nothing less than a toil. She finally arrived back at her bed and sat on its edge, her small legs hanging off. The shadows gave the impression of passive emotion but in reality she was growing in anticipation.

She had been waiting for this moment. Gently opening the bag she placed her hand in and slowly withdrew a medium sized box. Almost silently she removed the bag from her touch, placing it calmly under her bed. The box was on her lap. It had been a birthday present of sorts. For some time now, tradition had dictated she get a present on the day precisely a week after the celebration of her birthday proper. Tradition also dictated she wait to open it for as long as she could hold out. But she needed it now.

Her hands ran over the top lid and found the seal that praised the patience she had exhibited. It was not strong and it quickly peeled off. Her anticipation had now developed into some sort of dull excitement. She took out the inner contents in one pull, and felt what she had only previously known through sight. A plastic container enclosing a doll. She plucked the doll from its prison and, discarding the tray, sat further back on her bed and rubbed the doll all over. Arms, legs, head, plaited dress, she confirmed with her fingers what she had long waited to feel. Bringing her hands down to its belly she felt a hard inside: a large button. She pressed.

“I love you” said the doll in that reassuring middle aged womens voice, the epitomizes all that we want in a guardian: comfort, security and longevity.

Katie raised the doll up to her neck in an intimate embrace, and for just a moment it seemed as if the dark had indeed retreated, giving light to that flicker of superficial emotion between a growing human being and a stagnant plastic doll. Pressed anxiously to Katies chest, the doll again uttered a message:

“Things cant be bad when I'm around for you”


Up in the sky, miles above the reach of Katies feeble influence, the wind smote upon the clouds a little gap, and from within the hollow thus made the waning moon stretched its yellow glow through the thin curtains and onto a mirror standing nigh the bedroom door. Katie looked up to see her night time reflection.

Gray and white hairs spilled from her crown down both sides of her head, down as far her shoulders where a faded night dress continued the occupation of concealment; continuing and continuing until ceasing at her knee, whence her bruised and wrinkled legs completed the caricature of old age. She was 84. She was dying.

Feeling again the doll in her hand, she was reminded of the fallacy that was growing up. For 84 years she had roamed the world imbibing in the fruit of natures harvest, drinking deeply from the well of human intellect and reflecting often amongst the solace of the human mind. And yet now, 84 years passed, here she sat on the edge of a bed waiting for the midnight, terrified once more of the dark, and clutching, without reason or excuse, at a synthetic play doll, savoring in the intermittent silences the guardians voice that spilled indiscriminatingly and without care into the stuffy confines of Katies night. 84 years passed and yet no years grown it now seemed, her fear of the night still requiring the same false reassurances.

Now in some ways more content, and in some ways less, Katie returned to her sleeping pose proper. Towards the ceiling she lay and all seemed timeless and bare in that scene but for a small doll perched near her left shoulder within sufficient distance to caress her heart.


As the clocks tended toward the midnight hour, a distant rumbling heralded the coming of the storm in the east, that upon its breaking would crash the eerie crescendo of silence, loneliness and despair that had marked the daytime hours in a restlessness of bleak anticipation and crude dreams - now sentimentally reminisced; now nonchalantly rejected; now finally clung onto in a terrifying fear of the unknown - of the stroke never heard; of the prayer never said; of the dawn never come.

“I love you grandmother, and I will never leave you.”

All comments welcome

Hi,
love your story. any more????
A