Short piece

femur61

Hi all, this is the start of a story. I would like peoples opinions on the writing? Is it hard to read or does it flow. Feel free to say you don't like the writing. I am sorry the story hasn't got a conclusion but I would like to know do I need to work on my style or basically is it any good? Thanks in advance.


I couldn’t breathe, a film of fear had slipped over my body like a tight-fitting glove, pushing my chest into my lungs. I tried to grab some air, sweat seeped out of every pore of my body. In the distance, I saw her running. Fragments of the moon filtered through the trees hitting her hair as it swung from side to side. Pushing through the briars, I didn’t stop, I needed to catch her. She slowed and just as she turned to look at me. She cried my name; I felt her hands on me, shaking me, shouting.

‘Tom, Tom,’ her frantic; her high-pitched voice pierced my eardrums.

I blinked, trying to focus, I blinked twice. I didn’t recognise her. It wasn’t her. Where was she gone? My eyes cleared of sleep, it was Sarah.
‘Tom you were shouting in your sleep again.’ She sat on the bed beside me running her fingers through her short hair she said, ‘Jesus You need to sort this out. I can’t cope. Every night- every bloody night.’

I had the same dream for the last six months. Initially, the dreams hadn’t bothered me but the lack of sleep did. Every night I hoped she would turn, but she never did, but as she floated away I knew who she was. Sitting up, tired as if I had been running, I wanted to make sense of my dream. The sticky heat of the night didn’t help. The August air thick and dead. A welcome breeze caught the flimsy curtain moving it in waves. The material caught in the moonbeam cast a ghostly shadow across the floorboards. The sea outside moving softly against the rocks below, my breathing now in momentum with the sea.

‘Tom,’ Sarah said putting her arm around his shoulders, but I needed air. I pushed her away.

‘Jesus Tom you need to talk to someone if you refuse to talk. I can’t cope.' She was desperate but how could I tell her I was dreaming of my dead girlfriend. Sitting up I pushed her away into the direct beam of the moon, the light caught the bleached hair accentuating her pale face.

I needed space. Slamming the bathroom door the darkness tight against my chest. I desperately searched for the string of the mirror light. My reflection in the mirror said it all. I leaned over the bathroom sink splashing cold water on my face. It revived me momentarily but as I looked in the mirror, my ashen skin and red blotchy eyes, I was falling apart. A fly buzzed around the light instinctively drawn to the light, angry it had been woken, . I wondered why they crash into the bulb continuously. Did it not hurt them as the bulb heated, but the fly seemed to intensify its fight with the bulb the hotter it got. I suppose I did the same as a child when my father took my ladder away from the tree hut, no matter how many times I fell I still tried to reach it.

Loud fists on the door brought me back to the present. ‘Tom. Tom are you alright?’

I didn’t answer I continued to stare at my reflection. I knew it was Fiona in my dream, even though I never saw her face. After some time, I opened the door Sarah had returned to bed. The red digits on the clock read 03.03. The recorded time the coroner had read out in court of Fiona's death, or the recorded time her mangled bloodied body was found in the shrubbery in the park. It wasn’t hidden, just cast away like an unwanted piece of garbage. It took months of therapy to get the image out of my mind, and the subsequent guilt. A fight, a silly fight over the colour of our kitchen, not even a real kitchen, a potential kitchen. We didn’t even own our own bloody house.

Sarah whispered, ‘Tom, look at you, you need to get a prescription.’ She turned away from me pulling the thin sheet around her. The night was so warm you could sleep naked in the heat, but Sarah said she liked the feeling of the sheet wrapped around her, it gave her a sense of security. It was a dig at me.

‘I’m going to make coffee,’ I said but Sarah’s breathing was already laboured with sleep.

I sat at the kitchen bar watching the coffee drip into the pot. I never saw the woman's face in his dream, just the back of her head. The hair had the same flow of curls as Fiona, dancing in the wind as she ran. The Moonbeam hitting her natural highlights. Fiona never coloured her hair. She laughed and said, Why would I? I am me, naturally me. The dream came to me one night light an unwanted illness. Six years. Why now. I had done my tenure in therapy; I couldn’t understand what she wanted now. It was different this time. I smelt her perfume that was the part of the dream that unnerved me most.

I stirred on the couch, the heat more intense as the morning sun spread it rays out into the living room. The coffee machine gurgled out its last drop of water on the ground coffee. The sweet smell of Arabic coffee automatically drew me into the kitchen like the moon pulls the tide. I needed coffee in the mornings.

The blind half open let in enough light into the north facing kitchen, Sarah had been busy. Flour and broken eggshells lay on the counter. Pancake mixture filled the Tupperware bowl. She always cooked when she was upset. Cooking was her therapy. If we fought, the kitchen smells would draw someone in, thinking it was full of wondrous delights. But I knew different. A familiar smell emanated from the utility room I entered, and sighed as I saw a tray off hot steaming muffins on the bench. Usually when she finished, she threw her creations in the bin to start over again.

I stood in the utility room doorway thinking I was losing control of my once perfect life. A life over the past four years had somewhat manufactured, worked hard after Fiona’s death. Now it was unraveling. I turned to get a cup, a stony-faced Sarah stood in the doorway, dressed in her power suit, ‘coffee is made, and if you want something to eat, it's there.’ She said waving her arm dismissive in no one direction in particular.

The silence scrapped on the kitchen tiles I couldn’t find the right words. Outside a bin lorry outside banged and clanged as it lifted a wheelie bin into its gaping mouth. ‘Sarah …’ She was gone.

echo beach

I enjoyed it. It is good, even very good.

I smelt her perfume that was the part of the dream that unnerved me most.

and

The silence scrapped on the kitchen tiles

are very effective images.
There was enough unsaid to keep the interest. With a little tweaking it wouldn't really need a conclusion but it would also work as part of a longer piece.
'Stony faced' and 'power suit' veer on the side of cliché and take from the description of Sarah but otherwise it reads well.