THE PROMISE

A married couple gets into an argument that might end in a way that only one of them is content with.

THE PROMISE

BY

BRIAN POMPHREY

 

 

I’ll always be there for you.” He said. He always says that. Jean gets so annoyed with it. Brandon has been in love with her since they first met at the age of nine.

“I know baby.” she said. “I know you will always be there.” They have been married only ten years. Jean is still as beautiful as ever, and Brandon is still as awkward as any dork; but love hit them both since day one. The past few weeks, Brandon can’t stop telling her the same thing over and over and over.

“I’ll always be there for you.” He smiles.

 

A week passes, and he is still saying the same thing.

“I’ll always be there for you.”

“I know.” Jean rolls her eyes. She loves him more then all the stars in the sky, but even that can’t stop her nerves from getting twisted. Only so many times can she hear the same thing before she gets annoyed.

 

The following week, and the two love birds are sitting in bed reading books, with the television on in for background. The room smells of incense and candle light.

“I’ll always be there for you.” He continues to say with the same amount of love as he ever has since the day he first proposed to her.

“Oh I know honey, I love you.” Jean states, almost patronizing. She continues reading. They sit in silence. Brandon breaks that silence with an awkward scratch to the back of his neck. She rolls her eyes.

 

A month passes. They both sit up in bed, like a tradition every night.  

“I’ll always be there for you.” He says.

“Okay fine!” Jean’s voice rises with attitude. “Why do you keep saying that?!” she snickers a bit, but it’s her way of coping with anger.

“I love you honey, you know that, but for Gods sake I don’t need to hear this from you all the time!” Her voice echos. The room fills with tension.

“Can you just stop?”

Brandon sits there in silence. His eyes drifting off into space. Jean looks at him expecting a response. Nothing. Silence, until…

“Baby?” He asks.

“What?”

“...I will always be there for you. I love you.”

She lays back in bed and sighs.

“Goodnight!” She says, turning over, covering herself with the blanket. Brandon looks over at her and smiles. His heart races. His whole body feels tense. He wants to caress her, but he doesn’t. He knows not to touch her when she gets like this. In his mind, all he can think of is how much he loves her. How happy and grateful to have her. His thoughts race from her to his life as a kid. His parents, friends, and jobs over time. Having children was always on his mind, but they never came. Brandon lays back in bed. He snuggles himself under the blanket.

“I love you baby.” He whispers.

“Hmm.” she groans.

“I’ll always be there.” He whispers, keeping his eyes looking up at the ceiling. He closes his eyes and sighs in relief.  

 

Next morning, Jean cannot stop crying. It was at 6AM when Brandon died in his sleep.

 

 

THE

END

Author's Note

Constructive criticism is always welcome. Please enjoy the story.

Reviews

[JayG]

Well, you did ask...

• I’ll always be there for you.” He said.

Beginning with dialog is always chancy because the reader has no clue of what emotion to assign to the voice. Added to that, the generic "he" tells us nothing of value. Will all become clear if we read on? The reader, having no assurance that it will, will probably stop here. And that aside, since you can't retroactively remove confusion, or have a second first-impression, it's best to give the reader context either as it's read or before. On entering any scene, your reader needs three things: Who am I? Where am I? What's going on? You can often provide that within the line, unobtrusively. By providing the protagonist with a name, for example, you get one of those items out of the way.

Next: When using a tag, instead of a period, you end the last line of dialog with a comma, and don't use a capital letter for the first line of the tag, as in: I’ll always be there for you,” he said.

• He always says that.

What you're doing is transcribing yourself telling the story to an audience. But that can't work. Why? Verbal storytelling is a performance art. And for that to work the audience must both see and hear your performance. But the page reproduces neither vision nor sound. So the facial expressions you use to illustrate emotion? Gone on the page. The gestures that visually punctuate? Your body-language? Gone, too.

And what about your golden voice, all filled with emotion? What happens to the changes in intensity, tempo, and all the other tricks that make the reader know so much about the emotional part of the story? Not a trace of them.

Your reader can't know what a given line will say. They have to read it, and then, it's too late to place the necessary emotion into it. Sure, you can tell me how a character speaks a line. But you can't tell the reader how to read YOUR lines. So while you can hear the performance, and know the performance as you edit, the reader has only what the lines suggest to them, based on their background, not your intent.

In the end, it boils down to one simple problem: You're writing as well as you can, using what you've been taught. But what we're taught in our school days is non-fiction writing skills that make us useful to employers. It's why we wrote so many reports and so few stories.

We know that we learn our profession or trade AFTER we leave our public education days, but somehow never apply that to the profession of fiction-writing. So, with the best of intentions we make use of storytelling skills inappropriate to our medium.

It's a problem that can be fixed, though, and it's not related to talent, but it does require fixing—which is NOT the kind of response you were hoping for when you posted this. Still, I thought you would want to know.

The fix? Hit the local library's fiction-writing section. Lots of good books available there. And while you're there, search for the names, Dwight Swain, Jack Bickham, or Debra Dixon on the cover.

Hang in there, and keep on writing.

Jay Greenstein
https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/