Comments: A snippet of my short story tentatively entitled “Colorless.” Hope you enjoy!
– JRF
***
Even through her young eyes, the world was colorless. She stepped over the threshold of her home’s front door, staring in awe at her neighborhood street, her fingers trailing along the shiny top of the brass door handle before falling limply to her side. The midnight sky was black as pitch, choked by columns of thick gray smoke that made her eyes sting. She blinked back the tears, squinting. The vague shapes of the houses across the drive loomed like pale ghosts from the gloom, seeming to twist and dance in the deep, flickering shadows.
She took another step forward into something pillowy and soft, smooth as silk. She looked down at her bare feet and found her toes submerged in a thick bed of ash. It covered the veranda of the house she had lived in all her life, spreading out across the lawn and drifting into the street, gently mounded and resting as quietly as new-fallen snow. She tilted her face upward, searching for the moon. She had always loved the moon, so pale and gentle. So soothing. A calm, cool presence after the terror of each day. But tonight, there was no moon.
Blistering hot air brushed across her cheek, lifting a strand of long brown hair to float into her face, moving the skirt of her favorite colorless dress across her knees. She reached up and idly pulled the hair out of her face, watching the bits of flaming cloth and insulation that swirled in the eddies of churning air. In this world without color, even the fire seemed bland, merely a bright white flash against the darkness of the starless sky. But the heat felt good. The night was cold. And there was no moon.
This is lovely! One of my favorite kinds of writing is the kind that’s almost exclusively descriptive. I would’ve liked to see more actions (such as, she reached, she stepped) apart from the amount of looking around in the middle paragraph, but that’s really the bulk of my complaints. If the whole story reads like this, I’d be really intrigued to see the rest! 🙂
Thanks for reading and the comment! I also like stories that are highly descriptive, as long as the description is sort of poetic. I was kind of going for that in this story… but I also wanted it to have a sort of slow, detached feel to it. I haven’t finished this one yet. I think the rest of it reads this way, but that’s from my POV as its creator, so I could be wrong. 😉 Lol. I have an idea I really like for the ending – I might just email the whole thing to you or something when it’s done because I’d love to hear your reaction to it even if I decide to submit it and don’t post it! 😀
That would be awesome! I’d love to read it. 🙂