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By andrewbalerdi
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14 March 2007 |
Please read and make of it what you will. A MAN
Here is a man under the half moon. The trees are tall and well furred; the light is little. In his left hand, sometimes swinging at his side and sometimes held lightly poised over his heart, he toys with a gold cross on a chain. After a quarter mile of dark road he passes a large building of some hard to determine kind. In a ground floor wing, one room is brightly lit; near the window sits a woman with glossy hair, bent to some papers. The man admires the profile the hair, the air of industriousness. He likes people who work hard. He walks on dismissing any notion of rapping on her window or door and chatting with the woman. It must be frightening to be a woman alone in a building at night, when the building itself is alone in the countryside nothing half a mile around except trees and a man with a cross in his hand and the young deer he has seen dart into bushes a few minutes back. She would be scared if I knocked he thought, and walked on.
Now it may be that the man had drawn abreast of the window the woman had seen him coming, had looked out casually from a darkened window in another room and seen this man stepping intermittently in the moonlit road. It may be that the gleam of metal in his hand seemed to her the gleam of moon on dagger. It may be she longed for this shadowy assassin to come destroy her, to rescue her from her hard work or loneliness or her glossy hair. It may be that she posed at the lit window to attract his attention, and long after he passed she still hoped that he may be crouched and lurking between the azaleas and rhododendrons. Perhaps ten minutes later she bravely desperately stepped out of the unbolted door and stood on the lawn and saw no one but the same deer under the hot summer fruit trees. Or not the same: who can tall one animal from another?
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I Liked This A Lot
Written by stevetroster (1588 comments posted) 14th March 2007 | It was full of mystery, and I wanted to know why the man was wandering about in the dark clutching a cross, and why the woman was so miserable that she wanted to die? But then if I knew the answers it would destroy the mystery.
I liked it so much that I am going to make a few suggestions in the hope that you will work on it some more and make me like it even more.
There are a few punctuation problems (which hopefully you will notice if you read it back) and there are also some quite strange passages. As follows:
(a large building of some hard to determine kind) either lose this completely as it reads poorly, or go with something along the lines of 'A brightly lit window, whilst the building itself is lost to the darkness'
(bent to some papers - He likes people who work hard) is that all it takes to work hard? I worked extremely hard on my Sunday Telegraph!
(nothing half a mile around) nothing (for) half - or - nothing for miles.
(Now it may be that (had?) the man (had) drawn abreast of the window
(the window the woman had seen him) that the woman had seen- or -that the woman would have seen?
(she bravely desperately stepped) missing punctuation? or missing word?
I look forward to reading this again when it's polished
Best wishes
Estee |
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