![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
apocalypsosOkay, so this is the scene I'm turning in to workshop this weekend for my creative writing class. If anyone's got any suggestions, I'm more than willing to hear them. I'd like to polish it as much as possible before I turn it in.
*
It's not the noise that wakes Sarah. Her eyelids crack open against interrupted sleep, forced open by the stark obscene flicker of reflected fire. She blinks away the last persistent dregs of sleep, yawns in a lazy uncomplicated way, and shoves aside white sheets, the white comforter, an unblemished white pillow.
Light shifts in swelling red and orange waves over the pale untouched beach of her white bedroom walls. Sarah forces herself up in bed and shoves limp fingers through the short wild curls atop her drooping head. The day before was a long one – school, her model U.N. Meeting, basketball practice, coming home to scrub the kitchen floor until it gleamed like polished glass – and sleep refuses to depart her exhausted body without a fight.
Slowly, she eases from bed. Her blurry gaze catches her reflection, too-thin and still swaying a bit, in the upright mirror in the corner. She could be a limp dangling eel, a drunken skeleton. She yawns again in protest at the persistent glare of rippling flames projected across the far wall. The neighbors must be burning trash again, toasting marshmallows, lighting things on fire just for the hell of it on a winter weeknight. Whatever rednecks do for fun, her dad will sneer over breakfast, if he and Mom are home by then.
Sarah hopes not. She hopes she eats breakfast alone again. This morning, she ate a silent bowl of contraband Cookie Crisp soaked in whole milk and washed it down with a warm can of Pepsi. She devoured both in her closet where she hides her illegal food, these guerrilla meal plans that reappear in the girls' lavatory during the long break between gym and study hall.
Sarah's stomach growls, cries out, begs for the forbidden cheer of a hearty midnight snack.
Her trip downstairs is made in silence, not even the slap of bare feet against cool unfeeling hardwood to poke her fully awake. With one child who'd finally reached the age of reason, Mom carpeted the entire house save the kitchen last year. Everything is deep white shag, thick and soft, a blank void. Sarah keeps waiting to sink into the floor, to put her foot down and just plummet into the blinding ether of Mom's bleached-white interior perfection. Sometimes Sarah wonders what that says about her mother and father, that their dream house is white, white, and more white. Even their wardrobes are, for the most part, bone and ecru and eggshell, unblemished and pure, a smudge of unnatural brightness against the rolling brilliant green hills and valleys. When autumn comes and the leaves change, their home sunk into a tumultuous sea of burnished golds and splashing reds, Sarah thinks their colorless modern house must look like a mistake, an unpainted spot on a canvas.
At the bottom of the stairs, she pauses, the soles of her feet swallowed in the carpet's plush fibers. At night, the house dies. There's the distant hum of the glass-front fridge, the white noise of ever-present electricity, but usually nothing else. Even her parents, when they're not spending the week at wine tastings in another state, sleep in silence. No snores or grumbles, no televisions left on, no rolling over in bed or irritated thumps to their long-suffering pillow. Mom once said Sarah could sleep through anything. Sarah still wonders how she would know.
Something taps at the front door, low to the ground, a slow unsteady rat-tat-tat.
Sarah's eyes narrow, squinting through the dim shadows at the slab of white which constitutes a front door. She didn't bother to flick on the sculptural chrome chandelier in the living room or carry her cell phone downstairs with her to light the way. The downstairs blinds are on a timer, lowering every night at nine even in the summer when mellow sunlight peeks through their slim but insistent barrier. The house is a tomb after sunset, and there's nothing to cut the darkness, not even the neighbors' bonfire, whatever it is they're burning so late on a weeknight.
Rat-tat-tat. Rat-tat-tat.
It's a raccoon, she thinks. A misplaced branch tumbling against the front door over and over in the breeze. Or the neighbors' dog has gotten loose again. That's all it is.
She shuffles to the front door, rubs sleep from her eyes, digs her toes into the carpet and grips the doorknob in lax fingers. On any other day, she would let the sound slide, but Mom and Dad won't be back until tomorrow. They won't be around to appear at the top of the stairs, one or the other a silent disapproving specter. Why, she could let in the outside, the dirty grimy flea-ridden outside, the scruffy neighbors' mutt or some curious squirrel or that lost crisped leaf. She's lucky she's allowed to come in the house, she thinks sometimes.
She turns the doorknob and opens the door a crack, not too far, not enough to let anything inside but smoke-clogged air.
It stings. The smoke – too thick, strange-smelling – sears her throat, the scrape of hot gravel across flesh already sensitive from regular splashes of evacuating stomach acid. Her eyes well with defensive tears. She coughs, hacks at the air, and nearly slams the door shut before she hears, “Please.”
She looks down, then out. Down at the man staining the Welcome mat with his scorched skin, then out at the scarred forest and smoking hayfield across the chipped road from Sarah's front door. Swelling flames bound from tree to tree, swallowing each in a visual symphony. The neighbors' house is the bonfire, it turns out, pitted by something enormous, obtrusive, and misplaced. Sarah spots oval windows and gleaming metal in the engulfed wreckage of the Millers' log hunting cabin, sees a hulking mass in the hayfield that might be the tail section.
The air is choked with unwanted scents: jet fuel, melted plastic, heated metal, hot dogs left too long on the grill. She tries to suck in clean air, tasteless odorless country air, but there's none to be had.
Her grip on the doorknob tightens, turns her unseen knuckles as white as the bones so close underneath her skin.
Mom's right, Sarah thinks. I really can sleep through anything.
“Please,” she hears, and looks down again. The man's shirt and shoes are missing, his black pants successfully hiding any unsettling stains. A half-dozen gruesome substances spackle his skin like a macabre Pollack knockoff. “Please help me,” he says, his voice rough. When he raises his arm, loose skin slides from his burns like freed sleeves.
Sarah thinks she should be rearing away, horrified and clean in her nice bright house. Except it's not her nice bright house, not her porcelain walls or bleached carpets. That wasn't her marble kitchen floor she scrubbed this evening until her fingernails cracked on her mother's request.
She reaches down, latching onto him with a careful grip, helping him up with the straining dregs of her limited energy. With bare blackened feet, he steps inside, and she knows that when he digs his toes into the carpeting the stains will never scrub out, no matter what her mother does.
“Come in, come in,” she says, and hopes she doesn't sound too giddy.
*
It's not the noise that wakes Sarah. Her eyelids crack open against interrupted sleep, forced open by the stark obscene flicker of reflected fire. She blinks away the last persistent dregs of sleep, yawns in a lazy uncomplicated way, and shoves aside white sheets, the white comforter, an unblemished white pillow.
Light shifts in swelling red and orange waves over the pale untouched beach of her white bedroom walls. Sarah forces herself up in bed and shoves limp fingers through the short wild curls atop her drooping head. The day before was a long one – school, her model U.N. Meeting, basketball practice, coming home to scrub the kitchen floor until it gleamed like polished glass – and sleep refuses to depart her exhausted body without a fight.
Slowly, she eases from bed. Her blurry gaze catches her reflection, too-thin and still swaying a bit, in the upright mirror in the corner. She could be a limp dangling eel, a drunken skeleton. She yawns again in protest at the persistent glare of rippling flames projected across the far wall. The neighbors must be burning trash again, toasting marshmallows, lighting things on fire just for the hell of it on a winter weeknight. Whatever rednecks do for fun, her dad will sneer over breakfast, if he and Mom are home by then.
Sarah hopes not. She hopes she eats breakfast alone again. This morning, she ate a silent bowl of contraband Cookie Crisp soaked in whole milk and washed it down with a warm can of Pepsi. She devoured both in her closet where she hides her illegal food, these guerrilla meal plans that reappear in the girls' lavatory during the long break between gym and study hall.
Sarah's stomach growls, cries out, begs for the forbidden cheer of a hearty midnight snack.
Her trip downstairs is made in silence, not even the slap of bare feet against cool unfeeling hardwood to poke her fully awake. With one child who'd finally reached the age of reason, Mom carpeted the entire house save the kitchen last year. Everything is deep white shag, thick and soft, a blank void. Sarah keeps waiting to sink into the floor, to put her foot down and just plummet into the blinding ether of Mom's bleached-white interior perfection. Sometimes Sarah wonders what that says about her mother and father, that their dream house is white, white, and more white. Even their wardrobes are, for the most part, bone and ecru and eggshell, unblemished and pure, a smudge of unnatural brightness against the rolling brilliant green hills and valleys. When autumn comes and the leaves change, their home sunk into a tumultuous sea of burnished golds and splashing reds, Sarah thinks their colorless modern house must look like a mistake, an unpainted spot on a canvas.
At the bottom of the stairs, she pauses, the soles of her feet swallowed in the carpet's plush fibers. At night, the house dies. There's the distant hum of the glass-front fridge, the white noise of ever-present electricity, but usually nothing else. Even her parents, when they're not spending the week at wine tastings in another state, sleep in silence. No snores or grumbles, no televisions left on, no rolling over in bed or irritated thumps to their long-suffering pillow. Mom once said Sarah could sleep through anything. Sarah still wonders how she would know.
Something taps at the front door, low to the ground, a slow unsteady rat-tat-tat.
Sarah's eyes narrow, squinting through the dim shadows at the slab of white which constitutes a front door. She didn't bother to flick on the sculptural chrome chandelier in the living room or carry her cell phone downstairs with her to light the way. The downstairs blinds are on a timer, lowering every night at nine even in the summer when mellow sunlight peeks through their slim but insistent barrier. The house is a tomb after sunset, and there's nothing to cut the darkness, not even the neighbors' bonfire, whatever it is they're burning so late on a weeknight.
Rat-tat-tat. Rat-tat-tat.
It's a raccoon, she thinks. A misplaced branch tumbling against the front door over and over in the breeze. Or the neighbors' dog has gotten loose again. That's all it is.
She shuffles to the front door, rubs sleep from her eyes, digs her toes into the carpet and grips the doorknob in lax fingers. On any other day, she would let the sound slide, but Mom and Dad won't be back until tomorrow. They won't be around to appear at the top of the stairs, one or the other a silent disapproving specter. Why, she could let in the outside, the dirty grimy flea-ridden outside, the scruffy neighbors' mutt or some curious squirrel or that lost crisped leaf. She's lucky she's allowed to come in the house, she thinks sometimes.
She turns the doorknob and opens the door a crack, not too far, not enough to let anything inside but smoke-clogged air.
It stings. The smoke – too thick, strange-smelling – sears her throat, the scrape of hot gravel across flesh already sensitive from regular splashes of evacuating stomach acid. Her eyes well with defensive tears. She coughs, hacks at the air, and nearly slams the door shut before she hears, “Please.”
She looks down, then out. Down at the man staining the Welcome mat with his scorched skin, then out at the scarred forest and smoking hayfield across the chipped road from Sarah's front door. Swelling flames bound from tree to tree, swallowing each in a visual symphony. The neighbors' house is the bonfire, it turns out, pitted by something enormous, obtrusive, and misplaced. Sarah spots oval windows and gleaming metal in the engulfed wreckage of the Millers' log hunting cabin, sees a hulking mass in the hayfield that might be the tail section.
The air is choked with unwanted scents: jet fuel, melted plastic, heated metal, hot dogs left too long on the grill. She tries to suck in clean air, tasteless odorless country air, but there's none to be had.
Her grip on the doorknob tightens, turns her unseen knuckles as white as the bones so close underneath her skin.
Mom's right, Sarah thinks. I really can sleep through anything.
“Please,” she hears, and looks down again. The man's shirt and shoes are missing, his black pants successfully hiding any unsettling stains. A half-dozen gruesome substances spackle his skin like a macabre Pollack knockoff. “Please help me,” he says, his voice rough. When he raises his arm, loose skin slides from his burns like freed sleeves.
Sarah thinks she should be rearing away, horrified and clean in her nice bright house. Except it's not her nice bright house, not her porcelain walls or bleached carpets. That wasn't her marble kitchen floor she scrubbed this evening until her fingernails cracked on her mother's request.
She reaches down, latching onto him with a careful grip, helping him up with the straining dregs of her limited energy. With bare blackened feet, he steps inside, and she knows that when he digs his toes into the carpeting the stains will never scrub out, no matter what her mother does.
“Come in, come in,” she says, and hopes she doesn't sound too giddy.
