The Demolitionists

Rose's picture
Submitted by Rose on Thu, 02/21/2013 - 19:38

He passed every day on his skateboard.
He passed the suburban cookie cutter houses, passed the perfectly trimmed grass and the advertisements for chain stores, passed the street signs named after nature that never existed, passed the boxes stacked in the yard like a brick and mortar defense.
He stared at all our familiar objects strewn across the lawn as we tried to make a house a home.
He came like a regular deviation in the long weeks I spent in my room.

I was new and I didn’t have friends. I had nowhere to go and no way to get there. I sat in my room and traded pastimes for purpose.
Draw, write self-indulgent poetry, listen to music, eat, sleep, die.
I stared at him as he passed. I drew pictures of him on old receipts. Back then I was always falling in love with people I’d never met and places I’d never been.

Comments

SaraNordgren

02/25/2013 - 17:16

Wish I could vote again. "....on old receipts." That's such a thoughtful touch.

Cybil Fierst

02/23/2013 - 19:06

Rose, your opening describes me and my state of mind for a period of time when I was fifteen. The metaphorical "die" struck me the hardest. You've expressed it in a way that is beautiful and more fulfilling than my own memories. I suppose that is the potential power that written words have, and the reason why we write. Thank you for sharing this.

Rose's picture

Rose

02/23/2013 - 19:38

Yay, thanks. I was really trying to capture that classic teenage angst, which I may or may not have actually gotten over yet...

Myles's picture

Myles

02/23/2013 - 16:07

Very cool. Loved it. But there didn't seem to be any clue about the title, so I'm intrigued. Why is it called The Demolitionists?

Rose's picture

Rose

02/23/2013 - 17:20

Thanks
As for the title, I won't go into detail because I've already changed a lot in the drafts and I'm liable to change a lot more before I'm done, but it's the name of an organization, and, literally most of the characters will have demolished a lot of stuff by the end of the story.
I'm thinking of changing it to The Devolutionists though because I like the connotations.

SAL's picture

SAL

02/23/2013 - 14:14

Rose,

It seems everyone has their own favorite line from your opening. Mine was "I had nowhere to go and no way to get there."

Your words took me into a deep state of empathy with the protagonist. You have to have great skill to do that with just 150 words.

- Salvador

zachnichols

02/22/2013 - 20:30

Rose,

I enjoyed your opening so much that I just read it ten times. This sentence - "He came like a regular deviation in the long weeks I spent in my room." - really got to me : )

I'd like to suggest to you take out "Back then I didn’t know what love was", and the last sentence. I felt that these two sentences were not in tune with the rest of the opening.

Rose's picture

Rose

02/23/2013 - 08:07

I'm glad you like it and thanks for the suggestions. I took out the "back then I didn't know what love was" sentence, and I think I worked out how to keep the flow without it.
I also took out the last sentence. It's still in the full story, but with the way it was cut, that sentence was hanging and it was kind of weak on its own. It really needed the full thought so I just cut it out of the excerpt here.

SaraNordgren

02/22/2013 - 18:48

Rose,

Your prose is so lovely that it took my breath away. I loved every word, every melancholic sentence.

trudy terrel

02/22/2013 - 15:04

omg! this was so good that i had to share it on fb. it lifted me up and broke my heart at the same time and i can't explain exactly why i felt that way.

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