Post by Cy Skywalker on Jan 29, 2007 20:37:51 GMT -5
This is the first thing I ever wrote about the hero of my novel Plotseekers. I dug it up and liked it, though a lot of the history-facts in this are different from how I have them now. Enjoy--don't steal.
Constantine Kipling worked at an automated Laundromat, being the sort that could sit still for a long while, reading usually, and appear to not be there at all. He would appear at your elbow in a moment if you needed something fixed or figured out or translated into a few different languages. "The most prepossessing thing about the young man was his name." He had an elderly grandmother who was the matron of the place, and who would sweep in to check in on everyone and to occasionally hand her grandson a new book. He read Tolkein, and Fitzgerald, and Cooper, and all great fantasies or dramas that had depth of world to them so that he could almost feel what the characters were going to do a page away. He counted change and kicked the hulking silver Laundromat machines, and ran down the mall to the barber’s when his grandmother made him get his thick hair cut. His parents lived in the city, but they had once been English and wanted their son to get the taste of the country in him, because he was going to be an editor, or, his grandmother said, a great writer, and then he could let the family move out too. Pennsylvania was not the homeland countryside, but nearly.
A selection of strange people came in and out through the plastic door, but they were strange in ways that did not satisfy Constantine’s desires for the otherworldly, for the opening of a hero’s story. He grew tired of the romances and dramas and histories handed him, whether the new ones with their bright crinkling covers or the old, the dustily labeled classics. He was put through the classics at school, he said to his grandmother when she looked at him with her young eyes under old hair and skin, and he couldn’t feel their events like he could the fantasies and speculatives anyway. She did not look down on him for this preference like the teachers did, although she looked sideways at him with the habit that she had, and like the same quality in a bird-dog this meant she was surprised. He described the feeling just in those words, feeling, with a little hesitation because he wasn’t sure she wouldn’t think he was crazy, but she slid over that too. He knew something was up, because there had been books he could not feel, that she handed him; he never could understand Hawthorne.
He had never written anything of his own, though his grandmother asked him to try and he did. He couldn’t get the words to match the images, but images he had; and there were good worlds but sentences would not hold them. She said that this was alright, but he could not match her expression when she said this with an emotion. His great want was to live a story, to feel the threads of the plot in the real world, though this was a great paradox. There was something appealing about paradox.
One night Constantine lay in bed and thought about a story he had been going to write if he could recall what was able to be translated into words from this fight scene; the hero stood in a village on a cliff. The villain stalked in a shape like a dinosaur or a dragon remix, and leapt, and...would those alien legs bend that way? He liked the design of the feet but couldn’t see them being practical. Maybe it would scratch the rock as it walked. Dramatic enough, that would work. It came forward. Constantine had just come from reading a book he had picked up a long time ago and forgot about, and it had held him until he had grown tired but been too...real-feeling to sleep. He had thought maybe something fiction was going on, finally, but it was too pure real. It was the appeal of fiction applied to the darkness outside and the reflection inside his window, the juxtaposition of warm within and cold without, and the sparks of light from the computer across the room. Then he had sunk into the planning of his story, and then he had felt a little jet of warm breeze cross his forehead and rearrange a bit of his bangs. Appreciably warmth lingered in a trail. His breath gently caught in his throat at the inexplicableness of this. He had knowledge of supernatural cold wind only, moving in haunted houses. And a moment ago the hero had stood in a rushing wind under a hot, alien sun.
He waited, for a long time with the light on. In the reflection his own self caught in the mirror the silvery window became when he flicked the desk light on,. He thought, for the first time and incredulously, that his might be a face of a hero or someone in a movie. He almost did not recognize it at first. He looked like a someone scared and surprised, now, choreographed to have the layered blankets pulled up to his chin and slowly being rearranged by gravity. He waited, for a long time, but no further magic came, and after that he slept.
It was fall in town. Of course it was fall in the lanes too, but in town the leaves had less place to fall and so they piled up, and the normally sober and resented suburb was decorated, its Victorian houses decked out in pumpkins and colors of the season. Constantine walked to school with a group he was part of only for the ritual of the morning.
Constantine Kipling worked at an automated Laundromat, being the sort that could sit still for a long while, reading usually, and appear to not be there at all. He would appear at your elbow in a moment if you needed something fixed or figured out or translated into a few different languages. "The most prepossessing thing about the young man was his name." He had an elderly grandmother who was the matron of the place, and who would sweep in to check in on everyone and to occasionally hand her grandson a new book. He read Tolkein, and Fitzgerald, and Cooper, and all great fantasies or dramas that had depth of world to them so that he could almost feel what the characters were going to do a page away. He counted change and kicked the hulking silver Laundromat machines, and ran down the mall to the barber’s when his grandmother made him get his thick hair cut. His parents lived in the city, but they had once been English and wanted their son to get the taste of the country in him, because he was going to be an editor, or, his grandmother said, a great writer, and then he could let the family move out too. Pennsylvania was not the homeland countryside, but nearly.
A selection of strange people came in and out through the plastic door, but they were strange in ways that did not satisfy Constantine’s desires for the otherworldly, for the opening of a hero’s story. He grew tired of the romances and dramas and histories handed him, whether the new ones with their bright crinkling covers or the old, the dustily labeled classics. He was put through the classics at school, he said to his grandmother when she looked at him with her young eyes under old hair and skin, and he couldn’t feel their events like he could the fantasies and speculatives anyway. She did not look down on him for this preference like the teachers did, although she looked sideways at him with the habit that she had, and like the same quality in a bird-dog this meant she was surprised. He described the feeling just in those words, feeling, with a little hesitation because he wasn’t sure she wouldn’t think he was crazy, but she slid over that too. He knew something was up, because there had been books he could not feel, that she handed him; he never could understand Hawthorne.
He had never written anything of his own, though his grandmother asked him to try and he did. He couldn’t get the words to match the images, but images he had; and there were good worlds but sentences would not hold them. She said that this was alright, but he could not match her expression when she said this with an emotion. His great want was to live a story, to feel the threads of the plot in the real world, though this was a great paradox. There was something appealing about paradox.
One night Constantine lay in bed and thought about a story he had been going to write if he could recall what was able to be translated into words from this fight scene; the hero stood in a village on a cliff. The villain stalked in a shape like a dinosaur or a dragon remix, and leapt, and...would those alien legs bend that way? He liked the design of the feet but couldn’t see them being practical. Maybe it would scratch the rock as it walked. Dramatic enough, that would work. It came forward. Constantine had just come from reading a book he had picked up a long time ago and forgot about, and it had held him until he had grown tired but been too...real-feeling to sleep. He had thought maybe something fiction was going on, finally, but it was too pure real. It was the appeal of fiction applied to the darkness outside and the reflection inside his window, the juxtaposition of warm within and cold without, and the sparks of light from the computer across the room. Then he had sunk into the planning of his story, and then he had felt a little jet of warm breeze cross his forehead and rearrange a bit of his bangs. Appreciably warmth lingered in a trail. His breath gently caught in his throat at the inexplicableness of this. He had knowledge of supernatural cold wind only, moving in haunted houses. And a moment ago the hero had stood in a rushing wind under a hot, alien sun.
He waited, for a long time with the light on. In the reflection his own self caught in the mirror the silvery window became when he flicked the desk light on,. He thought, for the first time and incredulously, that his might be a face of a hero or someone in a movie. He almost did not recognize it at first. He looked like a someone scared and surprised, now, choreographed to have the layered blankets pulled up to his chin and slowly being rearranged by gravity. He waited, for a long time, but no further magic came, and after that he slept.
It was fall in town. Of course it was fall in the lanes too, but in town the leaves had less place to fall and so they piled up, and the normally sober and resented suburb was decorated, its Victorian houses decked out in pumpkins and colors of the season. Constantine walked to school with a group he was part of only for the ritual of the morning.
