Fast Flash Fiction #1 - Living Hell

 

Living Hell

     In the middle of a half-moon night, a woman can’t sleep. She sits upright, looking into the mirror near the end of her bed. It isn’t long until she approaches it. Looking at her reflection, she appears tired of face, tired of herself.

     She’s about to turn away when she sees something in the darkness of the mirror’s reflection. For a second, she holds still, but nothing shows up. Still her eyes are wide, as if she expects someone or something to move behind her. Again, nothing happens. Uneasily, she climbs back into bed, her gaze never once leaving the mirror.

     A storm breaks outside. Rain hits the roof above the woman, distracting her for a moment. But then her eyes look to the mirror again. An arm clad in glittery black is reaching for her from behind. Without a sound, she scrambles off the bed, backing away even though nothing has materialized in the real world. In the mirror’s reflection behind her, the full figure of an otherworldly man crawls onto her bed, his face hidden in shadow except for the eyes. His eyes burn with fire.

     The woman turns and runs right through the mirror. Glass shatters and falls around her as she falls deep into a dark void. She turns mid-fall, looking at what awaits her below, but almost immediately after, she finds herself rolling onto dry ground. When she comes to a stop, she finds herself in a desert on the brink of a storm. Wind whips dust into the air, the clouds above are almost black, and lightning strikes in the distant mountains.

     She’s been here before. She knows this world – she’s carried it within her for longer than she can remember. And she knows there’s no living in a world like this. One can only hope to survive.

     Just when she’s gathered herself, lightning strikes behind her. Falling to the ground, she looks back and sees the shadow man from before. Here, his face is no longer hidden. It’s a pale, drawn-out face with a cruel expression and eyes the color of liquid gold. Black scales cover his body, shimmering like outer space. The wind tugs at the mere shreds of a cloak hanging onto his shoulders.

     The woman remains still, trying her best to hold her breathe. She watches as his golden eyes blindly look off into the distance. His whole body remains taut and expectant.

Blood-red light fills the edges of the sky, creeping in through the clouds. The first raindrops begin to fall.

     Just when the woman thinks the shadow man will leave, a cold snake slithers over her wrist. Again, she doesn’t scream. But her sudden movement doesn’t go unnoticed. Before she can run away, the shadow man grabs both of her wrists, pulling her up to her feet. He gets so close that she can feel the blazing heat of his eyes on her face. She strains, looking away, doing anything she can to avoid staring into those eyes for too long. The rain pours down harder. The dry desert ground turns to sludge.

     Lightning strikes as the woman manages to free one of her wrists. But the shadow man is persistent and pulls when she tries running away. She tugs, he pulls, their silhouettes lost in some strange dance against the ever-reddening sky. The wind gets stronger, shrieking like a creature in pain.

     Just when she pulls her last hand free, the shadow man’s hand clamps around her throat. In a single motion, he lifts her off the ground with the one hand alone. The woman closes her eyes, struggles to breathe, wonders how she survives this every time. She can feel the heat of his gaze burning through her skin, but she knows better than to look.

     Even in this panicked moment, she feels a change in the air. The rain doesn’t pelt her skin and the thunder grows distant. The shadow man’s grasp feels less and less real, as if he’s fading into nothingness.

     She keeps her eyes closed when he screams in rage, when the hellish light from his eyes erupts into fire. If he was any stronger in this moment, the flames would have charred her face. The thought of that makes her shiver, but she can breathe now, and every breath pushes her further away from this hell-world. Only when she no longer feels the shadow man’s hand on her neck does she open her eyes.

     Morning light streams through her bedroom window. Her sheets are twisted, most of them spilling off the bed. She lies huddled next to her mirror, which really is broken. Partially congealed blood slicks her hair and an arch-shaped cut lines her right arm. This hasn’t happened all the previous times, but she doesn’t act surprised. Things were bound to end up this way sooner or later.

     Thinking she should clean herself up, she rises and steps into the bathroom a few feet away. The door behind her swings until it’s ajar.

     The pieces of the broken mirror pool together on her bedroom floor. Like a wave, silver washes over the base of the mirror, filling in all the edges. In two seconds, the mirror is restored, and somewhere in the reflection, the shadow man’s eyes glare from the darkest corner of the woman’s room.

     By the time she steps back out, the previous night will be forgotten, as will the memory of all the other times. She’ll wonder why she’s injured and why it hurts to breathe. A strange, raw pain will tear at her from inside day after day. Her body will remember what her mind cannot until the next time she finds the shadow man in the mirror.

Only when this happens all over again does she truly remember. Every time, she wonders:

What could possibly set me free?

Author’s Note

 

     Diving into this brief piece of flash, I’ll begin with the basic conditions in which it was written, initial thoughts, and any other external factors that contributed to this story!

     I wrote this in the early morning on a day when I was struggling to do much of anything. This definitely impacted the story in what I was willing to explore and its lack of dialogue. I can always tell the difference between writing done under happier conditions and writing done when struggling mentally/emotionally. In the case of the latter, it often results in more minimal worldbuilding, overall minimal style, and more of a focus on visuals.

     As I always do, I was listening to music while writing this. Music always helps me stay in the varying moods needed for my stories, as well as maintain focus. On this particular morning, the song I was listening to was “1 Shot” by DPR Ian. Not so much for the lyrical content, but for the dark, dream-like, and urgent feel of the song. My synesthetic* reaction to it definitely contributed to the red sky imagery midway through the story.

     [*For those who don’t know, synesthesia is a sensory response that is the result of two neural sensory pathways crossing. When one gets stimulated, so does the other. In my case, my auditory senses stimulate my visual senses – resulting specifically in music synesthesia (seeing colors when I hear music)]

     Before I get into the actual content of the story, let’s talk craft – weaknesses, strengths, and all!

     The entire thing is told in the present tense, but instead of being told through the woman’s point of view it’s told by some unknown, yet all-knowing narrator. This isn’t typical for the majority of the stories I write – especially the use of present tense. In some ways, this unique POV helps create the sense that you’re there in the moment with the protagonist. You’re going through every strange and frightening moment.

     It also gives a bit of a voyeuristic vibe to it. The narrator is giving you information you couldn’t otherwise get (knowing that the woman has been through this surreal experience before, showing the mirror put itself back together, etc.). And you can do nothing but watch as the woman faces the shadow man in the desert and resets herself for the cycle of conflict all over again.

     Overall, I’m pretty happy with the POV choice! I think it’s effective for the kind of story presented here.

     I will say, however, that I can easily recognize one of my failings as a writer in this. The confrontation scene itself is alright, but not the greatest. I’ve never been great at writing scenes requiring both intensity and action. Tell me to create atmosphere and I can do that, no problem! But action? Perhaps you might come away with a different opinion, but I’ve always seen that as an area for improvement in my writing.

     While this is meant to be 1,000 words or less and leaves little time for worldbuilding, the worldbuilding is still important. That’s what gives you a sense of setting and reality and great worldbuilding for short or longer works can present a lot of challenges. I know myself to be a very character-centric writer, so worldbuilding has always been one of my weaknesses.

     Here, I don’t think it’s the worst. I couldn’t spend a whole paragraph describing the woman’s bedroom or the whole scope of the desert she falls into. But the details I was able to provide were decent enough. Considering, too, that this isn’t meant to be an overly touched-up work, what I managed to make in roughly two hours was fine. (Doesn’t mean I’m not going to examine it later and figure out how I can do better in the future!)

     [A brief tangent on the desert setting - that's a natural landscape that I almost always gravitate to when I think of more abstract stories. Having lived in Nevada for four and a half years as a kid, there's something about that kind of landscape that makes you think any strange thing is possible. You can easily picture ancient times, strange creatures, shapeless and nameless unknowns. I didn't appreciate it that much as a kid. But as I've gotten older, the desert has stayed within me and grows more and more vivid in my imagination]

     One other area where I think I could have done better here was engaging the senses a little more and a little stronger. There’s lots of visuals here – which was partially the whole point of writing the story this way – and there are both touch-related and auditory sensory cues. And yeah, looking through it, perhaps what I included really isn’t that bad. But in past writing group and writing class experiences, I’ve always been told to expand my sensory cues within the prose. I use as many specific, bold, or active words as I can to make the senses come alive. Still, I’m so in my head that sometimes I’ll stray into adding in overused terms or clichés. Not the biggest crime when used sparingly, but I try avoiding them if I know I can write something that feels more original or fresher.

     Now addressing the story itself. As I listened to music and let my imagination wander, images came to mind. These images fell into a natural sequence of events (at least, as natural as you can get for something that’s more like a dream) which loosely put together the thin plot in here.

     I really only hit something of a roadblock when trying to construct the ending. This is the one and only moment when we get a glimpse into the woman’s true thoughts, any sense of interiority. I wanted to make sure what she thought resonated with the last paragraph and conclude the story in a somewhat satisfactory way.

     Now, of course, the plot as it stands for a piece of flash fiction written in roughly two hours isn’t much. The plot is more like a dream sequence than anything else – something that has the semblance of story but doesn’t always provide enough details to really feel like a story. That’s to be expected for a more stream-of-conscious way of creating fiction. With it being surreal as well, it’s not going to work like a more conventional story, either.

     I definitely feel like the end of the woman’s struggle with the shadow man could have been more definitive or satisfying. During my daydream-y process, my mind couldn’t come up with anything other than the desert world suddenly fading away. If I gave myself more time and words to work with, I know I could come up with something different. Or if I really wanted to keep the fade-to-reality sequence, I could have drawn out the tension in the moments before it.

     The lack of dialogue, while intentional, might also present issues of its own. It’s not like there’d be many opportunities for talking in the story sequence as it stands. If I could, perhaps I’d give the shadow man one line…even then, I fear I’d write something terrible or cheesy. Something that would not fit the strange, off-putting vibes of the story. The extreme sparseness of internal thought might be more of an issue than the nonexistent dialogue. At the same time, though, would more internal thought get in the way of the dream-like sequence at work? Questions like this must be asked in both the drafting and revision stages but especially in revision.

     Another thing about this story that could potentially lead to reader satisfaction issues are all the unanswered questions here. Why has this woman been repeating this cycle of conflict? Who or what is the shadow man? What about her mirror? Why does it behave the way that it does? Why can’t the woman remember what happens? Is all of this due to a curse? Is the world she’s in one of magic or is it the real world? If it’s the real world, are mirror portals and shadow men an unusual phenomenon or a natural element?

     However, I hesitate to label this is a definite problem for one reason: the dream-like vibe of the story. Even if I hadn’t followed my imagination’s natural direction, I still intended what I wrote to be strange and mysterious. You ruin that atmosphere if you give too much away. Also, some of the vagueness could actually work to its advantage. It leaves the story more open to interpretation – readers can view it in a variety of ways. I won’t list any of them out, since I don’t want to influence your perspective too much (I have my own interpretation, for sure). But with the strangeness and uncertainty about the story’s reality, it gives the reader more of a chance to derive their own meaning.

     There are plenty of stories out there with tight logic, structure, and realism. The stranger ones can provide a reprieve from the boxed-in feelings we’re all used to while still offering patterns that feel familiar to us.

     The only other thing I can really point out here critically is the title. I’m notoriously bad at coming up with good titles for my own stories! It’s almost as bad as trying to tell others what your story is about. I kinda just let the mood of that morning and the overall sequence of the story dictate the title for this story. It’s not the best, not the worst – it’s at the very least functional. Hopefully I can get better at this in the future!

     There are probably more weaknesses and strengths here. But by now, I’m so blind to my own writing that I’d have to leave it alone for a week and then come back to it to pick out anything new. If you see something I missed and have constructive advice to offer, I’d love to hear it in the comments! While this flash fiction story is far from perfect, I do feel happy that I let myself try a different writing/storytelling style. I’ve always loved surreal and abstract stories, but I’ve only recently begun to let myself try writing ones of my own. This, at least, is a good first step and a good indicator of what I could do in longer works.