So I am writing a short story about that whole atomic bomb dream I had a few weeks ago. With the beginning of Hamlet in my A.P. Lit class, finishing up my personal statement, last minute preparations for the SAT and college applications I have no creative juices left. I really need a solid writing portfolio for Pratt because with my GPA (2.3) and what will probably be disappointing SAT scores, I NEED AN ORGASMIC PORTFOLIO.
So this is my shitty rough draft that took me 5-10 minutes to write. I want the short story to be at least two pages long and really have more emotion in it. I want the reader to be able to feel what I felt like when I woke up from that dream. I want this story to haunt the reader and break their poor little heart. Please, please, please if anyone has ANY suggestions for imagery or ideas to bring out emotions in the reader, please help! I want the mood and the tone of this short story to be tragic, but without catharsis. There can be no healing for the reader except in their own mind and hearts. I don’t want to supply the reader with that medicine, I want them to be able to find it on their own.
Okay.
Here it is.
(the blank is for the name of the girl in dubliners that won’t leave her abusive father for a sailor, I have to check my old ap comp notes for her name.) And I honestly think this sucks right now, or at least most of it does. I don’t want it to sound likea cheesy romance novel. I want it to be a reality in the readers head. I am also going to switch it from past tense to present tense. I just thought for the first draft I would write it however I could. I’ve been pushing myself to write this down for a month and I just never got up the emotional strength. Please, please, please help! :]
It was at that moment I saw it, I saw the mushroom cloud, and I knew what was about to happen next. The bomb had hit the earth and I had seconds, if that, left to live. The brightness of the bomb hitting the organic earth was unbearable, like staring directly at the sun, but I could not look away. I saw the cloud rise up into the heavens and extend out, how large it was swirling above my head, a giant gray storm coming to deliver my doom. The cloud started to extend out towards me, but I was paralyzed with fear, like sweet BLANK I was unable to get onto the ship and sail off to happiness. It is not like I could do anything anyway, there would be no running from this certain death. So I just sat there and let the reaper rap me in his arms and whisk me away.
The moment the cloud hit lonely me standing there I could feel it. My death only took an instant but in that quick moment I felt pain like no other. I could feel my skin smoothly melting off my body, I could feel what everyone is afraid of. I felt death, I knew death, I made friends with death. I felt what it was like to have a second last a lifetime, an eternity. So many things went on in that second that I cannot even explain or make sense of.
As this pain raptured and raped my body I could only think of one thing: Max. My lovable and kind hearted boy and his sweet smile. I could see myself running my hands through his soft and beautiful strawberry-blond hair. I could feel myself moving my hands across the newly grown and fiery red scruff that lined the perimeter of his face. I felt the feeling of looking into his sea-blue eyes and I was once again lost in their embrace. I felt my hands inching around the surfaces of his skin that I knew so well and had grown to love with all my heart. I saw him for only an instant and was enveloped with a new pain, much more unbearable than the physical pain currently radiating through my body. I realized I would never see Max again, I would never run my hands through his hair or feel his rough beard against my soft skin. I would never peer deeply in his soft blue eyes or be kept warm by his body laying next to me in bed. I would never again see the boy that had made a home inside my heart, my soul, my entire earthly being. I could not believe I was leaving him but just as that came to my mind my soul escaped it’s painful fate and my body was empty. I no longer existed, the whole world was black.
