Hi,
I have just started writing a story I’ve had in my head for some time.
Just looking for opinions and any tips. I think it is probably a bit overly descriptive and wordy. Sorry if it’s crap.
Any who, thank you in advance :)
It was a jewel-bright day of autumn; glassy sunlight, shiny blue skies, a certain, almost imperceptible clarity that sharpened and silhouetted every car and tree and rooftop, penetrating the warmth of the day with a whisper of doubt.
There was a perfect white kiss drawn across the sky where the paths of two airplanes had met that Mary paused to admire as she crossed the bridge.
Despite being dog-tired, her feet aching, she was enjoying the walk, gulping in great lungfuls of the warm, sadness-tinged air, as all around her cars queued and revved, impatient drivers slurping take-out coffees and licking pastry crumbs off fingers in their race to work, students straggled and sulked and bopped, wearing headphones, inappropriately warm bobble hats, clutching oversized folders and a sense of their own importance.
Mary observed them with the hint of a smile drifting, remembering that feeling of change, of self-belief that you were the generation that would change the world.
September was a time of great shift; it always made her feel slightly out of touch and left behind. She thought of people she had seen die and of her own end, because with the hint of amber encroaching on the trees, there was a reminder that everything must end.
She had scrubbed and scrubbed but there was still a smell that lingered on her, of animals and straw, not quite extinguished by the alcohol gel, and she was imagining standing under her shower, washing off the smells of the delivery room, when a homeless man came to her attention just a few feet ahead.
He was hunching forward, draped in an oversized, dirty looking cape or blanket of some sort, and gave off an unhinged, possibly intoxicated energy. His greasy hair stood on end all over his head, and his skin was covered in welts and bruises. He was unshaven, red-eyed, mumbling to himself, unsteady on his feet. He looked as if he had been living under a bridge for some time.
Her instinct warned her to cross the road, to sidestep and avoid avoid avoid, assuming he would ask her for money. But then, he turned and looked directly at her, like a dog in a shelter pleading to be taken home, and Mary had an overwhelming wave of sadness break over her. She stopped dead, and as she watched the man stared at her, glassy-eyed, desperate.
He said something, so quietly and slurred, that Mary had to step forward to make it out. It sounded like “I was supposed to meet someone here…”
As she watched, he dropped the blanket to the ground and in a movement that belied his aged body, hauled himself up on to the concrete wall of the bridge.
“No!” Mary cried involuntarily and dashed towards him, her hand outstretched.
He jerked his head round to face her, teetering on top of the wall, and his cheeks glittered with tears. “I can’t bear it.”
She kept her hand out to him. “Just. Just hold my hand. We can get through it.”
The man snatched a breath, his chest heaving, up, down, and with each breath Mary held hers, watching him teeter and sway on the edge with her teeth clenched.
“Look. What’s your name?”
He bunched his fists and pushed them in to the sockets of his eyes tiredly, as if trying to push out the information. “I can’t remember.”
She swallowed. “I’m Mary. And I was meant to meet you. I was meant to meet you here.”
The man let out a long slow breath, staring out across the expanse of water, the September sun sparkling and cracking on the surface, to the rows of buildings lined uniformly along the embankment and the ant-like bodies of people moving far in the distance, living unsuspecting lives, entrenched in the trappings of another Tuesday morning routine.
Mary became aware of a crowd gathering around them, of people stopping to watch the young woman talking down a homeless man from the edge of a bridge.
He tilted his head at her, his eyes drinking in the blue uniform, bulky black shoes, the gleam of a pocket watch clipped to her breast pocket.
She had a sensation of someone stepping on her grave; the hairs on her arm stood on end. She forced herself to breathe, to keep her hand stretched out to him. “Listen to me. You are supposed to live.”
“I was meant to walk by here just as you climbed up, and I am here to tell you, you must live. The universe made us meet.”
The man stretched out his dirtied, blotchy hand and the tips of their fingers touched for a second. A small sob escaped him.
“I know,” he said.
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Creative writing
Just written this, be gentle!
21 replies
hazandduck · 05/06/2019 13:52
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