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The Last Minute · Original Minific ·
Organised by RogerDodger
Word limit 400–750
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True Sailing Is Dead
The first is thrown overboard, thrashing and writhing. Water fills the lungs and then they are drowning drowning can't breathe must breathe can't can't drowning still—

Air. Air air air. The head has come up for air, hacking and vomiting out the sea like a mad birthing of the world. The legs flail without reason, some sort of primal instinct to survive if nothing else, working and pumping forever if need be. The head sees gray in the distance, not the suffocating ocean but something solid and real and real and full of—

Or maybe the water has gotten to the head already. Maybe the head is too far gone and all it's seeing is a final, desperate attempt at hope and life. The brain disagrees with the heart that claims to know better, to cling at miracles. A mirage. Nothing more but—

The heart does not give up like the brain, does not resign itself to the fate of the body or head or lungs. Land is near, but then another body and another and another plunge into the frightening depths of salt, throwing the brain into a frenzy and the stomach into contractions. Cold exhale and the lungs scream for—

The head is getting cold and the lungs are crying out but the heart must continue its manic quest towards the mass of gray. The different gray. Limbs diligently forward, galloping their way to freedom's shore. The ears quiver and shrink. Voice boxes lead an assault, screeching and crying into the darkened leagues—

Now all of the bodies are far away. The brain is no longer cowering and despondent, but motivating the heart. Pushing. Cheering. Encouraging the heart to have faith, must have faith, to go on, not too much longer now, it's getting closer and salvation is nigh for the body. The heart is cool and doubts the brain. Questions from the heart, soon wrested—

The brain can't answer, can only blush and admit its wrongdoing. Focus. Focus. The neck has cramped. Focus. The eyes have lidded. Bobbing up nameless and full of quivering guilt—

But the brain keeps pushing and willing the heart and then liberty is at hand. The body throws itself forward, stands on trembling legs, and surrenders its arms to the miserable, foul heavens before collapsing onto the soft ground. Water, cruel and unwilling mistress that it is, charges in blind fury, but all is beautiful and right to the heart and brain. Until, in bloom, lurks the telltale shadow of the body's former—



"In and of you, all around you, without prior knowledge or consent. I am you.

"I am you, but you are not me. You mean nothing. I give you purpose, meaning. Life.

"I am your best friend. Your mortal enemy. Your lover. Your mother. Daughter, son, husband, brother, sister, wife. Aunts and uncles, cousins and parents, strangers in the street. Father.

"You say I am impossible, that I am but one. That is a lie. I am many. You are one. You are one from me, and I am many.

"You see me without believing. It is understandable. You are not the first, nor will you be the last. You simply are.

"Scream, while you can. Disbelieve, if you must. But do not ignore me. Do not overstep my rule, or you will fall into desolation. Let not your eyes deceive you of this.

"Watch me change. Watch and bow on trembling legs as you see me for what I am. You do not have much time before we embark."




Breathe. Heart is corpse, body is convulsed. Breathe. Pain is slender and strength. Breathe. Lungs skewered, iron innards of release. Breathe. Graveyards are for the living. Breathe. Fight or fight, there is no running anymore. Br—
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#1 · 1
· · >>horizon >>FloydienSlip
The story does give a good sense of the brain deprived of oxygen, but I have no idea what the italic portion portents, besides the sailor's inevitable death. It gives off a distinctly Buddhist vibe. If that was the intention, then it is a clever metaphor to have a sailor drowning to represent the individual drop returning to the ocean of the One.
#2 · 1
· · >>FloydienSlip
First segement is very frenetic prose, well capturing the visceral (pun intended) feelings on display.

The italics section is a hard cut to something. I'm not quite sure what. Death, maybe? Odd, and changes tone though, so this is a rough transistion.

The end. "Breath. Heart is corpse." I don't get it. Corpses don't breathe. Ditto "Graveyards are for the living." Is this thing becoming a zombie or some other undead?

Sorry author, you lost me.
#3 · 1
· · >>FloydienSlip
I suspect there is a decent piece of meat in here, but, at the moment, I can't really connect the dots. Might be that I'm dumb, might be that I'm lazy, or might just be that the piece is actually too obtuse.

While I do agree that the prose early on does capture the visceral idea of drowning/hypothermia/etc, I feel how lyrical it is actually lets things down a bit. Its a little too pretty, if that makes sense.
#4 · 3
· · >>FloydienSlip
I didn't understand or hook into this piece at all on a first read, and with 16 entries to get through on my prelim slate, that's the read that counts. Clarity and hook are essential elements, especially in minifics.

While I'm sure there are things going on if you read closely and get into the allegories or whatever's going on here, I think the most helpful feedback I can give to this author is to refuse to do so. None of the fancy stuff matters if 90% of your readers have their eyes glaze over and can't buy into the piece to get to it. Don't dismiss this and say "Ok, I get the intro was weak but that was intentional, what do you think about the way it conveyed the feeling of drowning and the Buddhist blah blah"... No. Don't even think in that direction. Go back to the drawing board, focus on accessibility, put forward a strong hook and introduction, and then start thinking about going deep on metaphors.

Thank you for writing, though. Please do not be discouraged by this feedback. Quite the opposite, we want to see you succeed as an author. Make this a good learning experience and come back stronger for it!
#5 · 2
· · >>FloydienSlip
...Is this about the Zong massacre?
#6 · 1
· · >>FloydienSlip
Someone seems to be drowning.

...aaaaand that's all I've got.

Yeah, not doing much for me.

The frantic atmosphere in the beginning is alright, but since I don't know anything about the character, or have any way to connect to them, it doesn't really affect me much. The second bit is... weird and non-sequitur, and the third bit is self-contradictory.

Emotion is good, but I'd like a bit more meaning, please.
#7 · 1
· · >>FloydienSlip
breathing machine broke
#8 · 2
· · >>FloydienSlip
Yeah, this is really obscure.

It's like, a ship capsizes. One of the crew members barely makes it swimming to a nearby island. Then the guy faints and see God in dream? Then finally, the strain is too strong and the guy dies?

Or maybe Oblo is right. The guy is on a hospital bed, the drowning is metaphorical, maybe he’s experiencing a pulmonary oedema, and succumbs to a heart failure.

I wish I could put all the pieces together, but I can’t. Like the others, I’m stumped. I mean, it’s not a bad thing per se—some fictions leave you wondering, but you know you have all the clues necessary to work up the hidden meaning, and it’s only because you’re dense that you can’t put two and two together. But here, we’re left with the definite and lasting impression that we’re being led up the garden path…

Not a bad piece of writing, but it left me scratching my head.
#9 · 1
· · >>FloydienSlip
Yeah, I got nothin' either. I can score it on prose quality, but I can't connect the dots through that middle section, and there's just not enough detail in part 3 to establish it independently (and just enough to seemingly rule out being the same narrator as part 1, who got to solid land).

>>Dolfeus Doseux
a clever metaphor to have a sailor drowning to represent the individual drop returning to the ocean of the One

But the sailor doesn't drown, unless you're taking a very different interpretation of the ending of part 1 than I am.

Author, I hope you explain what you were trying to go for here — and that you take into advisement while editing that it seems to have flown over pretty much everyone's heads. "Don't be subtle in the Writeoffs" is a trope for good reason — we don't have the luxury to pick through the piece like a more dedicated reader would — but unless you want to lock out everyone but the most dedicated readers, you're going to need more signposting here.

Regardless, there's a poetic quality here that I think serves the piece well, if you're able to get the meaning gelling further. Don't write this off as an entirely failed experiment — just don't stray quite so far out into the cryptic hinterlands. Thank you, if nothing else, for an intriguing textual experience!
#10 · 3
·
>>Dolfeus Doseux
>>Xepher
>>AndrewRogue
>>Ranmilia
>>Dubs_Rewatcher
>>Not_A_Hat
>>Oblomov
>>Monokeras
>>horizon

Thank you all for the comments and criticism. This story was originally only the very first part (minus the last sentence in that section), which I discovered was too short to make the minimum wordcount, so I kinda... added a bunch of random stuff to pad it out. I wasn't really expecting it to do well, but I hadn't entered a Writeoff since the first original short story round (October 2015, Eye of the Storm). Apologies for making everyone suffer through this, I know it needs a lot of work.

The lesson here, at least in my case, is don't submit experimental pieces. I'm at a sort of crossroads in my writing where I focus more on the bizarre and surreal, and because I'm still a novice writer, I'm not yet at a place to pull it off. But as someone who has entered Writeoffs in the past, I should have remembered that!

Thanks especially to >>Ranmilia for your feedback early on. There's a lot of good critique in your comment that I'll take to heart in future stories (and I've unfortunately always been bad at good first lines; it's something I'm ashamed to admit), and I'm sorry that this story was so opaque. To be honest, I'm not really sure what I was going for either, plot-wise.

If nothing else, writing this did help me get back to writing on a daily basis. Thanks again to everyone for your comments. It means a lot that you took the time to read through this atrocity and actually give me meaningful feedback. Until next time!