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"SSC2: Danny"

A gentle breeze blew across the blue lake top and through the rustling reeds. The spruce trees surrounding the old stone building swayed, and occasionally a fish could be heard splashing as it jumped in the lake. Overhead some sparse white fluffy clouds adorned the sky and sunlight streamed down upon the green luscious grass. The boy approaching was too wrapped up in his own thoughts to notice his surroundings. He remembered coming down here with Danny, fishing in the lake with their rods and the joy they both experienced when they caught there first pike. They had killed it and put it in the bag, and then went exploring into the forest of spruce tress. Then they had found the old mill.
It was a dilapidated old stone structure. Two of the sails were missing and the other two were rotting away, covered in green moss and lichen. But the structure itself inside was fine. When they had forced open the old door all there was inside was the mill stone, a few chairs, a ladder to the hoisting beam at the top, a fireplace and a few empty bags which at one stage had probably held grain. Danny had at once rushed over to the hearth, and decided they would make a fire and eat their fish there. He had sent Greg to collect firewood around the base of the monolith stone structure. Greg was two years older than Danny, who was nine. They were firm friends. But Danny was the decision maker, he was the leader.

They had cooked the fish (after Greg gutted it) and now Danny wanted to play hide and seek. Greg remembered as he walked through the spruce trees, that he had meekly agreed to be the seeker. He remembered it like yesterday - counting to fifty and looking for Danny. He looked everywhere but couldn’t find him, looked in the hearth, looked behind all the walls, looked up the trees, looked up the ladder, looked in the reeds but he still couldn’t find him. Finally Greg gave up and shouted for Danny to come up. Greg remembered the gleeful expression on Danny’s face as he climbed out from where he was hiding, a log bridge over a river full of rocks. His face seemed to have a mocking devious tones to it, and all the resentment Greg had ever had against Danny surfaced. He lashed out. It went in slow motion. Greg’s shoe flailing towards Danny’s face. Connecting to his jaw. The shock that juddered up Greg’s leg. Danny’s expression of pain, agony, hurt, suffering, fear, …puzzlement? Danny’s head hitting the boulders in the river. The crack that accompanied it. The blood. The death of Danny.

Now, three years later, Greg was back at the mill. Back at the place where he had robbed a young boy of his life in a reckless surge of petty rage.
Oh, he had gotten away with it. Danny had been messing around. He tripped and smashed his head open on a boulder. Greg was a good boy. He wouldn’t do anything to harm Danny. It had been a tragic accident. The families mourned. They had got on with their lives, and Greg tried to.
But he couldn’t.
His dreams were fractured of images of the carnage that day. Slow motion. Replays. It was like someone had a video recorder that day and played it back in Greg’s head every day. When he slept, he saw Danny. Soon he started seeing him when he wasn’t sleeping. A face in the crowd. Someone on TV with Danny’s face. At night, when he turned off the lights, he could swear he heard him breathing near his ear and asking hi m did he want to play hide and seek. He started failing at school, turned to drugs but even the most mind numbing substances couldn’t rid him of his visions.
Now, he was climbing the ladder to the top of the windmill. He reached the top, got out and tied one end of the Hessian rope he was carrying to the hoisting beam, and the other around his neck.
“I’m sorry Danny. I’m so sorry.” he sobbed, as he jumped, jumped off the roof, out into the empty space, out into the hair. As the rope tightened around his neck and the rotten hoisting beam, it broke off. It went in slow motion. Greg, writhing in the air for a few seconds. Plunging towards the ground. Seeing the mossy cobblestones growing ever closer. The sharp pain as head splintered. Senselessness. His body bouncing and rolling. His head hitting a boulder in a dried up river bed and coming to a stop. The cascades of blood. The death of Greg.

Nearby, a small figure stood, a boy of about nine and curiously pale with a serious expression on his face. He gave a small nod of approval and then vanished.

A few early mistakes made this tough going, but it's strong in the descriptive sense. A nice enough tale, but a little too much telling rather than showing us what happened in Greg's downfall. Perhaps a description of how his appearance and attitudes changes with his spiral into drugs, rather than a throwaway line.

Awww...


Too depressing. :-)

FinalFantasyFanatic wrote:
> Paradox: wrote:
> I do A Level English Language.
>
> Hey, me too.
> It sucks - not enough writing.

True :-(
We've only done TWO creative writing pieces in total. I feel used.

Eeek - sorry, missed this when you posted it originally. Only found it 'cos I was counting entries :(

Liked it muchly as always but I need to get my head out of the gutter this morning.

> fishing in the lake with their rods and the joy they both experienced

Such an innocent sentence until I read to much into it :D

Well, I do English Lit, so moo to you.

Paradox: wrote:
> Cyclone wrote:
> You've been reading too many 'How to analyse short stories in a
> critically semi-pretentious way' books.
>
> - -
> ___
>
> I do A Level English Language.

Hey, me too.
It sucks - not enough writing.

Cyclone wrote:
> You've been reading too many 'How to analyse short stories in a
> critically semi-pretentious way' books.
>
> - -
> ___

I do A Level English Language.

You take me to the clouds above, clouds above, clouds above.

You are my rock.

That's what I tell the government, yes.