[fic] Jumper

[belluminabyssus]

Title: Jumper
Word count: 1314.
notes: Written for May, week 1 of brigits_flame. This is a weird story; I apologize in advance. I don't know why I wrote it. The prompt was "A bag of root vegetables," and I'll be the first to say that this was used very peripherally -- it did, however, inspire the whole thing (my first image, sadly, was of a suicide, not of soup

Comments

dodos rolling out the edit wagon,he pauses

[bardiphouka]

Well, what is there to say here without letting the envy show through? Two thoughts come to mind.

Cassie-the-human drank it raw before it could hatch

And when she hit the ground, she broke like an egg and was slurped up raw by her other selves just before she cooked.

A part of me complains about this because they are so close but do not match. I am not saying they have to, just that I wish they did somehow. Although the hummingbird has disappeared by the end in a way.

"I still have some of him on my shoe," said Cassie. "If you want it."

"You keep it," said the man. This brief exchange could be considered a story in and of itself. And a terribly unsettling one, simply by the matter of fact way in which you tell it. I realise there are people who would say things the way Cassie has in order to shock, but we do not get that feeling about Cassie

Re: dodos rolling out the edit wagon,he pauses

[belluminabyssus]

I do definitely agree with your first point -- I thought about making it be more parallel, but wasn't sure how it would work, or if it would sound too repetitive or not. I couldn't decide, so erred on the side of caution. :) If you have any thoughts about that, I'm all ears!

Thanks so much for the edit, Bardi! :) I'm glad you enjoyed reading it.

[bardiphouka]

Bear in mind that this is just my thought on it. But I have always considered flame entries to be,more often than not, a sort of prose poetry because of the compactness of them. Granted there are people who wrote plain prose because they have continuing narratives. Which is fine also. But in this case it is a sort of poetry. In a sort of Poe alive in the 21st CE sort o way. So you can get by with parallels in a way that would be a bit stilted in a longer piece.

This is not to say to be repetitive but to show us the parallels between the three things..the original death, the dreams and the end of the story. Not that it is essential. But as poet I keep trying to read it as such. It is, in the end of course, your piece. I am merely making a suggestion.

Editor chiming in! 1 of 2

[innana88]

I'm one of those editors where the more brilliance there is, the more I'm going to dig into it. So, yeah, I've got a lot of critiques here, but you gave me a helluva lot to work with. I can't tell you enough how much I enjoyed reading this, nor how much I want to read more of what you write. I like your mind. I like how tight the story is. I like the connections you are making. I like how grisly your imagination is. And I can't get over the way you've managed to write the macabre with so much sensitivity. Bloody effing brilliant.

Okay, here I go:

"It was just a dead body that had fallen in front of her by sheer coincidence."

I popped out of your story here asking myself, wait, was the body already dead? Just cut out 'dead'. You say that in the next sentence, anyhow. This just streamlines it a bit.

"Cassie saw no reason to be put off her daily routine because some man had ended his own life and gotten blood on her new shoes." A bit clunky and a run-on. Try: "Cassie saw no reason to be put off her daily routine because some

Editor chiming in! 2 of 2

[innana88]

"She wanted to see the pores in his face before they got filled with blood and drink his sweat and most of all she wanted to ask him questions." This is confusing. Try separating this into three different sentences. "She wanted to see the pores in his face before they filled with blood. She wanted to drink his sweat like nectar. Most of all, she wanted to ask him questions." I added the 'like nectar' because the rhythm seemed screwy without it.

"But she knew in the back of her mind that even if she did fly that high, hummingbirds could not speak, and so instead she flapped her wings and kept him company as he fell." This is a bit cumbersome. Try streamlining this. Your point still comes across but there isn't anything getting in its way: "But once she reached him, she found she could not speak; she could only keep him company as he fell."

"She searched online for any mentions of the man's death, of his name. But he wasn't anybody, and if he was, nobody knew it. She would have felt sad except she found it hard to be sad about

Re: Editor chiming in! 2 of 2

[belluminabyssus]

Thank you so much for the edit! You had some good insights that I'll need to ponder. :) I'm also so glad to hear that you liked reading it despite some of the problems!

Re: Editor chiming in! 2 of 2

[innana88]

Hon, there's no 'despite the problems' here. I enjoyed it PERIOD. You are one hell of a writer. It was an honor to edit this.