Jump to content

First Pages -- Lilith & The Garden (Women's Upmarket, 88k)


Recommended Posts

Introduces narrator and main protagonist/antagonist. Introduces one of several settings. Introduces thematic elements. Alludes to forthcoming plot points and reveals "Act Zero" setup. Includes dialogue. 

Chapter I: Clotho.
It’ll be mid-morning in my clapboard piece-of-crap house in God’s own Blue Ridge mountains and I’ll have a hangover that could kill a cat, and not even just a regular cat but a bobcat maybe or whatever an ocelot is. It may occur to me (as so frequently it does) that I am for all intents and purposes out of food, which dilemma has been caused not by insufficient funds but by a general lack of gumption to get off my gangly bum and go to the grocery store. This laziness is in turn precipitated by my ever-increasing tendencies towards partaking of certain pleasant substances.
          And so when my day of reckoning finally comes, I will be in a state of supreme irritation.  I will be sick and starving and mad. I’ll drag my clicking bones to the windowsill, and what will I see outside? Such a pretty day in April. With the lilacs and blue clouds and all of the fixings. And I’ll know it for sure. I’ll see it from a million miles off. There’s no excuse.
          Not that there’s ever been much of an excuse to begin with. Not since the cloudy day in March with the wet snow and the misery when my half-sister was arrested from my very doorstep. One thing you’d better understand is that no sister of mine, half or otherwise, is about to get arrested on some petty bullshit. The charge filed was absolutely homicide. Of dubious degree, admittedly. Or at least to me.
         I have assured myself many times that everything is alright. I did ask her once whether she was traumatized and she said no she was not. And furthermore she was released on her own recognizance (a word whose definition nobody truly knows) on the very day of her arrest and barely forty-eight hours after that the charges were dropped altogether due to insufficient evidence. At which point she blabbed about the incident to the entire internet.
         This part is not ideal. But at least she isn’t in prison.  I do suspect that freedom is still preferable even when it’s being constantly surveilled and investigated by every social media platform including the mainstream ones but especially the creepy ones with their baroquely alternate realities that warp lonely or scared individuals into radical cyberspace toads who mistake their own paranoias for super-intelligence. 
         Then again, who am I to say? I’ve never been imprisoned. Nor have I gone viral. Honest to god, I haven’t had very many experiences at all that are worth discussing. The place where I live alone with my canines is very quiet.
         And to answer your question, I have no idea whether she actually did it or not. Nor am I entirely convinced that it matters. 

—-

     What I’m about to do is take you on a trip. The rules governing both international travel and substance abuse maintain that you should never go on a trip with a stranger and so I’ll tell you right off the bat that my name is Hecate. Its pronounced like hellcat but with all of the l’s erased and with the a flattened into sounding like an e. I received this screwball name from the same charmingly psychotic grandfather who gifted me my alcoholism. I do love it. Despite which there are people who insist on calling me Cate, and believe me –  I resent each and every one of them. 
      And so ecce femina, ladies and gentlemen. I’ll be your omniscient narrator for the duration of our journey together. Am I making claims to some kind of second sight? Perhaps you’re unaware that the original Hecate was none other than an ancient witch goddess, but don’t be frightened. There’s time to explain all of that later. Right now, let’s get on with things. I own six dogs.
Do you honestly think that they’re small ones? Because no. They certainly are not. Perhaps not giant enough to guard the gates of hell but confidently huge enough to mistake a human toddler for a snack. And goddamn are they loyal to me! Of course I prefer the company of these gorgeous monsters to that of  nearly any human person on the planet. And to confirm what you have likely surmised already, I am most definitely single. Without a speck of interest in altering that status. 
      Almost everything else about my life as it exists now is irrelevant. Do you honestly care where I work? For what it’s worth, it’s a bar. If that isn’t self-evident already then it probably will be soon. Truly when you get right down to it, all you really need to know about me besides the number of dogs I own (six, if you forget)  is that my half-sister and I grew up together in Boone, North Carolina. With a dead mother and two grandparents, one of whom was a drunk and the other was a fake, and the whole cosmos overtop of our childhoods was the color of white sunlight dappled by lime-hued leaves. Until night came and the violet darknesses settled thickly into the brittle branches of a thousand blackened conifers. 
     We grew up in that wild country as a couple of beasts blessed by the sunlight. Since we were raised by grandparents too old fashioned not to trust us to range freely and safely through the sanctified hills, we wandered infinitely. We climbed through the secret places deep in the hills that teemed with animals whose habits we learned and mimicked. The whole landscape was littered with lakes where we swam without clothes in the sky’s reflection. We made splashes and laughs until we emerged into the scratches of the thicket and had picnics in the woods with treats that our fake grandmother called Val made lovingly for us that morning.
      I am writing this weird history purely out of resentment. 
      Because time has to move. That’s the single way in which all human beings are slaves without hope for escape because there is no arguing or compromising or negotiating with time’s unjust dictatorship and with the bloodless cruelty of beautiful moments passing into oblivion underneath our eyeballs and fingertips. If I could have made time stop or even killed it altogether while my sister and I were young and happy monsters exchanging private whispers underneath the cathedral of trees with their stained-glass leaves and owl-cluttered steeples — while we snuggled ever deeper and more securely within our mutual mythologies —  while we were warmed by the sun and by all of the love that we shared back then but squandered later —
       Then the universe would be paradise indeed. I would never sneak another solo drink. I would never smoke another weed.  But there is no freedom for us here. And so time passed. So by the time I write this tome my sister will have isolated herself in a basement in Philadelphia. And I will smoke. And I drink and drink whatever I can get.

(skipping 560 words to reach a more dialogue-heavy scene)

 

III. ““Do I smell alcohol?” says Dr Blake.
           Isla doesn’t answer him. She’s dressed in a black dress and there’s no makeup strong enough to conceal the long and preternaturally straight gash of a cut that glows burgundy below her right eye.
          In her lap, my half sister grips her purse. It belonged to our mother. And how many years ago? So many. Isla never questioned that this purse was the specific purse that she needed for today. Its slouchy shape is old-fashioned, but the pliability of the leather allows Isla to feel its contents. She caresses the thing inside. 
        “It would almost be a relief,” says Dr Blake, his eyes still on the road, as he references the grim pleasure that my half sister has been taking in her recent abstention from the boozes. “But nine in the morning is perhaps too bold a move in the opposite direction.”
        “That’s an odd thing about you, isn’t it?”
         Dr Blake says, “What’s odd?”
        “How you’re sober but always trying to ply everybody around you with booze.”
        “I’m not sober.”
        “Aren’t you?”
       “Didn’t we meet at a bar?”
       “Meet?” says Isla. The bafflement in her face is earnest. “We knew each other for months and months before that night.”
        “In one sense, yes. But then again in another –”
        “Anyway. It’s not like I’m the one driving.”
        “Thank god.”
        The decision to buy the Tesla was a difficult one for Dr Blake. He doesn’t consider himself to be a man who indulges in gauche displays of excessive income. But in this case, well of course he was able to convince himself that since the car was electric he wasn’t shelling out for himself but rather for the sake of the planet. Certainly he wasn’t buying the car because it’s attractive and fashionable! The sole factor in his decision making process – of course, of course – was the geopolitical damage caused by our national dependence on gasoline, in addition to climate change. It goes without saying.
      Only an ass resists the demands of noblesse oblige. And so, with the beneficent smile of sainthood illuminating the unusually sharp contours of his middle-aged features, Dr Blake bought himself an expensive car and thus fulfilled his duties as an environmentally conscious man of means. It is out of character, then, for him to jerk the Tesla so suddenly to the side of the road.
      “What are you doing?” my half-sister says.
       Dr Blake puts his head in his hands.
      “Is everything alright? Are you sick?”
       "I did this to you.” 
        Plaintively she says, “Please John." 
        There’s a way that Dr Blake’s eyes go distant when he’s upset. Something else wells up there too. When she first knew him, Isla mistook it for a gentle sensitivity. Too late did she realize that it was only loneliness in disguise, and corrosive regret. 
         She touches his shoulder, tentatively. “I chose it all myself.”
         "You think the choice was yours?"
          The cars whizz by.
         “Anyway. You’re right,” says Isla. “For what it’s worth. And I’m sorry. There was a bottle already opened from last night –”
          “-- from when I was in the basement.”
          “Sure. Is that alright?”
          There are tears in Dr Blake's eyes now. This is not what Isla wants. It is distinctly counter-productive. 
          “So yes. I did sneak half a glass this morning.”
          “But why? After all these months. That’s what I don’t understand. What made last night different? And this morning, especially?”
          “It hasn’t been months. What about Tuesday.”
          “Please. Isla. Don’t. Don’t talk about Tuesday.”
          “Ok. Sure. So I snuck a few sips this morning when you were taking your shower. And then again. When you were back in the basement. I said I was sorry.”
          “Yes, ok. But why?”
          “I don’t know why! Does there have to be a reason? It is a holiday, after all!”
          Dr Blake guffaws through his streaming tears. “What? You mean Good Friday?”
          “Of course!”
         “What were you raised? Lutheran?"
          "Something like that."
         "So what? Is that the custom among the Calvinists? Day-drinking through the crucifixion?”
         “Well you know,” Isla shrugs in a way that would be cute if the circumstances were radically different. She spreads her fingers in the air. “The misery of it and all.”

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 0
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Popular Days

Top Posters In This Topic

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share









"King of Pantsers"?




ALGONKIAN SUCCESS STORIES








×
×
  • Create New...