Katherine

[idgiehkt]

They found him on his knees. I wasn't there, haven't been there, but I can see it perfectly, the chaos of scattered 8x10's, pictures of God knows what (please not). His head resting on the tv table, blood everywhere. Three days he knelt before God in perfect stillness, un-Christlike and waiting for his stone cold body to be carried away.

I have memories like those pictures on the floor. They always come in the moment just before sleep; as I drift to unconsciousness the scenes come roaring out of the pit of my memory, causing me to gasp and jump and awaken. In those split-second moments I see myself in rooms I don't recognize, with people I don't know. I see a slice of light falling onto the darkened floor. Sometimes he is there and I don't know why, and I don't know what is happening. Other times, there is just nothing, nothing, nothing, but cold fear and my quickened heartbeat. This is what he willed to me, locked in my memory away from even and especially myself.

My family would call me cold-hearted for making someone else's death about me. I openly admit having prayed for this day; it's renewed my faith that there might be, despite all evidence to the contrary, some sort of benevolent deity out there in the universe. Not because I'm spiteful, but because no more lives will be ruined, or derailed. No more parents will look the other way, no more little girls will be turned against themselves and be taught to hate their own reflection; not by his hand, at least.

As I run this thread of his back through my life so many images come forward and name themselves products of him. Probably to tally them up would be more than I could shoulder, but a few keep repeating, playing themselves over and over like music videos on a short playlist. I am remembering Katherine. At the time we know each other, Katherine is 21 and I am 23. (It's funny to me now how when I knew her I thought those 2 years made me vastly older than her). Katherine has cut off her beautiful long hair; now it's just below her ears, and she is getting very thin. She gets more and more compliments every day as her bones jut further out; she's doing heroin every afternoon now with Tamara, an ex-junkie ('ex' because she no longer shoots up) who places the accent on the second syllable of her name and expects everyone else to do so as well. Katherine talks to me about her therapist who touches her, which I think is weird. He tells her someone has taken her power away, which she knows although she can't fathom who it might have been. We are standing in the kitchen at work talking one day about boys, about the ones that have come and gone while we did not notice. I don't even remember the words she used, or the ones I used, that lead us to the point where we stood stunned, staring at each other realizing we had the same sickness, the same disease of perception. She tells me about Steve, a boy she knows who took her by the arm recently and told her that in college he had really, really liked her. And she repeats it, with surprise in her voice. At that moment our eyes meet and I know just what it's like, that shock; it's like surfacing from a dive, fighting the water to get upward and breathe. "You just feel so dirty, like no one could ever like you." Standing there, I know it's that precise emotion in which I've spent most of my life. I had the same talk, with a different boy, the same shock, the same sudden surfacing but way too late. Fifteen years later, I'm still fighting to get to the surface, fighting to stay there. I don't know what happened to Katherine, and I've never tried to find out. To think that her tormentors may have won is a scary possibility, one I hope to remain blissfully ignorant of if it's the truth. I won't forget that moment in the kitchen when our eyes met, and confirmed our mutual suffering, when we realized we could not help each other.

Over the past few days, I've realized, however, that Katherine did help me, in a small way, because the times when I felt I was so tainted, so vile, so ugly that I can't even think of a word strong enough to describe what I imagined was the revulsion others must feel when looking at me, as if they could see right though to my past and what he put into me, it is in these times that I see Katherine. I see her flawless skin, her beautiful eyes that shone like abalone catching the light, that thick brown hair that was still beautiful even cropped off in that silly boyish haircut. I think of her laugh, the way her long fingers held her cigarettes, the way her cheeks were always the slightest bit pink. I see her in my mind in these moments and remember that moment we fused and she became my mirror, all those years ago, and I realize that what Katherine gave me was a reflection of my own beauty. I know that the violation we both felt was just that, a feeling, and that in her beautiful reflection for one moment I found my own worth, despite all evidence to the contrary, despite that man and others putting their shame and violation into me. He's free now, I'm still trudging forward, and somewhere, I hope, Katherine is as well.

[petgoat]

1. It's vivid, visual, and arresting.

You're a talented writer.

It's a bit wordy, though, which is why I didn't get past the second paragraph.

"the chaos of scattered 8x10's, pictures..." with its redundancies is a symptom.

Life is short.

You've got the talent to make this first-rate if you can work off the fat.

[Orrex]

2. I think that petgoat got it exactly right

There is a sort of rolling redundancy that adds a lot of mass to the text without adding much substance. In some places you add a second and third phrase where one is sufficient all by itself. Trust your writing to carry its own weight without adding additional cumbersome phrasing. The good news is that you've got a strong progression here, if only you can pare away the excess. As a stylistic note, I'd caution against "un-Christlike" as being too clunky, and "chaos" might be a trifle too strong in this context. Also watch out for repetitive words: memories/memory; moment/moments; nothing/nothing/nothing. These are greatly conspicuous in a short piece and can be distracting and a drag on the narrative.

I'd add that you veer a little too close to cliche in a few places. For example, "memories like those pictures" is something of a stock image, even though I believe that you're focusing on the scattering of the pictures, rather than the pictures themselves. "Moment just before sleep" is another common image, as is "pit of my memory" and "locked in my memory." Not that these are bad ideas, but these particular phrasings have been used so often that their impact is greatly reduced. Consider reworking them, and the text will come away stronger.

I think that paragraph three is a bit heavy-handed, and it comes across as preachy.

Paragraph four strikes me as the meat of the story, but it needs some revision. As it stands, it's too coherent for stream of consciousness but too rambling to be really coherent. Additionally, I read "As I run this thread of his back through my life" three times before I realized that you were referring not to a "thread of his back" but to a thread of his run back. A little confusing, unintentionally I suspect. I think that "vastly older" is weak word-choice, by the way. Maybe "so much older" instead? Also, "ex-junkie" automatically suggests someone who no longer shoots up--is there a reason to spell it out here?

There are a lot of potent images and ideas in this paragraph, though; rework the text to bring them out. As it stands, it's kind of like a character sketch, but it's a good one.

[idgiehkt]

3. thanks

I really appreciate the feedback. It's just a narrative I wrote the other night but every line is true and honestly I didn't think anyone would critique it and the fact that people did touches my heart because that takes alot of effort. The reason i used ex-junkie is because to some people heroin use is heroin use no matter, in fact I didn't want to go into it but the third person's life (Tamara) was spinning right out of control at the time (her pets were starving) but her rationale for why she was 'okay' was that she wasn't mainlining anymore. Good point on the last paragraph with the thread, I didn't even think about that being mixed up.

I can't figure out what you mean by "preachy" in the third paragraph...but it's okay, it's just something I wrote the other night, to kind of get it out of my system what I was going through at the moment. I can't imagine ever publishing something like this in any other form than poetry because I don't write fiction, which is probably why some of it is weird in some way.

[Orrex]

4. Well, maybe "preachy" wasn't the best word to use...

Now that you've explained the subtle (and poignant!) connotation of "ex-junkie," I really like it. I think that you should definitely keep it in, if you can make the distinction to the reader (ie., those who, like me, didn't realize the different labels for mainlining versus other use). Here's the passage in question:

she's doing heroin every afternoon now with Tamara, an ex-junkie ('ex' because she no longer shoots up) who places the accent on the second syllable of her name and expects everyone else to do so as well.

First off, that's some really effective characterization, and in a very compact form. But maybe you could rework it a little to help clue-in the reader:

she does heroin with Tamara every afternoon. Tamara puts the accent on the second syllable of her name and thinks she's an ex-junkie because she doesn't use needles anymore.

Well, that's far from perfect, but you get the idea. In any case, I think that you can omit "expects everyone else to do so as well" because it's sort of implied, if that’s how she refers to herself.

Anyway, I didn't really mean "preachy" in a proselytizing or theological sense, but rather that the tone is a little too pushy or aggressive in conveying the narrator's feelings:

My family would call me cold-hearted for making someone else's death about me. I openly admit having prayed for this day; it's renewed my faith that there might be, despite all evidence to the contrary, some sort of benevolent deity out there in the universe. Not because I'm spiteful, but because no more lives will be ruined, or derailed. No more parents will look the other way, no more little girls will be turned against themselves and be taught to hate their own reflection; not by his hand, at least.

There's a desperation or urgency that doesn't quite ring true, as though she's trying too hard to convince the reader, and as a result the impact of the passage is compromised. But it's powerful at its core; if you can strip it down closer to its essentials, you'll have a really strong sequence.

Consider something like this, perhaps:

I've prayed for this day, and now that it's come I can almost believe that someone's watching out for us after all. Maybe it's shallow to use someone's death to prop up my view of the universe, but it's even more basic than that. He's dead. No more little girls turning against themselves, hating their own reflections. No more parents looking the other way. No more lives ruined. Not by him, at least.

Incidentally, I think that you should give the pimp/pusher a name, or even a derisive nickname, so that you're not always referring to him as "him." Put it in the first sentence of the piece: "They found Roger on his knees" or whatever you want to call him. Thereafter when you refer to him, there's no unintended ambiguity. Also, I just noticed that there's a bit of a disconnect between the first two paragraphs and the third. It's not quite clear that Roger's (sic) death is the one that you're talking about, and it's not quite clear that Roger is the jerk who ruined those girls' lives. That would be eliminated by naming him, and the reader's focus can stay on the story without having to figure out which "he"did what to which "her."

One final note—although I wasn't really thrilled with the term "un-Christlike," I can see that it's sort of apt in an ironic sense, since his death does sort of free the girls who would otherwise have continued to suffer. But I'd resist the insertion of explicitly Christ-based imagery if only because it's a little too weighty for what you've already got going on here. Let his death, and the subsequent "freedom" of the girls speak for themselves.

There's a definite cathartic vibe to this piece, as though you're getting rid of something that's been festering for a long time. And that's an entirely appropriate exercise to undertake through fiction! The only caution is that, in achieving your release (whatever it be), don't overplay it at the expense of the story or the reader. Let it out in all its ugly fury in the first draft, and then work from there to achieve the final piece. Of course, that only applies to cathartic writing that you intend to share or publish; if you're writing for your own sake, let it rip!

Thanks for sharing this. As has been said several times in the thread already, you've got a strong story that can readily be worked into something of real power. Please post an update with your progress, if you care to do so!

[idgiehkt]

5. thanks for all the feedback.

I really appreciate all the effort because I know what an amount of work goes into critiquing someone else's work. This is just something I wrote in the middle of the night the other night when I was pretty overcome with emotion about this death and this man's impact on my life. He was a hardcore repeat offender pedophile, not a pimp or a pusher. The 'un-Christlike' I put in there to intentionally and immediately quash any religious associations someone might find from the kneeling position he was found in, and the three days before the body was removed, since I grew up in the church those are powerful associations with religion and I didn't want anyone making that leap, since these are the circumstances of the man's death.

On the preachy thing, it comes from anger at the families of perpetrators to protect children around them from someone as sick as this, and the actual details of it would probably curl your hair. So death was just such a blessing from God in this case. I think that paragraph needs to be at the end. I'm pretty overwhelmed with this right now and don't want to think about it anymore. Usually when I write (I mostly do poetry) I put everything away for six months and then revisit it. This is really Katherine's story, even though I don't know how I ended up, it's my affection for her that I wanted to come through, and describe my own perpetrator whose death brought up her memory since at the time we knew each other she couldn't put a face on hers although she knew there had been one.

[petgoat]

6. "put everything away for six months and then revisit it."

That's good practice. This piece has some really good stuff in it, so I'd like
to see it after you've revisited it. The emotion is definitely there, and
to write it all down when the blood is spurting from the wound is exactly the
right thing to do.

But I'm with Raymond Carver: "Art is not self-expression, it is communication."

Putting it away allows you to discover the work as a reader rather than as its
creator.

And maybe this is just my own personal problem, but I am repulsed by the
130-character lines people tend to use online. I'm used to an 80-character
line and I get an uneasy out-of-breath feeling beyond that.

[GOPFighter]

7. Excellent

I enjoyed reading your piece. I flows nicely and it felt real. Well done!

[bridgit]

8. i miss you already, honey...

:cry: :hug: