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Under the Surface · Original Short Story ·
Organised by RogerDodger
Word limit 2000–8000
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ASCII of a Wave
The sun touched the water and flickered dreamily. Colette watched it go down with eyes wider than the sea.

She sat softly in the sand of a California beach, halfway between the ocean and the parking lot. The beach was pockmarked with footprints and crumbling sandcastles abandoned by their makers. The urge to swim had been satisfied, but it wasn't quite time to leave yet. Here was balance. Equilibrium.

The moment fell through the sieve of her mind as a car horn sounded from nearby. She turned and saw a familiar woman hop over the stone wall separating the beach from the parking lot.

“Are you done yet?” the woman said, plodding across the tiny banks of sand left by the wind and the tourists. “I’m starving.”

Colette chuckled and turned back to the ocean. The sun was nearly halfway down now. “We can stop and get something on the way home if you want.”

“I dunno. I worked out today, and it’s getting late. I’ll probably just warm something up at home.”

“I’ll buy.”

“Well, if you insist.” Bea whipped around, slipped in the sand, shook it off with a delighted gasp, and raced back to the car. Colette watched her go with a smile on her face. Once she was sure Bea wouldn’t hurt herself vaulting over the sea wall, she looked one last time into the ocean. Twenty yards to the sea. Twenty yards to the wall.

Colette sighed. When she sat here, she felt like she had it all.

As Colette slipped into the passenger seat, Bea spoke up. “Tell me again why you like waterwatching.”

“It sounds so weird when you say it like that,” Colette giggled. “You make it sound like a fetish.”

“It is, the way you do it.” Bea slammed her door shut, sealing out the sound of the ocean. In the vacuum her voice sounded strangely hollow. “But I love the sound of your voice, so just tell me.”

Colette rolled her eyes. “It looks like a dream,” she finally said.

What Bea didn’t know was that, to Colette, it looked exactly like a dream. A very particular dream, in fact. Since she had first moved to the west coast ten years ago, Colette had dreamt of the ocean. It was the only dream she could remember with any amount of clarity.

In it, she sat in the sand watching the tide rise. After awhile the water would touch her toes, then move up her legs and chest, until finally her head went under and she was left breathless at the bottom of the sea, though in her dreams she never felt compelled to breathe. There at the bottom of everything, she would watch the sun descend towards the surface. Just as it touched the waves, the dream would flash to black and end.

That dream played across her mind as she and Bea sped down the great wide highway towards their home in the suburbs. She could see the ocean peek through the valleys from time to time. The thought of the sun setting into the ocean and going out burned into her mind as the sky grew dark, but then Bea saw a sign for a burger place and got jumpy on the accelerator. For her own safety, the task of navigating the slew of exits and turnpikes took precedence.

When they got home, greasy take-out bags in tow, Bea stole french fries from the bottom of the bag while Colette set the table.

“Come on, they come wrapped in little plates.” Bea protested as she snuck another one of Colette’s fries. “We’re just waste water on washing them.”

“Yes,” Colette replied, slipping a plate under Bea’s meal, “but the grease will smudge the countertop, and if I don’t try and keep this house clean no one else will.” She lingered in Bea’s personal bubble for a moment, just to make sure she got the message.

“Don’t look at me. If you’re looking for culprits, look for that stupid bird that keeps running into the window. I don’t know what his deal is, but he did it again today. At least he’s not building a nest in the gutter anymore.”

“I can’t control the bird. I can’t control you either, for that matter,” Colette said with a chuckle.

Bea slouched and tore into her burger. “At least I don’t poop all over the window.”

That remark earned Bea a fry to the face. In response, she grabbed the two french fry boxes and spilled them together between them.

“Now you won’t know which ones are mine,” Bea said triumphantly.

“Eat them all if you want.”

“No, don’t encourage me! I’ll lose my, my--what’d you call it?”

“Your lithe figure,” Colette said blithely.

“Yeah, I’ll lose my lithe figure. Can’t have a trophy wife looking anything less.”

Colette’s frown softened. “Bea, you look wonderful.”

“Not for long, if you don’t help me with these fries.”

In no time at all, dinner was done. Bea offered to clean the dishes for once as Colette went to their lofted bedroom. Before she climbed into bed, Colette checked the weekly forecast to make sure it wouldn’t rain and opened the window. Though at the moment it was obscured by the thrum of cars and sirens from the city some miles away, she knew that when night came truly the sound of the ocean would float across the rolling hills between her and the coast and find her. It always found her.

Springs creaked behind her. She turned to find Bea already hogging the covers, not that they needed them. In the winter, blankets were a necessity. In the summer, it just felt nice to be beneath them with someone.

“What’s my schedule look like?” Colette asked once she was in bed.

“Uh--hang on.” Bea wiggled to the nightstand, taking more of the covers with her. “You have that rich dude--Winnerstein? Weinerstein? Whatever, I can’t read your handwriting. He’s tomorrow at nine. Then four more clients, then lunch, then five more clients.”

“Want to get lunch?”

“Nope,” Bea grinned, “I’m gonna sleep til noon.”

Colette sunk further into the bed. “You’re hopeless.”

“The operative term would be unemployed.”

“You’re telling me there’s an entire city out there that doesn’t have a single bar to bartend?”

“Nope, they’re just not hiring me to bartend them.” Bea’s smile fell a little. “Don’t get down, Colette. Summer’s a good time of year for this. Things’ll pick up.”

“I know.” The light outside grew dimmer still. Soon the only source would be the scented candle on Bea’s nightstand. Colette relished the low light. This time of night, everything had a bluish tinge to it. “I’m not worried about money, I’m worried about your sanity.”

“Well, good. You can worry about sanity and I’ll worry about money.”

They kissed softly as twilight gave way to night.

“That’s my little bookkeeper,” Colette cooed.

The candle winked out. A sound flitted across Colette’s ears--perhaps the sea, perhaps the rushing of an impending dream.

She fell asleep smiling.

)`'-.,_)`'-.,_)`'-.,_)`'-.,_)`'-.,_

Colette didn’t dream for nearly a week. When the ocean dream came again, it took her by surprise.

The day before, the bird Bea warned her about came back. They were in the middle of breakfast, talking about a one-night job Bea had found in the city bartending for a garden party in the evening, when something smacked into the nearby dining room window.

Bea swore and spilled her cereal. Colette just jumped.

“I told you!” Bea said. “I told you it would be back!”

They watched the bird fly in a lazy circle, then dive at the window again. It hit the glass headfirst and fell, unconscious, into the dirt outside.

“Jesus,” Bea said. “Should we help it?”

“It’s probably crazy.”

“Huh. Maybe it spent too much time in the sun as an egg and it got fried.”

Colette glanced at the scrambled eggs on her plate and sighed.

“Dumb bird. Look at the coloration,” Bea said, peering through the glass. “It’s brown with black spots. What kind of bird is that?”

“I’m a dentist, not an ornithologist.”

“Yeah, well you’re the best dentist in town. This bird is the worst ornithologist in history if he can’t even fly right.” Bea ignored Colette’s laughter and added, “Must be a loony bird--oh look, it’s getting up.”

The little bird shook its head, hopped around in a circle, and looked up at the two women eyeing it through the glass.

Bea tapped her finger against the floor. “Hit the window again, you little--” The bird rose up, opened its beak, and slammed into the window again. Bea yelped and stepped back. “Quit it!”

Through the glass, the two heard the bird utter a single note reply before it turned and flew off.

No one spoke for a moment. Colette stared through the windowpane. If the bird came again, it wouldn’t scare her this time. The sleek analogue clock in the formal room ticked softly. A dense flurry of car horns sounded somewhere far away. The stovetop went click as it cooled.

Bea let out a harsh chuckle. “I told you he’d come back.”

Colette finally looked away. “That was weird.”

“I think it can smell my cooking.”

“You’re eating cereal.”

Bea just laughed. “He pooped all over the window too. And would you look at the time, gods above and gods below, I need to get supplies for my job tonight. Who on earth could possibly have the next hour free to take care of that?” She slugged the remaining milk with a flourish. “I just don’t know.”

“You’re not doing this to me.” Colette tried to block Bea’s way out the door, but she was just too fast. “You can’t do this to me!”

Bea threw a smile over her shoulder as she hopped into her car. “I’m already in the car. I don’t know what else I can do.”

Colette tried to shout something else, but Bea slammed the door shut and flew away on the bleached pavement connecting their little suburb with the rest of the world. She watched until the car was out of sight, then sighed.

“I should divorce her,” she mumbled as she rummaged around for cleaning supplied. “That’ll teach her.”

The bird didn’t show up again that day. Colette went to work when she was finished cleaning up and heard nothing from the sea. Tell white plumes of smoke from distant factories crested over the coast like giant waves.

The ocean swelled and churned. No one seemed to notice.

Was it... getting closer?

Colette woke up from the dream with a quiet gasp in an empty bed. Bea had stayed at a friend’s apartment in the city to sleep off the hard night of bartending. She always did get invested in her jobs. The window was closed. It had rained the night before.

It was for the best, Colette thought. She felt a cold coming on.

)`'-.,_)`'-.,_)`'-.,_)`'-.,_)`'-.,_

The cold put a damper on her spirits, but it wouldn’t stop Bea from coming home that evening with half a crate of fancy wines and another set of crazy stories. This was their rhythm, as predictable as a tide. Colette on one side of the table, nursing hot tea and a meager portion of her own halfhearted cooking. Bea on the other side, leftover wine all but spilling from her cup, inhaling the lion’s share of the meal and exhaling some outrageous tale from the night before.

“You wouldn’t believe the kind of parties these yard club fogies can pull off. I mean, god, they were dancing on the bartop! One old dude, he had to be fifty years old, he took his polo off when the band played this one song and whipped it around like a stripper!”

Colette murmured and drank more tea.

“And then his wife came over, and I thought it would be the death of him. I thought he was done. She had this look like she was going to drag him off by his ear. But at the last second she breaks into song and starts dancing with him. Then, get this, she pulls out her purse and starts sticking dollar bills into his pants!” She paused to gulp some wine. “The old guy loved it. I got to keep all the bills he left behind, too.”

“And the wine.”

Bea smiled. “Yeah, and the wine. The club paid for it and no one stopped me when I packed it up. May the sun forever shine on the hearts of the drunk! They were so generous.”

Muffled rattling came from the storage room down the hall. A question formed in Colette’s head--washing machine or boiler failure?--but the harsh thump of blood in her head drowned it out. She looked up to find Bea with a strange look on her face.

“What?”

“Were you zoning out again?”

Colette shrugged. “This cold is killing me.”

“It’s fine. Don’t stress. I said, tell me about your day.”

“Oh. Well, I saw that rich client today for his follow-up. We did some surgery on him last week--”

“The rich whatshisname, yeah.”

“Right, that one. We did some serious corrections to his misaligned lower front teeth, and I think the surgery freaked him out.”

“How so?”

“Well, his teeth poked out before. Now they’re straight like they’re supposed to be, and he’s telling us we fixed them wrong. I couldn’t think of a kind way to tell him they look better now.”

“What a jerk.”

“He threatened to sue while I was examining him.”

“Really?”

“I almost sneezed in his mouth as he said it, too.”

Bea scrunched up her face and let out a long, “Eww.”

A smile broke through Colette’s cold features. “You’d be surprised how often it happens. The gauze masks help.”

“Oh my god, stop.”

“I think I feel one coming on right now.”

“Oh my god, stop!” Bea threw her hands up and wailed. Colette ran to the counter and grabbed a tissue. This just made Bea laugh even harder.

The bird picked an opportune moment to slam into the window again. Bea nearly fell out of her seat.

)`'-.,_)`'-.,_)`'-.,_)`'-.,_)`'-.,_

Colette slept with the window open until her cold cleared up. Every day she felt a little better, until one day she woke up and completely forgot she had ever been sick at all. That was how things went with her. Something came up and consumed her life until it went away, and like waking from an incomprehensible dream she would blink and forget it ever happened. Colds, bad work days, neighbors, exes--they all went away.

Suburban life treated Colette badly. The endless rows of houses that looked eerily identical to hers made her head spin sometimes. When she drove past them on her way to work, she could look out her window and swear she wasn’t going anywhere at all. Spinning, yet stationary. Always moving but never moving anywhere. Like the ocean.

She was at her desk in her home office that weekend, browsing through a website of exotic beachfront properties she could never afford, when a notification bell chimed from her phone. She could tell from the ring it was a social media alert. Without looking over at her phone, she pulled up her account on the desktop and took a look.

What she saw made her jam the power button on the computer tower. She stared at her reflection in the empty screen for a moment before standing up and walking outside. She did one complete lap of the house before stepping back inside and picking up her phone.

The same name she had seen on her desktop was now on her phone. She looked around, wishing the bird would come and smash the window to pieces so she could do something.

The name on the notification was Butch. It was an ugly name, and the picture next to it was no better. He had aged horribly since the last time Colette had seen him, with a patchy black beard stringing together locks of greasy hair with a matted clump of chest fuzz. He was as lopsided as he was hairy as he was horrible as he was magnifying.

When they were both in college, Colette had somehow dated him. A few years after they broke up, somehow, Colette started buying drugs from him. Ten years ago, she had flushed her baggie of party drugs and study pills down the toilet and broke all contact with him. Tossed him to the sea and watched the memories of him float away.

Why did it feel like she was the one without any solid footing, then?

She blocked him without replying to his message, whatever it was. The very thought of him was enough to put the rest of her day out of focus. It was like trying to look through a glass full of water. When one part of the picture stood still, the rest shifted.

She moved around the house in waves, cleaning and straightening and trying not to look outside too much. It was all shifting so strangely. Then Bea got home from some errand or other, and everything else shifted.

They didn’t talk about their days as they ate dinner. Bea had enough sense to notice something was off, and after they were finished she cleaned up the dishes like a real trooper and put on a movie she knew Colette would like.

They fell asleep in each others’ arms. When Colette woke up the next morning, she recalled rushing water moving closer over sand and creeping cold. The ladder was just an aftershock of the sickness coming back to ruin what was left of her weekend.

)`'-.,_)`'-.,_)`'-.,_)`'-.,_)`'-.,_

The next week was lonely for Colette. Someone from the garden party had recommended Bea to the right person, and offers to bartend upscale parties in nicer parts of the city came flooding in. They barely had time to kiss and say goodbye around lunchtime, if that. Colette thought more about Butch, and she kept reassuring herself that she had done the right thing. The more she thought it, the less the words sounded like words.

After three days of seeing Bea exclusively through video calls, Colette was all but ready to tackle her. Partly out of longing, but partly for validation. Winnerstein, Wintergreen, whatever his name was, kept sending her threatening letters. The computer felt booby trapped, the keys weighted with trip wires and pressure mines. The roads felt narrower, the cars wider. The horns louder. The news bleaker.

On the third day, she got a call from the local hospital while she was finishing up her lunch break at the office. An older nurse informed her that, no, everything was alright, it was just her wife, Bea--yes, she’s okay. Nothing to worry about. She was in a car accident this morning, and--well, about an hour ago, actually. That was when she came here. She’s doing very well, and I need to reiterate that there’s no cause for alarm. We just want to run a few tests, and since she’s in a medically-induced coma at the moment we need a spouse’s approval to--

Colette wasn’t sure whether to floor it straight to the hospital, damn the red lights and stop signs, or be extra careful and drive five under the speed limit.

When she made it to the hospital, she met the nurse who had called her. She led Colette to a room in the first floor of the ICU with lots of windows and staff that looked more at home in an eastern religious commune than a den of western medicine.

In a quiet room at the end of the hall was Bea, bandages on her head and legs, pain written on her face in the form of a subconscious grimace. One tube connected her arm to a saline drip.

“She looks dead,” Colette said coldly.

“Nothing of the sort,” the nurse replied. “We’ll run a few tests on her over the next hour to make sure she doesn’t have a concussion or any other internal injuries, then bring her out of the coma. She’s very lucky.”

The tests wound up taking three hours. With nothing else to do in the now empty room, Colette tried tuning into the hospital sounds and finding a rhythm, but it was all chaos all the time. Nothing popped out. She resorted to checking her phone every few minutes. When she ran out of apps to check, she thought back to Butch and his endless supply of uppers and downers.

That third and final hour alone in Bea’s hospital room was the first time in ten years her brain relaxed at the thought of stimulants. She felt disgusted, but then the nurses wheeled Bea’s sleeping form back in, and the thought was lost.

“No concussions or internal bleeding,” a different nurse than before announced, “but a fractured left tibia and some serious bruising. She’ll be awake in fifteen minutes. We’ll bring you the complete paperwork as soon as we have it.”

The staff cleared the room. An hour went by, and still Bea slept.

Slowly at first, then all at once, a wave of fatigue sapped the fear from Colette’s body. She put her head next to Bea’s leg and tried to think of something--anything to do to shake it. She had to power through. She had to be strong. But when she opened her eyes, all she saw was the bleach-colored bedsheets blurring into the bleach-colored walls. Somewhere beyond the hospital room, past the rolling gurneys and buzzing machines, the ocean beat on against the sand.

Colors danced behind her eyes. Always moving but never moving anywhere.

Colette closed her eyes, and it all went away.

)`'-.,_)`'-.,_)`'-.,_)`'-.,_)`'-.,_

Colette opened her eyes to find herself on the beach again. It was evening, like it always was in her dream. The sun was going down. The water seemed even closer still. As she waited for the ocean to finish its inevitable course, she laid back and ran her fingers through the sand.

Fifteen minutes passed. That was the first sign of trouble. Then her cell phone rang.

A string of curses burst from the receiver. Colette was glad she hadn’t put it to her ear.

“You dumb bitch,” she heard Bea say, “I should divorce you right now. I mean it. You little asshole. The nurses said you left. I just wanted to do something nice for you and you left me in the goddamn hospital by myself!”

As Bea continued to curse and scream, Colette looked to the western horizon. The sun touched the water and slid down slowly into the waves, flashing and flickering as it went.

When night finally fell, she put the phone to her ear and heard herself say, “It was too much to handle all at once. I’m sorry dear. I’m on my way back,” but her mind was elsewhere.

She found her car sitting idle in the parking lot. The keys were in her pocket. It was all so much like a dream. And yet...

Fear and shame shot through her like steam through pipes. This wasn’t a dream.

)`'-.,_)`'-.,_)`'-.,_)`'-.,_)`'-.,_

From then on, Colette couldn’t trust herself. The thought that she had drove to the beach and sat there for hours and couldn’t remember any of it cast a cloud of uncertainty over her. What else had she forgotten? What else was lost? When the fundamental trust anyone who interacts with the world has is shattered, all bets are off.

Bea’s situation complicated things. Insurance didn’t want to cover all the medical costs due to outstanding circumstances. When Colette pried for answers, she found that when the paramedics had pried Bea from the wreckage of her car, they thought she had already bled out and died. It turned out the red sticky stuff on her face was not blood but ketchup. The half-eaten bag of fast food on the passenger’s seat was just as damning. The firm claimed Bea was eating at the wheel when she lost control and rolled her car down the California highway.

“The rest of it was supposed to be for you,” Bea admitted. “Some asshole cut me off and I swerved too hard. I just lost control.”

Colette wanted to be mad, but losing control seemed to be something they both struggled with.

“It’s alright. You just have to focus on getting better, and we have to focus on getting things back on track.”

“Are you okay?” Bea asked. “I’m so sorry for doing this to you?”

Colette wanted to laugh, but she couldn’t muster up the energy for it. “It was an accident, right? It just happened.”

“I think you should get some sleep.”

“No.” The harshness in her own voice startled her. “I’m gonna call the insurance company again. Then I’ll go to sleep.”


“You better promise, or I’m gonna knock you out. Then you’ll have to sleep.”

“I promise.”

“Okay.”

Colette didn’t sleep for another twelve hours. When she finally did pass out next to Bea’s bedside in the wee small hours of the morning, insurance papers and case reports from work spread across her lap, she was transported again to the ocean.

The water was a little closer. Faint scents of antiseptic and sandalwood floated around her.

)`'-.,_)`'-.,_)`'-.,_)`'-.,_)`'-.,_

They let Bea out of the hospital a few days later. Colette spent some of her built-up vacation days and nursed Bea around until she was able to get around on crutches. The house felt dusty and unused, but they were home again.

Bea slept on the couch, her casted leg elevated with plush pillows. Colette didn’t sleep for nearly 50 hours. The thought of having another waking dream tore at the rational part of her brain screaming for sleep. She napped here and there. Five minutes. Ten. Fifteen. Jolt awake. Think about coffee. Think about drugs. Think about Butch and his awful drugs. Perhaps they could make her function again.

The hospital bill arrived on the same day as an official summons to court from one Mr. Harold Weinerstein, seeking malpractice reparations.

Colette sobbed over the papers in the living room as Bea looked on helplessly. “What’s his name? Weenerstain?”

“Whiner-stein. W-E-I-N-E-R, stein.”

“Weinerstein. What a prick.”

it didn’t matter what he was, Colette thought. With the amount of money he had, it wouldn’t matter how dazzled the judge would be by the miracle work she had done on his busted face. Money moved the court dates. The settlement would be oil on the floodwaters, waiting to ignite. They had just been handed a court summons of burning rags.

“Babe?”

Colette looked at Bea, who in turn looked at her.

“What is it?”

“You look like you’re about to die.”

“Don’t say that kind of thing,” Colette said, and collapsed over the coffee table.

The last thing she saw were papers flying across the room and Bea lunging for her only to trip over her crutches. The sound of her wife screaming in pain was drowned out by an omnipotent white noise, the sound of water rushing over itself in a tubular wave, stretching into forever.

Colette woke up on a beach at evening, ever closer to the waves, and immediately went for her cell phone. Sure enough, her dream had merged with real life. This time it wasn’t just an evening. It had been three days.

)`'-.,_)`'-.,_)`'-.,_)`'-.,_)`'-.,_

In the right frame of mind, legal work can actually be somewhat calming. Colette was not calm as she poured through her practice’s insurance policy covering malpractice. She was not calm as she read the large list of exceptions where the company would not rover malpractice lawsuits. She was not calm as she gulped down another energy drink.

The last one actually made her feel pretty good.

What did calm her down was the presence of Bea, and the delightful way she articulated exactly how miserable the cast and crutches made her. But those moments of serendipity consistently gave way to uncertainty. After her last dream episode, Colette had made Bea promise to not let her leave the house alone.

Was it insanity? This was the stuff of cartoons and sitcoms. Not the stuff of dentists living posh middle-class lives in California. There was hardly any time left to worry about her own mental state in between worrying about the practice getting sued and worrying about the hospital bills, but somehow she found time. Time enough to damn those insurance companies, too.

One evening, Bea had tried to make a convincing dinner for two, and wound up ordering pizza instead. As they ate, Colette said flatly, “I kinda miss drugs.”

Bea put down her slice. “What?”

“It seems like the last thing I should want right now, but in some way it makes sense to be doing drugs right now.”

“That’s stupid. You said you almost died the last time you used.”

“Yeah, I did.”

Bea tore into her pizza with merciless abandon. “So there you go. It’s stupid and you shouldn’t think about it.”

Colette closed her eyes. “You’re right.”

“Hey. Over here.”

Colette looked up.

“Don’t say that again.”

“Bea, I’m scared. What did I do when I was asleep? I was gone for three days. What did I do? What did I do?”

That was all on the tip of Colette’s tongue, but she held it back.

“Instead, she asked, did you hear from the bank about the insurance claims?”

“I’m working on it. They’re stubborn old shits, but we’ll get them. If nothing else, we can get a loan and pay off all the debts over time. We have options.”

They fell into silence for another few minutes.

“Colette?” Bea said.

“Yes?”

“I think you should give me your cell phone.”

“What do you mean?”

The words seemed to come out slower than they had before, and lower in pitch. “You’ve been talking to your old drug dealer, haven’t you.”

The mention of Butch made Colette clam up. Cold wind from nowhere made her hair stand up. “I haven’t.”

“That’s why you had those episodes. You were back on drugs.”

“That’s insane.”

“Admit it.”

“No. You’re wrong.”

“Admit it!”

Bea’s past thought came back to Nancy. She had plenty of options here, but all the doors seemed closed. More than closed--open in every direction forever. Doors everywhere. 360 degrees of openings and opportunities paralyzing Colette. She hated options. She wanted to be a dentist. She wanted something simple.

But this was no longer simple. The bills were piling up. Two more months and they would take the car and the house and everything not carried on their backs, and everything off their backs too for good measure.

And the dreams! Every time she dreamt she was by the ocean. Half the time the dreams were real, and she’d wake up quietly in the evening to find ehr phone ringing and Bea leaving sobbing messages over the machine begging her to come home, sick with worry and doubt and fear, asking all the time if this was somehow her fault. That was three days after that recent disappearance. What would happen after a week? Or two? Or three?

“Well?”

Everything was coming apart.

)`'-.,_)`'-.,_)`'-.,_)`'-.,_)`'-.,_

The worst day of Colette’s life come on the day one month after Bea’s accident, a few weeks before the official changing of the seasons and a few weeks before the schools started. Everyone was progressing. Bea was out of her cast. She and Colette talked less and less. One thought the other was using again. The other thought you’d have to be crazy to think that this was the result of just drugs, that there was something else far deeper going on. The malpractice case was driving them straight into the ground. The hospital wanted all its money yesterday and wouldn’t accept IOU’s. The windows at the Colette and Bea household her open once again. Life was putting weight on their broken bones.

Then Colette had a two-week fugue.

She awoke on a beach at evening, the soft colors turning a deep twilight purple on the horizon. The water was deep blue and crystal clear. She was so close now she could feel little rivulets of water leap onto her feet. In between the bands of orange sunlight skipping across the surface, she saw the flowing shapes of underwater plants.

Wait! Be patient! She wanted the sea to overwhelm her. The water rising up past her eyes, the sunlight bending and swaying, the air a distant memory, the life spent clinging to the sandy coast forgotten entirely. Now was the complete absence of time. Tomorrow was forever. Yesterday was ageless like the sea. Forever moving. Forever stationary. Forever.

Dreams usually didn’t contain phones,

There were over a dozen voicemails on it, each one from Bea, each one more desperate than the last. Somewhere around voicemail five, Bea had gotten it in her head that Colette had left her. The messages were angry, then hateful, then downright spiteful. Around message nine Bea had evened out and mostly just sobbed. She begged Colette to reconsider a choice she hadn’t even made, telling her that she would change whatever she wanted as long as she stayed.

The sun slipped away. Colette gave Bea a call.

“Is it really you?” Bea asked.

“Yes.”

Bea swore loudly. “You dumb bitch. I should divorce you on the goddamn spot. What gives you the right to just leave, huh? What kind of divine bullshit makes you think you can just leave me?”

“Bea?”

“You think you can just leave with all this going on? Do you know who’s coming to the house every day? Tax collectors. One from the court and one from the bank and more from I don’t know where.”

“Bea?”

“There are tax collectors here every other day, Colette. They don’t stop until you promise them more money. The insurance is falling through everywhere. The Weenerstain guy is siphoning all our cash away with that stupid case. We can’t do anything. We can’t--” Bea shrieked.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s the fucking bird again! Look, they said they were gonna take the cars. We’re three weeks away from losing the house.”

“What?”

“Did you hear me? They’re gonna take our house, Colette!”

“Bea.”

“What?!”

“I want to go swimming, Bea.”

Dead silence on the line.

“I’m gonna get a divorce.”

It seemed impossible that their bastion by the coast could ever fall into someone else’s hands. Colette hung up and dreamed for another week of deep blue water and faint sunlight.

)`'-.,_)`'-.,_)`'-.,_)`'-.,_)`'-.,_

She couldn’t tell what time it was, or if any of this was real. If seemed real enough. She wondered how the ocean felt. In her mind she was already passing the shallows, slipping the grip of countless stalks of seaweed, plunging deeper and deeper into the deep. She opened her eyes, but there was no sting. Tall beams of light folded and creased as they hit the surface far above her. She watched the sun move closer and closer to the waves, tilting the light that pierced the water, until it touched the sea. Darkness rose from below like sleep. The colors faded, first blue and then green.

Then black.
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#1 · 1
· · >>Cassius
I feel like this story is meant to be a metaphor for something, but damned if I can tell what. Maybe I'm just not poetical enough to understand it, but in my reading this came across as a collection of only vaguely interlinked scenes and events.

I understand that it is an unreliable narrator story so we are supposed to read between the lines, and again, perhaps I just lack the insight to understand what was meant to be implied. But whatever I was supposed to get out of his story I didn't get it.
#2 ·
· · >>Cassius
I agree with Jaxie ^^^

I really can't tell what the huge metaphor is about. My best guess is that she is using drugs again but the bird hitting the window doesn't fit in there??

I do like the story though, it's well written but very vague.
#3 · 1
· · >>Anon Y Mous >>Not_A_Hat
I'm going to review this at a later date, but I just briefly wanted to interject here.

>>GaPJaxie
>>Anon Y Mous

Come on guys. I get that this is a litfic, and the manner of presentation isn't exactly the most intuitive (I had troubles figuring out what the story was about for about 2000 words into it), but you're treating it like it's a puzzle. It's not. Some of the artistry I find difficult to pin down (all the ocean dream symbolism, why it's ASCII, what Bea is suddenly amazingly vulgar and angry in certain scenes, why Harvey Weinstein is a minor antagonist in this story, why perspective shifts in some scenes, etc.), but it's not like the main point is buried under a rock or something.

The whole story is about drug abuse, specifically being driven to it. The wave is both a visual representation of the cyclical ups and downs of drug use as well as a narrative indicator of when Colette is "tripping." The bird is a representation of Colette, something that's compelled to hurt itself, but never learns any better.

I usually don't critique other reviewers on their level of attentiveness, but I feel you're being very uncharitable with your read of this story, and I feel bad for the author (WHO ISN'T ME BY THE WAY, I SEE YOU TRYING TO GUESS ME FOR THIS ONE. IT WASN'T ME I SWEAR) because the story in my opinion isn't nearly as obtuse are you're making it out to be.
#4 ·
·
>>Cassius
That makes a bit more sense.

The Weinstein thing popped into my mind when reading this but my brain went "hur der its a coincidence" If this story would have been about sexual abuse I would have been able to put two and two together but she mentions drugs, which weren't a part in the scandal with Weinstein. There was the Weinstein guy who abused his power- a key part in the real life scandal. And there was her drug dealer- who might be part of real life??

I don't know, blame my 11:00 brain processing this.
#5 ·
· · >>Cassius
This is a good story. Not easy to read, and read into, but good nevertheless.

I like the play between the two protagonists and the way they interact. This is actually quite nice.

The metaphoric part (sea, bird?) can be subject to many interpretations, which is good and bad. Good, because it gives matter to chew our cud on. Bad, because it makes the story unnecessarily obtuse. What exactly does the bird represent? Why does it shit over the window? What is the exact meaning of the sea?

I think the decision to leave out the scene in which the girl phones to her old dealer introduces an artificial confusion which does not add anything to the story. You bet the reader is clever enough to interpolate/recreate the missing parts, which is good. However, the fact that no drug-related stuff (outside the guy) is mentioned I think perplexes more the reader than it entices it (we sort of get this blank is intentional and created by drug use, but we’re never 100% sure).

The pile-up of mishaps might be a little contrived.

At the end, I’m left a bit wondering though. What exactly is the takeaway? Girl has a nice life, bumps into a series of mishaps, gets back into drugs and dies. Cassius tells me it’s a character piece, which it certainly is, but I’m still left unsatisfied. I would’ve like more meat to it. I’m left thinking there is a big box (the metaphorical, poetic aspect of it) but actually only a tiny mote in it (the story itself).

Which is sort of a bummer to me.
#6 · 1
· · >>Cassius
Seeing the title, I was hoping for a massive ASCII picture, like the kind you used to see in game walkthroughs on GameFAQs. I'm tremendously disappointed. Jenkins, I need an ASCII Link Head on my desk, stat!

I liked this story! Bea and Colette are funny together, and I like how the stakes keep rising. The imagery of the beach is vivid and alluring. There's also something to be said for how confusing this is—but the good kind of confusing! Just like Colette, it didn't take long for me to lose track of what was a dream, and what was reality. That works here.

Bea’s past thought came back to Nancy.

Who's Nancy?

She’s doing very well, and I need to reiterate that there’s no cause for alarm. We just want to run a few tests, and since she’s in a medically-induced coma

"She's fine" and "We had to put her into a coma" are two statements that don't match up. That said, I'm also not a doctor.

I'm still not clear on everything—what's with the bird, for instance? And Harold Weinerstein... that name sounds quite familiar.

In all, pretty good. Just a few—

Oh, my ASCII Link Head is here!

_______
..-'` ````---.
.' ___ .'````.'SS'.
/ ..-SS####'. /SSHH##'.
| .'SSSHHHH##|/#/#HH#H####'.
/ .'SSHHHHH####/||#/: \SHH#####\
/ /SSHHHHH#####/!||;`___|SSHH###\
-..__ /SSSHHH######. \SSSHH###\
`.'-.''--._SHHH#####.' '.SH####/
'. ``'- '/SH####`/_ `|H##/
| '. /SSHH###|`'==. .=='/\H|
| `'-.|SHHHH##/\__\/ /\//|~|/
| |S#|/HHH##/ |`` |
| \H' |H#.'` \ |
| ''`| - /
| /H\ .---- /
| |H#/'. ` /
| \| | '.. /
| /| ''..______.'
\ //\__ _..-. |
\ || ```` \ |_
\ _.-| \| |_
_\_.-' `'''''-. | `--.
''`` \ `''-; \ /
\ .-'| ````.' -
| .' `--'''''-.. |/
| .' \|
|.'



...um.
#7 · 3
·
Reading through this the first time, I had trouble keeping track of who was saying what. I thought Bea was the dentist and Colette was the trophy wife. There is a fair amount of naked dialogue lines in this story that just go on for too long without reestablishing who is speaking that it becomes a bit of a chore to read. Or, the dialogue is interrupted by the narrative, and the dialogue continues without telling the reader who starts the conversation. You have to stop, go back, figure out who had the first line, and then trek your way back to where you were originally before you got lost.

The lack of speech and actions tags become a further problem when it comes to understanding Bea and differentiating her from Colette. When they're speaking, it's hard to tell the two apart. For a character piece involving primarily only two characters, Bea's personality is a bit hard to pin down. Colette we understand because he have her inner narrative to go off of, but Bea is fairly nondescript in how she emotes aside from some brief hints of flavor (she's a party girl, concerned with her appearance, angry[?]).

The presentation of information is a bit unintuitive. Some important information that should be shown instead of told (e.g. Harvey Weinstein's Threatening E-mails, Colette Missing Bea for Days, the call from the hospital, etc) really feels like abridged versions of what should be entire scenes that are skipped over. Some lines are hard to make sense of given their context (who the hell is Nancy?). Elements of the metaphors don't match all cases of the situation.

Why is Harvey Weinstein in this story?

Why is Harvey Weinstein in this story?

Why is Harvey Weinstein in this story?

Why is Harvey Weinstein in this story?

Why is Harvey Weinstein in this story?

Why is Harvey Weinstein in this story?

Why is Harvey Weinstein in this story?

I've typed this out manually seven times now. I did not use CTRL-C + CTRL-V. This is how serious I am about this question. I have no clue why you decided to include a Harvey Weinstein stand-in for this story, but it is horribly distracting to the overall piece and really has no business being there.

For the record, I want to note that I agree with >>Dubs_Rewatcher, and certainly being in a medically induced coma is certainly a cause for fucking alarm. It is not a procedure that is undergone lightly, and it's usually performed to protect people who are in imminent danger of suffering permanent brain damage. If I was Colette in this situation, I would sue the hell out of the hospital.

Speaking of, as a guy who comes from a family of tort litigators, the sub-plot involving Not-Harvey Weinstein, along with the car accident subplot, is pretty patently ridiculous even with a generous benefit of the doubt. I get the impression you don't really know that much about the ins and outs of how insurance works.

Okay, first, let's get the easier one out of the way: the car accident. Your car insurance is not your medical insurance. For the purposes of your medical insurance, it doesn't matter what degree you are personally culpable for the damage inflicted to your body or if you were at fault for the accident. This has nothing to do with your medical coverage your medical insurance provides when you go to the hospital. Whether or not Bea was eating at the wheel has absolutely jack of shit to do with the amount of coverage her medical will provide.

Granted, it could affect whether or not her car insurance fronts the bill for the accident. If you're in a no-fault state like I am, it wouldn't matter, each driver would collect from their own insurer regardless of who caused the accident. However, California is an at-fault state, so it is entirely possible that Bea's insurance premium would see a substantial hike.

But nothing more than that.

Given that Colette appears to be some sort of dental surgeon, whose median salary is around $160,000, and a particularly good one that services high profile clientele, she could easily be making over $200,000 dollars, it's fairly strange that she wouldn't have an outstanding insurance policies for both vehicle and medical that Bea would be covered under. The narrative says she's "middle class", but I find that hard to believe, assuming Bea makes any kind of wage (which again, she appears to given the fact she tends bar for higher class clientes, like Colette).

Given that knowledge, let's get into the more complicated issue of the Not-Weinstein subplot, which with some mental gymnastics, can appear to be more plausible, but really wouldn't happen in the way the story describes, nor would it really be anything resembling a death blow to Colette.

Let's grant a series of very generous assumptions to the author:

-Not-Weinstein's lawsuit can and will go to court, simply because he has the resources and energy to dress up what is essentially a completely frivolous lawsuit.

-Colette's counsel cannot because of this file to dismiss with prejudice or ask the judge for summary judgement

-For whatever reason, Colette's malpractice insurance wouldn't pay for any of her attorney's fees or the damages that Weinstein is incurring (completely implausible, but let's just grant that assumption for now).

-Colette's counsel is so incompetent that he will somehow lose this case or for whatever reason since Colette's lawyer is not mentioned, she has done the extremely stupid move of trying to represent herself.

Not-Weinstein has damages that are so small that the amount of money Colette would end up owing would probably not even be 10 grand. Not-Weinstein is upset over the aesthetics of his teeth. In terms of punitive damages, that's jack shit.

Let's snap back to reality and abandon all of those very generous assumptions. In a world where malpractice insurance exists and actually does something, Not-Weinstein's plan could be to bully the insurer to get money out of them via a settlement (which, although far-fetched, could work), but it certainly wouldn't affect Colette in the manner the story suggests it would. The insurance would pay her for attorney's fees and potential damages, and she's probably going to see a spike in her premium, which would be an inconvenience since malpractice insurance can get up to 34,000 a year, but she certainly wouldn't be bleeding money through attorney's fees, because she wouldn't be paying them herself.

The problem with this is, Not-Weinstein is trying to bully an insurance company at this point, and it's highly likely that he would get swept in court, beaten down with having to shell out for the defense's attorney's fees, and further humiliated with a fines related to frivolous litigation—ironically awarding Colette damages. See the thing about people like the real life Weinstein and Donald Trump is that often don't actually go to trial or file an actual lawsuit. They'll hoop and holler and threaten and cajole, but when it comes right down to it, they usually won't file over stupid bullshit like this. Because it costs a ton of money to actually start a lawsuit as a plaintiff, and you risk losing even more.

Now, let's grant a different set of assumptions. Just for the fun of things, let's assume that Colette actually did fuck up Not-Weinstein's mouth, causing him substantial pain, reduced ability to eat and conduct his everyday activities, and essentially turned his gum-line into a frankenstein experiment, due to massive negligence in her standard of care.

In a realistic scenario, this would have a decent affect on Colette's livelihood. Her malpractice insurance still would certainly cover this. That's what it's there for. But her premium is gonna blow up. Her practice might fire her. Her professional reputation is gonna be stained, and she might have a hard time finding work. But even then, she's not gonna have her house repossessed or lose her car or anything crazy like that.

Additionally the timeline is hyper accelerated. What happens in a month would probably take at least the better half of a year, if not longer. But anyways.

Minutia about the plot aside, this story is has a mystery to it:

Is Colette on drugs or is she really have fugues like Walter White? Has the stress caused her to go crazy, or is she back on the horse?

It's drugs. She's on drugs. The oceans is drugs. You're drugs. We're all drugs. Question: Drugs? Answer: Drugs. The metaphor? Drugs.

This is a story about being beat down by society and how we seek to escape through drugs and self-harm, despite the fact we know that it'll hurt us. Colette's story is a spiral of self-destruction. Much like the bird runs itself into the window everyday and never learning, Colette is doomed to a cycle of getting high (i.e. doing something that hurts her despite the fact she knows it will) until she dies. The end. Very uplifting.

>>Monokeras once told me that the idea that the bird is a metaphor for Colette doesn't make any sense because she doesn't shit on the window like the bird. I think for the purposes of making this metaphor clearer, you're going to have to add a scene where Colette shits on the window, because obviously the symbolism is too dense for people to recognize the parallelism. This is sarcasm by the way if you can't tell, please don't actually add a scene involving Colette shitting on the window.

I admire this story for what's its trying to do. I like depressing stories about failure and people failing and not succeeding, which is failure or being unable to overcome obstacles, which is also failure. The issues with the presentation and implausibility of some of the finer details, I thought this was generally a decent character study. Some things, like who the fuck is Nancy, or some actions like, why the fuck is Bea so angry in this scene, don't realize crystallize very well to the reader, making it seem more confusing than it already is, but I can back the overall shape the story ended up in.

3rd place on my slate. Bronze medal. Woohoo. Break out the fucking kazoos, because you are a winner my friend.
#8 ·
·
needs more ASCII.

for an opening hook, it seems like slice-of-life intensifies. I guess it's okay. It doesn't do anything to offend or bore me, but it doesn't quite pop in my mind either.

If I'm reading the clues correctly, I would say this actually needs a little more scenery. Find a unique way to describe the beach's waves, just enough emphasis, and it'll be stuck in the back of my mind as I read on. Then it'll resonate whenever you need to bring it back up as a symbolic metaphor (of whatever it is). I know that Colette likes the waves and dreams about them, because she says so, but let the audience feel a little bit of that attraction too and they'll be pulled into her world.
#9 ·
· · >>PaulAsaran
It's all very pretty, but your MC has very little agency here.

I guess it's kinda a tragedy? It didn't really do much for me though, because despite all the sound and fury, I don't think it's really about anything, thematically. 'Collete goes insane under pressure and commits suicide', the end. She makes maybe one active decision in the whole thing - deciding to buy fast food - and then just sort of slowly crumples under the pressures of life.

Perhaps it works better as a horror story, actually. Horror is one of the few genres where I think lack of agency can work really well, and there's enough mood elements that I did feel some emotions while reading this; it gave a kinda claustrophobic feeling, and the end was sort of a relief from that. I don't think it really goes deep enough for horror, though. Still, I like it better as mood piece than a narrative, although it's not good enough as a mood piece to surpass the narrative stories on my slate.

Part of what's going on, perhaps, is my frustration with the seemingly thematic elements; the bird and the sea-dreams/fugue keep coming back, but they never seem to actually mean anything to the characters. They're just sort of there. Litfic lovers will probably really enjoy this. I... don't.

EDIT: I've now read the comments. (I usually don't, so I can give an uncolored reaction.) I can see how >>Cassius would zero in on this being about drugs, but I don't see any indication in the story that Collette is actually taking any, or anything she does to parallel it. Sure, she considers it a lot, but I'm not seeing evidence that the fugues are caused by drugs that would give her unreliable narrator status.

Taking drugs requires a decision, after all. Even if this was totally metaphorical, I'd expect to see her making decisions which parallel that, which would then cause her fugues/suicide. There's no fugue/not fugue conflict to parallel the drug/not drug conflict. She explicitly rejects drugs; she never even tries to reject the fugues/dreams. Unless it's about being drugged, which just sort of happens to you. Anyway, I can't buy into the metaphor.

Well the characters are great, and the prose is really solid. This definitely deserved to final, but it doesn't have enough actual substance for me to really get behind it.
#10 ·
·
For once, I went ahead and read some of the other reviews before writing this. Normally I don't like letting my opinion be influenced by what others think, but I wanted it for this one.

The biggest debate I've seen so far is the presence of Weinstein. After some thought, I think the name is purely convenience. Nobody likes Weinstein, so he's an easy target for ridicule and loathing in a story where a big wig rich guy is needed to take on a villain's role. It's not any deeper than that. His presence isn't about him at all, it's just a means of introducing the lawsuit. And why is the lawsuit there? To provide a metaphor for how drug use destroys financially, much in the way Bea's accident may represent how drug use destroys one's health.

As to the query regarding "why the heck do we keep going back to the bird shitting on the window," that's a clue to what specific drug she's using, and how. First off, what color is bird shit? Colette is on heroine, and she's been snorting it directly from the windowsill. That's my interpretation, anyway.

Now, this all assumes that the story is about drug abuse. As >>Not_A_Hat notes, that may not actually be the case. The drug dealer and the argument could very well be red herrings. Most people who do drugs are aware of the fact they are doing drugs, after all. I'm tempted to think there's something deeper going on, even as I acknowledge the most obvious possibility. But to be honest, I was just waiting for an ending scene to announce that Colette had ended up dead due to a previously undetected brain tumor (promptly making Bea feel like crap for accusing her wife of something she wasn't doing, much like the reader).

...I suppose it could also be a metaphor for West Coast society in general. After all, according to Colette the dreams didn't even start until she got to the West Coast, and the drug problem apparently started before that time. Although it is interesting to note that Colette gave up drugs at the same time that she and Bea moved to the coast. Coincidence? Regardless, it seems that the real problem began ten years ago, when she quit drugs and when they moved to the coast. Ten years. That's a long, slow build up for it to just be drugs.

I like the story and the mystery it evokes. I think it lends itself well to a forum such as this, allowing everyone to debate what it is about. But as a story – and one entered into a contest, no less – I don't think it holds a lot of appeal. It got into the finals because it is well-conceived and written, but I think the niche appeal will limit its prospects from here on out.

Regardless, I am impressed.
#11 ·
·
tl;dr: An intriguing bit of character based drama that stumbles over some facts that really distract me from the story.

So this was the story this round that really left me wondering "how do I feel about this story?" And I'm still not sure. There is some really good stuff here, with a generally high prose quality and some legitimately fun interactions between Bea and Colette. I can see where you're trying to do character drama, but the sense of progression throughout the story is rather weak and we are just sort of ferried along. Which might be part of the point, but I feel in comparison to something like Foxes Have Holes, the sweep is much softer.

Cassius brought up the technical plot errors, and I have to agree with them. They were hugely distracting and, given they formed the basis for a lot of the later action, it is really, really unfortunate that I have trouble suspending disbelief for them. To reiterate though:

1. Everything I know of medically induced comas says, in fact, that they are rather big deals.
2. Insurance on the whole doesn't work that way.
3. I'm pretty sure dragging out legal stuff is actually more a danger to the plantiff than the defendant.
4. You would figure out the name of someone destroying your life with a lawsuit.

And yeah, the Harvey Winstein thing is... really distracting and I'm not really sure what the point is. It seems to be a joke, but it isn't particularly funny, and if there is some deeper meaning to it, I don't have the patience to ferret it out. And the fact that it repeats several times is fairly tedious.

Bea's dumb bitch commentary is also... very out of place? Setting aside the fact that media has made it so I have a hard time separating that expression from abusive spouses, she is... amazingly aggressive out of nowhere, particularly at the end of the story where she -should- know that Colette is clearly having a mental break. It is possible that this is all about the breakdown of drugs and insanity and such in relationships, but we really don't get to see the collapse of their relationship like we do in something like, say, the Drowning Girl, which leaves me sort of unsure what to do with it.

I dunno, even recapping my thoughts on this story I'm still kinda unsure what I feel about it. There was definitely a lot of good, but there was also a lot of really problematic stuff. My winner for hardest story this round to rank.