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""Fireworks" - In progress Short Story"
PagongRatEater 12927 desperate attention whore postings
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08-07-04, 04:32 PM (EST)
 
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""Fireworks" - In progress Short Story" |
LAST EDITED ON 08-08-04 AT 00:18 AM (EST)I've always loved to write, but never really have had the courage or gumption to get serious about it. I've written a few chapters of several books, but have just petered out. So I'm looking for some honest and brutal feedback if this is even a direction that I should go. It could be that it sounds just GREAT in my own head and be totally geared for an audience of one.  Anyhow, I would really appreciate any feedback or response to this piece that had been knocking around my brain for a couple of years now. Is it interesting? Do you want to read more? In the end the finished piece will be a 20 or so page short story, so this sample should give you a taste. Thanks for your thoughts and your honesty. _______________________________________________________ Lenny Rogers hated the Fourth of July. It wasn’t the fireworks. The noise never bothered him and he thought that some of them looked quite beautiful. It wasn’t the patriotism. Lenny had risked his life for his country in the South Pacific during WWII. He loved his country dearly. Still there was no day that filled him with as much anger, as much dread and as much loathing as Independence Day. And it was all Mike Peterson’s fault. Lenny and Mike had grown up together, had gone to war together and had once been best friends. They had shared birthday parties, bicycles, even the occasional girlfriend as they grew up. It never hurt their friendship. When they were sent to other ends of the world during the war, they wrote each other as much as any one else back home. Mike had even once saved Lenny’s life when they were younger. They had been swimming together in an abandoned quarry pit that the city council had filled with water to keep the kids from climbing around in it. There was still some old equipment and structures that it cost too much to haul back out of the pit after many of the men from town gave up on it in 1914 to go and fight in the Great War. Part of the fun was the strangeness and the danger of swimming there. None of the parents would allow their kids to swim in the Pit, but all of the kids did.
On that ill-fated July day, Lenny and Mike had gotten there early, while the rising mist still swirled over the forbidden waters. Even as ‘old veterans’ of the Pit at the ripe age of 10, the water looked strange and unfamiliar that morning. The summer of 1922 had been a particularly dry one and the level of the water was much lower than normal. Lenny, always the rasher of the two, was tearing his clothes off even as he ran toward the still, dark water. He stopped just a moment at the edge looking out over the man-made lake. Lenny felt a small twinge of warning in the last moment before he leapt, but like all 10 year old boys he promptly ignored it and went flying off the ledge into the waters. Mike was still removing his socks when he noticed that Lenny still hadn’t resurfaced. “Lenny?” he called cautiously into the quiet morning. The surface of the lake wasn’t clearly visible yet, but Mike couldn’t hear the tell-tale splashing of Lenny coming back up for air. Acting on instinct, he quickly pulled off his shirt and leapt into the water with his jeans on. He might catch hell for it later, but he didn’t even think about it as he dove. As he bobbed back to the surface of the lake, he could see that Lenny was nowhere in sight. Ducking back under the water he turned his head frantically this way and that looking for his friend. Out of the corner of his eye he caught the gleam of something pale just out of reach. Swimming, grabbing, grasping – his hand closed on the solid shape of Lenny’s arm. He pulled him up to the top and to the safety of the small bit of dirt that served as a beach. Mike turned Lenny’s head and water ran out before a sudden fit of coughing erupted from Lenny’s throat. He turned onto his side and promptly threw up the quick breakfast he had grabbed on the way out the door and sat heaving and coughing and crying without speaking for the next 15 minutes. When Lenny could finally speak he croaked out a pitiful “Thanks, Mike” and offered his friend a meager smile. The boys never went back to the Pit again. In ’25 another kid had an accident down at the Pit but this one was fatal. They drained the Pit and filled it with dirt. And Lenny and Mike breathed a silent prayer of thanks that the malevolent presence was gone from their lives. They never talked about it. It just wasn’t their way. But they knew. Deep down they both knew just how much that day had brought them together. For the rest of their lives that moment would bind them closer than brothers until the day that John Hester died. -------------------------------------
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Flowerpower 4968 desperate attention whore postings
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08-10-04, 02:14 PM (EST)
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7. "RE: "Fireworks" - In progress Short Story" |
Excellent beginning, Rat. Definately picques your interest from the get go, but does remind me of another novel that I have read, but can't recall the name. It came out about 4 years ago and was a popular read in the summer. About a young couple who were presently college age, who had been together all through high school. They go, with some of their friends to a quarry or lake of some sort, and as the weather of late had been a severe drought that summer, the guy dives in only to break his neck. What follows is the anguish the girl feels for choosing not to marry her now invalid fiance.Although different, it does bear a similiarity to the beginning of that book. I also would like to know more detail as to how/why the kid did not re-emerge....did he get caught on some of the underwater equipment, did he knock himself out when he entered the water, what? But, it definately captures the readers interest, and just who is this John Hester? Sounds like you definately have some direction with this story, and I'd welcome the opportunity to read it. Thanks, FP 
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