Prologue (Draft)

My attempt at presenting something that has formed in my head.

 Prologue.

 

  Looking him starkly in the eye in her attempt to carry along their stalled conversation she asked, remembering those three words he'd uttered over the phone the night before. 

  "Do you love me? Because I..."

  She paused, and with hopeful anticipation in her eyes that his answer would meet her expectation she reached across the table and grabbed his hand with a smile. He allowed his lips a quirky smirk and rested his cheek in the palm of his free hand, gazing upon her.  He exhaled, his torso illustrating the concept of breathing, then he attempted to speak but stopped. A chilling stillness ensued. She felt it. 

  The establishment in which they dined had been occupied to capacity that night. Upscale, but casual enough that the patrons felt at ease with their conversation. So there had been just enough banter and chitter-chatter. Braggadocio men at an adjacent table flirted with the waitresses as they did their rounds, while the more conservative ones at another table shared laughter and toasts with their inner circles. She couldn't hear a soul. His silence was endemic of it. It was all a blur. A kind of silence that enveloped the atmosphere and seemed to dwell on it like a leech.

  Had he understood the question?  It was a simple enough question to understand. Even easier to answer. Or was he just choosing not to answer? Would this be the moment in which he'd finally affirm the perception and feeling she held of him? Or had it all been but a fool's errand? Had she become but an amusing indulgence to him? Her thoughts ran wild.

   She clasped his hand as though to induce a response, nothing. This time he lends himself a smile, a kind of hubris within, which he followed with the flicker of an eye. Thus he endeavored to speak again, and that time he did, but his words were such she didn't quite understand. There had not been the slightest projection. A whisper. 

   She suddenly began to remember the ventriloquist at her eighth birthday party. How similar was he, in that moment, to this man, the one she'd adored from the first time they met. And even worse, she felt compared to that tiny figurine of a Persian woman the ventriloquist used in his act. 

  She withdrew her hand swiftly and seemed to dissolved within herself. Dresden stared at her anticipating a reaction, but she remained still. Stiff as a corpse euthanized upon a table. Her mind had frozen. Her thoughts were whispers of echoed voices on the outskirts of her mind.

    Her eyes wandered back and forth through the glass window by which they sat, inadvertently keeping track of every passerby. Her mind seemed to systematically single out the pairs of the opposite sex strolling hand in hand casually through the narrow street. Then, swelling up within her like a river above its banks, she felt anger. She was angry that at that moment, unlike those couples out under the bright lights of the carnivalesque city, her hope of happiness was nothing but that. Hope. She felt the weight of her existence settling upon the very fiber of her being. Such silence was worse than any word he could've spoken. Maybe somewhere along the way she had lost account of who she was, and in doing so had lost him. How sad, she thought. Then, almost unwieldy, she asked;

  “Have I been lost to you all this time?"

  "You know the answer to that," he replied. “But it's not you, Elise, it's me. I've always been the one."

  "Then why?"

  "Because at one point we had what you desires most."

  "And now?"

  "Now, my dear Elise, we must say goodbye."

  "There must be a reason then. Or perhaps there's someone else?"

  "The reason is quite simple. I have a rather constant need to move forward, and in doing so, I must go out and live. You of all people should understand that. Well, I guess you wouldn't now would you?" 

He followed that with a smile. A disingenuous one Elise thought.

  “But I don't, Dresden, I don't. I love you, say you love me too." She pleaded whisperingly.

  "Please…?"

  With a thousand words roaming through her jaded mind, please was the only one that seemed to find its way out.

  "I'm sorry," he asserted as he got up and began to take his leave. Elise grabbed onto the sleeve of his shirt, but her attempt was rendered obsolete.

  In the following moments that followed the chronology of events, from the first time they met, that outlined their relationship seemed to flash before her eyes. They’d all been good and joyous moments, not a single indication therein that it would all end in such a way. Needless to say, deep down within herself she had always known that he was a man of conflicting interests. A man who didn't quite believe in the concept of commitment. A fickle. It still came as a surprise, but.

  "Why'd I have to need you like that? Why'd I fallen so quickly?" The words seemed to fall out of her mouth against her will.

  "Because that's what people do..." A voice rang. It came from behind her, a waitress. Having just been dealt a mortal blow in the arena of love, Elise had completely lost track of time and had sat still, unaware, at her table for the duration of the night. She lifted her head to find that she was the only patron, they had all gone, and that it was closing time. Her head fell swiftly--would've landed in her seafood entrée had her propped-up hands not been there to catch it--as the waitress came about to face her. 

  "Sorry to hold you up," Elise said, lifting her head slowly to the waitress who, casually, pulled out a chair and sat across from her.

  "It's okay. Don't worry about it too much. And like I said, that's what people do. They meet someone and fall in love. We all do that s**t," the waitress cooed.

  Elise, hesitant in giving a rebuttal, shrugged, smiling warily. She had no intentions of discussing her affairs with the waitress, Debra, as she would identify herself, who didn't quite seem to have won her battle with puberty. What could such a young one possibly know of love? Of the affections of the heart?

  "I know what you must be thinking," Debra interrupted Elise's thought.   "What could this kid possibly know about it, right?" Except that I do. I know what it's like to want someone who has his sight on someone else."

  "Well, Debra I'm sure that you do," Elise said, looking over at the rest of the establishment's employees, congregated at the check-in counter, without a doubt discussing the little side-show they had been privileged to witness. Then, reverting her attention to Debra with a f**k-it-why-not expression on her face, she asked;   "Have you ever felt something so profoundly wonderful that when it was taken from you, you felt your very existence collapse upon itself?"

   "Yes, I have. And I have the scars to prove it. They may not be visible, but they're there. I think you understand what I mean by that."

  "Well I suppose I do now, don't I?"

   "Look, Elisa, can I call you that? I can tell you obviously have a knack for over-analyzing things. I don't know, maybe that comes in handy in your line of work...."

    "And what line of work might that be?" Elise interrupted.

   “Well you're a cop, aren't you? There is a gun and badge in your purse. I saw when I walked around." Elise smiled, looking at her open purse atop the table.

   "So, do they tip you for being nosy as well?"

   "I don't know, do you always bring a gun on a date? Surprise you didn't blow his brains out." 

   They both had a laugh.

   The funny thing about it was that she had thought about blowing his brains out. Not once or twice, but every f*****g ticking moment after he'd gotten up and left her. Disgraced, with an ocean of eyes in company. For a moment she had even reached into her purse and held it in a firm grip. This was at the precise juncture he gave the “it's-not-you-it's-me speech.” An expert shooter, she'd graduated top of her class at the police academy; unprecedented for a left-handed female. A sniper with a handgun; Jane Wayne was the nick-name they coined her. She had her reservations about it of course, mostly that it was corny, but she went with it.

    She'd seen it clearly. Little particles of brains resting, rather artistically, atop the salmon dish on his plate. A third eye cavity ideally situated between the two he already possessed. It would've been easy, especially so, since she'd done it from much further distances. The motive would've been different of course, but the concept of murder was common-placed within her line of work. She'd not flinched an inch the first time she killed a man. Her hands didn't shake, nor had her pulse risen beyond the standard parameters.

   The blithe, plush-faced waitress, Debra, had been rather solemn in her revelation to Elise the reason the man she loved suddenly had a change of heart. It was the other woman, as per what she, Debra, had seen. The woman that sat just behind Elise at an adjacent table but positioned well enough to share frequent stares with Dresden. That woman. The blonde woman he whispered to at the moment he spoke without words. The girl he winked at while he held Elise's hand. The woman he ultimately left with that night while Elise sat abandoned and shamed.

   "It's amazing the things you see working in a place like this Elise. The audacity of some people is epic as f**k! It's a f*****g fiasco!"

  That was all. Elise would leave there shortly after leaving a twenty-dollar tip.

   "Thanks for being nosy, Debra," she said as she handed the waitress the bill.

   “It was my pleasure, Elise."

  Both women smiled in an embrace. Elise thought that if the circumstance had been different maybe they both could've talked about something they liked as she walked out into the moonlit night. After all, there was something very welcoming about the young woman. Perhaps they would. But of course, there was the other thing of which she thought.

Reviews

[Robert Parlange]

Very good. I like the way you introduced Elise as a human being. It was a familiar setting and you handled the details expertly. We've all been dumped. And this scene captured that. The later revelation that Elise was a cop, and a tough one at that, gave her a vulnerability beyond the cliche “Dirty Harriet.”

There were a few textual problems, but I'm sure you will take care of that in the re-write. The dialogue was good. That's usually hard but you don't seem to have a problem with that. It seemed natural and wasn't forced.

This was good. Keep writing.

[Deco]

Thanks for your kind words, I appreciate them. I did notice those problems too and will fix them here soon. Thanks again for taking the time to read my writing.

[D Connolly]

Elise strikes me as a weak and needy human; the precise kind of woman I wouldn't keep in my circle. She has no sense of "self". Really? She begs him to tell her that he loves her? Grabs his sleeve as he walks out on her? Gross. If she's a cop, then she's smart, and if she's smart, I hope that she would have seen that coming instead of being so surprised. The desperation just creeps me out. I know this is a prologue, so there might be something in the rest of the story that leads up to why she's such a lump... I'll read the first chapter and take it from there. There's also not a whole lot of action in this. It's so introspective and it jumps in a strange way; one minute she's a pathetic needy "little girl" (essentially) and the next she's imagining what his brains would look like on the salmon plate? I don't think so.
I don't mean to tear this apart.... I just, think it could be better.

[D Connolly]

You know, it just bothers me when women are written in such a passive way. I mean, she remembers what it's like to KILL someone. But here she is, whining that this nobody is leaving her in a restaurant... I mean, if it were me, he would have ended up with the salmon plate in his lap, and I WOULD HAVE LEFT WITH THE BLONDE HE WAS FLIRTING WITH. I'm begging you to give Elise some redeemable characteristics and make her a strong character. Please. I can't bear it.

[Deco]

Beinb who I am i can't simply turn a blind eye to the issues you have with this. With that being said, it seem to me you're suggesting that because someone breaks up with another person,in this case, that person deserves death? Maybe not. But i think her strength lies in the fact that that's not how the world works... being someone in a position to enforce the law and all. And so being a cop does not take away ones humanity in a way that we all have that one person we feel strongly about, a feeling that when taken away, especially in such an arbitrary way, might push us to do the unthinkable. Her strength lies in the fact that she understands that that's not the answer even though doing so would not take much... in her recollection of having done it before... under a different circumstance. I think a takes a tremendous amount of strength in that. I hope this helps a little. Thanks for reading this though D. Connolly. :)

[D Connolly]

No! Not at all, of course they don't deserve death, no way! I'm saying, that the idea that this woman, who is a police officer and a darn good one if she's the protagonist of your story, who graduated at the top of her class, who is fantasizing about this guy's brains "resting artistically on the salmon plate", who carries a gun on a date with her badge, who doesn't seem like the kind of woman who can be taken for a complete fool, has the potential to be a great character. But in the beginning of this story, she's a welp! She's begging him "please say you love me" and she's grabbing his sleeve as he walks away... I mean, they can't be the same character! She's been reduced to a 13 year old little girl when you do this to her. This is a woman who is smart enough to have graduated from the academy at the top of her class. He hadn't even told her that he loved her, which tells me that they hadn't been together that long. How in the world would a woman with all of her assets be reduced to a sniveling little wimp over a guy? That's all I'm saying. And as weird as it is, I lost a little sleep over this last night. Really, I was up like 2 hours longer than normal wondering how you could do this to me.

[Deco]

Okay, I get it. But damn! I hate that you lost sleep over this though, really. :( In any case, this is still just a draft so the final Elise may yet be a character you can appreciate. By the way... he tell her he loved her, you can find this at the very beginning, we just didn't here him say it but she did. You are passionate about this art of ours, that's good.

[andrew mitchell]

Wow did you write this! excellent writing skills sir. may I ask how long did this take to write and edit. lovely story so far.

[Deco]

A day or two to be honest. Thanks for reading it though.