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The Disappearance
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The Disappearance
Anonymous
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Joined: Jun 12, 2004
Total Topics: 25
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Posted 02/01/08 - 11:38 AM:
Subject: The Disappearance
quote post
#1
Heavy, gray clouds drag themselves reluctantly across
the sky low and thick. A wet pavement with crushed and
broken paving stones, paralyzed from years of near
disuse, crawls through a deserted backstreet. A
Citroen 2CV with a smashed headlight and peeling
paintwork is parked with two wheels on the curb. The
owner has long gone and there is a notice of
dereliction glued to the dirty and shattered
windscreen. The nearest door belongs to an apartment
building. Inside, the letterboxes have been
vandalized, mildew spreads across the walls and a
small, bare, burnt out light bulb hangs on a twisted,
dusty wire sprouting from a gash in the ceiling. On
the third floor there are four doors of plywood, which
were once nicely varnished but now the damp has warped
and mottled the wood and flakes of the original
varnish dully curl off in abstract patches. Behind the
door with the plastic 3b screwed into it a woman's
voice is getting louder.

"What the hell do you mean: 'she's just a friend'?
Don't think I don't know there's something more going
on! I was standing next to you both and I saw the way
you looked at her. That's not the way you go on with
someone who's just a friend!" Stubbing out the
cigarette, whose smoke filled the already suffocating
atmosphere in the small flat, she grabs a large cloth
bag from the coat rack beside the door and starts
gathering odds and ends from the bookcase and shelves.
These things are her belongings. "I've had enough of
this crap! I'm going and don't try to follow me. Try
and get yourself sorted out instead, loser!" Hair
uncombed and still struggling to get her coat on, she
pulls the door open and slams it behind her.
As her footsteps fade off into the stairwell he is
left to deal with the situation. He knows that this is
going to be the end. There is a certain finality in
his eyes and he resolves himself to the inevitable
events that will follow.

Sitting on the torn sofa with his head in his hands
he glances up at the door. She said not to follow her
but he wants her back so much. He stands up and goes
to the door. He puts his hand on the handle but he
just doesn't have the mental strength to turn it.
Resolutely, he bows his head and goes into the
bedroom. There he finds a t-shirt that she forgot to
take with her. He pushes his face into the material in
a vain hope to feel her for one more time. When he
realizes that this is not possible the world becomes a
sharp sheet of cold steel with only one purpose: to
slice his soul into unrecognizable shreds.

The cheap wooden window blinds are still shut and
shafts of pale light tendrils piercing through the
cracks catch the heavy dust and smoke floating in the
room. Cigarette smoke has never seemed so still. The
fridge is almost empty but there is a can of tuna fish
in the cupboard. Erratic but somehow predictable he
gets up repeatedly to look in the kitchen. He sees a
knife in the drawer and his mind clouds over. "This
could be the instrument of my fate," he thinks. But
no, it's just too dramatic and he decides to hide the
knife by throwing it on top of one of the cupboards
that get opened maybe once a month or less.

Slowly he eats everything in the apartment. On the
second day the toilet paper runs out and after three
days closed in these three rooms he starts to think
about going out to buy some food. The keys are hanging
by the door, beside a scarf, which she also left but
he had not noticed until now. Now things are
different. She is no longer someone he knew and loved,
she has become a towering goddess in his mind and the
scarf, unlike the t-shirt is a religious symbol. The
sudden impact of seeing the scarf freezes him, as
would a divine revelation. The door no longer leads
out into the real world. On the other side lies the
possibility of her existence. He is no longer going
out to find something to eat, going out now represents
a test of faith as real as death. But he must go out
or starve.

With all the shutters closed the light in the
apartment has been reduced to one electric bulb in the
kitchen and whatever light manages to reach the other
rooms from there. He makes one last attempt to get
through the door. Unshaven and dressed in the same
clothes for four days now he finally manages to get
past the scarf and his need for food and toilet paper
has proved stronger than his fear of what may lay
beyond the door. His hands tremble as he reaches for
the handle and he realizes that it was the last thing
she touched as she left. With piety he places his hand
on the brass door handle almost expecting to get
burnt. The dim light in the hall is not even enough
to read by but to him it seems blinding and
unbearable. He is stripped of all defenses outside the
door.

In the deserted street a strong wind spins old
newspapers and plastic supermarket bags into the air.
His steps are not quite regular. His limbs are sticky
and awkward. Dressed in a black sweatshirt and old
jeans he staggers in the direction of the store.
Before getting to the store his attention is drawn to
a paint shop. The shop window is not extravagant but
something in his mind makes a connection with all the
identical cans stacked in pyramids. The rolls of
cardboard and plastic sheeting flap spasmodically in
the stiff breeze. The spiral of undulated cardboard
draws him in to a whirlpool of darkness. His hunger
and dizziness are beginning to affect his conscious
ability to make logical decisions. Spinning now in a
dive he can see a light at the bottom of the roll of
blackness. This also fades and he almost collapses in
a heap on the street. He is caught by the shop owner
who then takes him inside the paint store and gives
him a glass of water. Dazed and confused, he tries to
find meaning in this turn of events but he cannot. He
is sitting opposite a shelf lined with tins of black
paint. Pitch black, like his soul. If he could be in
the black paint then he would be able to hide and she
would never know. He buys about ten kilos of black
paint and a large brush. He struggles back to the
apartment with the cans and brush. The door closes
slowly behind him in the dim hall.

After regaining his breath he opens one of the tins.
Black. No light comes from the interior of the tin. To
check that there is really something in the tin he
dips the brush tentatively into the darkness. It comes
out with the edge of the bristles black as night. A
drop falls onto the carpet and no reflection comes
from the wet paint droplet. He lights a small candle
on the coffee table in front of him. Then he gets up,
goes to the kitchen, turns of the light there and
returns to stare at the tins of paint in the light of
the candle. He just sits there. He is not waiting for
something to happen. Suddenly he takes the brush and
puts its full length in the first open tin. When he
brings it out the bristles are almost invisible in the
candlelight.


Starting with the drops on the carpet, he pushes the
brush around on the floor and then onto the walls.
Dragging the tin around as he goes he paints
everything in the apartment black. The fridge, the
light switches, the furniture, the windows, the
television, the bed, the mirror, everything. Among the
last thing to be painted are of course the door and
door handle. He has left till the very end the scarf,
the object that has linked him with his own image of
reality until now. He takes the scarf from the hook on
which it hangs and holds it tightly in one hand. For
the first time in four days his eyes focus on our
reality, but not to stay, not to cling to something,
not possessing, rather a final farewell glance. His
face changes again and is now distant and unconnected
to his immediate surroundings. His grasp on the scarf
tightens and then it plunges into the last tin wrapped
around his hand and wipes out the last paint. With
this the last reflecting surface in the apartment is
covered in the black paint. Only the candle is left as
a visible point of light. His face looms into the
candlelight and his eyes close slowly. As he leans
back in the now black sofa his face also recedes into
the blackness.

Outside in the hall children are playing. The night
comes and the morning comes and a woman carrying
shopping passes the door. She lives in the next
apartment. The cycle repeats.

The woman who normally keeps herself to herself
starts to get concerned. She knocks on the old door
where the plastic 3b is screwed in tightly. There is
an unfamiliar odor in the air. No answer. Later she
tries again. No answer.

The woman has met with the couple that once lived
here and has kept a phone number. Later that day,
outside 3b stands the woman from next door and the
girl who had become a goddess in the eyes of the man
who loved her.

The girl takes out a key and places it in the lock.
The key turns slowly and the door opens. As they stand
there in front of the doorway a cold gust of air
rushes into the room carrying some dust with it.
Blackness is before them. The girl wants to step
inside but her foot can't find the floor so she pulls
back. There is nothing to be seen beyond the door,
nothing to be heard. Her voice gave no echo and there
was no ambient sound from the space on the other side
of the door. No light from any window could be seen
and no floor or wall could be touched. You see, the
odor was not that of death but rather the odor of
nothing. He had literally disappeared. His goddess was
real and he had fulfilled his usefulness in this
world.

The truth is simple but cruel. There is no time
or place on the road for a 2CV that has reached its
destination and finds itself abandoned. A dereliction
notice for a human being is not as obvious.


Edited by Tobias on 02/04/08 - 03:47 AM
Fergus Currie
Blind watcher of the sky
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Posted 02/04/08 - 03:53 AM:
quote post
#2
Nice to see the paragraphs at last!

...and so Achilles never reaches the tortoise.
...so never send Achilles to get fags!
Paul
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Joined: Mar 10, 2002
Location: Sacramentoish
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Posted 02/04/08 - 09:48 AM:
quote post
#3
I've deleted all the pre-paragraph votes. Please re-vote.

"We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two. We are finding that we must learn a great deal more about 'and'."
- Arthur Eddington
Fergus Currie
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Posted 02/05/08 - 04:36 AM:
quote post
#4
Why?

...and so Achilles never reaches the tortoise.
...so never send Achilles to get fags!
Paul
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Posted 02/05/08 - 12:35 PM:
quote post
#5
Because it's not the same story they voted on now.

"We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two. We are finding that we must learn a great deal more about 'and'."
- Arthur Eddington
Fergus Currie
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Posted 02/06/08 - 01:11 AM:
quote post
#6
Paul wrote:
Because it's not the same story they voted on now.


You are kidding, right? It's exactly the same story I posted a month ago.

I copied and pasted it from here:

http://www.talentdatabase.com/channels/15/profile...

Do you think I sat down and deleted the paragraphs myself?

Fergus

...and so Achilles never reaches the tortoise.
...so never send Achilles to get fags!
Paul
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Location: Sacramentoish
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Posted 02/06/08 - 09:17 AM:
quote post
#7
If you're incapable of understanding that a story reads differently with paragraphs than without, you're hopeless. You may plead with people to give you back the "poor" votes you had previously. I'd upgraded mine to fair, but as you insist, I'll go back to poor.

Do you think I sat down and deleted the paragraphs myself?

Actually yes, since it was a plain text submission and the link you give shows no readable paragraphs there, just line breaks with no indentation. But that's beside the point.

"We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two. We are finding that we must learn a great deal more about 'and'."
- Arthur Eddington
Fergus Currie
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Joined: Jan 11, 2008
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Posted 02/07/08 - 02:10 AM:
quote post
#8
I didn't ask if you thought I put paragraphs in, I asked if you though I took them out in the original post.
Yes, I did put paragraphs in the re-post since your text editor took out my line break style, which is normal practice in short stories.

As for being hopeless, I trust my hopelessness depends on something more substantial than my inability to understand the grammatical difference between 'Last Exit from Brooklyn' and 'War and Peace'.
FC

...and so Achilles never reaches the tortoise.
...so never send Achilles to get fags!
Caldwell
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Posted 02/19/08 - 04:24 AM:
quote post
#9
I like that story, The Disappearance. 'why I asked for paragraphs, too. I believe I voted "good" for it, tied with "curiosity", though can't recall now what button I hit. With paragraphs, the story reads a lot better.
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