The exercise:
In 2013 we went to Mejaran. 2014 brought us Vancouver Irrealis. 2015 took us to The Colony. 2016 was spent at House of Mercy. 2017 was the year of The Dream Kingdom. In 2018 we created Empires. 2019 took a different path with the A Robot and Its Master poem, along with monthly revisitations to all the previous stories.
Now, we have reached 2020's turn. And it simply makes sense to make this the year of Hindsight.
Yes, I waited three years to make use of this theme. You're welcome.
Mine:
Looking back now, standing here amidst the rubble of it all, everything is so crystal clear that it pains me to examine it. Like staring at the sun. If the sun was a giant, burning reminder of all the mistakes I made, just hanging in the sky, day after day, for the whole world to see.
It's easy to spot the things I would have done differently. All the no's that should have been yes's. All the yes's that should have been no's. The lefts that should have been rights, and rights left. The steps forward that should have been panicked backpedalling.
Regrets? Yeah, I've got a few. What happened between me and Nina is up there, near the top of the list. If not the top. Agreeing to the work trip to Tokyo... bloody hell, what was I thinking? That had no chance of turning out well - an unmitigated disaster was the safe bet there. And yet... off I went, suitcase in hand, English to Japanese dictionary in my back pocket, and an understanding of the culture that began and ended with sushi.
The stuff with my father... yeah. Maybe we'll talk to each other again. Time heals all wounds, right? Probably not though. Burning down his house is a bit of a deal breaker, and ain't nobody cares that it was an accident. At the end of the day there's no difference between accidental ashes and intentional ashes.
Yup, it's been a tough couple of years. I'm not looking to host no pity party though. I just... I dunno. Maybe by examining what went wrong I can do better next time.
Well, I mean, I sure hope I'll never again be faced with having to choose between a homeless clown and a reformed serial killer for a roommate. But, you know, if I am?
I'd definitely give the ex-serial killer a chance.
4 comments:
Hmm, well the tale's beginning is definitely fascinating, with lots of little hints that I hope we can develop all the way through the year. I like the litany of disasters that have happened, some small and some large, but that the narrator doesn't (yet) sound hopeless. If I could ask for anything, it would be just a little more direction on where this should go: do you want to move forward, using Hindsight as a guide, or reflect on the past, using Hindsight to analyse actions? Or is Hindsight the name of the narrator's pet giraffe that you've not introduced so far?
I suppose I have to choose.
And so I choose....
Hindsight
I remember my English teacher back at school, a starched woman with all her own teeth; she always used to say that you start a story at the beginning, and then tell the middle of it all the way through until you come to the end. She never told none of these twisty stories though, that writhe around and come back on themselves until they're a snake biting their own tail. I keep looking around and wondering where to start and everything keeps needing me to start somewhere else to explain things. I thought this hindsight business was supposed to make things easier. So I'm just going to jump right into the middle and maybe, just maybe, hindsight will help me figure out how it all really fits together.
It was June, and it was hot. Too hot, hot like you lit the fire in the fireplace in the morning and closed up the room so when you come in in the evening there's just a blast of hot dry air and you know that you're going to be feeling ill and feverish inside of five minutes. But it was hot outside and inside, so it's like you went in and closed the door and sat down anyway. Tokyo was two months in the past by that point, and there'd been a brief fling with Gina and that had gone south real fast, like a Floridian seeing frost in Chicago, and so I'd headed on up to Thunder Bay where my father had a small house and a bigger boating concern renting canoes and houseboats out to the tourists. I was expecting some chilled days lying out on the beaches, maybe barbecueing in the evenings, and hearing homespun wisdom about everything I was doing wrong in my life. Especially about Nina and Gina. But then I got there and the heat settled like a gravity blanket over an invalid and Dad gives me the stinkeye and tells me that the HVAC system ain't never worked proper and why didn't I make myself useful and fix it.
I thought about saying no; I thought about pointing out I'd have more luck if they asked me to run the Godzilla-breeding programme in Tokyo, but instead I wiped away the sweat from my head with the back of my hand and watched it dribble off onto the floor and decided that I wanted to be cold much more than I wanted to bitch. So Dad headed out to the pick-up to drive over to the shop and rent boats to tourists who didn't even know what the pointy end was called, and I got his tools out of the shed and opened up the HVAC unit.
"Compressor's broke, most likely," Dad had said as he drove off, his words half-drowned by the pick-up's engine. "Keeps hissing something chronic."
Yeah, it was hissing alright, because it was a nest of snakes. Pretty ones, orange and black, all twisting around one another and the HVAC bits and pieces, and I could count at least seven heads and maybe more tails. So I went to my suitcase to fish out my winter gloves, which were there because I hadn't know what else to do with them after Tokyo, and that's when I found out that Gina, or maybe even Nina, had left a small but potent incendiary device in there.
Greg - apologies for the lack of direction, but I think you've gone in the direction I'd have most preferred all on your own :)
Really enjoyed the details you filled in, and the place you chose to begin. I think we'll be able to jump around the story fairly easily but this gives us a good starting point.
Was not expecting the snakes or the incendiary device, so well played on both accounts. Though, obviously, if it were me I'd just use the incendiary on the snakes...
@Marc well, that would explain how his father's house got burned down with little chance of mending wounds, I guess... ;-) Seems like we've already got our first loose end where we want it!
I was flung backwards through the doorway, and by the time I picked myself up and was back on my feet, the room was fully engulfed in flames. I ran out of the house, dialing the emergency number on my cell as I ran, but the line was busy. I tried again from outside the house, as the roof caught. I gave up on getting help, and grabbed the garden hose. That was about as effective as you would expect, and I gave up on that as well. I remembered the pump Dad had put in the shed, to get water from the lake in an emergency like this. But the shed was locked, and I stood there helplessly, watching Dad's house burn down.
Post a Comment