Hi Everyone! Goodness, I haven't been on here in soooo long. But the bug has bit and so I'm back. This is a short story I wrote for my English 281 class (OMG, I'm in college now! Actually, I'm almost done with undergrad...ugh I feel old). Anyway, It's based on this book called "If on a Winter's Night a Traveler" By Italo Calvino. I need to give some background information or else this won't make a lick of sense. Basically the book, which I recommend 100%, is written in second person, so the main character is "You", but it's not actually, you...trippy, I know. Anyway, he buys a book but something went wrong in the publishing and a different story starts halfway through his book. So the story is of him trying to track down the original story, but the reader gets bits and pieces of all the other stories he reads too. These stories are never finished. Anyway, my assignment was to finish one of the stories, and I chose "What Story Down there Awaits its End", which is about a man (only named "I") who can erase reality and this weird government organization wants him to do that and create a new world, but he doesn't want to. There's also this girl he keeps running into named Franziska, who he totally digs, but is really, really uncomfortable with relationships. The first line of my story is the last line of the original story. Anyway, here's my continuation, please let me know if you have any questions.
Also, this is just to get back into the swing of things. I'm thinking about writing another longer story ;) Stay tuned for more details.
What Story Down There Awaits its End?
"Listen: I know a café here at the corner, all lined with mirrors, and there's an orchestra that plays waltzes. Will you invite me there?"
Her words are the impetus needed; the concreteness of her desires spurns the pen across the page that the world has been reduced to. Darkness covers my eyes, and for a moment I fear that I haven't reached her in time. I fear that we are about to be swallowed into that terrible chasm of emptiness. Abruptly in a rush of sound and light, heavy enough to crush us and pulverize us into an oblivion of sensation so over powering it threatens to reduce us and everything to our very essence, the world returns.
We are in a dim corner of the corner café; our beings are at once both shielded and revealed by potted ferns and glittering mirrors. Our image bounces across the room many times over, both obscuring and revealing until we are lost in the void of crystal chandeliers and frosted windows inside of gilded frames. The air is stifling, heavy with smells of spices both exotic and well known, conversation, laughter and the thick smoke of tobacco. The marble table where my hand rests next to a delicate plate of puff pastry is cool to the touch.
Franziska sits opposite me with her muff and scarf gone, revealing a peach and gold dress that sparks like her eyes. She is saying something to me, the warm timbre tones of her voice enveloping me with a sense of belonging. I wonder now why I resisted our arrangement of meeting. The inevitability of attachment gnaws at me; the suppositions of a bond between us in strangers' eyes pick at the back of my head like a migraine. Yet Franziska is still as beautiful as when we randomly meet, perhaps more so. There is a certain air of excitement about her; she possesses a happiness I haven't seen before. Could it be that she too saw that flat, void of a world and the deep chasm opening beneath our feet? Is she exhilarated that I snatched us from the jaws of oblivion? I yearn to erase the bond between us to calm my unease, but something stops me. Perhaps it is Franziska's radiance, too beautiful to ignore. Perhaps it is that ethereal bonds are more difficult to destroy than a tangible, concrete object.
I focus all of my attention on blocking out the world; I will not erase it, but simply ignore it. This is much harder that erasing; I must just nearly eradicate everything around me. Dim the lights, the sounds, the smells. I focus solely on Franziska, her golden eyes and milky skin, while tremulously holding on to reality. It is so much more difficult that simply letting go. The tight, straining lines of reality are uncomfortable and my mind begs me to release.
"I'm so glad to finally see you! I was worried you see, I thought I wouldn't happen upon you in time."
Ah! So I had been right, she had seen that vast dead expanse and was thankful that I had saved us. She had seen those insidious men, with their long, black coats, so plain, and yet so terrible.
"Of course, Franziska. Did you think I was going to leave you stranded and alone?"
Slight curiosity registers in her eyes and a throaty chuck escapes her lips. She lifts the warm golden pastry to her lips and blows before savoring a delicate bite.
"These so remind me of my grandmother! I used to go to her house in the winter as a little girl; it was a small red dacha in the forest, filled with the smells of pastry. I should take you some time; she would so love you and your sense of humor!"
For a moment, I am captivated by the image of us at this small, red cabin: a bright orange fire and wood smoke. Erase the grandmother, erase the pastries too: otherwise there's the extra work of erasing them off of the body later. As for the grandmother, the less connection, the less suppositions about any relationship with Franziska the better. And yet…
I catch myself sliding back into my murderous habits. I must not delete reality, but hold on to it. Hold on to Franziska. I am compelled to consider if it would really be all that awkward. The gaze of strangers and its discomfort seems nothing compared to Franziska's warmth and radiance tonight. I am about to reply to her: I would love to meet her grandmother at the little dacha, but before I can eject the words from my mouth Franziska clasps my hand and pulls me up.
"Waltz with me!" She demands and I follow, rebuilding reality as necessary. I add the couple at the table next to us and erase the waiter in our way to avoid a collision. I bring back the sounds of the orchestra, but keep the light dim. She pulls me onto the lacquer dance floor, more leading than following; we float into a stream of twirling bodies. Fabrics and colors assail me from all sides: crimson velvets, somber silks, crisp white cottons. I resist the urge to erase them all. Perhaps if I stay firmly rooted in concrete reality, anchored in the arms of Franziska, the ominous fellows from Section D will not be able to find me…find us. Perhaps they are only in that void of a world and not in reality. And yet…tension pricks at me, a sense of certain unease nets at the back of my mind. Could they be here?
"What on earth were you doing earlier anyway? You looked such a fright when I stumbled into you!"
The spinning of the room, the bright warm shapes and ominous shadows, reflected into the myriad of mirrors makes me slightly nauseous but I focus my gaze on Franziska's sparkling eyes. "Having an unpleasant chat. I was so glad to finally reach you; I saw you very far off, you see."
From the corner of my eye I see dark figures moving towards us. We spin into the crowd and I understand that the Section D men will not stay in their empty plane, waiting to rebuild. Without me, they cannot. Hot panic washes over me and I grip Franziska tightly.
"They're here." I shudder to myself. Franziska pulls away slightly to appraise me; we have stopped dancing and we stick out in the crowd of crowds, real and reflected. I resist an attempt to erase the men. Anyway they cannot be smoothed away like so many other annoyances of life. They are unreasonable.
"Really! You're acting so strange today, not like your usual joking self. I've half a mind to take you home!" A teasing smile plays at her lips and I inhale slowly, trying to understand. Doesn't she know? She certainly saw that empty, barren land with its deadly fissures. She saw the ominous men, hadn't she? Perhaps not, perhaps she had been too far away. I had run to her, after all.
Panicking I mutter an apology. "Let's keep dancing." I swing us around, melding back into the churning bodies, anything to keep us from becoming spotted. I see one approach, dancing with a young lady who seems surprised to not be with her partner of a moment ago. They are closing in, these dark, black ominous forms. They are encroaching on us, on my bright, shining Franziska.
A thought strikes me: I start to erase. I smooth the glittering mirrors into one smooth expanse of frosted gray until just a blank wall remains. That, too, goes. The dancers amass into one large vomitous lump of color, shrinking until they are gone. Next the tables: poof! The dance floor melts into the cool gray expanse of nothingness. But we must not linger here, not in this place of death. The men advance on us, slowly at first. Or perhaps they are just very far away. Think! Think! I imagine a cozy wooden house, the smell of pastries and a crackling fire, but it is to no avail. Once again all sense of concreteness, of physicality has disappeared. Again the world has been reduced to abstraction, to thoughts on paper. I can grasp at nothing…unless…
We are still dancing, but Franziska realizes something is amiss. She touches either side of my face with her soft hands and examines my soul with her golden eyes. She is so warm, so soft and real.
I know what I must do.
The men are getting closer, nearly to us. If they catch us I shudder to think of the things they will make me create; the things they will make me destroy. Their new world will be no world for Franziska and me; it will have not spontaneity or beauty. Leaning forward, barely breathing my lips on to hers, in one final moment of spontaneous beauty, I erase us.