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Each of the dozen short stories in A L Kennedy’s 2009 collection, entitled ‘What becomes,’ attempts to answer the question hauntingly posed by Jimmy Ruffin in 1967. I’d like to know how successfully (or otherwise) your character(s) deal with their particular heartbreak, preferably in no more than 600 words, and no later than midnight on 31<sup>st</sup> October.
UPDATE/ALTERNATIVE TO SEPTMBER COMP.
In view of lack of response so far, I wonder whether Tessa Hadley’s new collection, ‘After the funeral’ might be more inspiring? If so, give it a go – give them both a go if you feel so inspired – you’ve still a couple of weeks.
Thanks, Sandra. I’ve started a story – it probably works better with the After the Funeral theme. I doubt I’ll manage two stories. September is a busy month 🙂 I like it, the busyness and back to school feeling.
As I well know, Ath, but returning from a week in Orkney to nil activity I thought I’d give everyone a second possibility of inspiration.
A smol warning for all the darkness most foul; my headspace is aging like fine wine, and therapy is expensive 🙂
This is in response to the original prompt on heartache, based on the short story collection, ‘What becomes’
Home
There were dreams we slipped into, and out of. Through their haze I saw a prince and castle, figments of blueberry pancakes for breakfast and late afternoon naps, someone who noticed how soft my feet were as he washed them. Then darkness so impenetrable I remained blind to my future long after I escaped it. Starved for companionship and affection, I’d fallen in love almost immediately; pulled that man’s essence into the very soul of me, a vampire tapping a vestal vein. I’d latched onto his being like a baby, though he had no soul of his own to speak of. The darkness in me desperate to know the darkness in him.
The betrayals are a wound, raw and festering, the nerve endings completely exposed. All it takes is a thought or memory, an innocent encounter with another human being to touch it, and the pain, the pain is excruciating. It is a darkness so impenetrable I no longer dream. A cold and monstrous, broken black. Nothing fills it better than my desire to taste of his suffering. It is a dread need I have to watch him writhe, to witness him sick and failing, exactly the way that he left me. It is in everyone of us to be like this. We are all to blame for the shadows that stretch across each life we touch, and throughout the world around us. As for that suffering . . . I’ll wait forever just to taste it.
I waited for months before I left, and I’ve no desire in me to revisit the cemetery where the remains of my naivete lie buried in an unmarked grave. My desire is the black dog that guards me now, a roving malevolence beneath my skin, spectral and spite-filled. It is a madness driving me towards vengeance, towards a monstrous, malicious evil all my own. Rutting against my own hand, skin awash with heat and shame, my being is compliant to its will, offers up gratitude and sin in equal measure, raising energy till deed and day are done. A back so injured the legs no longer function. A heart stuttering to a dead stop, never again to pump blood through that body. Yes! Yes, whatever you want. Just give me what I need.
I took it. And I’d do it again. The ring you slipped off your finger, when you asked me over just to talk, when you felt me up as I pretended to sleep. I’m going to throw it into the swamp we made love next to, after you exiled me from ever walking through your front door again. After she arrived, and I didn’t recognise your using me for what it was because I was still calling it love. I will throw it in the stagnant waters, putrid and full of decomposing things, tainted, just like that love. After all, that ring is your birthright, little doll, and I would see you rotting there with it, if I could.
May you be haunted by all you’ve done.
May your home always feel like a gravestone.
May you suffer all your life without end.
525 words (excluding title)
Edited for formatting gremlinsThis is in response to the original prompt, ‘What becomes…’
599 words (Phew!)Glan-y-Nant
She’s the reason I’m so far from home in this quiet corner of Carmarthenshire where the tourists don’t come, driving along this grass-grown lane to nowhere, neither knowing nor caring where I’m going. Walking-on-air. light-in-the-face, ice-in-the-heart Madeleine, who taught me the truth of that saying about the one who kisses and the other who offers the cheek. Madeleine, who took all the love I had in me to give, leaving me empty and flat as a used tube of toothpaste.
Grief has many ways of inflicting itself upon you. I never cried when Madeleine moved out – I’m a big girl now, a published author no less, and I’d seen it coming for a while – but life lost all its savour. I drifted on autopilot through every empty day, moving among the people in my life like a shadow, a ghost, apart. I couldn’t relate at all to the motivations that kept them busily leading their lives when it was all I could do to drag myself out of bed in the morning, and keeping up a brave face, a pretence of interest in the things they said and did, was becoming more than I could bear.
And I couldn’t write. There was not one breath of inspiration, not one word in me. I was close to the edge, and I knew I had to get away before I slid over it. To somewhere quiet, where I could put myself back together in my own time.
And I think I’ve found it. Ever since the lane dipped into this valley and plunged beneath the trees I’ve had the feeling I’ve entered a secret, secluded world, but it’s not until I’ve come round a sharp right-hand bend and over an ancient stone bridge that the view opens out and I can see what sort of place I’ve stumbled upon.
On the other side of the bridge there’s a space just big enough to park without blocking the lane. I get out of the car and walk back onto the bridge, in a vast hush broken only by the sibilant murmur and gurgle of running water.
As I lean on the parapet, looking at the beauty all around me, the steep wooded slopes to either side, the sunlight sparkling on the water below, something tensed inside me begins to uncoil. It’s like coming out of a hot noisy street into a cool quiet room. This place is speaking to me, speaking of peace, of healing.
Hey, isn’t that a house? Back there beyond the car, behind those trees?
I retrace my steps, and there it is. Nothing much, a plain little two-up-two-down, but it’s all I’d need. I could learn to be happy again here. I feel it, deep in my gut. Waking up to the sound of the stream. Nobody to please but myself. A simple life. I could grow my own vegetables, even keep some chickens. If only…
I sigh, and turn back towards the car. And then I see the sign. Ar Werth. For Sale.
I freeze, my heart thumping. Wistful dream has become real-life possibility. Dare I do this?
Come on, Rebecca, don’t be such a bloody coward. It’d be a big change, sure, but isn’t that just what you need? You can’t go on the way you were.
Yes. Whatever it takes, I’m going to buy this house. I note down the estate agent’s details and the name on the gate, Glan-y-Nant. As I walk back to the car I feel, for the first time in months, a smile creeping over my face.
my offering is based on the original heartbreak challenge .
I titled it –
Heartbreak Is A KillerYou asked, ‘what becomes of the broken hearted?’ The more oblique and pithier question would be ‘How do the broken hearted cope?’
I’m not naming names because if I did …. Well, let’s just say that’s not a good idea.
Instead I’ll say, he was a man I thought I could invest in and, in the beginning, it was great.
You know, tall, good looking, well-educated; eyes with that brooding attentiveness you can just fall into. Sometimes he’d finished my sentences. He made me smile. We both travelled a lot and to be honest I needed a change of direction from my usual pastime.
People who met us said we were a damn good match…
Too good to be true, right. I mean we all have a past. Sometimes we talk about it, and sometimes we don’t and as always, some pasts are murkier, secret, or more curious than others.
Me for instance, I might look like your average ditzy blonde, girly-girl but I’m not.
I’m more analytical than you know, have an eye for detail, and work hard to conceal my most private, ‘extermination-contractor’ business.
Yes , I have done things I’m not proud of and there are some I would love to tell you about but I can’t because if I did, well, I’d have to kill you and that’s no idle threat.
I could fill a notebook with ways to do it and dispose of your remains as well: The last pages of said notebook would also contain codenames of those I could rely on to help me complete such a task.
Anyway back to my story.
It turned out he was pretty good at hiding things too, and, because I had grown complacent looking through those proverbial rose-tinted specs, I walked into each day rather blinkered and unmindful.
He blinded me with attention, and by being everything I wanted him to be.
It took longer than usual before I noticed the warning signs. You know what I mean, forgetting small things promised, the late arrivals and unanswered messages, the scent of perfume, not mine. At first I overlooked those things but when late night outings kept happening my professional interest was piqued and I started keeping closer track of things.
He inadvertently let slip he owned a passport in a different name and brushed it off as a change of name from when he was a child.
I did a little digging, and by that I mean covert snooping among his personal things
What a liar: He had four. All in different names.
When I discovered his carefully hidden bag of ‘work tools‘ I knew he killed people too.
I can hear you all now muttering about the old ‘pot and kettle’ proverb but there is a bit of a difference between an assassin and a serial killer, you know.
I do it for cold hard cash.
He does it for thrill and pleasure.
I suppose looking back on things I was not actually heartbroken – more correctly I fell out of lust, was pissed off and realised I had lost my edge .
I think that the thing that irked me most was I was being used as a convenient cover story.
He mistakenly assumed I was meek and controllable. I’m not a fool, nor submissive, or controllable. I don’t mind getting my hands dirty either.
Remember that old saying ‘hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.’ Well this man is about to find out just how scorned I was feeling.
It’s taken some quick planning but, like I said, I know people,’
(599)
What becomes of the broken hearted?
Tomorrow, if I make it through the night, I celebrate my one hundred and ninth birthday. I hate my birthdays. Life’s punctuation. People wander about pretending it’s a secret that there will be a party for me in the day room. The press may attend. The staff will say things such as, “Well done”, as though I fought to remain alive. I will stay in my room as long as I can, but they will find me eventually.
It won’t be my idea of a party. Oh, they will try hard, but… sandwiches, tea and coffee, cake, bright lights. My idea of a party is dark corners, a glass of something strong in my hand, conversation here, laughter there, music, and…
Honestly? I was thinking, “and Katherine”.
There’s irony for you. Tomorrow is also the twenty ninth anniversary of Katherine’s death. My fateful eightieth birthday. My party with dark corners and strong drinks. She was travelling to this celebration all the way from Penrith when some child, full of bravado and with a new licence, crashed into a National Express coach on the M6. A coach with her on board.
Let me tell you about Katherine. I met her in 1924 when I was nine and she was eight. She was a sad little thing who had been invited to my ninth birthday party by my parents, because they knew her family. Back then, a child’s party was mainly an adult event where the children were props and set dressing. Not to me. Skinny, dark brown hair, dark brown eyes, an aloofness to her. We talked, we played, but somehow, I never felt she came close to me. I saw her, on and off, for another year. Enough time to fall in love. Deeply and hopelessly. Enough time for me that is. Then her family moved away.
Ten years passed, and in that time not a day went by without her in my thoughts. I never mentioned it to anybody, except Arthur. Arthur was a friend. My best friend.
Arthur said, ‘Chin up, old man. Plenty more shrimp in the ocean.’
He had a feeling that things were “brewing” in Europe. His father was a Colonel, a career soldier from the last outing, and Arthur decided to follow him. On his last night before he headed off to start training, we cut loose in a hotel—and ran into Katherine. I knew her straight away, but I was drunk. She gave me her card.
‘When you’re sober, write to me.’
When I was sober, I had lost her card, and she had gone. Took me a while to recover.
Five more years and Arthur’s foresight was proved right. Enlisted in the army. Saw precious little action until the war was almost over. Then I saw things that will stay with me forever. And I met Katherine in a village called Jawiszowice. She was some kind of government spook, and she had seen stuff too. We clung to each other in the mud of this alien place, and I hoped—but
‘I married Arthur,’ she said. ‘He kept my card.’
I broke my leg slowly once when a van backed over it. Agony. But the pain of “I married Arthur” lasted longer.
So, eighty years old and a friend told me that Katherine was widowed. Gave me an email address. I tried it and she said she’d come to my party. I was old. Not an inch of me without a wrinkle, but still I hoped. You know the rest.
What becomes of the broken hearted? Nothing happens. We endure.
UNTITLED (600 WORDS)
‘Seriously, Dom, you’re going to want to know about this.’
Virgil’s words tumbled out with enough agitation to stir, not only my curiosity, but something in the darker recesses of my mind.
‘Piety’s back.’
***
Piety – Prototype 1: Experimental Transcendent Interface. An engineered being of such incredible power, I had labelled her ‘dangerous and unpredictable’ moments before she fried my synapses with an experience of such immense beauty and energy, she left me in a state of mental shutdown for two days.
‘What does she want? Do we know?’ I dressed. Threw basic essentials in a bag. I had to be there.
‘She says she wants her freedom. She’s prepared to barter Orcadian – with all its modifications – in exchange for a free pass to anywhere, and the promise that the Federation will stop hunting her.’
‘It’ll never happen. You know it and so do I. She’s much too volatile to roam around the galaxy unfettered and unchallenged.’ I felt a sudden rush of emotion… Pity? Anger?… for what had been, at one time, a highly sophisticated computer program. ‘Look, can you wangle me passage to wherever it is you are?’
‘No need. Transport is already on its way. You made such a lasting impression on Piety last time you met that she’s asked if you might be allowed to negotiate terms on her behalf. I guess The Federation are hoping you can persuade her to be reasonable.’
‘I doubt Piety’s requests will ever be reasonable enough. The Federation view her as their property. Why would they settle for Orcadian – however advanced the modifications – when, if they could find a way to restrain Piety, they would have access to almost unlimited potential?’
***
‘Freedom Jones.’
Her voice is a featherlight caress across the velvet of my mind.
Piety. My dark self is both amused and awed. We’re light years away from the rendezvous point. How are you communicating across such a distance?
Piety’s sigh is a mix of self-satisfaction, inevitability and something I can’t put my finger on.
‘I want to ask a favour. I think I know a way to find peace, at least for a little while. Will you help me?’
***
‘They’re saying the loss of Orcadian was the result of Piety’s modifications, but I can’t help thinking she planned it. How else could there have been an explosion of that magnitude without a single loss of life?’
I closed the audio-link with Virgil and turned to the being beside me. The being who became a passenger in my mind moments before Orcadian exploded. I have carried her here at her request – a down-sized version of herself but, in my opinion, no less dangerous.
Piety.
She is autumn after a rain-storm and the rush of wind through pine forests. She is a fiery golden sunrise and the dark, moody depths of the North Sea. She is wild raspberries and heather honey… She is John’s memories of his birthplace. John’s Piety.
‘When I discovered that they had refused to repatriate John because of his fugitive status, I was very cross. Cross enough to become the being John always worried I might. I tapped into the computer system on one of the unmanned outposts to find out who had dared deny him his last request. That’s when I discovered that you had taken delivery of soil samples from Earth, and I knew that you had found a way. I needed to find a way to bring you closer to me, so I sacrificed Orcadian. He’s here, isn’t he? You buried my John on Scottish soil, here on Terra II.’
Heartbreak
Megan sauntered to the immigration officer, a man with ears pointy as a chihuahua, and not much bigger. His name tag, begging for a new laminate said his name was Ralph. Megan slid her form and passport across the table.
Her week in St. Vincent had served its purpose but it was time to head back to Michigan. The humidity and flickering lights in the cramped quarters calling itself a departure hall agreed with her.
The immigration officer pointed at the bag in her hand. “What’s in there?”
“Rum.”
“What kind?”
Megan said, “Your local Sunset Rum.”
“You crazy? You can’t take that on an airplane.”
“Why not? It’s just rum.”
“Sunset is the strongest rum on earth.”
Megan had no doubt about that. One sip when she landed in St. Vincent cured her heartbreak. Her colleague, Alvin, back in Michigan, had told her about his native island’s rum. He was astute, it seemed. He worked beside her since she left college five years ago and never mentioned Sunset Rum until she removed the photo of that son of a bitch, Mike, from her desk, lost interest in eating and dieted on Air Supply through her laptop speakers.
Alvin had been right that Sunset Rum could cure heartbreak. And there would be more to come, surely. If Mike could shred her heart, anyone could. But to tell the immigration officer the truth would sound like a mountain bike missing a gear.
“I love your Sunset Rum,” she said. “I need it as a souvenir.”
“It’s too strong to carry on a plane, ma’am.”
Like how a passenger must have their seat in the upright position for take-off. Rules for the sake of rules but bureaucrats must find something to do. But there is one language bureaucrats understand.
She slipped her hand out her pocket, planted it on the counter. “What if my Sunset Rum was friends with President Andrew Jackson?”
The immigration officer smiled, revealing a crooked front tooth.
Let her board with her precious Sunset Rum. Let anyone break her heart, she had the elixir.
“You Yankees think you can buy everything,” said the officer. “With the cost of living in this country, it would take more than a twenty to get me to break the rules.”
Megan jammed the crumpled twenty bucks into her pocket.
“So, every time I need Sunset Rum, I need to find a thousand US dollars for airfare, a couple hundred more for decent accommodation, beg my boss for a few days off, fly to St. Vincent, to get a drop of Sunset Rum?”
He shrugged. “Or you could move here and live.”
# #
If you have the good fortune of visiting St. Vincent in the beautiful Caribbean, you might pass Megan’s bar, Healed Heartbreak Shack. Please, stop by. Order the Ralph Special – Sunset Rum with a splash of lime. And don’t tell her she sounds like an American, she’s been working on her Vincentian accent for a couple years.
Word Count: 497 words
I should’ve known better than to panic – what I took for drought was silent fermentation which resulted in an uncorking and a fizzing cascade of sparkling wines. Knick’s violently vivid tale of betrayal dangerously intoxicating with an awe-inspiring detonation of language.
Richard B’s continuation of his ‘Whodunnit’ tale and Rebecca’s stoic acceptance –the flat tube of toothpaste – was similarly, silently but painfully affecting, but welcome for the implication that time does heal.
Terrie’s ‘He blinded me with attention, and by being everything I wanted him to be’ perfectly encapsulated the situation, temporarily blinding me as to how it would – wonderfully – end.
Athelstone managed to break my heart, both with his story and with the final line, and Seagreen’s Freedom Jones – impressive, mind-blowingly mysterious and so very intriguing – hurt in unanticipated ways. Then Alex added another, individual, alcoholic twist, this time of rum and I found myself provided with half a dozen stories more than equal to those of A L Kennedy. And with the necessity of naming a ‘winner’ when in truth I think it was me who won. So, since all merit first place, and because I think it’s a while since Knicks set the monthly competition, I’ll hand the baton to her, thanking you all.
Thank you, Sandra, for a prompt that actually got me writing. It’s ages since I last entered the monthly comp, possibly not since the Cloud imploded.
Just to clarify, this is a prequel to my earlier stories about Rebecca rather than a continuation, set ten years earlier. Rather like Athelstone with Teabreak, I can’t leave her alone. I love her to bits, as they say.
Oh, and a worthy winner. An awesomely intense piece of writing from Knicks.
@ Richard, glad to hear you were inspired, and hope it becomes a (good) habit. I did try to make sure I’d the time-line correct for Rebecca, but whichever, it worked as far as impact was concerned.
🙂 It has been a while, yes. Thank you for your flattering words, Sandra, and for trusting me with the monthly comp baton this turn around. Thank you Richard for the congrats. Well done to all! I thoroughly enjoyed each entry, lots of lovely lines and all the proper, not to mention yummy, writing I’ve missed reading around these here parts 🙂
October’s prompt should be up within the hour.
What a productive monthly challenge ,Sandra.
Everyone of the stories so enjoyable. I’m glad it wasn’t me having to make that choice on who to pass the baton to.
Congratulations Knicks for such a great piece, and well done everyone else for their offerings too.
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