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Latchford Confesses His Sins
The first sin happened when I was eight. Back when I could catch any ball thrown my way, in the days when I thought I was the next Don Hutson. Dad was the first stumbling block in this regard, listing off the concussions and Parkinson’s that famous footballers often got.
So instead of Junior Varsity, I was stuck in the Flag Football League. In the pecking order of sports, it was just above the Special Olympics and Women’s Volleyball. They didn’t even use a real football field; they just borrowed the community baseball field and painted yard lines in the outfield. My team was the Shadows, and the opposing team was the Sharks.
But the Sharks had Tim.
Brown hair, brown eyes, a couple of freckles here and there. Nothing was outwardly special about him, except that he could run and catch a hundred times better than I could.
And that was all the Sharks needed to prevail at each meetup.
“Touchdown!” became their recurring cry.
“Better luck next time” became ours.
I grumbled at the end of each game, usually about Tim.
Unsportsmanlike conduct, the holy part of my mind said.
Who gives a damn, the other parts replied.
The second sin happened when I was fourteen. My Boy Scout Troop had returned from a camping trip, and we fooled around with the sports equipment as we waited for our parents to arrive.
At some point, I got ahold of the football and climbed the Hill. It wasn’t a large hill, maybe seven feet above the ground. But from the top, everybody seemed as small as I wished they were.
“Alright, gather up!” the Scoutmaster called out.
But I didn’t want to gather up. I was on the Hill; you didn’t just get off the Hill.
That’s when I saw Fred.
Fred, who’d threatened me with his pocket knife and called me a stupid son of a bitch only twelve hours ago.
My eyes narrowed, and I let the football loose. It hit Fred right on the back of the head, where the skull and neck meet.
I ran down the hill to him, spilling out my sorrys and my very sorrys. And for a while, under the eyes of the scowling Scoutmaster, I meant it.
But I saw the hurt in Fred’s eyes, that thin stream of tears a boy keeps in when he tries to be a man.
And I grew happy that I caused him pain.
The final sin happened last night. We went to Mitch’s Tavern, the local sports pub. Adorned with TVs and sports memorabilia on every wall, it was the perfect place to distract oneself from life’s troubles.
It didn’t quite work in my case though, as my Troubles were sitting beside and across from me. They stared at the televisions, mumbling about So-and-So getting a first down or Whosit dropping the ball.
I wanted to tell the Troubles things. Like how they needed to get off my back about finding a job. There weren’t any to go around. Besides, they had jobs, and they didn’t look any happier than I was.
“Um, can I get out?” the Trouble known as Caleb asked me. “I gotta poop.” I slid out of the booth, and he did the same before zooming off to the restroom.
“We’re in the final minutes of the fourth quarter,” the announcer said. “UCF leads Memphis, forty to seven.”
I took one last swig of my Pabst, then set the glass back on the table.
“Excuse me,” I said to my Troubles. “I’ll be back.”
I followed the path my brother took, and eventually found myself at the bathroom. I wandered inside and towards the urinals.
Ziiiip!
I let a thin stream into the piss-station.
Piss.
This is piss, and piss is this.
Piss in the wind or piss in the toilet.
My mother is piss and my father is piss and Caleb is piss and I am piss and football is piss.
I zipped my pants back up. I wandered over to the sinks and let the warm water flow through my fingers.
Rinse good, I told myself. You must be clean.
I’d never be clean, though. I was piss, like everything and everybody else. I could not be cleaned, only directed into the nearest toilet for flushing.
I dried my hands, then rushed out of the room. The stench of Caleb’s shit was beginning to creep my way.
So instead of Junior Varsity, I was stuck in the Flag Football League. In the pecking order of sports, it was just above the Special Olympics and Women’s Volleyball. They didn’t even use a real football field; they just borrowed the community baseball field and painted yard lines in the outfield. My team was the Shadows, and the opposing team was the Sharks.
But the Sharks had Tim.
Brown hair, brown eyes, a couple of freckles here and there. Nothing was outwardly special about him, except that he could run and catch a hundred times better than I could.
And that was all the Sharks needed to prevail at each meetup.
“Touchdown!” became their recurring cry.
“Better luck next time” became ours.
I grumbled at the end of each game, usually about Tim.
Unsportsmanlike conduct, the holy part of my mind said.
Who gives a damn, the other parts replied.
The second sin happened when I was fourteen. My Boy Scout Troop had returned from a camping trip, and we fooled around with the sports equipment as we waited for our parents to arrive.
At some point, I got ahold of the football and climbed the Hill. It wasn’t a large hill, maybe seven feet above the ground. But from the top, everybody seemed as small as I wished they were.
“Alright, gather up!” the Scoutmaster called out.
But I didn’t want to gather up. I was on the Hill; you didn’t just get off the Hill.
That’s when I saw Fred.
Fred, who’d threatened me with his pocket knife and called me a stupid son of a bitch only twelve hours ago.
My eyes narrowed, and I let the football loose. It hit Fred right on the back of the head, where the skull and neck meet.
I ran down the hill to him, spilling out my sorrys and my very sorrys. And for a while, under the eyes of the scowling Scoutmaster, I meant it.
But I saw the hurt in Fred’s eyes, that thin stream of tears a boy keeps in when he tries to be a man.
And I grew happy that I caused him pain.
The final sin happened last night. We went to Mitch’s Tavern, the local sports pub. Adorned with TVs and sports memorabilia on every wall, it was the perfect place to distract oneself from life’s troubles.
It didn’t quite work in my case though, as my Troubles were sitting beside and across from me. They stared at the televisions, mumbling about So-and-So getting a first down or Whosit dropping the ball.
I wanted to tell the Troubles things. Like how they needed to get off my back about finding a job. There weren’t any to go around. Besides, they had jobs, and they didn’t look any happier than I was.
“Um, can I get out?” the Trouble known as Caleb asked me. “I gotta poop.” I slid out of the booth, and he did the same before zooming off to the restroom.
“We’re in the final minutes of the fourth quarter,” the announcer said. “UCF leads Memphis, forty to seven.”
I took one last swig of my Pabst, then set the glass back on the table.
“Excuse me,” I said to my Troubles. “I’ll be back.”
I followed the path my brother took, and eventually found myself at the bathroom. I wandered inside and towards the urinals.
Ziiiip!
I let a thin stream into the piss-station.
Piss.
This is piss, and piss is this.
Piss in the wind or piss in the toilet.
My mother is piss and my father is piss and Caleb is piss and I am piss and football is piss.
I zipped my pants back up. I wandered over to the sinks and let the warm water flow through my fingers.
Rinse good, I told myself. You must be clean.
I’d never be clean, though. I was piss, like everything and everybody else. I could not be cleaned, only directed into the nearest toilet for flushing.
I dried my hands, then rushed out of the room. The stench of Caleb’s shit was beginning to creep my way.
Preliminary thoughts (will come back to this later):
-Two-thirds of this story I liked. The last third takes everything far too fast and intense.
-Tonally shifts towards the end, overall breakdown of the character arc is incoherent and muddled
-What is the take away?
-This guy does sound like he would drink PBR (the drink of losers and neophytes)
-Narrative voice good, although drastically changes in attitude in the third scene
-Two-thirds of this story I liked. The last third takes everything far too fast and intense.
-Tonally shifts towards the end, overall breakdown of the character arc is incoherent and muddled
-What is the take away?
-This guy does sound like he would drink PBR (the drink of losers and neophytes)
-Narrative voice good, although drastically changes in attitude in the third scene
Great narrative voice, but I have to agree with >>Cassius and say that I don't get the point of this story. The connection to the prompt isn't obvious either, though maybe the narrator is confessing these on his deathbed? It's not clear, and the ending feels anticlimactic compared to the growing tension in the first two parts of the story.
The point of repentance is that there is a morale to which you learn through your actions or that you promise that you'll never do such sins ever again. If the story was longer you could have used the wrath of the man to bite back at him, or at least allow him to learn his lesson. This is half-repentance, expecting to be forgiven of your sins when you cant even bring yourself to cease them, which, both story-wise and life-wise, is incomplete.
I adore your first scene. Like, if the other two scenes just didn't exist, and I was judging this purely on the strength of that first scene, this would undoubtedly be one of my Top Contenders for this round. It builds this subtly creepy atmosphere that leads up to one of the most fantastic scene breaks I have seen in quite a while, establishing a brilliantly unreliable narrator (and can we take a moment to appreciate how perfect an unreliable narrator is in a story about confession?) and a building sense of unease and dread through omission...
At least, that's how I read it: the actual sin itself is omitted, and only the circumstances leading up to it are presented. And if that's your goal here, author, you've accomplished something damn amazing in that first scene. My concern from the later scenes is that that's not your intent, and that not only makes the final two scenes fall a little flat for me, but also weakens the punch of that first scene.
That isn't to say that your second scene (we'll, uh, come back to the last one in a bit) is bad! Actually, I quite liked it on my first reading. It does a fantastic job of maintaining the suspense the first scene built so well, and keeps that creepy atmosphere that is really the most enjoyable thing in this entry. And heck, in the reading I think you might have intended, it's probably the strongest scene: the moment the sins move from being thoughts to thoughts-accompanying-actions is a key moment in Latchford's arc, and in that reading this scene holds that up really well.
But the second scene does, I think, tell the reader a little too much. I said before that I thought it maintained the suspense from the first scene: I would much rather see the suspense build further, here. Keeping suspense unchanged is really the bare minimum you need to do with it to keep a reader engaged, and I really do feel that this scene could pull a little more weight in that regard.
And then... then we have the third scene. I'll be perfectly honest, I'm not entirely sure how this scene fits into either of the readings I've established as obvious choices, which either suggests that I'm missing something or that the first two scenes aren't quite guiding the reader to the place you'd like them to be at in time for the third. In fact, I'm so uncertain about this scene's purpose that I'm not fully sure I know what its sin even is! My best guess is that it's got something to do with the almost-but-not-quite stream-of-consciousness passage about piss, but not only did I find that passage obscure and irrelevant, I'm not entirely sure how it fits into the structure of sins that we've seen so far. Add to that the rather jarring change to the narrative voice―though, of course, wholly justified by the presumed time skip—and the scene as a whole falls totally flat.
All in all, author, I think that you might need to consider seriously re-writing some parts of this. It's not that any of the individual passages or scenes are poorly-written (quite the opposite—on the whole, your prose is great!), but that they don't all seem to fit together very well, and it might be easier to pick your favourites to keep and craft new passages and scenes to fit in better with them than to sand away at what you already have until it fits. And despite all I've said, I do still really like a lot of what this story achieved. It was Flawed but Fun, and I can appreciate that a lot. I do hope you let us see a polished version of this, because I for one would really enjoy it!
(Horse? HHHHHHOOORRRRRSSSSEE)
At least, that's how I read it: the actual sin itself is omitted, and only the circumstances leading up to it are presented. And if that's your goal here, author, you've accomplished something damn amazing in that first scene. My concern from the later scenes is that that's not your intent, and that not only makes the final two scenes fall a little flat for me, but also weakens the punch of that first scene.
That isn't to say that your second scene (we'll, uh, come back to the last one in a bit) is bad! Actually, I quite liked it on my first reading. It does a fantastic job of maintaining the suspense the first scene built so well, and keeps that creepy atmosphere that is really the most enjoyable thing in this entry. And heck, in the reading I think you might have intended, it's probably the strongest scene: the moment the sins move from being thoughts to thoughts-accompanying-actions is a key moment in Latchford's arc, and in that reading this scene holds that up really well.
But the second scene does, I think, tell the reader a little too much. I said before that I thought it maintained the suspense from the first scene: I would much rather see the suspense build further, here. Keeping suspense unchanged is really the bare minimum you need to do with it to keep a reader engaged, and I really do feel that this scene could pull a little more weight in that regard.
And then... then we have the third scene. I'll be perfectly honest, I'm not entirely sure how this scene fits into either of the readings I've established as obvious choices, which either suggests that I'm missing something or that the first two scenes aren't quite guiding the reader to the place you'd like them to be at in time for the third. In fact, I'm so uncertain about this scene's purpose that I'm not fully sure I know what its sin even is! My best guess is that it's got something to do with the almost-but-not-quite stream-of-consciousness passage about piss, but not only did I find that passage obscure and irrelevant, I'm not entirely sure how it fits into the structure of sins that we've seen so far. Add to that the rather jarring change to the narrative voice―though, of course, wholly justified by the presumed time skip—and the scene as a whole falls totally flat.
All in all, author, I think that you might need to consider seriously re-writing some parts of this. It's not that any of the individual passages or scenes are poorly-written (quite the opposite—on the whole, your prose is great!), but that they don't all seem to fit together very well, and it might be easier to pick your favourites to keep and craft new passages and scenes to fit in better with them than to sand away at what you already have until it fits. And despite all I've said, I do still really like a lot of what this story achieved. It was Flawed but Fun, and I can appreciate that a lot. I do hope you let us see a polished version of this, because I for one would really enjoy it!
(Horse? HHHHHHOOORRRRRSSSSEE)
I'm not sure of the point here. It's enumerating sins, but I don't get out taking a leak at bar is a "final sin." Loss of faith maybe?
The first two scenes set up a pretty obvious structure, and it's working until that third scene break. The third scene feels non-sequitur to the extreme. No idea why friends at a bar are his "Troubles" or most of the other references.
Sorry, but you lost me.
The first two scenes set up a pretty obvious structure, and it's working until that third scene break. The third scene feels non-sequitur to the extreme. No idea why friends at a bar are his "Troubles" or most of the other references.
Sorry, but you lost me.
I agree with Xepher here. The first scene doesn’t really look like a sin to me. Envy, maybe? But, I mean, envious can be a positive feeling if you turn it into a drive towards improving.
I get the second more easily. Retaliation. I can relate to that (even though I don’t practice this form of petty vengeance).
As for the third, it’s pretty confusing. I think the guy breaks down because he suddenly realises he’s beginning to think or act like the others – whom he despises – do. That’s the more likely explanation I can come up with.
However, yeah, I don’t really see the connection to the prompt.
I get the second more easily. Retaliation. I can relate to that (even though I don’t practice this form of petty vengeance).
As for the third, it’s pretty confusing. I think the guy breaks down because he suddenly realises he’s beginning to think or act like the others – whom he despises – do. That’s the more likely explanation I can come up with.
However, yeah, I don’t really see the connection to the prompt.
But the Sharks had Tim.
GAY LOVE STORY INCOMING. Now let's read the rest and see if I'm right.
Nope, wrong. ... probably. Oh well.
As far as I can tell, the sin in the first scene is the grumbling. It's a bit hard to spot.
Like everyone else is saying, I was with this for the first two scenes, but felt like I was waiting for a payoff that never came in the third, and the lack of payoff retroactively makes the piece feel incomplete and directionless. I feel like some essential elements were cut for time or length here, such that I really can't even guess what the idea behind the third scene is. The connection to the prompt, if there was ever going to be one, would probably have come in the ending as well.
Not much else to say. What got done is a very nice read, but it's clearly incomplete. I'll look forward to the author's notes on this one. Thanks for writing!
Libertydude Confesses His Writing Sins (A Retrospective)
See kids, this is what happens when you crank out a story in under two hours while sleep deprived and nervous about your future.
I jest, but in all seriousness, the biggest problem with this story is that it was basically me writing by the seat of my pants. The story’s main plot veered from a car ride where Caleb talks about his constipation, to a NEET having a drunken reflection on his life in a bar. It was only after about the fourth or fifth draft I happened upon the idea of short vignettes about the main character’s sins. The rest of the story flowed pretty easily from there, as I simply recalled old memories to get the right kind of images and tone. The only thing that was consistent throughout each draft was having the scene in the bar and having the story revolve around American football (I’d just come from a bar involving the aforementioned UCF and Memphis game, so the imagery was stuck in my mind).
Some of you wondered how this story connected to the prompt. Personally, I wanted to avoid any apocalyptic tales, mostly because I suspected many other writers would go that route (and I was right). Instead, I decided to tie it in with football, which is measured in minutes and is often decided by the last few seconds of the game. All of the vignettes take place at the end of each football situation, a.k.a. close to the last minute of play. Hell, the final scene has the TV mention “the final minutes of the fourth quarter”. I was worried that a lot of readers would claim that was just shoved in to fit the prompt, but apparently nobody noticed it.
Since nobody brought it up, the name Latchford was a reference to “Blatchford Sarnemington”, the fake personality of the main character in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story “Absolution”. The story dealt with a similar theme of guilt and being unable to deal with it, and the Blatchford persona was a way for the main character to deal with his guilt by claiming he didn’t do the bad things he did. Latchford isn’t a persona, but it’s not the main character’s real name either. It’s simply a placeholder for the reader to refer to him as something other than “the main character” or “protagonist”.
This is a weird retrospective for me, because most of my other ones end with me hemming and hawing about the final result, saying that I’m disappointed and underwhelmed. This is the first one where I really don’t feel that. I’m actually relatively satisfied with what popped out. I sure as hell want to edit some things (the third section needs to be trimmed, and the first two need some more descriptive details), but I think the story turned out a lot better than I’d thought. Maybe it’s because I wrote about something closer to me than usual (football and complicated guilt), but I still feel this is one of my better stories. Hopefully, I’ll be able to make others think similarly with a little bit of a rewrite.
Now, for some personal responses:
>>Cassius
-Two-thirds of this story I liked. The last third takes everything far too fast and intense.
Yeah, the last third is the area I had the biggest problems with too. I wasn’t sure how to shorten it without removing Latchford’s breakdown, so I largely cut from the other two sections. But my problem with it is actually the opposite: I think it’s a tad too slow. It goes from quick shots in the first two sections to this drawn-out scene.
-Tonally shifts towards the end, overall breakdown of the character arc is incoherent and muddled
That’s kind of the point. Latchford doesn’t know what the hell is going on with his life, given how he’s sitting with his Troubles and is just staring at TVs. He’s also drunk as a skunk, so it would make sense he’d break down for no particular reason.
-What is the take away?
That there’s always somebody else to blame for your own faults. Tim ruined Latchford’s football career, Fred got him in trouble with the Scoutmaster, and Caleb’s defecation drives him from the bathroom. None of this is true, of course, but Latchford makes it true, just how we all blame someone else for our own failures.
-Narrative voice good, although drastically changes in attitude in the third scene
Again, the final part makes a lot more sense if you take it to be Latchford waking up from the previous night’s drunkenness, hungover or still drunk. But yeah, that part probably needs a little less disconnect with the other sections.
>>FloydienSlip
...the ending feels anticlimactic compared to the growing tension in the first two parts of the story.
I disagree. I think Latchford’s bizarre monologue about piss is thoroughly climactic enough. It’s such an odd escalation from the small resentments throughout the rest of the story that I thought it was good conclusion.
>>Kritten
Good point, but you’re making the fatal assumption that Latchford wants absolution. I thought it was clear from the ending that he knows he’s a bad person, but he just doesn’t care enough to change his ways. Admitting you did something wrong is different from wanting to be forgiven for them. Also, I think it’s more realistic to have somebody want absolution, then go right on sinning. After all, nobody ever goes to Confession just once.
>>QuillScratch
You’re the only one that seemed to focus on the story’s suspense. I personally wasn’t going for that sensation, but more of a vague sense of uneasiness. Latchford is meant to be off-putting; not necessarily out of place, but definitely "off" enough to make people hesitant toward him. I’m also glad you caught onto the Unreliable Narrator aspect of the story. Even if I wasn’t the author, I wouldn’t trust a single thing Latchford says.
As for the third section, the “sin” is Latchford himself. At this point in his life, he is bitter and angry, and doesn’t seem to be improving the lives of the people around him. Look at how he seems disdainful toward his brother (and how said brother seems uneasy around him), and how he refers to the people across from him (either friends or family) as “Troubles” to him.
And this ties into the piss monologue. He finally realizes just how terrible of a person he is, but he justifies it with how everything is piss. Nothing is his fault, because everybody and everything else are clearly as bad as him.
>>Xepher
Honestly, I’m not really sure what you mean by “references”. The football references, maybe? The Troubles, though, are just meant to be Latchford’s way of saying he blames them for whatever problems his life is having right now. And the third act is sort of meant to be a non-sequitur; notice how Latchford’s drinking in this scene and it starts saying that this happened “last night”?
>>Monokeras
But, I mean, envious can be a positive feeling if you turn it into a drive towards improving.
I think you’re giving Latchford too much credit. Notice how the phrase “Who gives a damn” ends that section?
I think the guy breaks down because he suddenly realises he’s beginning to think or act like the others – whom he despises – do.
That’s not a bad way at looking at it, but I was going more for “he realizes he’s a bad guy, but is fine with that because he thinks everybody is just as bad”. The key idea is that he thinks his actions aren’t his own fault.
>>Ranmilia
GAY LOVE STORY INCOMING.
Boy, that would’ve been an interesting angle, wouldn’t it? :P
...the lack of payoff retroactively makes the piece feel incomplete and directionless
I don’t think it’s as incomplete as others are saying, but there should probably be more clarification about the story’s central idea (that Latchford is a bad person, but always finds someone else to blame). I think the ending conveys that idea well, but it doesn't work if the rest of the story doesn't make that clear.
>>libertydude
The references I mean are why the individuals are tagged as particular troubles was one. More importantly, all the piss references. And the shit references. And the "you must be clean" phrase. All of these seem (being at the end of a story) vitally important, but I have no idea what they reference.
The references I mean are why the individuals are tagged as particular troubles was one. More importantly, all the piss references. And the shit references. And the "you must be clean" phrase. All of these seem (being at the end of a story) vitally important, but I have no idea what they reference.
>>Xepher
They aren't really "referencing" anything at all. It's simply an obscene way for Latchford to reflect on his inner rottenness and the evil he perceives in the world.
They aren't really "referencing" anything at all. It's simply an obscene way for Latchford to reflect on his inner rottenness and the evil he perceives in the world.