The Mysterious Late VOAT Entry

Insect Overlord

She almost didn’t notice the box at first. Rather, in her haste, Ann carelessly dropped her folders on top of it, struggling to balance the coffee cup in the crook of her right elbow. A leather bag dangled precariously from her shoulder, buzzing lightly. A tutt or two echoed from the wood-panelled corners of the library, and, realising her fault, Ann struggled to silence the phone buried at the bottom in her handbag.

Typically, the ringing came to an abrupt end just as her fingers finally found it, the chorus of Rihanna’s Disturbia cut short. She saw a dark-haired man alter the volume on his headphones at the computer by the door. She’d seen him there frequently over the previous months (he fully exploited the library’s free computer facilities) and felt she knew enough about him by now to get on with her work without apologising for the noise. He just wouldn’t be interested.

The stranger had not been the one to click his tongue in displeasure this time, but he had done it before. His presence in the old corner of the library seemed to exaggerate the silence rather than disturb it, the noise he made clearing his throat serving only to punctuate noise with a resounding full stop. For a short while Ann had appreciated the gesture, but, having once found herself in its receipt, she now thought it rude and humiliating.

Not that she was particularly anxious to please this man anyway. He’d never once spoken to her since she’d first seen him, but the contents of his computer screen spoke volumes. Ann could see the videos he watched on-line, the images he laughed at which he laughed and the pages blocks of text in varying background colours that changed depending on the forums he visited. She thought them a strange body of work to view in a public library, and occasionally wondered what brought the man to her own favourite study. He didn’t seem to care who saw the grotesque images he studied, and was one of the few who didn’t try to hide his networking page when Room Supervisors passed by on Facebook duty.

Ann placed her cardboard cup on the desk as gently as she could, afraid of staining her notes or splashing the keyboard. A high Georgian window yielded one beam of bright light, a stream of dusty air cutting across the library floor like a yellow-brick road which highlighted old circular marks on the corners of Ann’s desk. She always picked the same spot by the window, between the original brick walls and the panels that separated the computers from the bookshelves. The view of the outside world inspired her. The previous decade of prosperity had brought great change to her city, the skyline of which was now broken here and there with tall hotels. Looking through the Georgian window from her computer desk, Ann felt she could appreciate the juxtaposition of sky-scraping glass around the spires of old churches and the once mighty cathedral.

Alas, the fairy tale had come and gone with a bitter twist in its tail. Abandoned cranes like fresh scars on grey skin were the monuments that would remind her and others of all that they had once possessed, and all that they had thrown away. Unfinished shopping units were the megaliths that stood in testament to a generation on the verge of greatness, but whose fall had been just as spectacular as any before it. Ann had found solace in Celtic swirls and Mayan hieroglyphs, but could imagine no joy in the mysteries of spread-sheets and T-accounts that would occupy future generations.

Ancient stories and histories had become her passion, and the over-lapping stains on her desk now made her feel somewhat Olympian. It was a marathon effort, but her project had finally taken shape. Months had passed since she’d been able to think of anything else. Few of her friends still thought to invite her for nights out, and her phone rang so rarely that she still found one of the big hits of 2008 thrilling when she heard it. Every spare moment was spent reading, and her growing pile of highlighted notes brightened up the ever-shortening days as sunny September faded into memory and the cold of November dulled to sludge the last red remnants of what had been a strikingly beautiful October.

Ann moved to tidy up her notes as she slid into her chair. Having quenched the incendiary tones of her Samsung, she took a long drink from her coffee. Only then did she properly take notice of the box. Wooden, with a hinge on one edge and a small key-hole on the opposite side, it reminded her of her grandparents’ old sitting room cupboard.
More than a decade had passed since that cupboard had been thrown on a local Halloween bonfire. She still thought fondly of that winter. Thinking of it now, she smiled and recalled the excitement that she’d felt in the final fortnight of her twelfth October, the last great Halloween of her youth. Her parents had always been protective. They rarely allowed her to venture as far as friends’ houses in the next nearest estate. They were even wary of the short-cut through the alley-way by the local shop. As such, it had been such an adventure to run through the fields beyond the estate, gathering whatever she could find to help in the bonfire-building effort. Skips were raided outside the big houses near the fields, where extensions and conversions had come into fashion among the first households to enjoy new money. A local garage left damaged tyres behind its ware-house. When the older boys had come back with Coke bottles of petrol, Ann had known that this would be the fire to beat them all. Ann couldn’t recall how she had managed to convince her mother to give them the old furniture from her grandparents’ house.

Her grandparents’ house. Nana and Granda’s. It had been a decade since their cupboard had burned in the last big fire, and it was even longer since she’d seen the key they used to open it. Memories came flooding back of antique china, cut glass ornaments and silver trinkets. The colours fascinated her then just as those through the window did now. A sense of wonder washed over Ann, coming back from a distant time when she’d still believed in Santa Claus and magic, Halloween ghosts and the little birds that told her grandparents news she thought was secret. Closing her eyes, she imagined once more the cold handle of her grandfather’s magnifying glass and sitting on his lap, examining the message engraved on his favourite piece; Latin script on the inside of a golden pocket watch, “Omne ignotum pro magnifico est.”

She thought wistfully of the treasures, imagining boxes cushioned with old newspaper and bubble-wrap in the loft of her cousin’s farmhouse up the country. The treasures had gone to her eldest cousin after her grandparents had died. Ann hadn’t seen them since a family reunion in her early teens. She instead had received the old family trees and photo albums, and the fading pictures of vaguely familiar faces had inspired her projects ever since. She recalled snippets of old stories, echoes of conversations she’d over-heard when relatives chatted by the fire-place in her grandparents’ sitting room. The old brick fire-place and bare, beaten floor-boards had heard every word, but Ann was never old enough, never big enough to be part of the circle.

She had wished for so long to fill in the gaps, piece together the jigsaw that was her family’s broken history. She had the old pictures and the family trees, and all that she could remember of her father’s old bed-time stories. The documents and archives in the library were of some use too. But there was always something missing.

In her rediscovered excitement, Ann felt that this mysterious box could contain anything. It could just as easily be empty, she thought, before dismissing the idea. Ann knew she’d be entranced by it until she could find out for certain. She reached gently for the key-holed edge, fingers out-stretched, until a piercing buzz tore through the air. Her phone! It rattled across the desk, screen and buttons flashing, a phone-number she didn’t recognise jumping out at her. Ann grabbed it, scraping the metal legs of her chair harshly against the floor-boards. She couldn’t miss another call.

Running for the door, she took no notice of the dark-haired man who raised his head to watch her pass. She did not see the blank screen of his computer as she shielded her eyes from the beam of sunlight, or hear him gently lift his chair as he stood up behind her.

The room was dark when she returned. The man by the door was nowhere to be seen, and the break in Ann’s heart was matched only by the empty space on her desk. The box was gone.

pickarooney

Well, if you insist...

It's rather tedious. Nothing happens for long stretches and then finally there's some sort of action in the last paragraphs but it's too little, too late. There's too much description and not nearly enough action and it's about 80% backstory.

Having quenched the incendiary tones of her Samsung

This kind of thing will make people want to slap you unless the whole thing is written in a satirically pompous style.

Insect Overlord

If you thought it was that bad you should thrown it into the competition thread. Something so tedious wouldn't have challenged the better entries, regardless of the deadline.

Oryx

I read it, and found myself skimming to see when something was going to happen. In a longer tale, I think your amount of description would be good, its creating a lot of detail and background to your character. But with the limited wordcount, I think the focus of the story, the theft, could have featured more. You also left a lot of untied ends for me. Who was calling? Why couldnt she miss another call?

pickarooney

Maybe I could have been less blunt but regardless I would essentially have been saying the same thing. It may hurt at first but you need to hear it.

Insect Overlord

pickarooney wrote: »

Maybe I could have been less blunt but regardless I would essentially have been saying the same thing. It may hurt at first but you need to hear it.

I over-reacted to the "slap" comment more than anything else. Thanks for the rest of the critique. I'll keep those points in mind when I next write a short-story.

pickarooney

Insect Overlord wrote: »

I over-reacted to the "slap" comment more than anything else. Thanks for the rest of the critique. I'll keep those points in mind when I next write a short-story.

Yeah, sorry, I realise that the jokey comment wouldn't be funny in the context of the rest of the post.

Oryx

You ask pickarooney for critique at your peril. Im afraid to ask again after the last crit I had. Got to say tho, its tough but always constructive.