Light and Dark - Micro Story

[scificafe]

Something I wrote whilst in a sombre mood. It worked well to purge the darkness from my soul.


LIGHT AND DARK
By Andy Severn

Golden light burned the air through curtains gently parted by the warm breeze. Now still, the thick pink material held the bedroom in a dark gloom lit only by the shaft of light piercing the space and splashing against the creamy white wall opposite.

Julia slid from the darkness like a ghost, her white nightdress bursting into brilliant fire as it came into contact with the powerful stream of sunlight.
Turning slowly, she watched as the folds and billows of her gown flared and then sank back into shadow.

She stopped and let the light wash across her outstretched arm, fingers projecting tapered shards of darkness into the beam.

Dust motes winked and eddied like a rich soup of plankton in some exotic sea, spiralling and swirling as her arm began to sway gently.

Then, as she fell silently to the floor below the window, the fire in her gown was gutted like Julia's own life.
Two, three, four little pink pills danced briefly in the patch of sunlight on the floor by the wall before they too became still.

 

[SevenWritez]

Maybe it's just me, but it seems to me that you're trying too hard to paint a picture with over-descriptive details. "She stopped and let the light wash across her outstretched arm, fingers projecting tapered shards of darkness into the beam," followed by the nightgown description just seemed forced. I know it's a short little tale, but that's just my judgment, and I'm only one person, so yea. Other than that, good job.

 

[WriterJohnB]

I also felt it was a bit overdone. And the breeze is parting the curtains yet they are still? It jarred, as did "gutted" - maybe extinguished. It's good writing but too much symbolism for the short piece. IMHO

Take care,

JohnB

 

[GreenKnight]

I like some of those images a lot, like the plankton dust and the shards of darkness in the sunbeam. The prose is a touch on the purple side and it occurred to me there's a way you might improve that quite simply...

I was bothered by the style of description: who's describing this? Why do they use this poetic language? Maybe if you had this story told by the point of view of an unseen narrator, it might lend the language more credibility. Someone who witnesses this suicide but, for whatever reason, does not (or cannot) intervene. I wonder if making it someone else's voice might help it seem less 'writery'. E.g. 'I saw Julia slide from the darkness like a ghost.'

I've not explained myself very well, I fear... But it might be worth trying as an exercise.

 

[scificafe]

Thanks for the comments...

Thanks for the comments so far.
Yes, I deliberately over-described this one. I wanted to luxuriate in the wordiness to create a kind of languid atmosphere that almost comes across as erotic at the beginning, to try to create a voyeristic guilt in the reader when at the end they discover that all the time she's killing herself.
And so, there is no observer, it's the reader looking through the God's eye view of the author.

But hey, what an interesting twist if I DID give it an observer - her cat enjoying the warmth of the afternoon on the bed looking on with disinterest, only later to find that it's shut in the room now. Or is that a little POE?

 

[GreenKnight]

Perhaps not a cat

I just felt it needed a human observer to inject some emotion. Because the character kills herself we are left with no point of view, save the God's Eye View (which I've never much liked... it feels too inhuman). This narrative seems like the sort of thing an estranged, now dispassionate ex-lover might observe. For some reason I imagined a man in the room, in a wheelchair perhaps; a poet or an artist, making of his ex-lover's death one final work of art.

And yes, he might find that he is now locked in.

 

[ValkyrieRaven88]

I have to agree. Even the point of view of something like an angel--you know, non-human force--would make it better. Not that it's bad. It's pretty good.