Thoughts.com Blogs - Update on the short story

View Blog

Update on the short story

The young woman handed over the word filled paper. Mr. Troller took it for her, and read it aloud:
The predictable monster waits for the defeated beast to lower himself to his knees
To beg pardon for
what was accidentally done
The monster cuts the beast's ego...his pride
To move on and continue
whatever he is meant to continue
The unidentified energy forces the crushed beast to his knees
forces pitiful speech from his unsealed lips
His tear-stained eyes fake happy bliss
In his mind the monster does not bleed, does not feel
Merely exists
Merely defeats
Troller looked up at her, then back down at the paper. Places it words down on the coffee table closet to him. He waits a moment, as if to gather his words together perfectly. He forms sentences in his mind, and she can see this...she can feel it. What would he say? Would he hate it? Laugh cruelly and call her a fool? She held her breath, afraid that even the slightest of movement would send the old man into a frenzy of abusive speech. She looks up at him and see that his cold eyes had been watching her. Had he been reading her mind? Can he sense her fear. He shifts to the left and then to the right. Crosses his legs and takes off the glasses. Troller inhaled a breath and exhaled slowly. The silence had been enough to end her life all together.
"You are meant to feel sorry for the beast, that is how you wrote it." He paused for a second, just to reassure himself that he was taking the right path, that he hadn't missed the first turn.
"I love the metaphor beast/monster, because in reality without the pen, they are the same." The girl tried to figure out the old man's game. Tried to understand what he was out to get from her this time. She however didn't take the time to consider her path, she might have missed the turn. But still she spoke, her voice was shaking and broken.
"Not when I wrote, pity doesn't go to the beast." She looked up, Troller’s cool face showed her that might have been wrong. But what she couldn't understand was how he had always managed to figure out what she was trying to write, or fix the mistakes that she had so carelessly left behind. Maybe pity should have gone to the beast, maybe she was wrong about her theory.
"Why? Isn't that how you wanted it? To bring pity to the beast?" Troller smiled a sly and conceited smile. Cocky in a respect. He, Mr. Henry M. Troller, the writer would teach the student. The less gifted and dry girl how to write and what to mean when she write it.
"No, you are meant to hate the beast."
"But why?"
"Because he is weak...pitiful without pride."
"Yes, but-" She had cut off the old man, she would get her thought out before she lost confidence to do so.
"He had it, but it was taken from him, that's worse than not having any at all."
She had to catch her breath. She felt as though she was being strangled. Her heart raced, felt as though it would fall right out of her chest and on to the floor. She imagined the writer standing up and walking over to the heart, looking up at her and smiling, then suddenly without warning or sign would stomp all over it. She close her eyes for a moment, she fought back tears, but now she was losing the battle. Mr. Henry M. Troller, the writer himself looked relaxed and amused. As though it were some kind of childish game he hadn't played in awhile. She had laid her cards on the table, while, yes, she had already shown it through her face and he knew what she had before the cards were even revealed. She didn't have the poker face that's was needed in these little games of the mind. He knew why her eyes were closed. The little sap was trying not to cry. Will I spare her the tears today he thought to himself. Perhaps this once he might.
"The monster, you say, he does not feel or bleed, he is the pride taker, not the defeated."
"Yes." She couldn't see where he was going with this.
"I assume this is why you like him."
"Yes, he has no weakness, nothing to pity, he is full of pride." She tried come up with more than one word answers, she was unsure of what he might be leading up to, and she wanted to say herself the hurt from a let down.
"But he does." Troller gave the young girl just enough to take the bait. He knew she would give in to whatever he had just laid in front of her. He knew that she would answer and that he would have her cornered and that from that moment on she would be prey, and the predator wad hungry.
"Does what?" She didn't understand this haft remark the writer hurled in her way.
"Have weakness." He looked the girl right in the face, eye to eye. He could not only see but sense her confusion. She didn't know what he had meant. Troller loved it that way. Having a certain unethical power, that didn't seem to drain.
"Can't you see it, the predictable monster."
"But-" She knew when he cut her off that she had fell into a trap, a well laid and masterful trap.
"You see, monsters aren't suppose to be predictable, isn't not written in their blood."
"This monster-" The writer wouldn't give her a chance to finish the thought. It was time to bring her down to size. To have her curled up in a corner crying and tearing to pieces the story she had worked so hard on. She wasn’t ready to admit just yet that she had lost, she would see where the writer lead her to next, maybe the was a way out that both he and she had over looked. She prayed that there was.
"Has pride and power, but no...no imagination to feed them to."
"W-w-wh-"
"So he goes day in and day out defeating the same weak beast."
She walked home down spirited and tired. She imagined herself as a gladiator who had just finished a battle. She kept her head lowered, for she was sure that the world had seen or heard how the writer had torn her, the predictable monster, and pitiful beast apart. Exposed them. She clenched tighter to her coat, she felt naked. The winter’s wind had come along and brushed up leaves, dirt, and disregarded trash. At that very moment, she reached into her coat pocket and pulled out the paper. Empty words, she thinks. She extends her arm out into the wind, but her hand has a tight grip on the paper. Physically she had already let go, but both mentally and emotionally hadn’t let go and truly didn’t want. But it was too late, her eyes became tear-stained as she watched Winter take and repossess the foolish story. It seemed to her that Winter had been more than happy to relieve her of it.
As she continued her walk, she remembered how her Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde had been a month ago when she told him she was going to start writing again.
“That’s marvelous darling.”
“Do you think so?”
“Yes, I do. I really do love your little stories, love.”
Little stories the writer called them. Little. It was a insult tied together with a complement. But today, it was a pure battlefield of insults; one right after the other. With his cold eyes. Her own eyes had been following her feet. She had passed her studio apartment by two blocks. She thought to keep walking, walk until she was both lost and forgotten. But decided against the impulse and turned around walking back to her building. Her studio was on the top floor of the building, this meant that she had to pass three other floors before she would be safe again. She prepared herself for the light and useless conversations she would have to start or be involved in. Before opening the door, she wiped under her eyes. She knew they were red and that the evidence of tears would be easy to find. She told herself to tell them that it was a cold. Yes, that Winter had borrowed her health for a day or two now, and that she hoped he would return it to her shortly. She took in a deep breath, like the writer had done right before he began to slaughter. She twisted the handle to the door.
She paused at the entranceway of the building. She had just remember that Miss Black had asked her where she was going in such a hurry. She had told her that she had something to show the old man. Ms. Black inquired to what it was, but the woman replied with ‘Oh, sorry Miss but the writer had to the first one to know and see it.’ Miss Black smiled and said alright but when you come back today I want to know what it is and how he liked it. She promised that she would show her what she longed to show the old man first and that she would give a full report as to the writer’s opinion of whatever it was she was going to show him. She thought for a moment that Ms. Black had already know what it was that she wanted to show him. The walls of the building were thin, and you could hear everything. Miss Black lived but two apartments from hers and could hear the typewriter late into the night. On mornings when the woman would leave the studio for errands Miss Black would stand outside her door.
“Writing again I see.”
“Not really, just typing up a few thoughts… you know for the records.”
“Your eyes show that stories are forming again, look at your hands battered from typing and writing.” The woman looked down at her fingers, she hadn’t noticed the ink stains, that her fingers were red and shaky from the night before.
“I have to go Miss Black, the bus leaves soon and I have to catch it; I’m sorry if the typing is too loud, I wont type so late tonight.”
“I said no such thing, who am I to deaden the creative process, type whenever you like.” Miss had turn around and went inside of her apartment.

Posted by BrianneshaC on 2008-12-07 21:55:14 | Rating: