The moon stood tall in the sky, her shadow caressing the swaying clouds that floated over the earth, draping their mantle over sleeping flowers and drowsy trees. Rain droplets, children of the heavy rain that had stopped some hours ago, hung like little pearls in the brightly lit night, from the lip of satiated leaves, limp with liquid relief after months of cruel drought.
A frog croaked a solo on the edge of an unruffled puddle, even as crickets prepared, with discordant chirps and corrections, their orchestra for their nightly symphony. A dog barked in the distance, its voice scraping the skin of the peaceful night, time and time again.
Several barks from a distance replied its worry but they were too far away to matter and only it knew what had it perturbed on such a peaceful night.
Down the road, some distance away from the troubled dog, a baby began to cry. The baby’s lungs were strong and his anger or hunger could be heard across the street; as you know, sound tend to travel further at night. The shushing whisper of his mother could probably be pleading with him, trying to give him peace with a nipple to suckle or may be a bottle of baby food because the cry subsided before the crash of shattering glass scraped quiet again from the lips of the night, then a loud bang followed and then silence.
On a fence that surrounded a house along the same street as the barking dog and the crying baby, a bag appeared, then the hand holding the bag followed and then the head of a pretty girl joined the hand and the bag. A moon beam observed her face as it appeared over the fence. The girl's face was fixed in a frown of concentration as she dragged her body up to join the other parts of her on the top of the fence. She successfully sat on the fence and inhaled then she exhaled through her pouted lips. She looked down at where she had just escaped then turn around and threw her bag to the ground. A voice followed her down, filled with anger;
“If you leave this house, never you come back! Do you hear me?” the voice made anonymous by the fence yelled into the night.
The girl shrugged her shoulders as if pushing the words off her and jumped down to the other side to join her bag. She picked her bag from the ground and walked away, soon disappearing into the mist that had slowly formed as the night wore on.
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The frog cleared its throat, found a new note and pitch then it resumed its croaking. Soon the crickets resumed their sound check; the night was still young and there was so much to do.
Just as the earth was settling back to rhythm as old as time, a car tires squeal in the distance and bright headlights threw beams into the tender peace, the earth had just acquired. The car engine roared into an area some distance away from pretty girl and the vehicle revved to a stop at a black gate. The car horn sounded twice and then loud silence.
The driver jumped out of the car and rushed to the gate. He banged at the gate then he paced up and down the front of the gate, clearly agitated by something. He banged again and again then the drowsy voice of the gate man came from within;
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“Who wants to fall my gate? My boss does not have money to give armed robbers. You have to come back after he has finished the house that he is building in the village.” The gateman said.
“Open the gate, Musa!” the man outside answered in a loud voice.
“Ha Boss it is you. I am coming.” The gateman replied.
The squeak of a bolt being pulled filled the air then the gate squealed open, the man looking on.
“Is my father in?” he asked as soon as the gateman’s face appeared before him.
“Yes boss. He came in not too long ago.” The gateman replied.
The man brushed passed him, leaving his car outside the compound with the headlights on. The gateman stared at him, confusion in his eyes then he sighed and drew the gate back, hiding the house that the night had peeped on, from view. As the gate close shut, an anonymous voice spoke;
“Michael what are you doing here by this hour?”* The voice said.
“Father, I can’t marry Senator Chris’ daughter. I am in love…” the man is heard replying before the clang of the gate shutting overwhelmed his voice and the night heard no more.
The frog stared at the car in irritation for some seconds, waiting for it to make the horrible sounds it had made earlier but the vehicle does not oblige. It cleared its throat and began to croak then crickets began their symphony.
Just as the orchestra was getting to a crescendo before a particularly dexterous solo by the frog, a scream filled the air;
“Thief! Armed robbers! Help! Somebody help!” an agitated voice filled with fear screamed.
The night suddenly went still, even the moon and clouds seem to pause on their journey across the sky then a gunshot exploded into the quiet, into the night and a surprised bat flapped itself away, fleeing into the night sky.
Soon the thud of boots on grass sounded as someone landsd on the earth from a height then running footfalls sounded as someone sped away from the direction of the scream.
The owner of the feet appeared holding a locally made pistol in his right hand and a bag slung across his left shoulder. His eyes shifted in the dark as he ran passed the irritated frog and disappeared into the mist that crawled in the night.
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Someone sobbed loudly into the listening night but there was mostly silence. The baby started bawling again but no mother shushed him. Everybody sat at their window, peering through the edge of curtains, trying to catch a glimpse of the night.
The girl heard the gun shot and the scream. She shuddered and picked up her pace. She had walked far but she had not seen a car that would take her to where she was going to. She saw the light before a voice ordered her to stop. She stopped as a bright light was passed over her face, her body and her bag. She felt naked under the torch’s scrutiny;
“Where are you coming from?” the torch asked.
“Please remove the torch light from my eyes, I can’t see. I live in the estate and I am going out. Is there any problem?” she replied.
The hand holding the touch lowered and the girl could see the young man who had questioned her. He was a member of the vigilante group that supposedly guarded the area. He had also been pestering her for a relationship in the past.
“It is even you?” the girl replied then she hissed.
“Where are you going to by this time? You are going to see a man, right?” the vigilante asked.
“Since when did you become my father? Where I go to and when I go there is none of your business.” The girl replied.
“I cannot allow you to go. There has been gunshots heard in this area and we believe that there is a robbery in progress. I don’t want you to be mistaken for a robber and shot; do you understand?” the vigilante said.
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The girl looked at him for some seconds, then she sighed and walked to a bench by the side of the road and sat down. The vigilante nodded and turned away from her. He soon walked over to where two of his colleagues stood and got into a conversation with them. As soon as the girl saw that no one was watching her, she picked her bag and slowly climbed over the bench then melted into the bush beside the road.
The thief ran beside the well pruned edges of a hedge that sat around a bungalow. He slowed down as he got to a turn. He turned to the right to listen to the night for sounds of pursuit but heard nothing, as he turned back to the left, something slammed into him, throwing him off balance and he lost his grip on the gun which went off in the night. He landed on his back, his ears ringing from the gun blast and groaned but he suppressed his pain and tried to rise up. He struggled to his knees and then he saw what had hit him. It was a pretty girl and she was bleeding from her shoulder.
He crept to where she laid comatose, and felt her pause; she was still alive. He raised his head as he heard voices coming towards his direction. The gun had given him away. He looked at the gun, his bag then he looked at the girl. He sighed, opened the bag and took out the cash and put it in his pocket. He left the other items in the bag except the jewelry which he packed into the girl’s bag. He picked up the gun and the girl’s bag, lifted the unconscious girl on his shoulder and staggered away.
Stay tuned for the second part of this experiment. I hope you enjoyed it. I would love to read your comments and reply them; it's free.
Image Sources:pixabay
This is Oskilo's blog and he would love to read your suggestions on how to make this blog better serve you. He would like to know what you, his reader, think of the content. You just might have something he needs.
Peace
©@warpedpoetic
art and flair courtesy of @PegasusPhysics
There are some passages here that are incredibly well crafted. The metaphors you invoke are vivid and certainly pull the reader in. I wonder though if they story and the characters might be a little more powerful if you used these metaphors and description of the night a little more sparingly? The world you present here is in full HD but the characters and plot feels light in comparison. I imagine this will change with the second instalment, which I look forward to. Thanks for sharing this!
It was deliberate. I am always experimenting with my prose. I mixed poetic elements into the scene description, then I made sure that the frog, crickets, the night itself become characters in the story. So do not read the frog, the music, the moon and stars as scene props, read them as characters in the story.
I am trying to show how much of our activities affect our environment at the most basic level while a story unfolds before you.
The human characters are faceless I want to give the impression of strangers meeting each other. A name brings familiarity. You the reader will think that because you know the name then the character knows the name also. I wanted that shadowy element. It is night after all, darkness shrouds all.
I am glad you liked it and thank you for your criticisms. If you are not satisfied with my explanation and you know a better way, I am willing to learn.
Thanks for describing the experiment and the intentionality of how you opened the story. I like the idea of tilting focus to the environment and it’s role in shaping our experiences. I’ve always liked pathetic fallacy in the imperative mode but perhaps that is a method for an anthropogenic world order, giving agency back to nature is timely. I would never suggest I know a better way, that’s the great thing about writing, there are so many different ways to go about doing it. Look forward to the next one and I will be sure to check out your other posts.
Yeah that's the plan. Let's see if we can get something out of nature for a change besides being the most popular prop in a work of fiction. Pathetic fallacy will bring out the reality in the rest part of the story.
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Highly descriptive
I like what you are experimenting with here, @warpedpoetic.
One thing that is noticeable is the sounds of the environment drop away substantially as the people begin their dialogue. It is a stark contrast, and feels in one way like a zoom lens focusing on the people's interaction to the exclusion of all else, and in another way it left me feeling like you forgot about the sounds of the environment once the people started talking. I hope this is good feedback for you.
Cheers!
Yeah I noticed it too, that is why I think I failed. At the end of the day, the story is about humans and humans must talk. What if they don't? What if everything is about actions and body language? The environment's silence won't seem so out of place. What do you think @mitneb?
@warpedpoetic, I think that it would be a worthwhile and challenging experiment to do a piece sans dialogue. Part of the challenge comes because we are people reading the story, and we connect with the human characters in a way that we don't connect with the other elements. We gravitate towards what is happening with the people more than with the other elements because we are one of them. It's not entirely possible to connect with the other elements in quite the same way, and so the other elements will never be quite as interesting as the people. That's my theory, anyway. It doesn't mean you shouldn't experiment and explore ways of making the environment more tangible and significant. You've got to be skillful with it though. Otherwise it will come off sounding contrived, forced or overdone for the sake of trying to paint a word picture, and that's just boring.
Cheers!
Hmm... You are very correct. I need to think this one through. Thanks ma'am @mitneb