Projects
Consciousness Fiction
9. "Holly and the Captain" by Carl Johann Schroeder
Introduction: Writing group exercise #5, october 2006. Write the scene of an intensely emotional event that takes place over the course of about an hour. Use only concrete descriptions, no abstract vocabulary.
-- Carl, 2006
Holly and the Captain
By Carl Johann Schroeder, copyright 2006, all rights reserved.
She awoke smiling, her youthful lips parting. One hand to breast, she turned and reached with the other to the empty place in the blankets beside her. When her fingertips met the sea captain's hat upon the other pillow, she looked and recoiled. Sitting up sharply in the sturdy four-poster, she held her fair head in her hands and rocked herself slowly. Then the young woman reached for a hand mirror on the side table and watched herself put on the man’s dark headgear. "Holly, my dear," she said in a husky voice, nodding.
With flourish the woman rose from the bed and checked a wall calendar. Crossing off the twenty-fifth day of the twelfth month, she nodded again. There was a black garment on the floor amid soiled handkerchiefs, all of which which she trod upon as she crossed to her wardrobe. She dusted off a lovely summer dress of white ruffles and slipped it on over her shivering form.
Barefoot she ran down the hewn stairs to the kitchen. If a cold sliver pierced her pale foot then she did not notice. Luminescent in the sun of the windowsill, a bowl fashioned of imported crystal awaited, brimming with brilliant dried berries. She caught the bowl and began eagerly eating, delighting in saliva and flavor.
Out to the porch with the magnificent view she hurried, reaching as well for the spyglass on her way out the door. The brisk air did not concern her as she scanned the horizon beyond the windswept grassy hill which dropped steeply to rocks and sea foam. She gasped as she saw in the distance a tall ship approaching.
The young woman shouted and waved, her heart pounding faster and faster. She trembled to put down the spyglass and scoop more of the berries into her mouth, chewing faster and faster. Laughing as she swallowed, she traced in the cold air with one shaking finger the ship's outline enlarging. Gulls echoed and wheeled above her in widening patterns.
Sails billowing, the majestic wooden structure plowed up to the shore in line for the woman. A boy fishing on the breakers paid it no heed as it passed him. The hill suffered not a shadow as the great ship floated directly upon her. Dropping the crystal from cold fingers to shatter and scatter red berries, the young woman reached up to her captain whose strong arms reached firmly down to her. "Meredeth!" he cried, and the two caught each other to entwine inextricably, as the tall ship climbed up into the sky, becoming one with the clouds that the day's heat would soon be dispersing.
