Joan was dead

[jmmb]

Joan was dead. She had died a long time ago. Looking back, she realized that she had died years before she had even noticed. The part that surprised her the most was how little anything changed.

That first morning she had opened her eyes and it was all so beautiful. And calm. The early dawn light had slipped through her window, illuminating the edges of her bed and dancing quietly in the dusty air. Joan lifted her arm and let her fingers bathe in the quiet light. And then she gasped. Michelangelo could not have sculpted anything as delicate and sublime. The edges of her marble fingers had glowed translucently as the sun passed through them. She closed her eyes. When she opened them, it was gone.

She threw her covers off and jumping out of bed quickly got dressed. Now that she was dead, her fear was gone. She knew exactly what needed to be done. From the closet she grabbed her backback, dumping its contents on her floor. Then she replaced the books and crumpled papers with two changes of clothes, the miniature unicorn her mother had given her, a small stuffed dog, and the contents of her piggy bank.

She walked stealthily to the door, but turned around before opening it. She added a few rolled canvases, a small sketch book, her prisma pencils, brushes and paints. Then she opened the door and down the stairs. In the kitchen she paused long enough to pack a few lunches. Before the sun was fully above the horizon, she had disappeared into the long shadows. It was hours before anybody else in the house woke up. Longer still before anybody thought to check on her. By that time, she was on a bus to a destination she had picked at random.

[syme]

Nicely done! I like your style. "Joan was dead" is a good opening sentence (actually it reminds me of the beginning of "A Christmas Carol"). I like the descriptions which give the whole thing a sort of magical feel, especially when you are describing her looking at the dawn light coming in through her window.

As I understand it, you mean to say that she was "not truly living" right? But I'm a little confused if that's the case. Isn't she a child or at least a teen? How can a child be already "dead" in that sense? I feel that doesn't tend to happen until the point where we start getting cocky and trying to act like adults (without being truly mature). That's when we start looking at stuffed dogs, unicorns, and prisma pencils as silly things too childish for us. Care to share your thoughts about this? Or perhaps I didn't get it? If so, could you point me in the right direction?

[jmmb]

NO, I'm amazed that you did pick up on so much in just a few paragraphs!

This is actually the opening of a novel I've been working on for a while now. I went back to write some more, and discovered I did not like the intro so rewrote it, thus this.

She is a young teen and the story follows her as she discovers how to live again. OK, that sounds really lame... She is emotionally dead, and her character is kind of a composite plus of myself and some of the kids I work with (teacher).

The items she took with her are memories which are fleshed out later.

Thanks for the feedback!

[jmmb]

This is an older version of the same opening. What do you think?

[syme]

could you just post it so we don't have to download it?

[jmmb]

OK, here's the opening few paragraphs. The selection I posted was 8 pages...

Joan was dead. She knew that now, but it had taken many years to understand. Death had come slowly, creeping in its marble stillness. It had started at her fingertips, trailing ice along her limbs. Her heart had been the last to die. By that time, she hadn’t been able to feel her toes for years.

She’d been dead for so long that she could barely remember living, except with a bone-deep sense of loss. She sighed in frustration. So much of her time was devoted to these morbid thoughts about life. Briefly she wondered if she should tell her therapist about her continuing obsession. She quickly rejected the idea. She didn’t have the heart to destroy his newfound faith in her so soon.

After years of talking to him, trying to understand death, he had finally told her that she was making progress. He had never understood this yearning for life. In fact, she recalled bitterly, he had made her sign a contract swearing she would stop dissecting her arms in an attempt to find life. But she couldn’t. No, she would keep her thoughts to herself.

For years she hadn’t minded death. She had basked in its cocoon of numbness. She had reveled in its absence of emotion. Shakespeare had gotten it right, she had thought. Death was that consummation devoutly to be wished. She didn’t worry about what dreams might come, once she had shuffled off her mortal coil It was enough that she had.

She had spent most of her sixteen years of life wishing she were dead, trying to die. In fact, it had been very ironic to wake up one morning and realize that she was dead through no effort of her own. Even more ironic, perhaps, was that now that she was, she desperately wished she were alive again.

[syme]

Oh, eight pages?! I see! Well, could you upload it in a different format then? Like rtf? I don't have Word Perfect...