Yarn Fragments

These are two exercises I did in Writing class last year. I just thought I'd put them on here and see what you guys think. They're very very brief bits of narrative. Not even stories, really. More like snapshots. Enjoy!

1.Wrapped in her shawl, she stands out on the porch. She stands out there for almost an hour, while every now and then some brisk couple goes along the sidewalk with their dog. She hears a car go by on Maple Street—some cocky young creature speeding down like a comet in his Porsche. The faint current of downtown traffic is audible, like static in the air.
The nights are crisp, and the sky, clear and confessional. Every detail is sharp in crisp air. The constellations glitter like salt: Gemini. Taurus. The Big Dipper. She memorised them all when she was a little girl. Casseiopea. Orion. She would list them off to her parents at the dinner table, over uneaten peas and casserole. But now she can only point out a few; it was so long ago. The harder she looks, the more they appear like stars, and less like old stories. The older she got the less she looked up. But for nights like this, she would’ve forgotten the sky was there.
She remembers Cygnus, the swan. It was really Zeus in disguise, trying to deceive a girl in order get in her pants. She tries to imagine being knocked up by a constellation. The poor child would be stuck in one position for eternity, but it would be adored by everybody, her most of all. Any company would do, really. Any old swan. She had a Greek god of her own once, her own personal Apollo. But now the gods file for divorce like everybody else, and so here she is near the end of her life, twice married and childless. At her age, when the dark and confessional sky starts looking just like itself, unpopulated and endless, looking up is the most sensible thing to do. Look for a signal. To hurl a bottled message straight up, up, up through the ozone layer.


2.The three kids stormed the beach, bellowing made-up war cries. Their sprint turned into tiptoeing, as grass gave way to slippery pebbles, followed by cigarette butts buried in coarse sand. The other side of the lake hid behind an impregnable wall of rain that carried across the water, and the waves ravaged the shoreline. The wind chilled their half-naked bodies, but nothing would stop the charge of this light brigade.
Alistair led the way, followed by Eddie and then Darcy, and the waves rejected their early teen bodies. It toppled them over; Eddie lost his balance, who grabbed Alistair’s leg and dragged him down into the briny underworld, turning his war cry into a war gurgle. Darcy was still above the surface, arms akimbo. He gave a hearty laugh, imitating a brawny cartoon superhero. Soon after the other two burst up behind him and shoved him under the cold waves. His arms thrashed about like slippery fish, while Alistair and Eddie held down his head. They let him go and he shot up and tried to punch the boys.
“You almost killed me, you assholes!”
“Watch your mouth, Darcy! You should wash it out.” said Eddie, slapping the water in Darcy’s face. “You kiss your mama with that mouth?”
Darcy scowled. “I don’t kiss my mom, Eddie, that’s sick.”
“‘Cause I sure kissed your mom. So did Alistair. We shared her.”
“I’ll kill you, I’ll fuckin’ kill you!” Darcy lunged for Eddie, who disappeared under the water and tackled him.
Darcy was the smallest of their troupe. Always catching up to them, his voice had not yet plummeted like the others, but he could make up for it in other ways. He was the most brazen, ploughing through the rain, which now flogged their faces—and he hollered the loudest war cries. A young blonde bull, he would always be challenging older, bigger kids in wrestling matches and mercy fights. It always ended in hot stinging tears for him, but he never backed down. He was a fighter, in the sense that he was always looking for a fight. In another life he would have been storming the beaches of Normandy, rather than the beaches of western Alberta in blue nylon trunks.