Title: Trauma Transferred
Prompt: They had nothing more to say to each other.
The round table with carved legs was in the middle of a large room. Four chairs were neatly placed so each was exactly a few centimetres from the large red and cream floral table cloth. The cloth tumbled off the edges of the table with wavy edges. Kath walked into the room, deep in thought, and listened to herself say what a beautiful and elegant room. She noticed the pottery on the sideboard was 18th Century and placed to create a beautifully coordinated picture of affluence from an earlier age. She sat at the table and waited with a sadness that held her mind fixed on the events of exactly five days ago.
It was 5.30 pm on Saturday when for a moment Stan’s whole world of the past and the future flashed by in a split second. There was the other car hurtling straight for him. He remembered only the awful sound and the helplessness of the moment as his car slid sideways into the other. Then there was nothing.
Stan woke. Bent over him was Kath whose soft lips merely touched his forehead. His head throbbed with pain. He then felt pain in his legs and his arm. It was a jabbing pain that became unbearable with any movement. He noticed he was coming and going from real to unreal consciousness and was surrounded by curtains and pipes and electronic equipment that emitted a soft beep. His mind would stop and Kath would disappear.
The night was long and there were many fits of sleep and pain that sent his mid racing. Stan began to ask questions that seemed like they were fired from a rifle. How did it happen? Why am I alive? Where was Kath? What happened to the other driver? Who rescued me? What happened to my car? Was anyone else hurt? Will it happen again?
Kath knew, as the wheel chair came into the elegantly arranged room, that all was not well. There was a sense of foreboding even though Stan had recovered well. Their intimacy had faded and conversation had become sluggish. His mother, now in her senior years, pushed his wheel chair up to the table and carefully moved one of the chairs and then put it exactly in the corner, out of the way. It was placed with a precision that reflected years of care and attention to every detail and an awareness of the real satisfaction that comes from the exactness of completion. “I will leave you two to talk’, she says.
“Stan, how is your leg?” Kath asked in an attempt to break the ice. “Ok”, Stan replied. There was a silence. “What did the doctor say”; Kath then asked. ‘”Not much”, as he gave a grunt rather than a reply. Then there was a very long silence. Stan suddenly burst out: “I can’t stand this any more”. Again there was a long silence. “I’m leaving, I want to do something with my life”, he exclaimed. Kath sat in the longest silence of her life without emotion but crying and almost screaming inside, yet nothing came out. There was nothing to say and nothing that could stop the trauma being transferred. Kath cried, got up and walked away into the distance.
Gordon MacAulay, 20 July 2009
Titles:
My Silence
A Journey to Nothing
Nothingness
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
Heather says:
A strong mood gets created here, and I'm trying to analyse why: I think it has mostly to do with the detail of description you include. Particularly the PRECISION of things seems to forebode some coming chaos.
I got confused about the timeline of your story. I'm assuming that Kath and Stan are meeting up 5 days after the accident. But with 4 or 5 separate incidents happening in the story (Kate in the room, Stan having an accident, Stan in the hospital waking up with Kate there, Stan in the hospital by himself asking questions, Kate and Stan and Stan's mum in the room...), it's tricky to follow.
I think a little more foreshadowing of the direction of Stan's thinking would have strengthened the ending of the story. I'm guessing his accident caused him to adjust his priorities but the story doesn't paint that clearly.
You really paint detail beautifully. It enables your reader to really be there in the scene.
Kerry says:
This story has a strong narrative creating a feeling of dread. I wonder whether the dislocation of the timing of the events makes the reader ill at ease. Is this months later when Kath is sitting at the table or just a few days as we are told so precisely?
I would like to know what brought about Stan's transformation? Was it that he no longer loved Kath? Did he have a renewed sense of his own mortality? And why did his mother wheel him in to the room? Was the couple already estranged before the accident?
I would like to see you expand the story Gordon, and explore some of these intriguing questions.
I really like the possibilities of the scenario.
The description of the room at the outset is strong and detailed. It immediately puts you in the space.
I then found the change of pace and change to Stan's point of view lost some of the tension that seemed to be building. And it does seem as though more than 5 days should have passed given Stan's recovery and total (so it would seem) change of commitment to Kath.
I was intringued by the "Will it happen again?" which left me wondering whether Stan had some previously unknown condition which caused his accident.
I also cannot help but feel that the mother has a role to play in Stan's decision.
You have left the reader wanting more. I particularly liked the concept of transfer of trauma.
The last comment was from Peta - forgot to identify myslef - sorry.
There is much detail present in the story about things like table cloths and sideboards and pottery. There is a scary remembering of an auto crash. There are soft lips doing their best to soften the abundance of pain. There are unsolved questions for Stan about the accident. There is a very concerned and worried Kath (a wife?) and a mother.
Yet we have no detail whatsoever about what it is that Stan can't stand no more. The mother is obviously in on it (I will leave you two to talk - hey how come she knows something and the reader doesn't?)
For me this lack of detail on Stan's dilemma weakens the story too much. I'm left with a "what was that about?" The vivid story telling for me needed a bit more revelation on how you see all of this being connected.
This is a wonderful story. I was totally transferred to the dining room with your terrific first para. You have included wonderful detail particularly the precision of the furniture and I love the wavy edges of the table cloth tumbling. Stans scenes in hospital, remembering the accident and then capturing the experience of being in hopsital is again really real. I was in the dining room and then in the accident and then the hospital. Great words and word pictures.
Your POV is interesting. para 1 is Kath, then Stan takes over in the hospital, then back to Kath for the last 2 paras. I think it works but it does have the story jump around a bit.
I'd love to see you write every week.
Post a Comment