FAQ: How Long Are You Supposed To Wait?

These questions are about the short story “How Long Are You Supposed To Wait?”, and definitely contains spoilers which, once seen, cannot be unseen.  For the actual short story itself, please go here.

*CONTAINS SPOILERS!*

 

This one was another one of those ten stories you wrote in ten days for the Swinburne Microfiction Challenge in 2017, right?

Yeah.  Although if I’m perfectly honest, I already had the idea for this story before I ever entered the challenge.  I make notes on my phone whenever I have an idea for a story, and this one said something like “person trapped under boulder, has to saw off own leg with pocket-knife to escape, moments before person gets rescued by large group of fit and friendly backpackers who could easily have just moved the boulder”.  It was just a twist on that “person has to saw off limb to escape” trope, something that I thought was simultaneously hilarious and brutally horrible.

What was the prompt-word?

“Lost”.  It reminded me of that idea, and so I went for it.

So what’s the appeal of making someone do something horrible for, in hindsight, no good reason?

I think it’s rooted in my own inability to ever make a proper decision.  I think, if I was in that situation, I’d always be thinking “hang on, don’t be too hasty, there might be another way out of this”, and then just end up dying of hunger and thirst or whatever.  I don’t think I’d ever be certain enough that sawing off my own leg with a pocket knife would be the right course of action.  I find it hard enough to choose something off a dinner menu.

Is this symptomatic of a bigger issue, Mr Blackwell?

I really don’t know.  It might be.  I mean, when my delightful life-partner asks me something like “would you like a cup of tea” out of the blue, I’m thrown into paroxysms of indecision.  I’m like, do I want a cup of tea?  How much desire is want?  I was fine without tea moments before, so clearly I didn’t want a cup of tea seconds ago, did things really change so drastically in the last few seconds that now I do?  I mean, a cup of tea might be nice, but do I want one?  How do I tell?  Is it based on thirst levels, or pure flavour, or just the warmth of the cup in my hands?  If she hadn’t’ve asked, I wouldn’t’ve got up and made one myself just then, so does that mean I don’t actually want a cup of tea?  Or that I do want one now?  How did things change so fast from not wanting to wanting, just based entirely on someone else making a cup of tea for themselves?  Am I really that much of a herd animal that I need to have whatever someone else is drinking?  Is that a healthy way to be?  What if she’d asked me if I want a cup of something else?  Do I really crave beverages at all, or am I just craving inclusion in a social act?  Is it about the tea, or the experience of sharing an activity?  Would any activity do?  And how much-

Does she ask you very often?

No, not any more.

I’m not surprised.

Sometimes when she asks now I just pick a random answer. “Yes, absolutely”, I’ll say, without even considering whether I actually do or don’t, avoiding the traumatic whirlpool of decision altogether.  Because, in the end, it’s just a cup of tea.  It’s not really worth all that stress of actual desire-interrogation and multi-level cravings-analysis.  The decision-making maelstrom is so much more bewildering and takes so much more energy than it does to just say a quick yes or no, and then deal with the consequences.  So I tend to do that nowadays.  Um.

So -

“Black with one sugar thanks.”  See, easy, done.  Boom!

So, the title of the story, “How Long Are You Supposed To Wait”, is really just you asking this question of yourself, isn’t it.

Yes.  Trying to get some handle on exactly what an appropriate time is.  Because if the character had just waited a few more minutes, she’d be out and safe and with the perfect quota of legs.   When are we being hasty?  When is it time to panic?  How do you panic properly?  I’ve never quite been able to get my head around this stuff.

I’m guessing you enjoyed the ending of that Steven King movie, ‘The Mist’?

Fucking best ending ever.

FICTION: The Thirteen Thoughts from Clifftop to Rocks

Her first thought after leaving the clifftop was that the sun was coming up, over the ocean’s horizon, and that it seemed appropriate that, when she’d hit the rocks, day would break, and so would she.

Her second was that she hoped she didn’t survive.  There’d be nothing worse than surviving, living on, broken and ruined, a living testament to failure.  That she’d failed as a mother, as a daughter, as a nurturer, and now as an organism.  But failing to properly commit suicide was a whole other level of failure, the very worse kind of disappointment, like a bad joke – “you’re such a failure you can’t even kill yourself properly”.

Her third was the realisation that she would never need to see her baby daughter die again, never have to re-live that moment any more, never need to see her tiny crying body choked by that abusive meth-head fuck-up of a man ever again, never have to re-watch that moment through her semi-conscious drug-fucked eyes even one more time – it was over.  The relief filled her body so fully that she knew, when she’d hit those rocks, she’d burst like a waterbomb, no blood, just relief spilling out of her.  Nothing but relief, golden or glowing or filled with stars.

Her fourth thought was the same as her second.

Her fifth was that this fall was taking forever, and that the brain must really work at incredible speeds to process this much information in such a short amount of time, and that, really, maybe it was super wasteful to throw such a remarkable miracle of nature off a cliff and smash it to pieces on rocks.

Her sixth was that, if it was such an astounding miracle of nature, it wouldn’t have hurled itself off a cliff, would it.  And, it wouldn’t’ve lay there, catatonic, unable to move, while its crying baby daughter was silenced forever, would it.  No, this was no miracle.  This was rubbish, being thrown into the ocean.

Her seventh was that she felt no fear, only peace, and that since Ruby had died – been killed, been murdered – she had not felt this feeling, not for a single breath.  That all she had felt was guilt and rage, every day from waking to sleep, and that this fall was the first moment she’d been glad to be alive for years.

Her eighth thought was that, if she had wings instead of arms, she’d be flying right now, not falling.

Her ninth was that she hoped her mother would understand.

Her tenth was, if there was an afterlife, she was going to kiss Ruby’s chubby little cheeks until the end of time, she was going to hold her to her chest and sob for eternity.

Her eleventh thought was, if there wasn’t an afterlife, then she’d welcome the void.

Her twelfth was she was sorry, so very sorry.  But she was making up for it all, for everything, right now.

And her thirteenth thought was-

FICTION: In My Sedimental Heart

All holidays, all gruelling six weeks of enforced family time, I waited, heart open. 

I’d seen next year’s classroom list, and you were on it. 

This was it.  I’d waited three years, but Year Ten was the prize.  You were going to be in my class.  Finally.  I was going to be able to sit next you, maybe.  Feel your aura.

I’d been quietly in love with you since I first saw you in Year Seven, in your green chequered school uniform (mine, an invisible grey), laughing with other girls about who knows what.  A sparkle in your eyes.  There was a snorting sound you made, that the other girls were afraid to make.  You seemed so unafraid.

And each day, those three long years, you accumulated inside me.  Every time I saw you in the playground, each time I saw the back of your head at assembly, every time one of your pieces of art was up in the glass-fronted display cabinets in the North Wing corridor, my sedimental love for you grew stronger, grain by tiny grain.  Soon enough, I was almost crushed under the weight of all this love.

Unseen, unspeakable.  A silent and heavy love.

I was of course nothing.  I was a hairless, high-voiced nobody.  But I knew, I knew, that, once you got to know the funny, interesting, thoughtful, love-brimming person inside, you’d grow to love me too.  And now, we were getting that chance.

(Breeze’s friend Katrina approached me one day in the corridor, made some giggly announcement that Breeze liked me, did I want to hang out at lunchtime?  I laughed, shook my head: I was already taken.)

Three years of accumulating desire.  Not hormonal lust, I knew it in my heart.  In my fantasies, I had sex with every girl in the school, except you.  You were reserved for something more important.  This was the kind of connection I’d read about – the stuff of destiny.  I had a throne ready for you, in my spirit.

And of course, the first day of Year Ten came, and, of course, you were nowhere to be seen.

Over the holidays, you’d transferred to a different school.

Leaving just a space, your size and shape, in the heavy silent stone of my heart.

*

Years later.  Hair on my balls, a man’s larynx.  Booze and nihilism.  Sharehouses and unpaid utility bills.  Pizza boxes and bongs and sticky carpet.

I’d slept with a bunch of second bests.  Your throne was covered in a layer of dust, and I barely even felt the silent obelisk in my heart: what the high school kid had found so heavy, this man found easy to lift.  

And then, lining up to take a shot at the rickety old pool table at our local, suddenly I hear your voice, out of nowhere.

“Hey,” you say, sipping a mojito, “haven’t we met?”

And all the dust is blown away, and the weight almost brings me to my knees.

“Hey,” I gulp.