Draft 1

Very rough draft of a short story I stared a couple of months ago and got stuck.. Need some help!

   He was still in the dining room when he heard her moving about above him. He'd lost all sense of time since his watch had stopped but he'd listened to the water heater groan for at least half an hour. She always enjoyed long showers when she got the chance and he hoped it had relaxed her enough to at least have a conversation with him. They had sat through dinner in silence, her eyes avoiding his whilst pushing the food around her plate. He'd cooked some rice and found some canned peaches in the pantry but neither were very hungry. They both weighed half of what they used to and it showed. Neither ate for pleasure anymore, a simple luxury neither missed after time pushed them aside. He now sat at the empty dining table writing his letters. A habit she hated, a habit he saved for when she wasn’t around. He numbered them in order of importance, rather than a name or address he assigned a number to each correspondent. One was his parents, two was his girlfriend, three was his sister, four and five were friends. All had similar content, he could have easily just written a diary, but he wasn't ready to give up hope. The letters had a purpose, a recipient, and that was enough.

 

   When it began to get dark he blew out the candles he'd placed on the enormous oak dining table and closed the curtains, making sure there were no gaps between the fabric. He followed the soft piano music upstairs to her. There was a tiny candle sitting on top of the piano. It flickered as he spoke and their shadows bounced across the walls.

   "You should really put that out."

   "Light or not, they always seem to find us."

   He gave up easily, it wasn't a new conversation by any means. She was afraid of the dark and when she seldom allowed him to put out the lights she'd grope for him in the shadows, pressing her body against his and he wouldn't move because he knew how afraid she was to be left alone. They would lie for hours listening to each other breathing, curling their fingers together because they were both afraid to be alone in a place like this. The silence would echo against the walls and they had grown dependent on the comfort it brought.

   He watched her long fingers move across the keys of the piano, each note sharp in his ears. It had been a long time since he'd heard music and it wasn't as soothing as he remembered. Though, now, nothing was how he remembered. He stood there for a long time as she played a piece of music from memory.  He noticed the pale pink dress she was wearing, acquired from the rich wardrobe that belonged to the dead owner of the house and breathed in the sight of her, eyes closed, impossibly tranquil. She had once been a classical pianist and he knew how much she missed it; he had seen her eyes dampen when she'd taken in the sight of the piano when they'd first arrived. However much he protested it was too loud, it was too dangerous, she refused to listen. She'd say what was left if they didn't have their moments of happiness? It wasn't that he disagreed with her, but what was there if they were found? He knew she resented him, she was relieved to not be left alone but he wasn't her choice of company. They fought frequently and barely talked anymore. Somehow he knew he loved her, and she loved him, but it wasn't like anything he had felt for a woman before. It wasn't a feeling he could place but he knew he'd rather be dead than without her now. They'd both been alone for far too long before they found each other.

   She'd stopped playing and was looking at him. "Why don't you have a go?" She moved to the edge of the stool and patted it.

   "I've never played before."

   Her damp hair clung to her back but strands fell across her chest and arms as she moved, tacking themselves to his arm as he sat down beside her. The feel of her hair on his bare arm was intimate and he was reluctant to brush it away. She took his hands in hers and guided them over the keys, his fingers awkwardly pressing down with no sense of rhythm. She pushed her fingers between his, gently moving his hands with hers, a tune he was sure he’d heard somewhere before. He lost himself there in that moment, her hair stuck to his skin, her fingers entwined in his. It felt like home, or as close to home as he’d ever feel again. He didn’t know if she’d also heard them outside, but if she had heard them or not, she didn’t stop playing.

 

 

   He found her in an abandoned apartment building. His memory of entering the building was nothing but pushing open a door and the clang of empty food tins on the marble floor. He woke up on a bed and noticed her standing in the doorway. The sight of the baseball bat she clung to protectively with one hand brought to his attention the dull, throbbing pain in his temple. I brought you a cup of tea, she said, nodding to a mug on the floor next to the bed. No apology, no tenderness, just a cup of tea. He'd laid there in silence watching this thin, delicate woman wearing an enormous jumper that fell below her knees. He took in the sight of her for several minutes, the pair of men's work boots she wore, he later found out she stuffed with socks because they were several sizes too big, standing there holding an aluminium baseball bat against the broken door frame. When he sat up unsteadily and reached for the mug, she left. The tea was stone cold but he drank it anyway. In the days after they began to form an unsteady relationship. She didn't talk much; she preferred to listen to him and asked more questions than she answered. He knew she’d had a daughter, he heard her say her name out loud once when she thought no one was around. Connie. When he asked who Connie was she simply said, my daughter, and that was that. He didn’t ask and she didn’t offer anything further.

   They'd left behind everything that they were before, all the things that would normally define a person. A family, a job, friends, all those small habits that begin to distinguish us from others. If she was described as a loving mother in her past life, how would she be described when she became childless? If there was no one in the world left to love, would she still be that same loving mother? They became defined by their actions, their readiness to survive. Without each other they would be as base as animals. They were dependent on one another for definition and they loathed to admit it. When they'd first been attacked, the first time together, they didn't talk for several days. They had seen each other at their most primitive. It wasn't a first for either of them, they had long gotten over the intricate emotions that came along with killing, but it was the first time another person had witnessed something so personal, so shameful, so utterly disgusting. She had ripped open the head of one of them with a cricket bat and was bathed head to toe in a spray of blood. He was left shaking and terrified while she walked away and quietly washed her hands. She began packing away her things without stopping to wipe the blood from her face. There became something quite shameful in wanting to survive. Hope wasn't something to be admired in their world and it soon became clear she pitied him for what she believed was naivety. Yet she pitied herself for being devoid of it. Every morning he woke up he felt a small flutter of hope. Every morning she woke up she was faintly disappointed she hadn’t been killed in her sleep.

 

   They moved often, to relieve boredom as much as for safety. Once, when they were packing up their limited belongings he felt her hand on the back of his neck. His response to any unexpected touch was to attack, even the first drizzle of rain still made him jump. But the lightness of her fingers felt so soft and so welcoming that he didn't dare move an inch in case she took away her hand. He stood with his back to her as she stroked his skin, felt the muscles in his back and ran her hand down to his waist, eventually placing her hand on his chest and pressing her body against his. His primitive response was to pull away. He was uncomfortable with the prison she had made around him. She had always been the more dominant one, she was fitter, faster and more intelligent than him. The only strength of his was the stronger will to survive. It was never said aloud, but she was the leader and he followed.

   He turned to her. If she was surprised by the sudden movement she didn't show it. She put a hand on his arm, touching him as though she'd never touched another person, exploring his skin like it was new to her. He took her hand and placed it back by her side and she looked up at him with an air of expectation. She tensed and he didn't know if it was in anticipation of rejection or reciprocation. He stood above her, taller by at least eight inches and he'd never realised how much bigger he was. Suddenly she looked small, fragile almost, and at once he noticed her femininity, the curve of her waist, her delicate cheekbones, her rounded lips. She lowered her eyes as he studied her, embarrassed maybe, and he took her cheek in his palm and pulled her face upwards to him. She was uncomfortable and he enjoyed it. He kissed her, softly at first, testing the waters, and when he felt some resistance, some hesitance, he pressed his lips harder against her face.

 

 

   They’d been passing an electronics store in some desolate town centre when it first happened. Somehow the electricity was still working here, as it sometimes did in the beginning, and a couple of the televisions in the window were emitting a news broadcast on a loop. They stood mesmerised by the blue glow and wondered how, after almost an entire population had been wiped out, were there still timeless windows of the past being transported through a flat screen? Neither had seen a television in months and neither had given much thought to there being some left out there, throwing images out into nothingness. They watched it happen all over again. Each screen fed them images of the dead, the frantic survivors trying to board boats or filling up motorways with their cars loaded with desperate faces. The silence made the reports even more terrifying than the memories. In the mass hysteria, the sounds of screaming and crying eventually became banal. It was the silence, the silence they now inhabited, that carried the sound of hell.

   And surrounded by the sound of hell they’d heard the rush of footsteps. There wasn’t time to think or fight or turn or even look at one another. So they ran. The three pairs of feet slapped against the concrete in unison. They made no sound, they were past the need to shout or scream. No one was coming to help. They left the city centre and passed rows of houses in an estate. Some of the houses were bathed in light from every window. Lamps, televisions, all left on in the panic. Both thought briefly about using one of the houses for shelter but it was too close behind them to risk it. It didn’t get any closer or fall any further behind but all three ran hard through the estate. When she began to fall behind he didn’t notice until her breathing got louder, echoing in off the wall of silence. He shouted an encouragement but the words fell on deaf ears.

   She screamed. Not a call for help but a scream of frustration. A defeat. It had pulled her to the ground by her hair and when he turned he saw a tumble of swinging limbs. He turned, and without a second thought, he lunged at the two bodies. They hit the ground hard. The force of it drove the boy’s head into the concrete. He grabbed it with both hands and smashed it down a second time, and then a third time. The sound of its skill cracking, crumbling apart beneath his hands imprinted in his mind for the rest of his short life. And then the gurgling, choking sound of blood rushing to escape from the wound. A more hellish sound than silence. They both knew the boy was dead but she still swung her baseball bat down into the broken skull. He felt warm for a moment, a sensation he had been longing for all winter. Yet, when he realised, with bile rising in his throat, that he was blood he flung himself off its limp body and vomited. The blood was stained across his cheek and forehead and most of his chest, melting into his jacket. He scrubbed hard at his face but his hands were thick with it.

   When he eventually turned to her his face was a mess of red streaks. Silently she used a shirt from her bag to mop his face, her own covered in a spray of perfect red dots. She didn’t seem to notice. Or if she did, she didn’t care. She picked up the bat, watching the broken body lying in the street, bathed in the glow of a street light.

   “It was only a child,” she whispered when he was close enough to hear. He hadn’t realised until now, until he looked at it without fearing for his life. It was only now he took in the surfer shorts and cartooned polo shirt.

   “It wasn’t a kid,” he whispered back, barely able to hold his voice steady. “It was one of them. He was dead already.” He took her hand.

   “It was only a child,” she repeated and removed her hand from his.

 

 

   "You're still writing those letters." She’d come in the study so quietly he hadn’t heard her in time to hide everything.

   He didn't reply. There was no point. There were only so many times he could repeat the same words, the same answers.

   "Why do you do this to yourself? What is the point in this?"

   His silence seemed to enrage her and she tipped a pile of letters onto floor. He knelt down and started to pick them up without meeting her eye. She kicked them out of his reach.

   "I'm glad everyone I know is dead," she screamed. "We're the damned few left here to rot. Alone." She was now standing above him, her face red with anger.

   "We’re not alone.”

   “I don't know why you insist on doing this.” She picked up another letter and tore it to pieces. “You don't even keep the letters, you just leave them everywhere we go. Do you think one day you're going to go to the door, a door that isn’t even your door, and there'll be a stack of letters addressed to you?"

   He knew everything she said was only the truth but he couldn’t give up. She couldn’t understand why he tortured himself in such a way but he had to do it. It was the only way he could survive.

   “What is the alternative?” He stood up to face her. “If I give up, if I don’t hope, I’ll turn into you.”

 

She was sat in the garden smoking a cigarette. He walked over to her and she threw the cigarette at him. He ignored it and sat down anyway.

   "Don't bother."

   "Don't bother what?"

   "Don't bother trying to apologise."

   "I won't then."

   "You remember all those bodies in that house we found? The kids just lying there in their beds, if it wasn't for the smell you'd think they were just sleeping. I don't know why I didn't have the courage to do that, I could have fed Connie a packet of aspirin and she'd never have known a thing. I could have saved her from a terrible death. That's what hope did to me, it made me think I could protect my daughter and instead I led her to her death."

   "She could still be out there."

   "She was six years old. I don't think even you are that optimistic."

   "It isn't your fault."

   "I know this isn't my fault, I don't care about this." She waved at the landscape. "I don't care about me or you or anything else. I care about her."

   "You know we're going to get out of here. And we're going to find her."

   "Stop it." She hugged her knees and pressed her face into her lap. "I don't want to hear your 'it will be alright' speech. I've listened to it a hundred times and I've never heard it said with less enthusiasm."

   "So now I'm giving up hope?"

   "If you did I don’t know where we'd end up."

 

 

   His fingers tore at bare skin, trying to claw his way in. He attacked her breasts with his hands, dragging her flesh in hard, rigid movements. She responded with a sharp intake of breath when he forced a hand against the elastic of her underwear. His head was spinning. He pushed her onto the piano and the only response that she was reciprocating was to awkwardly pull at the heavy lid as their bodies clashed against the keys, producing an ugly, flat sound that neither of them noticed. He pushed himself inside her and felt her body stiffen in pain, yet she made no noise or attempt to pull away. He was sure she couldn't even if she had wanted to. His fingers gripped her head, jerking it back to get at the base of her neck, only realising afterwards that he had pulled several strands from her head. Her collar bones stuck out defiantly and he dragged his teeth across them, tasting the sweat on her skin. With his head in her shoulder he moved against her with all his strength. He could feel the resistance inside her, her body was willing him to expel himself but her hands clawed at his back, his neck, with the same urgency he felt. He didn't experience the usual orgasm, just a relief; an emptiness that comes with crossing a line that can never be retraced, however many steps you take to attempt to find what you had before. They stayed entwined until they grew cold, and only when she began shivering did she push him away. He allowed her to slide past him and leant against the cold piano, breathing deeply. When the distant feeling of shame hit him he dressed with his back to her.

 

   He was in the kitchen when he heard her hammering at the piano with such a force it made him drop the glass he was holding. The noise cut through him, it wasn’t music, it was her fists hitting the keys with no reason other than to make noise. In an instant he knew it was the end and in that same instant he didn’t feel sad. He ran up the stairs, two at a time and saw she had opened every window, placed every candle they had on the windowsills like beacons of defeat in the open night sky. She was hitting the piano louder, if that was possible, with every breath he took. It rang in his ears, the last sound he would ever hear, and he was glad for it not to be silence. He ran harder up the enormous staircase, desperate to get to her, to be with her when it happened.

   The noise stopped as he reached the top of the stairs. He flung swung open the bedroom door and saw her standing at the window, surrounded by candles and wearing the pink dress. She didn’t turn around when he wrapped his arms around her.

   “They’re coming,” she whispered.

   And in the silence he could hear heavy footsteps. One pair, and then two, three, until the noise thundered towards them like a tide rolling in to claim its territory.

 

Author's Note

There are probably plenty of grammar/spelling mistakes. I would like to hear how I could make the characters more interesting. It's hard to develop them without giving them names. Is this annoying? Do you understand the plot or is it too vague? Which parts would you like to see more developed?
Thanks

Reviews

[Matt Pellegrini]

"He followed the soft piano music upstairs to her. There was a tiny candle sitting on top of the piano. It flickered as he spoke and their shadows bounced across the walls." A nice image. I'm a major sucker for a dim, shadowy figure playing, fully engrossed at a piano, but put her sitting there or some other sense of her presence at that piano. Personally, I'd love that image.

"Though, now, nothing was how he remembered." Tough sentence here. I know the feeling of needing to get in a certain sentence and only being able to logically put it in that one spot so it flows and connects with the previous sentence, but just the work with the wording and phrasing to make it more natural. It might be just a little off.

"but what was there if they were found." I'd rework this phrase. This sentence as a whole is one of the stronger emotional sentiments in the story, about just living even in the face of danger. Maybe add in the word happiness/joy or something since there's no real strong subject of this clause. "But what happiness would there be if they were found," or something like that.

I think you touch on an interesting concept that is shown well in your story. The idea that humans are so close to being just savage, primitive animals. It is the fact that we are able to be with another that keeps us somewhat civil. And I think this differentiation works well in the kind of story you're telling which leads me too...

For awhile, I was thinking this was Nazis and Jews, but after the first time they were attacked and she bashed one with a cricket bat, I started assuming zombies.

"When they'd first been attacked, the first time together, they didn't talk for several days." Drop one of the "firsts".

"when he turned he saw a tumble of swinging limbs. He turned," Also redundant. Drop a "turned."

"skill/skull" typo.

"that he was blood." Think you want "he" to be "it."

“It wasn’t a kid,” he whispered back, barely able to hold his voice steady. “It was one of them. He was dead already.” He took her hand. “It was only a child,” she repeated and removed her hand from his.

I get this. I understand what I think the big purpose of this part is. To give the female character some feeling and emotion and show that what her one care is, is her own child that she left behind, but I'm just not totally sure if this is believable. For me, I think the problem is, the kid was attacking her, and the way the scene plays out, it seems like the guy saved her. Then, she bats the head for good measure. So, one, she's sort of giving mixed signals by her own violence and two, I would think even though the kid thing hits home, she'd be somewhat grateful or just feeling fortunate. Better him than me, you know.

I would like this part to stay. To show the rift and difference between the man and woman. To really show that she does care about something through an indirect way. But, I think what happens needs to be changed. She can fall behind, but I don't think she can be attacked. Maybe when he turns, he sees how close it is and sees her struggling and attacks it to save her before she can get a chance to see it. I think something like that would give her anger more of a foundation.

I had no problem with the nameless characters. Since there are only two we focus on, it never gets confusing or convoluted. And I am a constant user of nameless characters.

I also think both characters were developed fine so far, specifically the woman. The man has the letters and all, but maybe you need to hint at what he's fighting for. Why he has this hope, that she doesn't. Maybe when they first meet, have him recall some of the questions she asked him, even if they don't get at any big questions, then we can make assumptions about the kind of person he is through his answers, though I know doing that might make it hard to keep the conflict somewhat vague.

Overall, I didn't think it was tooooo vague though. If it's not zombies or something like it though, like some kind of disease/infection affecting humans then maybe it is too vague haha. But, I felt at times, the vagueness felt just a bit forced. Only in regards to "them" though. Rereading some of the sentences that I thought seemed forced though, I may be overreacting. I just felt like there were times when you might have been trying to hide the word "zombie," but thinking about it, I'm not so sure characters would just say, "It wasn't a kid, it was a zombie," so I'm possibly wrong on this point.

Either way, I like what you did with what I deduce is a "zombie" story. Zombie plots, as far as most go, are generally in your face about it right away. Zombie this. Undead that. Flesh-eating. Dimwitted. Shotguns. Almost comedic violence. All that. But, you steered clear of that. And although most zombie stories have a group of people sticking together, unifying and whatnot, those people usually are survive first, self-actualization second. They reveal what they like/love or what they want to do or, IF they survive. Your characters are, fulfilling their desires/finding happiness/contentment/resolution first, sort of amidst surviving. I may have not explained that well, but, I liked it, is what I'm trying to say.

I sense there's more that you plan to add. I would be a little surprised if they did just die up there after the reader kind of gets this idea they might go looking for her daughter. Hopefully, there's a little more. And to be honest, I don't think you need to add another character if you were considering it. While I'm not against them meeting another person or two, the two you have right now are more than strong enough to be the entire team.