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Writer Notes
This is something I've been playing with for a while. I thought I would try it out here, see what people thought about it. Go easy on me.
Listen to the Reader
Single White Light
By: willoughby
The eldest of the four Overton children, nine-year-old Anna, a
pale thing with straight black hair and constant pink
barrette, had begun to feel uneasy around her mother: ever
since her father, a railway ballast worker, was killed in a
job accident several months earlier, her mother had been
acting strangely. On some days, for instance, Mrs. Overton
remained uncharacteristically quiet, and merely pointed a
finger or waved a hand at her children to come and eat their
supper, say, or to go upstairs and get into their beds. On
other days she made the children sit on the couch while she
paced the living room floor and talked to them at great length
about Jesus and God and the "cruel, terrible world"; much the
same as the preacher did at church, thought Anna, all the
while she and her sisters shifted and fidgeted much same as
they did at church.
This past week Anna noticed her mother setting daily
plates of breakfast for her father; then all day long at
school she wondered what would happen to these plates of food.
Were they thrown away? Did her mother finish them? On
returning home each afternoon, there was never anything
telling in the garbage cans outside; neither did the kitchen
bin give anything away; the plates were always cleaned and put
back in the cabinets.
And then a few nights ago, while she lie awake in her bed,
Anna heard her mother open the back door and greet her father
home from work just as she had always done before. And while
the nightly sound of her father's heavy foot steps
through the back vestibule had been one for which Anna had
routinely stayed awake before turning over and falling asleep,
comforted and assured, now her mother's gladdened voice
speaking into what Anna could only imagine was empty darkness,
filled her with pins. Even Anna's younger sisters, Mary
who was six and Jill who was five, had started crawling into
bed with Anna and crying themselves to sleep, confused between
missing their father and fearing that his ghost was wandering
the house. Sometimes Anna looked across the room at little
Bernard, there asleep on his cot, seeking a solace she often
felt in envying him: he was just a toddler and toddlers
didn't know anything about anything.
Comments
Poll Results
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Is It Interesting? 1 Vote(s)
70%
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Are the sentences smooth? 1 Vote(s)
80%
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Is the narrative voice appropriate? 1 Vote(s)
100%
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Are the word choices good? 1 Vote(s)
80%
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Is the dialogue believable (if any)? 1 Vote(s)
90%
Founded by Steve & Judy
Well, here's the first part.