This is my 2020 NYC Midnight entry. The competition gives writers from all around the world; a genre, theme & character that they must incorporate into a short story with-in a 1 week deadline. My challenge this year was - Ghost Story / Handmade / Recluse.
Here's what I came up with in the time I had available to spend on it.
Here's what I came up with in the time I had available to spend on it.
Twelve Steps
Where are you going?
I could hear my voice as if it were coming from somewhere outside of my own body. The wind was chilled and sliced at the words as they dripped from my lips dispersing them like dandelions to the breeze; a flower girl preceding a wedding with a basket of phrases and promises to carelessly cast here and there. Dearly beloved we are gathered here.
Wait, please!
I was desperately following my neighbour, compelled by years of quietly watching him behind the shutters of his windows, silent and solo; the world cast off outside of his walls as if he, or perhaps the world didn’t somehow belong here. He became somewhat of an obsession for me. Long winters passed as I witnessed the flames from his fireplace lick at the walls with warming shadows and yet I never saw a tree felled or kindle gathered. Summers were short and cold and sheer curtains tried to escape through a cracked window, flapping up to the heavens as if waving a white flag of surrender, the wings of a dove trying to make peace with its maker. Take me, I thought, take me in. He never seemed to leave that small house and nobody ever seemed to arrive but the years passed just so until this one day when I saw the front door creak and crack like a spine unused to the burden of its intended task.
Wait, I implored, I need to know what happens to you!
I tried to keep up with his swift pace, at times scrambling up a steep ascent on my knees, the thread of my jeans unravelling to reveal skin numbed from the ice. The man kept climbing effortlessly as if it was nothing at all, as if the cliff before us was merely a hump in the road. The wind whipped up around us and all I could hear in my ears was the ocean, an angry white-noise of eternity churning as if my own tympanic membrane was a sea shell that had trapped the tide inside when it was crashing up on the shore. I wondered if the tide would ever find its way back to freedom so that my hearing would be restored but I wasn’t scared; I was certain this was just a lucid dream and that the writer would soon wake me up and show me the sanity of a dreary day. I would rise up at dawn and take my breakfast as I did every morning and move out to my garage workshop to ply a fresh stack of collected birch branches into toys for local children who carried all the hopes of the world with them.
My hands ached. An arthritis caused from the years of whittling away at wood, you see, I had been a troubled child and my father thought that keeping my hands busy would keep the trouble away and so my hands have been busy ever since then. I had surely made thousands of toys over these years. The joy it brought me to see children in the street playing, trucks and strollers click-clacking up and down the sidewalk. I had just earlier been sitting at my window, hand trimming some balsa for a little toy car I was making for my son. He was six and the car was to be a speedster, of my own design, painted green with little red trims like the car my father used to drive. I was just taking a break from the tools to rub my aching palms and when I looked up at my neighbours home I saw the gentleman appear on the front porch. Was he leaving his home? Now? I was so caught off guard that I skimmed my hand over the un-sanded wood surface and embedded a splinter deep in my thumb. My skin now burned around the foreign particle as I knelt in the icy slush of the hillside trying to catch my breath on the sharp breeze while I kept the mysterious man in my sights. I mindlessly sucked at the wound in my thumb.
He had come to a stop. I could see him standing at the top of the cliff. His opened coat flapped with the wind and his trousers, way too big for his thin, frail frame did the same. He looked like a flag pole, a beacon for incoming ships; a warning that this was no place for refuge. He was reading something, a note, a card perhaps that he had taken from his pocket. The wind squalled and snatched it from him or perhaps his armed dropped intentionally and he let it go knowing that it would fly down toward me. I gave chase, the page was a butterfly caught in a tornado, unable to navigate out of it. I trapped it with both of my hands cupped so as not to spoil its delicate wings. I sat down and opened my fists and found that the chrysalis had emerged as an ancient note. I had known this paper from long before. It was carefully hand-made and had a little embossed flower pressed into it. I raised it to my nose and gently inhaled as if it were a rose. The musty smell of a long lost home. The heart pounded at the remembered finality of this loss. The folds were thin and worn with age and I carefully loosened them and smoothed out the page. It was addressed to me - it was a poem written by… her.
There are just twelve steps home.
A Wife and Son long left alone.
My hands started to tremble, a physical memory of a plague out of control, the trembling made my bones ache so deep inside I thought they would shatter if I took just one more step. How? I breathed inward, suffocating in my own questions as they retreated to the ball in my stomach where I held my secret pains; emotional tumours that ate me away with each sip of pity that I had taken long ago. I reached out to grab the mans shoulder and then I noticed something sitting on a rock beside him. He had placed a little wooden car there. The green paint had all but worn off with age and the soft wood was dented from years of crashing into walls and rails but a thin red trim stayed true to its stain like a little life-giving vein. My trembling hand pull back momentarily and I reached for the car but did not touch it. My mouth tasted like whisky and sleepless nights in the street and my head throbbed with consequences and stubborn, selfish choices.
I gathered my nerve and I grabbed hold of the mans shoulder and he turned around to see me. I staggered backward surprised and fell to the ground, my back splitting against a sharp branch. Breathless, I looked up at him and I found myself looking squarely at his face.
You are me?
A tear formed in his eye and slowly marked a trail downward through the filth on his cheek. His voice was shaken with sobs, it was hard to make out in the storm of humiliation and emotion that whipped up with the darkening clouds. He turned back around as if nobody had disturbed him and walked away. I counted the steps he took: one, two, three, four... eleven. Toward the cliff edge he slowed and when I counted twelve I could see him no more.
I looked around me, nothing was familiar anymore. Saplings had suddenly become ancient trees and walking trails were overgrown with evergreen. I made my way back to my house and tried to open the door but in my haste, I missed the knob. I tried again and again and when I made myself watch my hands, trembling as they were, I saw that my fingers passed through it again and again while I refused to make sense of it.
An old woman opened the door and looked at me with judgement. I told you, you must go. She said and I shook my head in confusion. You must go! you don’t belong here. She looked behind her, children playing near a fireplace, laughing and pushing each other around in the escalated games of over-energised young people. Mother, who is at the door? Nobody my loves, it’s just the wind a rattling.
I turned around and looked to go to my workshop but it wasn’t where I had left it. The building I had spent my happy days in was gone. I looked down at my hands and they suddenly stopped trembling. I realised that my fists were held tightly around something. I concentrated and carefully opened my hands and saw that I was holding on to a little toy car, broken into many old pieces. Green paint had been worn away from the many years of mishandling it but the little red stripe remained, true to its stain, like a little life-taking vein.
I opened the door to my workshop. I held a fresh piece of balsa that I was to make into a car for my son. He was six. I sat down by the window and looked out to my neighbour’s house. Will you come out today, I wondered to myself. I need to know what happened to you.
Where are you going?
I could hear my voice as if it were coming from somewhere outside of my own body. The wind was chilled and sliced at the words as they dripped from my lips dispersing them like dandelions to the breeze; a flower girl preceding a wedding with a basket of phrases and promises to carelessly cast here and there. Dearly beloved we are gathered here.
Wait, please!
I was desperately following my neighbour, compelled by years of quietly watching him behind the shutters of his windows, silent and solo; the world cast off outside of his walls as if he, or perhaps the world didn’t somehow belong here. He became somewhat of an obsession for me. Long winters passed as I witnessed the flames from his fireplace lick at the walls with warming shadows and yet I never saw a tree felled or kindle gathered. Summers were short and cold and sheer curtains tried to escape through a cracked window, flapping up to the heavens as if waving a white flag of surrender, the wings of a dove trying to make peace with its maker. Take me, I thought, take me in. He never seemed to leave that small house and nobody ever seemed to arrive but the years passed just so until this one day when I saw the front door creak and crack like a spine unused to the burden of its intended task.
Wait, I implored, I need to know what happens to you!
I tried to keep up with his swift pace, at times scrambling up a steep ascent on my knees, the thread of my jeans unravelling to reveal skin numbed from the ice. The man kept climbing effortlessly as if it was nothing at all, as if the cliff before us was merely a hump in the road. The wind whipped up around us and all I could hear in my ears was the ocean, an angry white-noise of eternity churning as if my own tympanic membrane was a sea shell that had trapped the tide inside when it was crashing up on the shore. I wondered if the tide would ever find its way back to freedom so that my hearing would be restored but I wasn’t scared; I was certain this was just a lucid dream and that the writer would soon wake me up and show me the sanity of a dreary day. I would rise up at dawn and take my breakfast as I did every morning and move out to my garage workshop to ply a fresh stack of collected birch branches into toys for local children who carried all the hopes of the world with them.
My hands ached. An arthritis caused from the years of whittling away at wood, you see, I had been a troubled child and my father thought that keeping my hands busy would keep the trouble away and so my hands have been busy ever since then. I had surely made thousands of toys over these years. The joy it brought me to see children in the street playing, trucks and strollers click-clacking up and down the sidewalk. I had just earlier been sitting at my window, hand trimming some balsa for a little toy car I was making for my son. He was six and the car was to be a speedster, of my own design, painted green with little red trims like the car my father used to drive. I was just taking a break from the tools to rub my aching palms and when I looked up at my neighbours home I saw the gentleman appear on the front porch. Was he leaving his home? Now? I was so caught off guard that I skimmed my hand over the un-sanded wood surface and embedded a splinter deep in my thumb. My skin now burned around the foreign particle as I knelt in the icy slush of the hillside trying to catch my breath on the sharp breeze while I kept the mysterious man in my sights. I mindlessly sucked at the wound in my thumb.
He had come to a stop. I could see him standing at the top of the cliff. His opened coat flapped with the wind and his trousers, way too big for his thin, frail frame did the same. He looked like a flag pole, a beacon for incoming ships; a warning that this was no place for refuge. He was reading something, a note, a card perhaps that he had taken from his pocket. The wind squalled and snatched it from him or perhaps his armed dropped intentionally and he let it go knowing that it would fly down toward me. I gave chase, the page was a butterfly caught in a tornado, unable to navigate out of it. I trapped it with both of my hands cupped so as not to spoil its delicate wings. I sat down and opened my fists and found that the chrysalis had emerged as an ancient note. I had known this paper from long before. It was carefully hand-made and had a little embossed flower pressed into it. I raised it to my nose and gently inhaled as if it were a rose. The musty smell of a long lost home. The heart pounded at the remembered finality of this loss. The folds were thin and worn with age and I carefully loosened them and smoothed out the page. It was addressed to me - it was a poem written by… her.
There are just twelve steps home.
A Wife and Son long left alone.
My hands started to tremble, a physical memory of a plague out of control, the trembling made my bones ache so deep inside I thought they would shatter if I took just one more step. How? I breathed inward, suffocating in my own questions as they retreated to the ball in my stomach where I held my secret pains; emotional tumours that ate me away with each sip of pity that I had taken long ago. I reached out to grab the mans shoulder and then I noticed something sitting on a rock beside him. He had placed a little wooden car there. The green paint had all but worn off with age and the soft wood was dented from years of crashing into walls and rails but a thin red trim stayed true to its stain like a little life-giving vein. My trembling hand pull back momentarily and I reached for the car but did not touch it. My mouth tasted like whisky and sleepless nights in the street and my head throbbed with consequences and stubborn, selfish choices.
I gathered my nerve and I grabbed hold of the mans shoulder and he turned around to see me. I staggered backward surprised and fell to the ground, my back splitting against a sharp branch. Breathless, I looked up at him and I found myself looking squarely at his face.
You are me?
A tear formed in his eye and slowly marked a trail downward through the filth on his cheek. His voice was shaken with sobs, it was hard to make out in the storm of humiliation and emotion that whipped up with the darkening clouds. He turned back around as if nobody had disturbed him and walked away. I counted the steps he took: one, two, three, four... eleven. Toward the cliff edge he slowed and when I counted twelve I could see him no more.
I looked around me, nothing was familiar anymore. Saplings had suddenly become ancient trees and walking trails were overgrown with evergreen. I made my way back to my house and tried to open the door but in my haste, I missed the knob. I tried again and again and when I made myself watch my hands, trembling as they were, I saw that my fingers passed through it again and again while I refused to make sense of it.
An old woman opened the door and looked at me with judgement. I told you, you must go. She said and I shook my head in confusion. You must go! you don’t belong here. She looked behind her, children playing near a fireplace, laughing and pushing each other around in the escalated games of over-energised young people. Mother, who is at the door? Nobody my loves, it’s just the wind a rattling.
I turned around and looked to go to my workshop but it wasn’t where I had left it. The building I had spent my happy days in was gone. I looked down at my hands and they suddenly stopped trembling. I realised that my fists were held tightly around something. I concentrated and carefully opened my hands and saw that I was holding on to a little toy car, broken into many old pieces. Green paint had been worn away from the many years of mishandling it but the little red stripe remained, true to its stain, like a little life-taking vein.
I opened the door to my workshop. I held a fresh piece of balsa that I was to make into a car for my son. He was six. I sat down by the window and looked out to my neighbour’s house. Will you come out today, I wondered to myself. I need to know what happened to you.