New Short Story

cobsie

Hi All - I hope this is not too cheeky of me to attach a whole story, seeing as I've only been a member for a really short time. I've been reading the threads for ages though, and have found the comments and feedback offered to other writers really constructive, so I thought I'd throw something out there and see what the reaction might be!

I'd really appreciate reactions and feedback, and am grateful in advance to anyone taking the time to read this! It's around 4,500 words - about 5 printed pages, I think.

Cheers!

The Mad Hatter

Don't suppose you'd mind saving it as a .html or a .rtf? Don't mean to sound paranoid, but I'm a bit wary of pdfs, given the number of security holes that they can exploit...

pickarooney

I find it a lot easier to comment on pieces that are posted in line as plain text, as it's easier to quote parts of the passage. I would read this and give a general reaction but honestly wouldn't be bothered trying to copy and paste bits from a PDF. It depends on how detailed you want the feedback really.

cobsie

Sure, no problem! Should I post the whole thing in the thread? Or attach a plain text file? Just want to facilitate you guys, so I'm open to whatever you suggest.

pickarooney

It might take several posts to put it all up, so if you can try and break it up logically I'll give it a look in a bit. The World cup is about to kick off though so it may be a few days!

cobsie

Ha ha! Fair enough!

Here goes then:

Section 1

Snow Day

Someone came into the break room and said that Dancing Man was dead. He fell asleep on a bench in Dudley Square and it snowed on him all night. They took him to Boston City Hospital in a silver blanket but he didn't make it. The hospital was opposite our building, the only place in the city that took the indigent. After discharge, they straggled around the triangle of grass by the bus shelter, stupefied, belligerent and hung over, steri-strips shining white on their plum-dark faces. The triangle was Dancing Man's patch, where he threw down his cardboard every morning and busted his moves, rain or shine.



I took this tidbit of news back to the office with my toasted bagel. Lizzie was already at her desk, opposite mine, sorting through the yellow inter-office envelopes that had come up from the morgue.



"Which do you prefer," she asked, holding one in each hand. "Murder or suicide?"



I thought about it. "Murder."



She flipped the envelope across to me. "Enjoy."



We worked for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, transcribing coroners’ reports off dictaphone tapes. Suspicious deaths from around Massachusetts came to us. The agency warned me it wasn't work for the squeamish, that people got burned out which is why it paid two whole dollars over minimum wage. I planned to work there through the winter, then go to San Francisco where I had a standing invitation to join an old college classmate. I was tired of Boston. It was harder to make friends with the flinty New Englanders than I had expected and after a humid summer of selling lemonade to tourists, I still only knew the Irish lads I came over with, friends of my brother and not really my type, although fine upstanding young men in themselves.



Lizzie was the other temp in the office. She was the same age as me and had a great line in thrift-store t-shirts with slogans like "D.A.R.E to Keep Kids Off Drugs" and "Quincy Police 5 Mile Fun Run". She treated the morgue reports like a droll spectator sport.



"Listen to this." She pulled off her headset and waited for my full attention. "Listen to what this kid did. Jumped off a bridge in Neponset. Okay? Missed the water completely, landed on one of the concrete platforms supporting the arches." She hissed through her teeth. "Ouch-a-roonie."



"Well, my guy shot himself in the head in his greenhouse."



"That's weird. I had a guy yesterday who shot himself in his lettuce patch. Maybe gardening really is as depressing as it looks."



"Maybe it's the salad vegetables. You put all that effort into growing them, then realise you'd rather have steak."



There were days when we cleared all the envelopes by lunchtime. Lizzie pulled out a book and propped her feet on a filing cabinet drawer. I took sheaves of paper out of the printer and wrote letters to my mother, complaining about the knifing cold and the cost of our heating oil bill, and marveling at my first slice of pumpkin pie, surprisingly sweet and delicious. Sometimes the pause lasted for hours, so that we grew drowsy and enervated and when the mail guy knocked on our door with a bundle of new envelopes, we looked at him with slow blinking eyes, unable to understand what he wanted.



At home time, Lizzie threw a scarf around her neck and punched her mittens together like boxing gloves, calling, "Lates, Nora." She had places to go, a boyfriend and friends to see, a life in full flow. I ate up the spare hours walking around the city, any number of ways brought me back to Allston and the Irish boys watching American football but refusing to learn the rules. I followed the unlovely tail end of Mass Ave into the South End, along sidewalks lined with cafes, past the brownstones on Newbury Street to the Mass Ave Bridge, where the buildings fell away abruptly and the Charles flowed wide and grey underneath. I crossed halfway and leaned over the railing and looked down at the city, winking black and white. The wind off the river blew sharp and raw, stinging my cheeks and the tips of my ears. I looked around and contemplated the unfamiliar sky. When it got too cold, I headed towards Kenmore Square to get the free train above ground. On the B line, a homeless lady hogged two seats with her enormous plaid laundry bags and sang out at the college kids, "Any you guys spare two dollars?" I admired the specificity of her request.



After I did my first report on a baby, I began to imagine the morgue as a quiet, white-tiled room, with high-up windows filled with pale winter light. The coroner's voice in my ear was soft and friendly. It was a calm place, I thought, restful and safe. Even though it couldn't be anything like that, because the morgue was in the basement and they needed bright halogen lights to work and there were spray hoses and sample fridges and phones and dictaphones. Still, that's how I pictured it. So one morning when Lizzie yanked off her headset and stood up at her desk, holding on with the tips of her fingers and swaying slightly as if she was about to get sick, I thought it was because of the report she had drawn the short straw for, a baby killed by his uncle. Her cheeks were flushed and her lips were open and she was shaking her head, no, no.



"I can swap, if you like. I can take that report." I offered.



Lizzie rocked like she might faint and I scooted to the edge of my chair, on high alert. She looked at me with brimming purple eyes, then dropped her head and started crying where she stood, with big shaking sobs, tears flowing down her face and meeting under her chin in messy rivulets. I blurted out, "Are you alright?" and put my arm around her shoulders, there there, and let her lean her weight against me. She cried even harder then, dragging sobs up from her toes and I had to take a step back to steady myself. When she was ready, she shrugged off my arm and swept her hands down her cheeks and dabbed her eyes with the knuckles of her thumbs."Sorry, sorry. So stupid." She drew in some steadying breathes. “Ari and I broke up. He broke up with me. Said he had to give this thing with Beautiful a chance. That's the girl's name, I swear to God, so, right there I'm in trouble. And I've seen her and she is beautiful."

cobsie

Section 2:

Lizzie released an aggravated sigh. She swung her chair around to face the window, side-on to me, and looked at the huge grey clouds that had drained the light from the morning. She drew her hair forward like a curtain to hide the blotches on her cheeks and her bloodshot eyes, glittering bitter blue. "It's gonna snow," she remarked then wagged her head as if shaking out water. "I tell you what, Nora. What's really hurting me right now is that I begged him to stay. God, the humiliation. It's ringing in my ears. It was brutal. I burst out crying and took his hand and said in a crazy panic "Please don't leave me!" Even though from the moment he started speaking - he was sitting across from me in my kitchen - I knew it was over. As soon as he opened his mouth it was over between us, and I knew it. Our relationship died like that." Lizzie clicked her fingers sharply. "So I don't know why I did what I did. But I grabbed his hand and his arm, y'know, like an old drunk at a bar who won't give up and I made him look at me and said, "Don't, don't, don't! Please don't!" She pressed the tips of her fingers to her eyelids and held them closed.

"Who's the girl?"

"Ha!" Lizzie threw her hands into her lap. "She's just a girl. Just some girl. I don't know her. Ari said they're in love, he's never felt anything like it. Which is really great to hear. I thought I was in love, so one of us was wrong, seems like. Guess that would be me." Lizzie fiddled with a metal bulldog clip, flexing and releasing. "I've seen her. I met her, actually. At a party. Wasn't even all that long ago. A friend of ours threw a huge party, right around Halloween. It was just starting to get cold, I remember that. Ari and I arrived together but we never stuck strictly with each other at social events. We mingled and did our own thing." Lizzie tossed the clip aside and sat forward with her elbows on her knees, eyes narrowed. "At some point in the evening, I came in from the back porch and surveyed the scene and saw Ari down the hallway talking to a girl. Some indie chick with blonde hair in a pixie crop. Like half the girls at the party. But I swear to you, there was something about the way they stood together that made me freeze in my tracks. I mean, the hairs on my head stood on end, but if you'd asked me why...And then Ari looked up and saw me and - that's the funny thing - he didn't jump back from her or look guilty, he looked happy to see me. He called me over and I went over and said hi to this girl. Beautiful, that's her real name. She said her parents were hippies and her brother's called Unity. She was perfectly friendly and nice. And that was the last I heard of her till yesterday." Lizzie's lip trembled. "I'm such a chump. Do you know I bought that bastard a car for his birthday?"

"God Almighty! What kind of car?"

She waved her hand dismissively. "Nah, a beater. A real fixer-upper, so don't get excited. Two hundred bucks for a 1962 Valiant. Black and white, chrome headlights, tail fins, the works. Like a pair of horn-rimmed glasses on wheels." She smiled for the first time in hours. "My dad's a mechanic and I know all about cars and I got this one from some kid out in Greenfield. I guess I knew things were slipping between me and Ari and I didn't know what to do about it. There’s no way of knowing, is there? What’s the right thing to do? I drove myself crazy. I tried sticking close, I tried giving him space. I tried crying, I tried having some moxie. Then I thought maybe a big romantic gesture would fix everything. And that we could work on it together and that'd be a cool thing to do."

"Did he like it?"

"Are you kidding? What's not to like? He loved it. I basked in the glow for a whole week. Number one girl. But in the end-up look where it got me. Now I'm down a boyfriend and a car."

The air outside was whirling with snow. I wondered if this was what New Englanders called a nor'easter or if this was just weather. A tired silence took hold between us. I offered to get some snacks and went down to the break room vending machine and spent a long time trying to decide what Lizzie might like. I eventually picked a Three Musketeers.

When I came back Lizzie was digging through her bag, shaking things out onto the desk. "Ari called. He's outside. He wants to talk." She shot me a look of fury and panic and began raking her fingers through her hair, tugging knots loose and smoothing it down. Her hands touched her cheeks self-consciously. "You have to help me, Nora. I can't see her. I'll fall apart if I see her. Okay?" Lipstick and a powder compact came out. Lizzie swept her hair behind her ears. "Okay, I need you to go down and walk past the car and make sure nobody else is with him. That's all. Then turn around and come back and tell me if he's alone." She began blotting her forehead in small, desperate motions. "Jesus Christ. Look at me."

The Valiant was parked on the far side of the bus shelter. I drew level, chest thumping, even though Ari didn’t see me and would not have thought anything of it if he had. He was alone, sitting with both elbows cocked backwards over the low vinyl seat, resting his head in one palm, angled towards our building, watching for Lizzie. I gave the all-clear, holding up one index finger as I circled back over the triangle of grass, shoulders high and stiff against the blowing snow. Lizzie came outside. Her hair was snatched by the wind and flew around her head in auburn strands. She sucked in her breath as if diving under water and walked to the car. I stood in the lobby under the entrance blower and watched her get in, then went back upstairs to our office.

Several times I got up to look out at the Valiant, but I couldn't see inside and there was nothing to glean from the black roof turning slowly grey. An hour passed, then another. I slid the dictatapes onto my palm with a little rattle and followed along behind the coroner's voice. "There is one and a half inches of adipose tissue. All organs are in their correct anatomical position and no unusual odor is noted to the body." I tried to decide what to do about my life. Stay or leave, I might never make it home. At the end of the day, I signed out and faked Lizzie's signature under mine and stepped into the streaming snow and thought about where to go to kill time. There was the Boston Public Library, with its arching stone entrance promising to protect the Commonwealth through knowledge. The reading rooms had long tables with green and brass lamps and I liked sitting in the wooden quiet, writing in my notebook. I often saw the same people, like the man who sat amongst volumes of case law and covered pages and pages of legal pads in loose, illiterate scribbles.

"Nora!"

I turned to the voice. Lizzie was waiting at the mouth of the T station. Her face was pink and damp and snow dotted her shoulders like a chalk outline.
"Oh my god! Where have you been? You left me alone with the stiffs."
She passed her palms across the air in an X and grabbed my upper arm, pulling me under the awning. Rush hour commuters pushed past us. Lizzie spoke with a jumpy energy, her words over-emphatic and uncontrolled.

"Wanna know what Ari came to talk about? He wanted to give me this - " Lizzie pulled a yellow golf ball from her pocket, and slapped it into my hand, "and to make sure I knew that he never meant to hurt me, that he's sorry for how it all went down."

I turned the golf ball to the light. In small black writing it said Steeves Driving Range, Eastport, Cape Cod.

"Oh, and he's getting married."

I dropped my jaw in disbelief.

"I know. I know. I made him drive me to a bar so I could get quietly drunk while I heard all about how love finds a way, how it's bigger than any of us. And now that I've heard all he had to say, listened patiently to all his crap - you know what? I want revenge." She pulled off one glove with her teeth and inched an AC/DC keychain out of her jeans pocket and dangled a car key. "My spare. Whatcha think?”

I thought Lizzie was edgy and hurt and looking for a way to make Ari sorry. I clapped her on the shoulder. "I think you need help."

cobsie

Last Section:

The Orange Line train was crowded. We stood in the stairwell, swaying from the poles. Lizzie recounted her afternoon. "I know I said I got quietly drunk, but that's not actually the case, if you want the honest truth. I started screeching like a barn owl, you're getting married?! and I don't know what kind of reaction he was expecting but I could see this was not it. He looked shocked as ****. I started shouting, when were you going to tell me? and even as the words were coming out, I realised that Ari really thought I would understand or maybe even be happy for him. For them. Cause they're in love. True love, a thunderclap, nothing to be done. But meanwhile in the real world, he's stuck in very close quarters with a girl who is screaming at the top of her lungs and calling him a cheating bastard and cursing his new wife and the air she breathes." Lizzie guffawed.



She tugged me to get ready and we got off at Green Street and headed up a winding residential road lined with triple-deckers. The cars had all been moved to one side of the street, our side, for the snow ploughs that would come around in the early morning.


"Okay, so I'm all riled up, I'm rising out of my seat and practically standing over him as I let him have it. He's expending all his energy on getting me to calm down, just to sit down. This old black dude walks past our booth and stops and leans in to Ari and says "Man, you oughtta be ashamed lettin' a woman yell at you like that!" God, that was worth the price of admission. Anyway, that's when Ari pulls out the golf ball. He's like, but look, look, just try to remember the good times we had and don't be bitter and - I should interrupt myself here. This was about a really great day we once had, when we drove to the Cape and stopped at this crazy driving range off Route 1. I just wanted to pee and when I came out, Ari had bought us a bucket of golf balls each and rented the clubs and we had such a good time, just whacking at the balls for fun, both of us really terrible, no technique. There were sandy dunes at the end of the range and the sea was just behind them and it was hot and dry, one of those grass-like-straw days at the end of August. On our way home we drove into a huge storm, thunder and streaming rain and we drove with the windows open because there was no air conditioning in my car and we got soaked, but it was okay, too. It was a good day. It really was." She stopped short and shrugged. "It's gonna be a while before I can think of it again without wanting to cry or punch him. He's even ruined my memories. How is that possible? It's not fair."



We stood under a streetlight on the lip of a hill, snow fluttering around us. It was a moment before I realised we were standing beside the Valiant. Lizzie had her key out, swinging it absently between her fingers.



"Ari's been driving this thing into the ground. The low fuel light was on the whole time we were talking. So hey, what do you think we should do?"



"Don’t do anything crazy. Just, think for a minute."



Lizzie pulled a face. "Listen, I’ve been thinking all day. That’s all I’ve been doing. I thought, I could put sugar in his gas tank. Very easy to do. Nothing would happen him, he’d just drive a hundred yards and boom! Engine destroyed. Or I could put a nail into every tire. That’s a bit of a slow burner. I was listening to him talk about how he was baking cookies, cookies with her when he decided to propose and I started thinking about the brake line, cutting it.” Lizzie turned her key in the lock and opened the door. Her face was a pale hard blank. I scurried to the other door, shot through with panic that she would drive off without me.



It was cold inside, the vinyl seats clammy and squeaky. The windshield was covered with a blue blanket of snow that gave us a cocooned feeling, kids under the covers hiding and giggling. The wiper-blades swooshed away two high arches of snow as we swung out into the middle of the street and revved uphill, tires sliding. I could feel it judder to one side and winced as we came close to glancing off a parked car but Lizzie patted the dashboard soothingly as if it was an old mare and encouraged us forward. When we came to Center Street, the ploughs had already passed up the main road, piling snow along both sidewalks in rough ridges and the wheels gripped the road more firmly. We turned left and headed south, driving in the narrow channel left by the ploughs, past thrift stores and tacquerias, then took a right by the statue of the Unknown Soldier. The soldier leaned on his rifle, a box of ammo slung sideways across his back, cap low over his face, considering the day ahead, or the day that had been. Either way, he was weary.



Lizzie nudged the car into the sluggish traffic on the Jamaicaway and we rolled along in silence, just the wiper-blades drawing back and forth. Black skeletal trees dotted the road to our left, marking the edge of the Pond. Snow flickered in the beam of our headlights as we followed the outline of the water in a wide arc, leaving the traffic behind us. We came full circle and swept downhill to rejoin the Jamaicaway a little further up, and began our loop again.



“I could put ping-pong balls in the gas tank, too. They get sucked up and block the fuel line and so the car keeps cutting out. Keeps stalling. It would take a while to figure out. That’s a good one.”



“Why don’t you just drive it to South Station and park in a tow zone? That’s harmless but expensive.” I glanced apprehensively at Lizzie. She swung the car out of traffic and back towards the Pond, following her own treadmarks around again.



“I could put superglue in the ignition and put my key in and jam it in there. That’s kind of funny, right?”



On our third lap, Lizzie slowed the car and lifted her hands off the steering wheel, palms up. “Let’s be honest. I’m not going to do any of those things, am I? I wish I was the kind of person who could just drive the stupid thing into the Charles, but…I’m just not crazy enough.”



"You're not going to boil his bunny."



"No, I'm not. I’d like to, but then I’d feel bad for the bunny and save it at the last second." Lizzie pulled in behind the boathouse and turned off the engine and slumped back in her seat. “I don’t want to do something that ends up in a yellow envelope. Something I could never get away from.” She watched the headlights bob along the far bank of the Pond, following their trail until they disappeared one after another into darkness. "I don't even want Ari back. It's the gesture. I want to take the gesture back. I just wanted to say I take it back, I never loved you after all. Because the whole time he was smiling and waving at someone over my shoulder and I thought he was smiling and waving at me."



Snow stippled the windscreen, gradually blotting out the view. I cast around half-heartedly for inspiration. The glove compartment yielded registration papers, a road map of Pennsylvania and an Altoids tin with a few dollars in quarters. I scooped these out and handed them to Lizzie. The back seat was empty save for a crumpled Dunkin Donuts bag and a security lock on the floor, still in its cardboard and plastic pack. I stared at this, straining backwards to pick it up.



"Hey, is this one of these, what are they called, security things for your steering wheel?



"A club?"



I brought it onto my lap. The pack was long and skinny, with bold yellow and black stripes and the word Citadel emblazoned crossways. It contained a heavy metal bar that locked to the steering wheel, and two keys. Lizzie sprang for it. She clawed at the back of the package, working her fingers through the cardboard. She slotted the club through the steering wheel, pulled the bar all the way out and tested that the wheel couldn't turn.Then she locked it into place with a heavy click. She looked at it in silent disbelief, tugging it this way and that. A slow smile crept up on her.



"Ari, you moron! These things are impossible to get off. They're really, really hard to get off. It's gonna take, like, a diamond drill-bit to get through this."



"Is this a tow-zone?"



She looked at me and slapped both thighs in excitement. "God, I hope so."



Lizzie flipped up the cover to the ashtray and dropped the yellow golf ball inside, then we got out and shot the keys high into the air and heard them hit the water, plunk plunk. Lizzie held up both hands and we clapped palms in triumph and crunched across the J-way, back to Center Street.



"I'm not gonna lie to you, I feel better, I really do." Lizzie said.



"Yeah, I do too," I nodded. I tucked a piece of paper with Lizzie's address into my coat pocket. We stood outside Dunkin Donuts, sipping sweet milky coffee from styrofoam cups, about to go our separate ways.



"I'm guessing it'll be a snow day tomorrow. Nor'easter is going to hit the city tonight and then it'll really start coming down. So, I'm thinking they'll shut the T. If that happens you should come over. Meet my roommates, play some Nintendo. Stay for dinner if you like, if you don't have plans."



I felt a kick of anticipation in my stomach. I smiled into my coffee.



Lizzie nudged me with her elbow. "Hey look. Look at that guy."



In front of a shuttered-up store a few feet away, a man was dancing, moonwalking slippily back and forth on a square of cardboard, his arms rowing through the air. He was bobbing and snapping his fingers to a beat in his head, eyes squeezed closed, transported. He paused and muttered bless you, God bless you, as we flipped a couple of quarters into his cup.

Wantobe

Thanks for posting- it's a really good story. Actually throw in the boyfriend getting murdered and some more about the Irish boys, and you've got a book I'd like to read. Not good at critiquing line by line but I thought the city descriptions were really strong without being over-powering. You know the way sometimes writers start to write passages of description that you prefer to skip over- well you didn't- it was just right.

cobsie

Thanks a lot for reading and the pos. feedback. I really appreciate it. It's kind of nerve-wracking putting stuff up!

The Mad Hatter

Wow, that was really excellent. I meant to just read a couple of lines but you sucked me right in.

I'm really fond of your straight, no-nonsense writing style.

If there's any criticism I could make it's that the dialogue didn't always sit quite right for me - when Nora said "God almighty", I kind of had to do a mental "Hang on, was she Irish?" I wasn't always convinced by the death imagery either - the snowy chalk outline and things like that seemed to link the characters to their job, but nothing else. I didn't feel that death was hanging over them or anything.

But these are really small things in a story I really enjoyed, and I'm only saying them because I think it's better than saying nothing. Great work, well done.

MilanPan!c

Awesome work!

There's a few small things here and there, but nothing a close edit wouldn't fix...

You might try and fix those double spaces when you copy and paste stuff onto the boards, just to make it easier to read, but overall very good!

Is this your first story?

I would guess, no.

Hope to read more!

cobsie

Thanks, Mad Hatter - I'm really happy that you liked it. Working the dialogue in two accents is definitely a challenge and I know I didn't always get it right. You're spot on with the 'God Almighty' bit because I had a million different exclaimations - that made her seem more Irish, less Irish, neutral...Irish dialect is so hard to write!

Another worry was over-egging the omlette with death imagery. I wanted to connect it more to lonliness and stasis, rather than an actual threat of death, but I feel I have to thread it a bit more finely through the story, it really needs a light touch. Maybe the chalk outline was a step too far

So glad to get feedback, though! Thanks a mil!

pickarooney

It was a truly engaging read. I just meant to glance at it but was halfway through the second section before I looked up again.

There seemed to be two characters in the story - Lizzie and Boston - with the narrator not playing a major role. It's an interesting angle - not quite omniscient and largely dialogue driven.

Unless I picked it up wrong, Nora is Irish and recently arrived in the States? She seems very familiar with the city, too familiar even, but I suppose we're told that she's a bit lonely and spends a lot of her free time wandering around.

Assuming again that she is Irish, there are a couple of Americanisms (sidewalk, odor...) which are out of place. Nothing five minutes editing wouldn't fix.

If I had to pick one thing that needs adjusting, it's parts of Lizzie's dialogue which is too clever and 'writery' for the casual conversation of someone in an emotional state.

I'd find it hard to imagine someone saying things like "I started screeching like a barn owl" or "Because the whole time he was smiling and waving at someone over my shoulder and I thought he was smiling and waving at me" although the latter is a lovely, poignant metaphor.

That's about as critical as I can muster really! Great job.

Antilles

cobsie, that was really great. The dialogue could do with some work, but apart from that that, it was fantastic from start to finish.

Also, possibly the best opening line I've ever read in this forum

cobsie

Wow - I feel so lucky to get such positive feedback on my first post! It's an entirely different experience to open up a story to complete strangers, something I have never done before. The comments have been so insightful and so useful, I'm really blown away. I have loads to think about, ways to fine-tune the writing. It's so encouraging. Thank you, guys!

Antilles

Looking forward to your entry in the next VOAT

cobsie

VOAT? What's that? Enlighten me, I'm a newbie!

FoxInATreehouse

cobsie, I quite enjoyed your story! It really drew me in as it progressed. There were a couple of things I noticed. You did a great job of helping the reader develop a sense of Lizzie and her background; however I would have loved to have a gotten a better sense of Nora, especially since she is the narrator. I didn't even know she was supposed to be Irish until someone mentioned it in a post.

I was able to pick up that she is unsure of her place in Boston, whether she wants to stay or not. As a reader, I kept asking questions...Where did she come from? Does she have family? What does she enjoy doing? Why did she choose the work she did? Or was it even a choice?...So, if you developed her character a little more, I think that would add to the story. I also liked your sentence structure in Lizzie's dialogue. You can easily feel her excitement/anxiety/stress.

Keep writing, you've some talent in you!

cobsie

@FoxInATreehouse: Thanks for taking the time to read and comment!

Some things are becoming apparent from the comments - that I need to give a better sense of who Nora is, for starters, and make more explicit that she is Irish. Maybe she doesn't need to be Irish at all? I think it's only necessary for her to be an outsider in the city. I could easily make her American, just new to Boston...either way, I need to develop her more.

I will think about that and post a new edit in a day or two.

Thanks all, incredibly helpful!

pickarooney

cobsie wrote: »

VOAT? What's that? Enlighten me, I'm a newbie!

VOAT = Variations on a Theme, the short story competitions we run on here regularly. The most recent one is here.

cobsie

New edit!

Many comments pointed to the need to develop Nora more, give her more substance - why was she there, what her background was. It wasn't even immediately apparent to some that she was Irish.

So, taking that all on board, I totally see the need to make her a bit more present in the narrative, even though she is a secondary character. The opportunity to do that comes at the start of the story, in the paragraph where she introduces the job at the morgue and mentions that she is living with some Irish lads. So I reworked that section and gave her more substance, without, I hope, bogging things down. I think this is a successful pass at that, anyway and allowing her this extra characterisation really adds resonance to the passage where she is wandering around the city after work.

So thanks for the helpful suggestions! Comments welcome on the extract below

******

Snow Day

Someone came into the break room and said that Dancing Man was dead. He fell asleep on a bench in Dudley Square and it snowed on him all night. They took him to Boston City Hospital in a silver blanket but he didn't make it. The hospital was opposite our building, the only place in the city that took the indigent. After discharge, they straggled around the triangle of grass by the bus shelter, stupefied, belligerent and hung over, steri-strips shining white on their plum-dark faces. The triangle was Dancing Man's patch, where he threw down his cardboard every morning and busted his moves, rain or shine.


I took this tidbit of news back to the office with my toasted bagel. Lizzie was already at her desk, opposite mine, sorting through the yellow inter-office envelopes that had come up from the morgue.



"Which do you prefer," she asked, holding one in each hand. "Murder or suicide?"



I thought about it. "Murder."



She flipped the envelope across to me. "Enjoy."



We worked for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, transcribing coroners’ reports off dictaphone tapes. Suspicious deaths from around Massachusetts came to us. The agency warned me it wasn't work for the sensitive, that people got burned out which is why it paid two whole dollars over minimum wage. I didn’t mind. I wasn’t superstitious or squeamish or otherwise fearful of the dead and besides, I needed the money. I had come over to Boston from Dublin with a gang of my college friends, after our final exams. We tore through the summer months in high spirits, shoveling popcorn in cinemas and selling lemonade to tourists, going to beaches on the North Shore at the weekend, or to the Esplanade for free concerts in the Hatch Shell, luxuriating in our bare feet on the hot dry grass, sneaking joints and beers as the Charles dazzled white beyond the chestnut trees. But one by one our numbers dwindled with the growing chill, like bees dropping to the pavement after the first cold snap in autumn. Then almost everyone had gone home or other places, and I was on my own with a couple of lads in the apartment in Allston, friends of my friends but not quite friends of mine. I wasn’t ready to leave, to go back to sensible choices and higher diplomas and first-time-buyer repayments. I took the job at the morgue just for some time to think.



Lizzie was the other temp in the office.She was the same age as me and had a great line in thrift-store t-shirts with slogans like "D.A.R.E to Keep Kids Off Drugs" and "Quincy Police 5 Mile Fun Run". She treated the morgue reports like a droll spectator sport.



"Listen to this." She pulled off her headset and waited for my full attention. "Listen to what this kid did. Jumped off a bridge in Neponset. Okay? Missed the water completely, landed on one of the concrete platforms supporting the arches." She hissed through her teeth. "Ouch-a-roonie."



[...]

MilanPan!c

What does D.A.R.E. stand for?

Drugs are really evil?

cobsie

Ha ha!

http://www.dare.com/home/InsideDAREAmerica/Storya135.asp?N=InsideDAREAmerica&M=13&S=98

It's a police-run anti-drug campaign aimed at yoots - 'just say no' etc etc. Hipster kids in Boston love those ironic DARE t-shirts

Antilles

MilanPan!c wrote: »

What does D.A.R.E. stand for?

Drugs are really evil?

Its a reference to how much training their officers get before giving a class: Detectives Are Rarely Educated

smcgiff

Excellent opening - professional good. While mid way through I thought the standard was slipping a little, but still good.

It was still good enough to read fully, so well done.

Also agree that you've got a wicked opening line!

Lady Tottington

This story is great! I really enjoyed reading it - I think you have very good control over your sentences - you can draw scenes with very economical language. I agree with what others have said about Lizzie's dialogue not being realistic when she's in an emotional state. Also, that re-write of the opening paragraph doesn't really work yet - far too much information handed out to the reader before we really care, I think. Still, from the evidence of the rest of the story, if you take your time you'll get there on that point.

Would love to read more.

cobsie

Thanks for reading, Lady Tottington! I did rush the re-work of the opening passage a bit. I think I have a better idea of where to put it now (Nora standing on the bridge looking at the city is the logical moment, emotionally) and I'm going to cut it to just two expository sentences.

Lady Tottington wrote: »

Would love to read more.

If you have time, please take a look at another story I have posted here. It's also part of the collection I'm working on. Thanks a mil!