hey, missy--

you said something about this story not being quite up to snuff? i say the only shortcoming i noticed while reading (twice) was that this felt a little more like a scene from a story, rather than a complete story with resolution. as always, your writing is evocative and truthful, and this effort would fit beautifully into a larger tale.

He succeeds in his third attempt to unlock the door. The lights are still on. He tries to take off his gloves – black mittens, shining with rain – but his hands shake too much to grip the moist wool. He uses his teeth. They chatter, but are useful. In the doorway he shrugs off his dark pea coat and opens the closet to put it away. Inside is her red jacket. He drops the coat on the closet floor and closes the door. He stares at the whitewashed wood. Since he left the hospital there has been a bright hole at the back of his head, a beautiful and infinite vortex of emptiness where all of his thoughts have fled. It feels like the height of a vaulted chapel ceiling. All of his limbs feel very far away.

you are so good at expressing inner turmoil without turning it purple. this introduction feels real, we immediately identify with this man suffering through shock. he's been jolted outside of his normal reality, and his floaty feeling and brain's self-defense against the coming emotional storm are well done. i'd like to mention the first sentence, how you give us important clues to this man's state--we don't know quite what that is yet, or what's happened to him, but we know this man is somewhat incapacitated. with a simple statement, you let us know without telling us. i use this phrase often when discussing your writing, and it's true. you're consistently faithful to the "show-don't-tell" maxim, and your stories make for an immersive experience every time.

 He turns. Kitchen to the left. Living room before him. Bathroom to the right. Which? What will he do now? The television is a dead eye. That thought is inappropriate. He moves to the kitchen. He has not eaten since – when? Lunch at his desk. One hand holding a pen, the other a sandwich. He does not remember what he had worked on today. He does not try very hard – it does not matter. He stares into the fridge. He does not see the leftover pasta, the milk, the butter. He does not see anything. He only stares, then closes the door. He does not want to eat anyway.

 He stands again in the hall, making decisions. He crosses the living room into the bedroom and stands in the doorway. He does not turn the light on. He had forgotten, for a moment. He doesn’t want to go inside. But he has to sleep; he can feel weariness settling into his eyes and bones. But even in the doorway he can smell her inside. Her perfume and lotion and soap. Her shampoo. Her fabric softener. Her natural scent. All of those things combined to become her presence. He slides his hand along the inside wall, looking for the light switch. He flicks it on. He wants to close his eyes and not see the slightly mussed bed where she had sat to put her shoes on. He does not want to see the permanent disarray of her vanity. He steps inside with his eyes on the floor and loosens his tie. His hands near his face smell antiseptic, antibacterial, unnatural. Hospital smell.

you take us through this man's return home, his first several moments, with the same numb remove he's experiencing. short sentences, minimal detail in the description, to match his inability to focus on more than the basic operating of his limbs. he shies away from personal reminders of his love, not capable of feeling that level of connection yet. just goes through the motions of coming home, too lost to do anything else. very real. paradoxically, the few details we get in these paragraphs are of her--her things, her scent, her places. the wall's going to be breached, as much as he tries to avoid it for now. we get a sense of how ingrained these two were with each other, and how painful being in that place is for this man, now. i bolded bits i thought were especially telling, and/or great description. the underlined sentence i thought was a bit muddy--i liked his thought about the television screen (a bit random, but it worked, i thought), but didn't quite follow to the impropriety of it. i loved your last two sentences here. the associations, the symbolism--great stuff.

They called him at work as he was straightening his desk to leave. They said he was marked in her phone as ICE – In Case of Emergency. They said, ambulance. They said, accident. When they said the name of the hospital he hung up and ran to the elevator and to his car and red lights and past emergency personnel and through a doorway to a room where a machine was pushing air into her lungs. He stood beside her bed, mesmerized by the unnatural lift and release in her chest. That was when the bright little vortex had first opened, just a pinpoint in his occipital lobe. Just a panicked faintness. A doctor came in and told him that when her car had landed upside down at the bottom of an embankment, she had suffered cranial and spinal injuries. She was not breathing normally. She did not have normal brain function. She was a sack of meat with a beating heart.

 the disjointed feel of this, his moment-to-moment memory of finding his love attached to machines was a great choice. we feel his burgeoning panic, how he stuffs it down, how the beginning realization of what's happening is a pinpoint somewhere deep inside his skull. the machines breathing for her, their even, plastic rhythm hits him, gives him his first inkling of the reality of her imminent death. you bring out his frailty even as he's unaware of it. the underlined: "just a . . ." felt a little awkward to me. would it mean the same as "just a faint panic"? i'm not sure, but that reads a bit smoother to me. the other underlined sentence, the last one, felt angry to me. not sure if you intended that, and anger is a strong emotion, very real in this situation, but the sudden burst of it, his thinking of her as a "sack of meat", felt abrupt. maybe a little too soon into the crisis, as he's not yet even accepted the fact she's already gone. i can still see his sudden anger working here, if maybe we have a hint of a lead up to it. he's been almost clinically detached in his emotional response to this point.

Did she have parents? No. Dead.

Siblings? Dead.

Anyone at all? Me.

 

            They said she was DNR. Do not resuscitate. They put her on life support only so that he could see her almost alive one last time. When he left, they would pull the plug, so to speak. He made them do it while he was there. He held her hand when they pulled the tubes out of her throat and turned off the noisy machines. He whispered in her ear for the full hour it took for her to die. He doesn’t remember now, his eyes wide and looking at the floor, his hands frozen at his neck, what he said. It was gibberish. It was fear and love. It was gone in an ear that couldn’t hear him.

this section is thick with sorrow. this woman's family history, the harsh reality of watching a loved one die. good stuff. we learn a little about this man, too--how he insists on being with her as she fades, how speaks to her the entire time even though he suspects she can't hear him. what else could he do? i thought the "almost" could be cut. doctors deal with death all the time, and they're not insensitive, but it seems they'd classify her as "alive" or "deceased", one or the other. technical terms in black & white. i'm also not sure if they would actually remove breathing tubes while he was in the room. i haven't ever been in this situation, so maybe they would, but it seems disruptive. turning off the apparatus would allow her to die under her own power just as well. but, it's a minor quibble. the last underlined bit: ". . . was gone in. . ." felt passive, a little weak. i know you, that you can find a more powerful way to put this, because this is a jolting thought and deserves to hit us that hard.

He sits on the edge of the bed and puts the heels of his hands into the hollows of his eyes. He puts his elbows on his knees. He is like that for a very long time. And all he can think about is nothing, is the space between his consciousness and his body, while he floats above himself and freezes in his shock. And the silence filters in.

this ending felt more like a continuation of the earler passages. strong writing, but not really leading us anywhere, to any shift or conclusion. the pace of your writing is perfect for the subject, but i think you need more space for this story to find its end. one thousand words won't be enough, i'm afraid.  you're so talented at expressing the power of our internal lives, at finding those unspoken truths we all carry, and as always, i'm impressed.

thanks for a thoughtful read, jenn--i feel all mellow and sad now.

I have to agree with Laurie, it does feel as though it’s a scene from a different story than a stand-alone itself.

The first indication of this is the way in which the story is told, completely from a third-person pronoun point-of-view, where you use “he turns” and “he sat” quite a bit. Personally, I tend to dislike present tense prose, but again that’s just my opinion.

black mittens, shining with rain

Add on “drops” to rain, or change to water, and it sounds better.

He uses his teeth. They chatter, but are useful.

The second sentence is a bit repetitive of the first. If he uses his teeth, then they’re obviously useful. Try fitting both sentences together, such as “He uses his teeth, even though they chatter.”

Since he left the hospital there has been a bright hole at the back of his head, a beautiful and infinite vortex of emptiness where all of his thoughts have fled.

I really like this sentence, but it’s at odds with the rest of the paragraph. Thus far it’s the only really descriptive sentence that I’ve seen in the paragraph.

He turns. Kitchen to the left. Living room before him. Bathroom to the right. Which? What will he do now?

These sentences are really really short and mostly give just basic information. It’s good to write short sentences as opposed to long ones, but sometimes they need to include just one simple function. Try combining two short sentences together.

He doesn’t want to go inside. But he has to sleep; he can feel weariness settling into his eyes and bones.

These can really be combined into a single sentence. The use of the semicolon in this case is good, but it’s better if you combine the sentences.

This was a interesting piece to read, reminded me a bit of The Sixth Sense or White Noise. It's a good premise, a very good idea, and I honestly think it’s a good piece, but the short sentences and the way it’s told makes it feel a bit lacking.

 Lost my first crit.  Trying again,

Circus,

Wow!  I loved this piece.  Whether through knowledge or empathy you have truly taken me to a place of bereavement with this story.  I felt along with the character and it connected me to my own former grief and helped me work through it.  What a great thing you have done here.

Story vs. Scene - to me this is a story.  The character may not change or resolve a conflict, but the audience has to.  The story starts with the audience being introduced to the conflict.  The character's already dealt with it the only way he could (the infinite void).  The audience then moves through that conflict to the climax (the woman's death) and finally while the man cannot change yet, the audience is changed by this very truthful story.  This is an esoteric reading I know, but it is how I feel.

The Rundown,

What We Whisper to the Dead

I feel the title set me up for something other than what's here.  I really expected a horror story of some sort.  This may just be due to my own reading habits (more speculative in general), but it did take me a couple paragraphs to key in to the power of the story.  Perhaps to change Dead to Dying would make it more relatable.  As it is I expected serial killers or zombies, not authentic human drama.

He tries to take off his gloves – black mittens

 In my mind mittens and gloves are two very different things, so this confused my visual sense a bit.

Since he left the hospital there has been a bright hole at the back of his head, a beautiful and infinite vortex of emptiness where all of his thoughts have fled.

In my experience this limitless void actually feels like it opens in your chest not your head.  This might however just be my own personal experience.

He does not turn the light on. He had forgotten, for a moment. He doesn’t want to go inside.

Up to this point the repetitive sentence structure had been working really well for me.  It established his zombie like state, his mindless nature.  However, here it started to call too much attention to itself and  draw me out of the story.  The sentences themselves became my focus instead of the situation of the character.  You may want to reign it in a little bit.

That's about all I can find.  This is just an excellent piece of writing.  It really touched me.  Thank you for sharing it.

-Ben

 Nice piece of work, Circus!

It feels a little like I've just been dropped in the middle of the story,  but it works pretty good I think.  I also felt like I was reading one of those "choose your adventure" stories, a little bit.  Without choosing what happens next (always got my butt killed...)  ANYWAY!  The ending also feels a little abrupt, but it's a good place to end.  I had to read it several time to be sure I "got" the ending right.

I don't have anything truly constructive for you (mostly because I'm not 100% awake yet, and I don't see any glaring errors)...but I do have a mini-challenge for you.  The way the story is told in present tense, it's very interesting.  Wonder how it will change if you change it to the past tense?  It would be an interesting experiment.

Lest you think I *don't* like the story, I do!  Very much.    I see room for tweakings, if you're so inclined.  It's a very dark story with an unexpected (to me) ending.  I really liked it & I enjoy your style & thinking.

Nice work!