Sample Page, extra eyes needed

[HillaryJ]

Now, then, the second appearance by this shade:
=====
I was left on that cold floor for time beyond counting. I sat there next to myself for a long time. I was shocked that the end could be such a simple thing. Was there nothing left to do but watch myself decompose?

I could hear you as you came and went. I could only travel a few feet from my body. Just far enough to see out the window. You lived your life as if nothing had changed. I was rotting in the garage and you thought nothing of it. It made me angry.

Impotent rage boiled through me. I tried to use my fury. My fingers could not grasp anything. I desperately wanted to hurt you. I wanted to not be forgotten.

The days passed like centuries. The anger comforted me after the shock wore off. I told myself I would have my revenge. I plotted while you were at work. To think I had once been concerned about you.

I was scared and confused when I was not angry. Knowing that you were neither helped keep me angry. I was jealous of your freedom. I wanted to leave the garage. I wanted to get away from my stinking corpse. The fact that I could hear and smell confused me. I could neither speak nor touch. I was not brave enough to see if I could taste.

I wondered if I could touch other souls. I would try to rip yours out if you came back into the garage . I wondered if you had a soul. How could you? You killed me after everything we had had together. You left me to rot. A mouse would have been disposed of.

My shadow fingers would have had nothing to get hold of.

Three days passed. Three long eons. I stomped around ineffectively. I silently cursed you. I longed to torture you for the rest of my existence. And then I was still. The fury that had given me purpose was gone. The fear that had enveloped me was gone. I was still a prisoner.

~Serzen

I like the spare details of the first two postings. I do have one concern, where I feel like I missed a step. When the MC (of these bits) first comes home, it appears he cares about his killer. I would like to see at least a line before this MC is angry and longing for vengeance, where instead he longs for an explanation, or wishes to know what has gone so wrong between the two that his life was forfeit. "To think I had once been concerned about you" doesn't feel strong enough, unless the relationship is explained so well in the course of the story that this has been explained.

[Serzen]

Heya, hiya, hoya. Thanks for playing along, folks. I'm glad to see that other heads than mine agree with the notion about the spare and bare. I'll admit that I like a few sentences that I composed in the third, more detailed, submission, but I'm likely to only salvage those sentences I liked out and work them into a variant of the first post.

Okay, anyway, here goes some more text. I'm going to provide context this time around. Strange, I know. It should also be a better jumping off point for comparing and contrasting the separate voices at work.
=====

Chapter the First
...[Introductory stuffs, proceeding to end of chapter]...
A good meal, an evening of care and comfort, spent in the arms of a lover and then, before it seems possible, you find yourself downstairs, strangely serene at seeing Jamie off. The two of you hold hands, facing each other, regarding each other’s eyes in the awkward yellowing light of the outdoor lamps. Everything that should have been said already has been, yet the feeling that more remains sits uncomfortably in your chest.

“Be careful,” you say, again.

“I will,” Jamie replies, squeezing your fingers and giving you a smile.

You draw in breath to sigh but catch yourself, instead simply repeat, “I love you. I’ll miss you.”

“I love you, too. And I’ll miss you, too.”

A hug, a kiss, another hug and then Jamie draws away. “I’ll see you in two weeks.” Then, turning resolutely to the car, “I’ll be late if I don’t leave now.”

You watch, keeping silent, knowing that there should be more words, angry with yourself for not knowing what they are, angry at yourself for not using the words you don’t know. As Jamie’s car heads down the road, you discover, deep down inside, some little piece of yourself is angry that Jamie is even leaving. Shaking your head, putting it off to exhaustion, you go back inside, lock the door, set the alarm and all but fall onto the couch, fading quickly into the arms of oblivion. On the very edge of consciousness, though, a faint sound tickles your memory, the sound of metal on metal, a key in the lock. The thought that Jamie must have forgotten something tries to register, but your eyes are heavy. You wrestle with them, hoping to see Jamie again, even if for just a minute.

You stand in the midst of a garden, bathed in glowing sun. Fruit tress of every variety you know, and dozens that you cannot identify, are planted as far as the eye can see. A stream, possibly a small river, flows nearby, its gentle waters tumbling away from a brighter area ahead. The notion strikes you to follow the water.

Shortly you stand in a small clearing where the glow of the sun seems much brighter or, perhaps, just more deeply hued. The little river you followed here appears to have its source in a circular pool at the center of the clearing. As you draw nearer, you see the pool as a ring, with a small circular island for its center and three more rivers draining off into the distance in different directions. A perfect white marble bench stands on the island. Before you are aware of what your body is doing, you find yourself wading through the river.

The water is surprisingly warm and at its deepest point does not quite come more than halfway up your thigh. The sun-warmed marble dries your bare legs quickly as you look out over the garden.

To your left, amongst the trees, a flash of red and silver catches your eye and you peer into the dark leaves. Again, there it is. Brilliant scarlet proceeded by a flash of silver. A cry rips through the silence. Your heart leaps so far into your throat that you’re surprised not to choke on it. The cry sounds again, from deeper in the trees; another burst of color explodes from the thick green shadows before an entire flock of brilliantly colored birds takes off from the trees with a sound like nothing you’ve ever heard before.

You are so startled that you sit back on the bench, a jerky, jumping motion. The seat wobbles at the sudden movement, throwing you into the grass. Winded and confused, you roll unstoppably down the slight rise and fall into the water.

Chapter the Next
I forgot my passport. I was only a little way down the road when I realized it was nowhere in the car. There was still time to go back if I hurried.

All the lights in the house were off and I thought you were asleep. I tried to be as quiet as possible when I let myself in. The key stuck in the lock again and made a lot of noise. It was quiet enough that anyone asleep upstairs would never have heard it.

You were asleep on the couch.

You stirred in your sleep before going still again. I kissed your forehead as softly as possible before looking for my passport. I thought it might have been on the stand in the hall or the kitchen table. I looked upstairs in the bedroom next. I was going to be late at the rate the search was going. I felt something crash into my head.

I opened my eyes in the garage. The floor was cold and hard. The blood seeping from my scalp was hot and sticky. I never noticed the knife until you pulled it out of me. The noise it made was soft and wet. The wound on my head hurt so badly that I could not feel the one in my guts.

The knife plunged in again and again. I stood outside myself and watched you attack me after only a few blows. You struck my lifeless body too many times to count. To see myself being abused that way made me angry.

You stripped off your bloody clothes and left them in a heap. I would have shouted at you if I had had a voice. I could think but not talk. I watched you walk away until you were out of sight.

The garage door opened and you drove my car in. You parked it next to my crumpled body and walked back out into the night. I saw you for the last time as the garage door slid closed. I would have wept if it had been possible.

I looked at the mess of a body that had been my home for so long. I sat down next to it and waited because there was nothing else I could do.

Chapter the Next Yet

You surge upright in your own bed, cold, sweaty and completely undressed. For a long, panicked moment your mind refuses to register its surroundings before the steady sound of dripping water catches your attention. Jamie must not have got the shower faucet turned all the way off, you think and the sudden recollection of familiar sound brings you the rest of the way to your senses.

With a sigh, you reach over for the clock to see what the time is. As though your hand closes some circuit, the alarm begins to blare. You shut the racket off and make your way into the bathroom for a shower, feeling more tired now that when you went to bed. Only when you are stepping out of the shower do you remember lying down on the couch.
[and carries on from here]...
=====

This is the manner in which I anticipate things moving. I want the separation in styles to be pretty bold. I think that I've achieved that, yet I'm exceedingly close to the work (obviously) and can't be the best judge as to whether or not it's true.

I'm glad that the dispassionate telling is evoking emotion, though. As I stated above: Just because the shade is no longer capable of FEELING emotion doesn't mean s/he no longer remembers what emotions FELT LIKE. I want the voices of the shades to read short, sharp, simple, yet carry the weight of eternity. When I say 'testimony' I mean it. These spirits are providing information that will effect the ultimate fate of the soul of You.

Please keep in mind when reading that the protagonist is a sort of Schrodinger's protagonist, genderless until you read the book. You are who I'm writing about. Each and every one of you. Even me. We are all the psychotic. We are all the lost souls. We are without meaning until we discover, accept and integrate introspection. To be human is to be lost. To know that you are lost is to rise above humanity and have the chance for something more. It's only a chance, but it's more than most will have.

~Serzen

[KaylingR]

Serzen-

I thought the spare/bare shade sections were generally pretty powerful, although the use of 'you' in them confused me. I'd have a hard time getting not getting lost if these were supposed to be breaks in a second person book and would try to avoid that pronoun.

Anyway, that's just my 2 cents. I'm one of those people who can't tell whose head I'm in when reading stuff written in 2nd P, so I may not be the best judge. Good luck!

-K.

[JTB]

There's a psychoanalyst in the UK who studies mulitple personalities and dissassociative (sp) disorders - Valerie Sinason, Google it. You might find some technical publications - and you may have already done this of course so forgive me - interesting, there's also a lot of stuff on 'psychic retreats' and studies on PTSD that you'll find useful in thinking through how this character works and how it is that two personailities can live along side one another and, like the Man's cat, is gone - shadowed, when 'confronted'

ambitious task you've set yourself, brave

[Ghost in the Machine]

Hi Serzen,

I like the third version of the victim’s tale with the details because it was familiar to me. The style was more comfortable, and the voice sounded alive, normal, and one-of-us. I could also detect that you weren't thrilled doing it that way. Things like “The last I saw of you was your naked ass retreating into the night as the garage door slid closed,” seemed to say, ‘you want details? I’ll give you some (insert expletive) details!

So I was comfortable. So what? This is your book, something new, bold, and unique. Screw comfort. The ‘bare and spare’ versions are spooky. They sound like they are coming from a ‘shade’, instead of a living soul. You want to be dispassionate? Go ahead. But be powerful. I think you pulled this off with the latest post. You have a fine line to walk between spare-ness and enough detail to make things interesting, but you’ll find a way.

Okay, back to being critical. I know you are not going to let go of the second person, but man, it’s hard to read. I would love to get back into the Snugglie of third person there. But that’s part of the discomfort thing, right? You’re making me squirm on many levels with this work, but in a good way.

Ghost in the Machine

[Serzen]

Hey, all,

Guilty as charged, I'm afraid. The third version was written from 100% genuine spite. I took the time out to write it just to, kinda, be a jerk. It's a failing of mine, I'm afraid. That said, it wasn't a useless exercise. There were some very good sentences and ideas generated as a result, and I salvaged them to merge with the earlier versions.

I'm glad that everyone is so discomfited by the text. I've always said that I want the reader to walk away feeling 'There but for the grace of BOB go I'. I think these "testimonials" are helping to create a deeper attachment to the narrative. But I would think that, I wrote the blamed thing.

I must say I don't have a lot of use for Snuggies but my dog thinks they make great beds, so there's always a use for things. It just might not be the use we thought of. The third person DOES appear in the intro and the outro, for example, but only to provide a frame to hold the rest of the story in. They serve to say "This is why you're going to experience the mindfsck that follows" as well as "You have been judged and found..." All the stuff in between is the real judgment, but giving something a little more concrete for the reader to get a handle on seemed like a good idea. I'm not totally without compassion.

Okay, that's said. Now, the output from merging the disparate versions of the chapter:
=====
I forgot my passport. I had not yet gone too far. There was still time to go back if I hurried. One three-point turn and five minutes of driving too fast and I was back home. The lights were off and I thought you had gone back to bed.

The key stuck in the lock again and made a lot of noise. I doubted it would wake you. You had always been a heavy sleeper. You were asleep on the couch. You stirred briefly before going still once more. I kissed your forehead as gently as possible before beginning my search.

Home. I would miss it over the next two weeks. Nothing is as comforting as the smell of home. It would give me something else to look forward to. Getting home required leaving. That meant finding the passport.

I thought it might have been on the stand in the hall. My coat pockets all turned up empty. I left the lights off and slipped into the kitchen. The only thing on the table there was a month-old pile of junk mail. I was going to be late at the rate this was going.

There was a chance I had left it upstairs on the dresser. My feet climbed the stairs silently. You slumbered peacefully for a change. It was a relief to see you get some rest.

The top of the dresser was bare.

Something heavy crashed into the back of my skull.

My body felt like it had been kicked down a flight of stairs. Cold concrete bit my palms. Scents of metal and chemicals assaulted my nose. I was in the garage. The floor made every square inch of flesh ache. Hot blood seeped from my scalp. It dripped little sticky drops on my shoulder. Something burned frigidly in my guts.

I looked down to see you pull a knife out of me. The sound it made was soft and wet. The stink of bile tainted the air. I was too shocked to make any noise but a gasp.

The knife plunged in again and again. I was dead after the third blow. I stood outside myself and watched you keep stabbing. The dull shock of separation settled in. You struck my lifeless body too many times to count. To see myself being abused that way was decidedly uncomfortable.

I tried to ask what you were doing. I had no voice.

You stripped off your clothes mechanically and left them in a heap. I watched you walk carelessly away. The only thing I could feel was curiosity about what would come next.

The garage door opened. You drove my car in and parked it next to me. I could smell the exhaust. You tripped over the pile of clothes. My passport fell out of your shirt pocket. Then I knew.

I saw you for the last time as the garage door slid closed.

I stared at the passport for a long time. It made me feel heavy and empty. The feeling should have been betrayal. I knew that. I felt nothing of the sort. A weighty vacuum settled into me. This was nothing like I had expected.

I did try to grab the passport. It was an exercise in self-indulgence. The document would do me no good. All attempts to use my voice failed. I could not leave the garage. There were corners of it I could not walk to. I experimented all night. It was clear by dawn that there was no way to interact with the world.

I looked at the mess that had been my body. It already stank. Multicolored fluids drained out of it. That thing had been my home for a long time. I sat down next to it and waited because there was nothing else I could do.
=====

Enjoy,

~Serzen

[Ghost in the Machine]

Hi Serzen,

This may be folly, but I feel the need to edit. Who knows? Maybe something here will strike you as useful.

Comment: I’m seeing a repetition of certain words. Maybe it’s deliberate, maybe not. I would be tempted not to repeat words like “home” or “feeling” too many times. Also, I’m going to sick the adverb posse on you. Sorry, it must be done.

I forgot my passport. I had not yet gone too far. There was still time to go back if I hurried. One three-point turn and five minutes of driving too fast and I was pulling back into our driveway. The lights were off and I thought you had gone back to bed.

The key stuck in the lock (again – omit) and made a (lot of – omit) noise. I doubted it would wake you. You always slept like the dead. You were sprawled along the couch, snoring.I brushed your forehead with the lightest kiss before beginning my search.

Home. I would miss it over the next two weeks. The smell, the tick of clock in the hall, the worn couch beckoning one to stay awhile. Those humble comforts would give me something (else – omit) to look forward to. But returning home required leaving. That meant finding the passport.

I thought I left it it on the stand in the hall. My coat pockets all turned up empty.

Stop: Do you mean the coat she has on or coats in a coat closet? If it’s the later, you might want to describe this better.

I left the lights off and slipped into the kitchen. Sifting through a month-old pile of junk mail on the table, I realized I was going to be late at the rate this was going.

Maybe I left it upstairs on the dresser. I stared at my feet as they climbed, willing them to be silent.

Stop: You slumbered peacefully for a change. It was a relief to see you get some rest.

Comment: This statement contradicts what she noted earlier about him being a heavy sleeper. I would just leave these sentences out.


The top of the dresser was bare.

Something heavy crashed into the back of my skull.

Comment: I wouldn’t break up the action here in different paragraphs, because the incident is a surprise. Try writing it that way and see what you think.

Suggestion: I could see that the dresser was bare, but I started walking toward it anyway, as if the gods might change their minds and let the passport reappear behind the alarm clock in the seconds it would take me to cross the room. Then something heavy crashed into the back of my skull.

My body felt like it had been kicked down a flight of stairs. Cold concrete bit my palms. Scents of metal and chemicals assaulted my nose. I was in the garage. The floor made every square inch of flesh ache. Hot blood seeped from my scalp and dripped onto my shoulder. Something cold sliced into my guts. It burned.

I looked down to see you pull a knife out of me.

Stop: Is the attacker in front or behind the victim? I’d like to know. Since the victim sees him, I’m guessing the attacker is in front.

Each plunge of the knife made a sound, soft and wet. The stink of bile tainted the air. I was too shocked to make any noise. (but a gasp-omit)

You kept stabbing, no expression on your face, even though I was dead after the third blow. I stood outside myself and watched you work.

Stop: The dull shock of separation settled in. You struck my lifeless body too many times to count. To see myself being abused that way was decidedly uncomfortable.

Comment: Having a “dull shock of separation” and being “uncomfortable” by seeing her abused body seem like contradictory statements. But for all I know, maybe you want this. My suggestion would be to omit these three sentences.

I tried to ask what you were doing. I had no voice.

You stripped off your clothes (mechanically – omit) and left them in a heap. I watched you walk (carelessly – omit) away. The only thing I could feel was curiosity about what would come next.

Comment: I don’t like the adverbs in the proceeding paragraph because they seem lazy. A ‘tell’ instead of a ‘show’. How about: You stripped off your clothes as if the smell of my blood and guts annoyed you. I watched you walk away without even looking at what you had done to my body.

The garage door opened. You drove my car in and parked it next to me. I could smell the exhaust. You tripped over (your) pile of clothes. My passport fell out of your shirt pocket. (Then I knew – omit.)

Comment: This part about the passport falling out of his pocket is wicked brilliant. Kudos, hurrahs! But the next three words, “Then I knew” diminish the power of that image. There should be a moment of blank ‘What the fsck!’ where no thought is possible for the victim. I hope you’ll leave them out.

I saw you for the last time as the garage door slid closed.

I stared at the passport for a long time. Berefit a body, I still managed to feel, but it was a heavy, empty load. The emotion should have been betrayal. I knew that. I felt nothing of the sort. A weighty vacuum settled into me. It was as unexpected as drowning with a mouthful of cold lake water when you knew you could swim.

I tried to grab the passport, self-indulgent as it was. The document would do me no good. All attempts to use my voice failed. I could not leave the garage. I experimented all night, but there were corners I could not walk to. By dawn, it was clear that the physical world and I were incommunicado.

I looked at the mess that had been my body. It (already – omit) stank. Multicolored fluids drained, spreading out on the concrete in dark fractal patterns. That thing had been my home for a long time.

Stop: Since you have the victim looking at her body and longing for it like missing home, I can’t help but see a parallel with her missing her house at the beginning of her passage. This kind of symmetry should be exploited to your advantage.

Suggestion: But there would be no returning from this trip. No smells of my deodorant or shampoo would ever bring comfort again. The stench of decay testified that my desecration was beyond repair.

I sat down next to it and waited because there was nothing else I could do.

Good stuff! Carry on.

Ghost in the Machine

[Serzen]

Ghost,

Appreciate the look. A couple of "complaints" before addressing your thoughts. (1) There is no she or him. I think you're imposing gender roles on your own because it makes you feel more comfortable to read about People instead of Ideas. If I'd wanted you to be comfortable, I wouldn't have written BROKEN MIRROR. ;) (2) You either forgot the "no punctuation but the period" rule or you're ignoring it. Again, I suspect it's a comfort thing. For me, it's a design thing.

The first else you cut is probably, as this reads, cut worthy. I left it in because I am thinking that I can still find more to add. It's kind of a placeholder, a stumbling block to remind me that more looking needs to occur. Good catch, though.

The junk mail must remain un-sifted through. It's important to something that happens a hundred or so pages down the road.

Slumbered peacefully as a contradiction: I know more than a few people whose sleep couldn't be disturbed by full-on tank warfare being initiated at the foot of the bed, yet they toss and turn, kick, talk, the works. It's what I was thinking of with that. There's likely a more glorious way to say it, but I didn't know what it was at the time.

"Something cold sliced into..." I want the initial thrust to be a mystery and shock. The victim doesn't know WHEN the knife got there. The cold burning is being taken in as the final thought in a mental taking stock: it might have been there all along or might be a new addition.

The position of the attacker is ultimately irrelevant. S/he is standing somewhere where s/he can reach from. The fact is that only one person could be doing this, so even with seeing his/her assailant, the victim knows who it is, even before dying and being able to see it all.

The shock of separation is taxing, it numbs the mind, but it doesn't prevent the mind from feeling squeamish about seeing things. Warning, mini lecture to follow: (I put on my robe and wiz anthropologist hat)

When one considers the multiplicity of the human soul, one must keep in mind that its many parts are not separate so long as the body is alive to hold all the aspects of the soul in place. A person might have 3, 7 or 9 souls, but they all live in the body and function as a single unit as long as the body lives. Upon death, the exodus of the animating spirit, the other souls are freed to carry out their functions. One travels to the afterlife, another usually stays near the body, the others do what they need to do. Nevertheless, none of souls, and particularly not the one that stays near the body, are immediately aware that the body is dead. It usually takes between 3 and 40 days for the truth to settle in. Thus, separation prevents strong emotion from occurring, AND it allows the observer to be appalled. It would be like you walked in on a slasher film where the victim looked surprisingly familiar. You know it's fake, but still. In this case, the ghost thinks that it knows that it's fake, but it's not.

Lecture done.

I'll take that the adverbs could be lazy, but they are actually accurate "shows", considering the mental state of the person they're applied to. I'll see if better ones come to me. Woodenly was an early contender.

Anyway, thanks for reading along.

~Serzen

[JTB]

?

[Serzen]

!

[Ghost in the Machine]

Hi Serzen,

I'm laughing at your reply to my post, but at myself. I know the genders of the characters are not supposed to be known. I just got lazy with my commenting because it is work not to identify the gender as you write. Same with punctuation. It's a habit hard to break.

Your description of multiple souls was interesting. I have no anthropology background. Is this your design or based on a known ideology?

Ghost in the Machine

[Serzen]

Ghost,

No single ideology is being drawn on. The ideas are probably between 5 and 10 thousand years old, more or less. In some cases they are older, in some they're probably younger. They crop up in Egypt, Siberia, the South Pacific, North America, etc. Much of the work is also based on "archaic" ideas of initiation as well, although it's kept very closely wrapped under a lot of veils.

The intro, which I'm in the process of writing, is more heavy-handed. It contains a spirit trying to cross a bridge "the width of a razor's edge" as well as a Cosmic Tree/axis mundi, the breaking of 'bones', the guardians of the Afterlife, a trial (which is, in effect, the rest of the book) and forced introspection (again, the rest of the book).

The other chapters that I'm working on are also more open about the metaphysical. They are the testimonies of the shades and, as such, are more candid about things like awareness of the physical world being tied to the location of the body, disbelief in death, knowledge about things like essence being directly tied to wholeness of major parts of the body, so on and so forth.

I could, as they say, write a book about it.

~Serzen

[Serzen]

Hello again, folks. I'm getting closer and closer to what I hope will be my last round of revisions before I'm confident that I'm ready to query. In doing so, I've tackled the "ghost" chapters again, with an eye to improving readability. A lot of people were having trouble with the short, choppy sentences; they were almost too much of a blank, I think. With that in mind, I tried to clean things up somewhat, while still keeping the dry, toneless delivery. If you would be so good as to observe and comment (on the chapter as a whole, please; only individual lines that are truly outstanding in their awfulness or awesomeness), I'd be thankful.

===============
Chapter Two
I forgot my passport. I had not yet gone too far; there was still time to go back if I hurried. One three-point turn and five minutes of driving too fast and I was back home. The lights were off and I thought you had gone back to bed.

The key stuck in the lock again and made a lot of noise. I doubted it would wake you, you had always been a heavy sleeper, for all your tossing, turning and talking. You were asleep on the couch. You stirred briefly before going still once more. I kissed your forehead as gently as possible before beginning my search.

Home. I would miss it over the next two weeks. Nothing is as comforting as the smell of home. It would give me something else to look forward to. But, getting home required leaving. That meant finding the passport.

I thought it might have been on the stand in the hall. The closet had no light, so I had to search by feel. My coat pockets all turned up empty. I left the lights off and slipped into the kitchen. The only thing on the table there was a month-old pile of junk mail. I was going to be late at the rate this was going.

There was a chance I had left it upstairs on the dresser. My feet climbed the stairs silently. You never stirred, but slumbered peacefully for a change. It was a relief to see you get some rest.

The top of the dresser was bare. I was trying to think where else to look when something heavy crashed into the back of my skull.

My body felt like it had been kicked down a flight of stairs. Cold concrete bit my palms; the comingled scents of metal and chemicals assaulted my nose. I was in the garage. The floor made every square inch of flesh ache. Hot blood seeped from my scalp. It dripped little sticky drops on my shoulder. Something burned frigidly in my guts.

I looked down to see you pull a knife out of me. The sound it made was soft and wet. The stink of bile tainted the air. I was too shocked to make any noise but a gasp.

The knife plunged in again and again. I was dead after the third blow. I stood outside myself and watched you keep stabbing as the dull shock of separation settled in. You struck my lifeless body too many times to count. To see myself being abused that way was unsettling, unreal.

I tried to ask what you were doing, but I had no voice.

You stripped off your clothes distractedly and left them in a heap, something else was already on your mind. I watched you walk carelessly away. The only thing I could feel was curiosity about what would come next.

The garage door opened. You drove my car in and parked it next to me. I could smell the exhaust. You tripped over the pile of clothes while making your exit. My passport fell out of your shirt pocket.

I saw you for the last time as the garage door slid closed.

I stared at the passport for a long time. It made me feel heavy and empty. The feeling should have been betrayal, I knew that. I felt nothing of the sort. A weighty vacuum settled into me. This was nothing like I had expected.

I did try to grab the passport. It was an exercise in self-indulgence. The document would do me no good. All attempts to use my voice failed. I could not leave the garage; there were corners of it I could not reach. I experimented all night, but it was clear by dawn that there was no way to interact with the world.

I looked at the mess that had been my body, my home. It already stank. Multicolored fluids drained out of it. There would be no coming back this time, I was becoming sure of that. I sat down next to it and waited because there was nothing else I could do.
==================

Thanks again,

~Serzen

[BethC]

I am just reading through this for the first time and I know I'm joining in a little late, but I definitely think you are so close with this last version. At first I had trouble reading through and keeping my head in the story, but no longer. And I love it. The only problem I have at this point--I'm ready to read more.

[Serzen]

Thank you. The "final" version saw a few more tweaks, so perhaps I've addressed those concerns that you might have had. It's too early to say, I suppose.

The book, I hope, will withstand multiple readings, which I think your comments bear out. The surface is just that. At least once a year I reread Gene Wolfe's BOOK OF THE NEW SUN and THE WIZARD KNIGHT, for they contain such depth that every new reading unveils something else. With each edit that I've done, I've found things I never saw when I originally wrote them. I can only hope that my work stands up to the standards set by others.

~Serzen