The Plight of Mark (Short Story)

Grievous

Here is a short story I wrote recently. All comments and Feedback and appreciated.

Thanks!

Mark my words

My earliest memory is waking up inside pages of tightly packed prose. I can’t seem to recall at this moment the name of the book I was first used in and why I suddenly gained sentience then. Someday I would like to know. Someday. My name is Mark.I have no idea how old or young I am. I am about the height of a mobile phone and weight less than a wet feather. In recent months I have turned yellow with age. it’s how I age. Comes with the job I guess. In any household on the planet you are likely to find someone like me lurking beneath the pages of new and old books, always doing my job swimmingly.

This seems to be my only purpose in life. I will also state that while my task is very limited. My enjoyment and job perks are sometimes enchanting and magical. It can be very refreshing and equally educative. Occasionally it can be just plain funny and ridiculously absurd. There are times when my life is very boring and painfully nauseating.

My favourite books are Adventure and Sci Fi and lucky for me my owner is partial to high Adventure, Sci Fi and a healthy dose of fantasy every once in a while. After some time I began to read better myself. The more my owner read, the more I read. This also helped my vocabulary to the extent that I can read and understand every page much quicker than my owner.

My owner’s name is Bill Reed. He reads quite fast as well. I read faster. I see him stopping to think from time to time. I would say he was processing the text or maybe daydreaming. Sometimes waiting for him to finish a page can be frustrating and irritating, it’s not like I have to be any place important. I simply want to finish the story!

Every time I tried to move I would be held back by the weight of the pages. So I would have to wait until Bill came back to the book and we would resume reading it together. I guessed long ago he never knew much about me or knew I had a personality of my own because he has never spoken to me ever or made any sort of attempt to communicate with me to date. There were times in the past when Bill left me trapped between the dark stuffy dusty pages of second hand Sci fi novels. These Novels had such ludicrous names like “THEY CAME FROM THE PLANET PLUTO” and “SOME LIKE IT HOT IN BARS ON MARS”. These titles weren’t very to inspiring to say the least and were usually very badly written. I guess I would know. I have lurked in the pages of more than 300 novels. I know my stuff.

Bill Reed was having a Topsy-Turvy day. Not unlike the MR TOPSY-TURVY from the famous MR MEN Children’s books-He was doing everything wrong today. This was the by-product of lack of sleep. He had been up all night with the newborn baby who Bill and his girlfriend Lucy named Brenda, Feeding her throughout the night. His girlfriend Lucy was exhausted from the all the hard work she put in with their other child Rebecca during the day so it was only fair that Bill would do all the night feeds and get up every time the baby needed attention; Most of the time it could be something simple like the baby’s Soother falling out of her mouth or that the baby was feeling uncomfortable because she needed her nappy changed.

Bill was on his way up the stairs to get one of his books to read, He had been in the middle of reading a weird little book called Moby Dick; an allegorical revenge filled fantasy about the whaling industry. Bill walked into his untidy bedroom and paced briskly over to his bookshelf and picked the book up off the shelf. He stood at the recently built bookshelf for an interminable minute and shuffled the pages of the book under his long pointy nose. The smell of the old book was delicious.

Bill left the room soon after with his book in hand and ascended the stairs a bit happier. He was going to make himself something to eat. Baby Rebecca was playing in the sitting room in her baby walker and as he entered the room he could see she was content in the confines of their small, snug sitting room. She was bubbling little fountains of spit on the top of her tongue.

“Here we go again! Mark thought” we are going on another journey! He could feel himself being lifted up and carried within the book by his owner Bill. “I wonder where we are going today”, Every now and then He got a glimpse out of a book and seen a bit of the world for himself. He especially liked the park. The fresh air and the wide-open spaces were intoxicating to him. Giving that he spent most of his time between the square pages of fantasy novels. Being out in open spaces still improved his chances of getting cusps of fresh air every page turn

Bill sat down on the couch and put his book down gently on the edge of his chair while he went into the kitchen to make himself something to eat. He was in the mood for beans on toast and he knew it was a quick snack to prepare. Best when the beans are super-hot. Something always bugged Bill about beans in the way that no matter how hot you cooked or heated them they never retained their heat for long. He would put them in the microwave and re-heat them when his toast was ready to be popped. A simple, but effective plan that always worked.

Just at the same time Bill left the sitting room, another little character much prettier than Bill and Mark was kicking herself around the room in her little walker with not a care in the world. She was Rebecca; Rebecca was the 10-month old daughter of both Bill Reed and his Girlfriend Lucy. Rebecca was two feet of cuteness and loved her baby food so much that most people referred to her as “Puddin” and she was certainly a little cute-ey. As she bounced her way around the room in her baby-food stained walker she goo’d and ga ga’d to her little heart’s delight. She had a habit of tossing her toys on to floor repeatedly and to the point where Bill would put ten different toys and teddy bears on her walker every couple of minutes. his logic was that ten toys would last longer for her to play with by the time she threw them on the floor again and started to cry for them to be picked up for her to do the same thing over again. One toy wasn’t enough.

All her toys lay on the carpet; almost strategically laid out like soldiers in battle.

“Wahh Wahh Wahh”! Rebecca suddenly cries. She needs something to play with.

“I’m coming, “ I’m coming”, Bill yells from the kitchen, “One sec Becky”.

As Bill speedily finishes buttering his Toast and starts to pour his piping hot beans over the toast, Rebecca gives her-self a massive push with the top of her stubby little twinkle toes and crashes right into the edge of the two-seater couch were her daddy bill had been sitting reading his book of the day. She spots something sticking out of the book that she can play and inches herself closer to the edge of the chair.

She knocks the book off the edge of the couch and it falls towards the front of her walker chair. As the book falls off the chair, the flimsy bookmark, no heavier than a feather floats down and into the hands of baby Rebecca. She smiles beamingly and utters the non-words “Ah ah ah”.

“Freedom”! Mark belts out. Nobody can hear him; maybe other bookmarks can hear him? There are no other bookmarks with him in this room now so it doesn’t matter. His joyous exclamation is as silent as the mythical tooth fairy putting money under a kid’s pillow in the night time.

One minute I am cosy inside the pages of Moby dick, the next thing I know I am floating through the air and on my way to freedom. I can’t feel the pages of the book clamping me back down anymore. Which must mean that I am free. My mind fills with the possibilities of all the things I am going to do now that I am free and all the places I will visit and all the other Marks like me I am going to meet. Hopefully we can share stories and experiences and have many adventures together; maybe I can help free all the other marks in the world? This will be my new purpose. I am marky the bookmark and I will now call myself “ The liberator of bookmarks”. I am the chosen one.

Marks’s freedom and short lived messiah complex was snuffed out 30 seconds later as little “Puddin” Rebecca chewed him, soaked him with baby spit and tore him into tiny wet blobs of nothingness.

The End.

RIP
Mark the Bookmark.

“He made his mark in life”

pickarooney

I really liked the premise and the opening paragraph, but it started to get sloppy thereafter.

The second paragraph labours the point, that a bookmark marks pages, to death. We know what a bookmark is. It would be best to remove this paragraph altogether and let the reader work out gradually who exactly it is that's talking. Much mroe rewarding than being beaten over the head repeatedly with the obvious.

Half-way through, the focus changes from first-person narrative to descriptive. It switches back mid-paragrph towards the end. This is really off-putting .

If you tidy up the repetition and punctuation you have the guts of a cute story here. Also, consider a new title, perhaps with a pun on 'Mark'. 'A Mark of Respect', 'Mark my words' or somesuch.

Grievous

Thanks for the comment.

This is the beauty of the first draft I suppose. I have already spotted a few more things that I would like to change myself.

Grievous

Updated.

Any more feedback guys?

pickarooney

I'll just look at the first few paragraphs and give you a few pointers, if I may.
It has improved, is less clunky, but could do with a little more polish and perhaps withholding some information.

My earliest memory is of waking up inside between pages of tightly packed prose.

Technically, the marker is not inside (one of) the individual pages, but between them. It is inside the book.

I can’t seem to recall at this moment the name of the book I was first used in and why I suddenly gained sentience then.

If you can't remember this transcendental moment, it lessens the impact and the reader is unlikely to care so much as if you recall with joy/fear/bewilderment your awakening at the Mad Hatter's tea party in Alice in Wonderland. Even some vague details which the reader might recognise would be an improvement. Also, a minor quibble, but assuming the bookmark previously existed as a non-sentient item, how does it know it wasn't used prior to this?

Someday I would like to know. Someday. (you should really break the paragraph here as you're starting a new section)

My name is Mark.I have no idea how old or young I am. I am about the height of a mobile phone and weight less than a wet feather.

The height of a mobile phone is not a very exact gauge. This reads a little like a child's riddle: I'm red, two feet tall and have wings; what am I?
You've basically told the reader that you're a bookmark already, so give him some credit.

In recent months I have turned yellow with age. it’s how I age. Comes with the job I guess.

No need to repeat 'age' here. Does ageing really come with the job? Do we not age regardless?

In any household on the planet you are likely to find someone like me lurking beneath the pages of new and old books, always doing my job swimmingly.

I don't like 'swimmingly' here. It's a bit of a frivolous adverb and invariably used to describe how something has passed off without a hitch. Consider 'competently' or a slightly more snazzy equivalent.

This seems to be my only purpose in life.

He's gone from being amazed at being alive to being borderline depressed quite suddenly. This could work in the context of him being moved from a Noddy book to between the pages of Sartre. If you could work in the angle of the bookmark adopting the personality of the writers he 'inhabits'... that could be interesting, but very difficult to pull off.

I will also state that while my task is very limited. My enjoyment and job perks are sometimes enchanting and magical.

The first bit sounds a bit witness-on-the-stand. Next we have something which you know you have a problem with - erratic punctuation. Read this back to yourself and see what's wrong. There are at least three things wrong in this sentence, in fact, one punctuational, one semantic and one syntactic.

It can be very refreshing and equally educative. Occasionally it can be just plain funny and ridiculously absurd. There are times when my life is very boring and painfully nauseating.

This is better, although 'painfully nauseating' sounds like overkill. It makes you so sick it hurts?

My favourite books are Adventure and Sci Fi and luckily for me my owner is partial to high Adventure, Sci Fi and a healthy dose of fantasy every once in a while.

Try reworking this to avoid repeating 'Adventure, SciFi'

After some time I began to read better myself.

This 'after some time' refers all the way back to the first line. There is not a clear enough parenthesis between the first line and this.

The more my owner read, the more I read. This also helped my vocabulary to the extent that I can read and understand every page much quicker than my owner.

The fact that 'read' is both past and present makes this paragraph quite confusing. You'll need to play around a bit with synonyms to make this a little clearer. I think it might also flow a little better if you reverse 'my owner' and 'Bill', i.e. '... much quicker than Bill." Your next paragraph immediately answers the obvious question "Who's Bill?"