Danielle Orner
Story # 6
03/06/07
Envy
She was me. Only younger, smarter, prettier. She had plans to conquer all the things I had already conquered but in half the time and with far more grace. Her future was all ahead of her and I was stuck with the decisions I had made in the past.
So, I went home and curled up in my bed. I curled tighter and tighter. I pressed my worthless little self smaller and smaller. The light in my apartment faded and brightened but still I focused on contracting myself. My thoughts of her perfection lapped over and over on my mind like the calm surge of a tide enveloping a beach bit by bit. I let the small ring of jealous thoughts squeeze me tighter and tighter. I didn’t eat or sleep or get up to use the bathroom. I just thought about how she was me but better. Like a new, improved model. Like a reborn style going from retro to chic. Me but better. And I curved my spine and contacted my stomach until I was hard and round and unfeeling.
Weeks after I went missing, the landlord finally keyed in. Everything was normal. The apartment was a bit dusty but still looked as if it was waiting for someone to come home from work or a long vacation. The only thing out of the ordinary was a large oval-shaped rock beneath the sheets of the unmade bed. The rock was smooth and grey. The landlord took it and fifty dollars from my wallet for his troubles before calling the storage unit to pack all my things in case I returned. The apartment was vacuumed and repainted and new tenants moved in. The landlord placed the rock outside in a fake little riverbed curving under the complex’s sign. The rock sat there in the sun and the rain surrounded by one hundred other rocks that looked just like it.
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2 comments:
Hey,
Nice, simple story. I really like the concept; I think the short length is good, and the ending (from the landlord coming in on) is really nice. The beginning, the reasons for and descriptions of the transformation, could use some work. Maybe, don't directly indentify that she's (he's?) suffering from jealousy- show us in the narrator's obessiveness: go on and on about how she's prettier, etc, maybe relate each point of envy to a point of physical suffering ("I thought of her face, its perfect beauty, and pressed my own ugly nose tight into my chest, hoping it would disappear there...). The ending has such a satisfying, eerie mysteriousness about it, while the beginning is just too direct, you know? And that's where the "magical" part happens.
Good work!
I have to agree with branden on this one. certain aspects in the beginning could be shown more than told to make the piece more powerful.
all in all, though, nice stuff.
^,^
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