Development of my project.

 As we get closer to the submission deadline for our final project I started redrafting my short story. I just finished my second draft and I want to share it with you. The story still needs a bit of work till it's ready for submission but it's coming together. For my second draft, I took a closer look into the world use and sentence structures although it's hard as I'm writing in a second language I can say that I'm getting a bit happier with my writing. 

I looked at 'The elements of style' by William Strunk Jr. It has some great tips on writing and also consists of grammar rules and guidences. For my second draft, I looked at rule number 13. Omit needless words. 'Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short or, that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that he make every world tell' (Strunk, 2018).

Bellow is my second draft of the story. I know its not finished yet but I hope you enjoy and leave me notes so I can improve it.

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He would usually call. Even when father was on a drinking binge, he would call. At least once a week: drunk, incapable of speaking clearly. He would call and tell my mom how much he loves her and ask her to come and save him.

When about a month ago my mom filed for divorce, he left without saying goodbye.

I guess a part of him thought it will be okay. Perhaps he would call in a week or two and my mom would save him as usual, save him from the monsters that hid in his past, beasts that laid heavy on his shoulders every time he submerged into the sea of liquor. She would save him. He would be back in the promise land, back with the wife, back with the son that he, even if he does not show, loves so very much.

He never called.

I think we both, me, and my mom, felt a tiny shift within. It was like a raindrop, when it hits your face and rolls down your cheek and down the neck and gets underneath your shirt and slowly dissolves. Then, for the very first time that day, you take a look at the sky and it’s (obscure) and grey. You know it’s about to start pouring, now you notice a slight change in atmosphere, and you can taste the soil around your lips, and you can still feel that raindrop on your cheek even if it’s already gone.

‘I’m going to check on your father’ Mom said as she was unable to reach him by phone. I asked to come with, but she told me that its better if I stay home. It was only next day that she took me along to help clean the apartment.

‘I found him right here’ She pointed to the sofa, ‘his knees were on the ground and he was facing the sofa like this’, She stretched her arms as if she was about to hug something invisible sitting on it. Suddenly she glanced at me and lowered her hands, paused for a moment and started to clean in silence. The sun blazed from the north, cutting through the window and laying its warm curls on the leather sofa, around the same place that my mom pointed at, piss evaporating of it.  It was becoming hard to breath, sickening even. I noticed my mom tucking her nose underneath the shirt. I done the same. We tossed all the clothes into black bin bags, majority of his stuff really. I think, we only kept few books of his, although I never seen him reading any of them. When we moved to the kitchen, there was thirty-nine bottles of vodka carefully stacked up on the dining table. My mom asked me to take them out, so I gently stacked them inside carboard box. Under the table I found one more cap of the same bottle, but as I could not find where it belonged, without really thinking about it, I placed it in my left-hand pocket. We took bin bags and boxes with empty bottles and left them by the containers outside the flat. On our way back I wander what the bin men thought once they found remains of my father covered in the morning dew. Once we got home my mother spend rest of the evening making phone calls. Next day was the wake.

The wake took place in a small red brick building no bigger than half the basketball court, It was covered in chestnut shingles and had tiny cracks in wooden frame around the windows. I arrived few hours later then my mother did, I guess she did not want me to get in the way. Inside, the smell of chemicals was exhausting. In the corner there was a women Trio performing Pie Jesu. One of the women was a teacher in my school, she gave me a tiny nod as I was strolled towards my sobbing mother and father, who for the first time I got to see in the suit.

Father looked indifferent, although his arms were crossed as he laid in the coffin, he did not seem particularly dead. Nor he ever looked truly alive, if not for mise en scene in which this took place I don’t know if we would even poke him with the stick to check if he’s alive. People were still arriving, mostly old friends of my parents. They would come one by one, to the coffin, do a prayer and then turn to me and mom and say something like ‘He was a great man’, ‘what a loss, such a great man, and so young too’ then they would take a seat and stare at us endlessly. I wonder if we knew the same man, or perhaps I just never got to witness the greatness that my father was filled with. He was never a great man to me, nor to my mom, at least for what I remember. No one ever told me that while he was around. No one told my anything, he haven’t told me anything. Only when he would grab me and pull me closer. Only when like a cat I would try to escape his grip, his sharp beard piercing my flesh and smell of alcohol that would give me a headache. He would tell me that he loves me, but I could not breath.

When not so long ago my friend's father killed himself. After the funeral whole town started to gossip behind his back. They said that he did not cry, that he was a bastard, that he did not love his father. As if love was obligatory, unconditional, surpassing beatings and abuse, neglect. As scars that we carry in our hearts and on our flesh are marks of love. They called him heartless. I saw him cry, in relief as demons now existed only in his past.

I tried to make myself cry too. I remember squeezing my eyelids so hard it felt like it might explode. I pinched my wrist till the point where blood was about to come out. It was no help. I turn my face away from the audience whom as far as I was considered was here to judge me on the love I had for a stranger lying dead in front of me. I drifted back. Back to all the beatings. Back to all the times, we found him drunk. To all the winters when a bottle of hot water was the only source of warmth. To the blood and piss that soaked throughout the walls. Back to the house which structure may collapse under the slightest breeze. I found a tear, and soon it left salt ditch on my left cheek. No one really clapped but I'm pretty sure few faces nodded with relief that at least one kid in this forsaken town still has a hearth.

Next day was the funeral.

When I arrived the sun was in its highest point. The coffin was already in the back of the black Cadillac. And we made a move towards the cemetery. Priest, with a cross in his hands was in front, then the car with the father, then me and my mom and then the rest of the people strolling behind us. It was a straight road across the town that led to cemetery. There was no high buildings or any trees to lay a shadow. Heat, like smoke was raising of the burning asphalt. It was hard to keep my eyes open as the sun was blinding, I could feel my shirt sticking to my back. There were people in the window, kids playing in the street and it all went quite for a moment as we passed but soon enough they would stop paying attention and go back to what ever they did. I could hear a ball bounce again and a childish laugh linger in the air.

Everything seemed to happen quick. We arrived at the graveyard and priest have few words of wisdom. Workers lowered the coffin and started to pour soil on it along with the flowers from the friends and family. ‘Lets remember him as a great man he was’ someone said. ‘we all do mistakes through out our life but nevertheless we should remember him for all the good he did’ same voice continued. As I could not control my hands I shoved them in my coat pockets hoping that that will make me look calm. Once again, the memories that I do not posses were brough upon me. I tried, that was least I could do I guess, but I could not find anything, nothing good to remember him by, nothing that had a happy ending, not to me at least. I found a bottle cap in my left pocket, It was from the apartment, it was all I had left of him. I pressed it so hard it cut my palm and I could feel blood gently dripping down my fingers.  

I told my mother, that I tried, but I could not remember anything, she said it was okay. Perhaps it will come to me eventually but all I wish was to forget all of this.

Afterwards we made it back to the same red brick building, although besides chemical compound soaked into the walls the room looked completely different. It now had tables joined in the shape of letter L. Tables were covered with drinks and food. It was the last bit of ceremonial tradition to say good bye. To have a drink for those who cannot be with us. ‘You should have a drink too’ one of the fathers friends told me. He grabbed a shot glass and a bottle of spirit, same one that we found in the apartment. The same drink that was a caused of all this. Same drink that thickened my fathers’ blood till the point that hearth could not take it anymore. Same drink which bottle cap laid covered in blood inside my left pocket. I felt myself gasping for air. To see all these people, especially my mom, one after another tilt their heads back and swallow the same liquor that took my father, before he even had a chance to say goodbye, before he had a chance to tell me that he loved me. I took the cap and screwed it on the bottle as everyone looked at me with confusion, anger even as why I’m misbehaving at the moment of grief. This never-ending cycle endlessly repeating in front of me have to stop.

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References:

 Strunk, W., 2018. The elements of style. 2nd ed. milton keynes: Lightining source.