some words

[bds]

hey, PD.

i've not posted anything creatively on here for ages, so I thought perhaps it might be time to. I wrote these two pieces for a creative writing portfolio for a university application, and I think sometimes it's kinda hard to take a look at something you've written objectively, y'know? anyway, I'm kinda proud of them, i'd be interested to know what y'all thought. I think maybe I'm still figuring out my writing style, still testing the waters. but yeah, if you've got any criticism or comments, that'd be fantastic. (i already sent the portfolio off, so this is purely for my own... development? as a writer). the first is something that I like because I think it's original, in the sense of it being super personal, and I really like the way it turned out, just as an articulation of my thoughts. the second is a bit derivative, really, and it's a concept that's kinda been done to death, but I was experimenting with language, playing with a more figurative style.

thanks for reading!

For a girl I barely knew

I barely knew you. You were the friend of a friend, a distant acquaintance. I think you dated one of my friends briefly; we met a few times but never really talked much. I liked you, I suppose, as much as it's possible to like a person that you don't know in any real depth. You seemed nice.

Anyway, you killed yourself. It sounds strange when you put it like that; bare of euphemism, devoid of the pretty language that we often use to cover up the cold, hard reality of things. You took a cocktail of drugs and tied a bag over your head. The news broke on Facebook in that weirdly modern, confusing, social-media driven way that seems to be the norm nowadays. All noise and no signal, everyone talking but nobody really knowing anything at all. I'll admit, I was shocked when I first heard the rumours. It's the finality that always gets me, I think. When you die, that's it. The End, no credits reel, no bonus scenes, just a final fade-to-black. I spent a while staring at my feed, refreshing, reading the comments on other people's posts asking for information or expressing their concern. When it was finally confirmed (I think it was your boyfriend, in the end) I was pretty upset, but only slightly more so than I am when a celebrity who I admired, whose music I enjoyed or whose films I liked dies. Like I said¬¬—I barely knew you. Our lives might have touched, but they were by no means intertwined. One of my friends who was close to you was pretty torn up, so I spent some time comforting him.

It was the same evening, almost as soon as your boyfriend posted that you were actually dead, that people started to write tributes on Facebook. They posted statuses, created a fan page, and I read the things they were saying—"too sad," "so young." I tried to write something of my own, but everything I typed seemed insincere, Hallmark card eulogies, clichéd condolences. I was staring at the blue 'share' button, but that was the problem, I wasn't sharing anything. It was just words, words with no real meaning behind them. In the end, I gave up, and went to bed. I thought it better to say nothing at all than write a false tribute or to force out some vague, insincere statement.

And I thought that would be it. A tragedy, certainly, and one that it would take me a while to get over, to compartmentalise and understand properly. I don't know if I'll ever really be able to comprehend the idea of suicide. It's not that I don't get the sentiment behind it, I totally do—it's just I find it difficult to understand when people actually do it. Maybe that's a blessing. And so I was lying there, thinking about suicide and death, when a thought hit me. A vague, dim memory. I'd never experienced this before, this feeling of being absolutely stunned, completely struck by a thought. The memory was of a Facebook message, an innocuous chat pop-up that I'd ignored a week or two ago. It was from you.

I don't remember getting out of bed, or opening Facebook and finding the message. But suddenly, there I was, staring at the words in the stark, harsh light of my laptop screen. It was innocent, a casual greeting, a fairly irrelevant piece of information, and a few kisses to sign off, but in that moment I realised that maybe it meant something more than that to you. I'd ignored it at the time because I was just about to go out as you said it and because what you'd said wasn't really that... relevant. It didn't quite make sense, you were talking about something that I wasn't interested in as if it was one of my hobbies, and, well, I just ignored the message. It didn't seem like a big deal at the time, and maybe it wasn't, but that was no comfort to me as I sat, transfixed by those few words. A wave of guilt rushed over me, and I let it. There's no playbook for emotions, no guidelines to help you decide how to feel, and so I just let it happen, because I thought that was what was right. I thought maybe the message was you reaching out for help, and that if I'd just responded; maybe I'd have been able to help you. Maybe you'd been feeling upset for a while, that you were feeling abandoned and looking for contact, even if it was just with fairly random acquaintances. I spent a long time staring at my screen that night, and the night after.

After a while, I figured out that this guilt was irrational. How could I have known that you were feeling upset? I don't even know whether you were at that point, anyway. And besides, how could my inaction be to blame, really? I eventually realised that it was probably just a cry for significance, a desperate attempt to feel important, to feel responsible. Deep down, I think I'd really like to have been able to change your life, even if I missed that opportunity, and so I feel guilty about it as a way of making myself feel better, because I prefer the guild to facing the alternative—that I was insignificant, that it wouldn't have made any difference whether I responded to that message or not. That's the truth, and the worst part is, I'll never know. Sometimes I still, months after your death, lie awake thinking about what might have been. My thoughts swirl with "perhaps," "maybe," "if." There's no certainty here, late at night, in the dark. No finality for me. No closure. Perhaps it's better that way.

I hope you're okay. Really, I do. I barely knew you, I know, but I still think about you.

-   Simon.

The Broken City

It was dark in The City. Not many of the streetlights work anymore—the bulbs gave up long ago, not that there's ever any electricity running through the pipes to power them anyway. The clubs and bars keep all their outside lights off past 11pm, although that's not to say there's anybody inside them, but even being identified as a place where people might congregate is enough to get your windows smashed as a 'warning.' It was quiet, too, very quiet, except for the sound of sobs slicing through the silence, a cough-splutter staccato, the noise forcing its way into the streets and through the cracks of slightly ajar windows. It was desperately, achingly heart-breaking, yet strangely rhythmic and beautiful. The kind of sobbing that could stop wars, melt hearts, turn rockets on their heads and send them back safely to their launch pads. It seemed to echo as it reverberated from one high rise flat block to the next, passing over unused telephone lines and dilapidated houses, rolling through cracked streets and boarded up windows. It was the soundtrack to a broken city, a soundtrack everybody heard but nobody mentioned—nobody talked about it at all, not once, not ever. It was the kind of haunting sound that you just can't get out of your head. The sobs were always there, always present, no matter how hard you shook your head in an attempt to dislodge them, they underscored hurried, hushed conversation and loud, angry argument. Even if you put your hands over your ears and squeezed tight, the sobs were still there, still audible.

The source of the sobs on this particular night was a young girl, no more than perhaps 14 or 15 years old. She was lying in a dark alley indistinguishable from any other, dressed in a dirty black tee and ripped jeans. The alley was dank, damp and covered in half-open, decomposing garbage sacks. The stench was appalling. Graffiti adorned the faded and cracked brick walls, angry, violent strokes that  proclaimed gang names and brutal signatures, scrawled and scratched into the walls in a way that left it unclear whether it had been sprayed on or simply carved by knives—or fingernails. The girl lay amid this filth, her long, matted hair falling over her face, concealing her features, but not enough to mask her expression, or the pained, terrified sobs wracking her hunched, contorted frame. There was blood in her hair and on her jeans, running freely from a vicious slice on her leg, visible through a gaping gash in the faded and discoloured denim. It stained the patches of moonlight a deep, rich red as it flowed slowly, laboriously, down, away from her body. Her tee shirt had been clearly ripped upon, it hung open from her shoulders, and her jeans hung in tatters over her thighs. There had been violence here. Its presence still hung tangibly in the air, the frenetic energy of the attack, the fierce struggle that ensued, and now—a strange calm, punctuated only by the hoarse, strained cries of the girl. The intensity of the sobs was horrifying, a visceral signpost to the degree of crime committed in the alley, but every choked, gasping cry seemed only to remind the girl of the intense pain that had violated her, and so she struggled for breath, each sharp intake rushed between loud exhalations, yet dangerously weak, as she lay, watching her blood dribble slowly from her wounds. She was utterly helpless, consumed by her terror and horror and the pain that she felt throughout her entire body.

Slowly, dimly, through the mist of the pain and the noise of the sobs, she started to hear another noise, too. A sound that was also part of the soundtrack of the city, a harsh, distinct drumbeat. It played with the sound of her sobs, each offbeat accentuating the difference between the two. One was a human sound, an expression of emotion, the noise of pain and fear, a rapid, involuntary weeping. The other was inhuman, stark against the silence of the city, caused not from an emotion but from the simple act of contact, of conflict—two hard objects meeting one another. It was the noise of footsteps, heavy and booted, each terrible thud a thunderclap of violent movement. The residents of the city knew this sound as well, and it signified the same thing as the sobbing—pain. The two sounds merged and intermingled as they rose together, warping and shifting in pitch until they were almost indistinguishable from each other. Suddenly, the footsteps paused. The sobbing grew louder, faster, more desperate. The girl saw the shadow at the entrance to the alley, knew what it meant. She heard the footsteps start again, quicker this time, with more intent, and she panicked, writhing and crying in a desperate attempt to begin her escape, but all she managed was a half-scramble to her feet before she fell back to the bloody, dirty concrete. She glanced back in the direction of the footsteps, in spite of herself, squinting to try and see past the patches of moonlight streaking past the gaps between high rise buildings. A dark silhouette greeted her gaze, steady and precise in its movements, a calm, imposing stride. She stopped trying to get to her feet. There was no point fighting. Her sobs were much louder now, with scarcely a pause for an intake of breath between each ragged, drawn out exhalation. The tears were streaming down her blood-streaked face, mingling with the blood and the dirt. Staring back down the alley, she could see glimpses of the figure as it approached, a flash of an official badge, the glint of a dark reflective visor, a gloved hand balled into a fist. The footsteps were deafening now, each impact an earthquake of sole on hard concrete. They slowed down, too, as the figure approached, drew the visor of its helmet up, glanced down at the figure of the girl, now curled into a foetal ball, her desperate, vulnerable sobs choked out through clenched teeth. The gloved hand reached down, gripped the face of the girl, wrenched it up to meet its gaze—she looked blindly, her vision swimming from the tears. The hand shook fiercely, violently, and the girl blinked as her vision slowly cleared. She was looking up into the hard set face of a man, his chin unshaven, marked by stubble, his cold, dark eyes were deep set and unblinking. He twisted his face into a grin as she let out a desperate cry, and threw her like a ragdoll to the ground. Her sobs were violent now, shaking her whole body as she desperately battled her pain to try and escape, but it was no use. The man spat once, a harsh, final gesture, and reached for the weapon holstered at his hip, before shaking his head once, quickly—a taut, brief response. He took a step back, and lifted his boot up. The girl stared up at the sole of his shoe, her cries reaching a brutal, constant wail. There was a single, sickening crunch, and then silence. A shocked, deadened, ultimate silence, throughout the broken city.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Wow... heavy stuff, BDS.

[bds]

Wow... heavy stuff, BDS.

thanks. I think sometimes poignancy is really associated with sadness in my head, and so when i'm aiming to be poignant maybe I overdo it a bit? not sure

[Mistre]

This is extremely honest/personal...I liked it.

[bds]

This is extremely honest/personal...I liked it.

thankyou!

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

Brutal. In the best way possible.

You have one typo in the first one, "guild" instead of "guilt" third line, last large paragraph.

[bds]

shitballs! wonder if I corrected that in the one I sent off

also, thanks

[Triple Zero]

I only read the first one yet ... heavy. Well-written.

About the eulogy insincerity, I recognize that feeling, I always thought "what do I have to add to this? It sounds so trite", but the thing is it only seems like that from the outside. The ones hurting usually really appreciate it, if those who wish to wish them well, do so, no matter how trite, as long as they mean it (or appear to mean it, even). The saddest thing is--and I've seen this happen--when everybody thinks this at the same time. Which was a bit of a wakeup call for me (didn't involve death btw, but testicular cancer, and he did get better in the end). From then on, I do make it a point to force out a statement, which may be vague, trite or bland, but it's never insincere. Sincerity is the easy part, just apply empathy. The hard part is getting over the idea of being one of the many voices that expresses a very heavy thought all using the same words. But that's okay, there's only so many ways to phrase such a thing. If you can write more and be original but otherwise the important part is your name below it. BTW this is not saying you should have signed some Facebook eulogy register, I'm just recounting some personal stupid social lesson that took me until way too late in my life to figure out.

[bds]

I only read the first one yet ... heavy. Well-written.

About the eulogy insincerity, I recognize that feeling, I always thought "what do I have to add to this? It sounds so trite", but the thing is it only seems like that from the outside. The ones hurting usually really appreciate it, if those who wish to wish them well, do so, no matter how trite, as long as they mean it (or appear to mean it, even). The saddest thing is--and I've seen this happen--when everybody thinks this at the same time. Which was a bit of a wakeup call for me (didn't involve death btw, but testicular cancer, and he did get better in the end). From then on, I do make it a point to force out a statement, which may be vague, trite or bland, but it's never insincere. Sincerity is the easy part, just apply empathy. The hard part is getting over the idea of being one of the many voices that expresses a very heavy thought all using the same words. But that's okay, there's only so many ways to phrase such a thing. If you can write more and be original but otherwise the important part is your name below it. BTW this is not saying you should have signed some Facebook eulogy register, I'm just recounting some personal stupid social lesson that took me until way too late in my life to figure out.

it's tough. the thing that stopped me from actually writing something was the fact that I had no memories with this girl, nothing to talk about, to base a eulogy on. like, I literally think i'd met her maybe 3 or 4 times? and yeah, I do think a lot of it is about just being one tiny voice in a chorus of many. if I had to give a 5-minute speech at her wake, I think I would've been able to do it. when I have not even 5 lines on a Facebook post, it's really hard to write something that conveys what I mean without just sounding like everybody else there. I don't know if that's just me being vain and wanting to appear different, or what. I just always feel like I'm rephrasing a message that (in this case, at least) I didn't really believe anyway.

thank you, as well. I want to write more, but I just get so burned out from work and stress and the fact that all I do for school is write things that I feel like I don't have time. and even when I do I just want to spend my down time playing stupid video games. I think maybe I just need to get through the last few months of this year, get some good grades in my exams, and then I get to focus on doing some more writing for me. (and hopefully I'll be able to spend my degree doing that, as well)