Rough Draft of Perceived Duration

Rough draft of a piece I am working on for a creative writing class I am taking. Putting this up for workshop purposes.

     The incident occurred at the end of two routine Thursdays. Though, certainly no one involved would consider the experience something as insignificant as an “incident.” Few ever learned the cause of the event, and speculation about the death of Dr. Joanna Morley, the sole casualty of those tragic Thursdays, became the topic of discussion when more current gossip was in short supply. Citizens of Lakehaven and its neighbor Lundy have given varied accounts of the Thursdays, but none were as mundane as that of Mildred Pruitt.

     Mildred was the second youngest daughter of four in a home where money was scarce and privacy was nonexistent. At twenty-three, she married John Pruitt for equal parts love and personal space. After thirty-nine years of marriage, two children who never visited, and one grandchild, John died, leaving Mildred with sole dominion over her home. Her reign was marked by floors waxed with religious regularity, well dusted knickknacks arranged just so, and a firm 8:00 p.m. bedtime. It was this final habit and a penchant for merlot before bed that allowed her to sleep through the event. While her neighbors scrambled for safety, Mildred Pruitt woke to a jarring crash that shook her from her bed only to find her well-ordered home in disarray.

     Mildred’s bedroom furniture pressed against one wall as though the room had been tilted during the night, and shards of the Tiffany lamp that resided on her bedside table found their way into the carpet waiting for bare feet to traverse the pea green shag. Further investigation of her home found the contents of her cupboards hurled to the floor, books flung across rooms, and the half-finished sweater she’d been knitting for her grandson poking out from underneath the upturned sofa.

Upon making her way outside, Mildred surveyed the exterior of her home. A single shutter had the temerity to crush one of her daylilies, but her home had survived rumpled but intact. Neighbors had not had the same good fortune.

All around Mildred neighbors emerged from their homes to assess the damage. The Millers asked her to keep an eye out for Buddy, their Labrador, and Mr. Garcia inspected the expanding crack in his driveway.

Mildred was talking to Elaine from down the street about the tree that fell on her new minivan when she noticed the men in neon vests directing people to a large tent at the entrance of her street, and she was discussing the Morley’s decimated workshop with Louise from two streets over when the men ushered her into one of the tents.

The doctors took blood samples and examined Mildred more thoroughly than she preferred before proclaiming their satisfaction and sending her new men in neon vests who loaded her into the back of a truck with her neighbors.

Mildred’s bones rattled around during the short ride, and she was certain the driver was intentionally hitting the bumps and potholes.

When the doors opened again, the citizens of Lakehaven were herded into the Lundy High School gymnasium. Cots spanned across the floor in even rows, and a woman was handing out blankets from a table at the front of the room. People sat in small clusters talking quietly to each other. She approached the woman distributing blankets.

“What happened, and why are we being held here?”

The blanket woman shifted uncomfortably before saying, “Ma’am, you’ve all been missing for two years.”

“What on earth do you mean?” A baffle Mildred looked around the room. Above the bleachers was a banner that read, “Congratulations Graduates!” in bold, blue letters, and underneath the felicitations, in much smaller print, “Class of 2022” was written. It had undeniably been 2020 when Mildred had gone to bed. She thought about the sweater she was knitting her grandson. It certainly wouldn’t fit the boy now. 

     Over the next four days, the citizens of Lakehaven were reunited with their loved ones. Such was not the case for Eugene Baker. His parents died the year before. Or was it three years? Eugene was no longer sure about much of anything. He had no children and was an only child. The only person Eugene had was Linette, and she was conspicuously absent.

After a courthouse wedding and a potluck in his parents’ backyard, Eugene and Linette settled into a state of domestic bliss. The aforementioned bliss evolved into a pedestrian comfort that permeated seven years of marriage. Occasionally Eugene would bring up the subject of children, but children would force Linette to take time off from her career.

She worked for a tire company and had gone to Philadelphia for a business trip on the night of the first Thursday, leaving Eugene to a night at home with a six pack and Linette’s workout tapes which held a peculiar eroticism for Eugene. He made a point of not examining that fact too closely.  

Now he sat on his cot as the gymnasium slowly emptied with each passing hour. It seemed as though her were the only Lakehaven denizen aside from lonely Helen who had nowhere to go.

     “Baker, Eugene.” A professional voice echoed across the waxed floors.

Eugene turned to see a woman in a slightly wrinkled, blue polo shirt standing in the doorway holding a clipboard. His stomach leapt to his throat. The past four days had been a constant parade of names being called by friendly people in polo shirts. Once a name was called, the person was gone, presumably to be with their family. With shaking hands stuffed into his pockets, Eugene made his way to the woman.

“Eugene Baker?”

“Yes’m.”

“Follow me.”

The woman strode quickly down the locker lined hallway leading away from the gym, and Eugene followed nervously. He wasn’t sure what had kept Linette away so long, but he was happy she’d finally made it. The woman stopped at a pair of swinging doors with high, round windows in them.

“Go on in.”

He pushed the door open and walked into what appeared to be Lundy High’s cafeteria. Eugene scanned the room in nervous anticipation until he found Linette’s face. The relief Eugene expected to feel at being reunited with his wife never arrived, though. Her normally confident face was heavy with an emotion Eugene was not quite perceptive enough to identify, and her belly swelled slightly.

     “Eugene-”

     “Please tell me you just got fat.”

     Linette glanced at her feet and then back to Eugene. “You were dead. I remarried.”

     “I was gone two years, Linette! You remarried and got pregnant in less than two years? You put off children for-”

     Stop it, Eugene!”

     He came up short, and saw the woman he married standing in front of him with tears in her eyes. “Why, Linette? Why?”

     “I was with Tom the night everything disappeared. I hadn’t fallen in love with him yet, but I wasn’t in love with you anymore. You weren’t in love with me either. You were just too comfortable to do anything else, but I’m not like you. I can’t stay in a marriage just because it’s easier than leaving.”

     “You don’t get to decide I’m not still in love with you!”

     She sighed and softened her voice. “I made some calls. Jerry knows a guy who knows a guy who’s looking to hire a new mechanic. There’s a trailer behind the shop with your name on it until you get on your feet, and I’ve called a cab for you. The ride’s on me.”

She handed him an envelope and walked out. Eugene watched her leave before sitting on a hard, plastic stool attached to the long cafeteria table. His marriage was over. His home was gone, and he was at a loss.

The woman in the polo opened the door and said, “Your cab is here, Mr. Baker.”

Eugene thanked the woman and followed her down the hallway past a distraught Helen being led to the cafeteria, and he thought that perhaps he’d have been better off staying in the gym.

     Helen Clemmons watched Eugene leave before she shuffled into the cafeteria. Her escort asked her to take a seat, and Helen sat grumpily on a too small stool. Over the past few days, she had begged every polo wearing person she came across to be allowed back into Lakehaven only to be turned away. Amid all the chaos of Thursday night, Edith ran away, and Helen was unable to find her before two men in neon vests carried her into the medical tent. Helen, a never married woman in her mid forties, knew how it looked for a woman like her to be as fixated as she was on a cat, but Edith was family.

Twelve years prior, Helen walked into the Lakehaven animal shelter with Laura. It had been Laura’s idea to get a pet, and Helen agreed begrudgingly. Helen was not fond of animals, but she had trouble denying Laura anything. They brought home a little tortoiseshell kitten who seemed oblivious to Helen’s ambivalence which only made Laura like the cat more.

After the car accident that killed Laura, Helen was left with a cat she never asked for and a too large bed. Edith seemed to miss Laura as much as Helen did because she curled up on her pillow at night and slept the night next to Helen. It was Edith bolting from her place on the pillow Thursday night just before the earth began to shake that woke Helen.

Now she sat in a cafeteria with walls as bland as the food was sure to be with the assurance that someone was ready to help her. She waited for about ten minutes before a man in a crisp suit strode through the swinging doors like a Wall Street gunslinger.

“Ms. Clemmons?”

“Yes, that’s me.”

“I understand you’re requesting to go back to Lakehaven?”

“Yes. I need to find Edith.”

“Edith?”

“My cat, Edith. She went missing that night.”

“Huh. Well the area has been cleared for reentry. I have a car to take you home.”

Helen’s heart leapt. “Lead the way,” she said standing up. The corporate cowboy led out to what must have been the main entrance to the school, and opened the back door of a sleek, black town car.

“Back to Lakehaven, please,” he told the driver before shutting the door. Helen watched him grow smaller as the car picked up speed. The driver seemed uninterested in talking, and riding in silence seemed much less exhausting than coaxing a discussion out of the reticent man.

When they approached city limits, Helen gave the man her address, and he navigated the streets leading to her former home at a careful pace. Damage ranged in severity from piles of rubble to homes that appeared slightly mussed. She noted Mrs. Pruitt’s disheveled flowerbed with guilty amusement. The old lady would be outraged. They passed the Morelys’ house, and Helen saw Greg in his wheelchair apparently surveying Joanna’s flattened workshop.

“Joanna must be devastated about her workshop” Helen said, not really expecting a response.

The driver started her by offering one. “She didn’t make it.”

A cold weight settled in Helen’s stomach. “Poor Greg,” she said thinking of Laura. The need to find Edith became more urgent, and when the car pulled to a stop in her cracked driveway, Helen rushed from the car with a hurried “Thank you!” issued as an afterthought.

Her front door was stuck when she tried to open it, so Helen had to force it open. Once inside, she made a beeline for the kitchen knowing the surest way to find Edith was to come bearing food. Helen cranked the can open with the handheld can opener she preferred, even if it was a relic, and heard a soft “Mrrrrow” and felt a small warm body bump against her legs. She scooped Edith into her arms and cried.

     A happy reunion like Edith and Helen’s was not in the cards for Greg Morely. He stared numbly at what used to be his wife’s favorite place on earth. In her workshop, Joanna delved into side projects she couldn’t get the grant money to work on for the university. She explored concepts that, for better or worse, remained theoretical.

Greg possessed only a superficial knowledge of physics, but he could listen to Joanna talk about her research for hours. She because animated, and the conversation would move from one tangent to another. A conversation that began with the theory of relativity would eventually make it’s way to the multiverse theory or space travel. In more recent months, Greg found solace in the multiverse theory. If it were true, then there was at least one universe where he wasn’t dying, at least not yet.

     When Greg was diagnosed with stage three liver cancer, Joanna quit her job and stayed home to care for him. When it moved on to stage four,she did not cry. Instead Greg saw the resolve settle onto his wife’s face. He knew the look well. She was stepping into the ring with his disease, and Dr. Joanna Morely did not lose.

     “Dr. McGibben said if we’d caught it even six months earlier, it would have been operable,” she said.

The comment took him by surprise because neither of them had been able to talk about it in plain terms yet. “And if wishes were horses…” he trailed off when he saw her face. It was saturated with desperation. “It can’t be changed,” he sighed. She held his gaze for a moment, nodded, and pulled out a fresh notebook.

“You know, going forward is easy. Astronauts do it all the time. It’s the going back we haven’t figured out yet,” she told him, and then she began to write.

At the time, the conversation had not been noteworthy. When Joanna could not come to terms with something, she turned to her work. After the two Thursdays, Greg could not help but wonder if his wife was the cause of the destruction that surrounded him. If he could go back and ask her now, he would. She had been half-right. Going back was not an option, but she was not quite right about going forward. That part was anything but easy.

Author's Note

This will probably be taken down when I post the final draft.

Reviews

[Zoli Fern]

This is an interesting piece. There are a lot of characters, and what was happening was a bit confusing. You clearly understand how to construct sentences and scenes, but I feel that you have the ability to be able to branch out in your writing. My biggest piece of advice is to show rather than tell us what is happening. I know this seems like cliche advice, but it can really make a difference.
While this is perhaps important information:
"Mildred was the second youngest daughter of four in a home where money was scarce and privacy was nonexistent"
it could also be portrayed more along the lines of "they often went to bed without dinner, all sleeping in the same room".
Just something to think about. Good luck in your creative writing class!