Sta.sh
The Hole of Craig
Craig sleeps in late. This could be a Monday, but it doesn't matter. He doesn't have an alarm clock. He wanders to the toilet without flicking on the lights, but he can still see the silhouette in the mirror. It says "metabolic syndrome", but he believes it's just the Remeron. You can tell some things by looking at the mirror, but there are much more of those that don't show up. It makes about as much sense as job interviews.
The bedroom features an ugly brown sofa and a bed too large for him. What could possibly provoke more loneliness than sleeping in a bed twice your size? The bookshelf is stuffed full of books, all that have been read in the past. It's all dusty now with a few fingerprints to suggest human presence. The television exists only for the background noise. He has no more interest in newspapers than they have of him. It's all just a collection of bigger and smaller holes.
The answering machine blinks with a new demand. Not answering it could mean another hospitalization, another set of loonies. This is how they manage his social networks. Craig never dated an inpatient. He has never had a girlfriend or a boyfriend, but he has been very close to getting laid and it's probably better than never having got that far. Not that he has much interest in sex, but he wouldn't mind someone to fill the bed, to make it a little smaller. Why won't they agree to castrate him?
The number of his past hospital stays is fuzzy. There have been so many diagnoses he doesn't remember them all. Every shrink has had a new label, sometimes two. It's easier to list what he doesn't suffer from. He doesn't have ADHD and his thyroid function is normal. Irritable bowel syndrome is one thing he can confirm. It's likely that the origin of the condition is psychosomatic, but no one has been interested enough to find out. This three-letter thing means pizza is banned, but what else would you eat if you were Craig.
Craig's sign is Capricorn, which portrays him as prudent and ambitious with plenty of patience. That doesn't exactly describe him, but the astrological depiction isn't any less accurate than anything else that has been written about him. He is treated as someone, not as Craig. What he is or isn't are just little pieces of the puzzle. Even with the modern technology we cannot see inside the cavity. He knows we are indifferent.
At night Craig swallows four different pills to make him sleep. Despite all these drugs, he still wakes up in the morning. There's often a feeling similar to a hangover even though he no longer drinks. It's difficult to remember which day of the week it is, which month and which time of the year. It's colder in the winter and sometimes he has to turn the heater on, but Tuesdays feel just like Saturdays. If Tuesday and Saturday suddenly changed places, Craig wouldn't be the one to notice.
When Craig dies, he will not be branded a hero, regardless of having hung around long past his expiry date. He has survived rejections, severe acne and even Effexor withdrawal - not once but twice. He has never been in a fight, he has never impregnated anyone. There is very little proof that he even lived. The childhood photos are now faint and yellow thanks to the cheapskate of a mother who stored her family in cheap plastic. There will be a handful of people in his funeral, but most are there just to confirm that he really existed. There will be no flowers. Who would buy flowers for someone who is dead?
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I like the fact that you describe everything in his life as 'unimportant'. He has a sofa, he has a tv... but what are they in real life... they're things that no one cares about which just emphasises how alone he is. The fact he takes so many pills, as if he just drugs himself up to get away from it all but then wakes up back in reality every morning.
But my favourite line is the ending... who cares that he's died. He doesn't even get flowers.
xxxx
One can feel Graig's drama, even though you managed to write about him in a dry and aseptic style. It's exactly why one can feel his drama, because of how you wrote it. Had you written a melodramatic text, draping with adjectives, Craig would just sound pathetic, and make no one sympathetic.
Indirectly, you incorporated his own voice to the narrative, through the bits where there's no logics in the associations. That's a good example of subtle characterization.
Cheers!
The impression I get is that although it's written in the third person, these are Craig's thoughts about himself - his attempts to quieten down the panic by reaching for an objective, unemotional standpoint. When he suggests any other possibility is absurd ("Who would buy flowers for someone who is dead? ") he's trying to quell his own outrage at the reality of his situation. For much of the piece though, he does this by stating things matter of factly. The situation is insane, but that's just the way it is. Just the idea that he is thinking in third person suggests there is a desperate need to attach meaning to his life, even if it is through observation of its apparent meaninglessness.
I like this. It is a short and uneventful piece, just like Craig's life, so it seems. Craig doesn't even seem sad any more, just resigned to life how it is...
and what about narrative action? what you have provided is a description of a state of existence, a frozen state. it's a good introduction. but in order to make it relevant to lived life, i think we need to see the character living his life, we need to see him interacting with others, or failing to do so, working, going for a walk, shopping, something that puts into relief that frozen state and follows it through, as it were.
technically, all good apart from ...
'There will be a handful of people in his funeral' needs to be 'AT his funeral'.
You're right that maybe I should have captured him also outside of his apartment even if he hardly gets that far. I probably should have also focused on the things that do offer him relief, it's one of the things that likely would have prevented the story from being so one-dimensional. I think it's the lack of writing experience lately that even though I clearly realized the way it was, I couldn't find ways to change that, I was too focused on telling and not showing if it makes any sense. Originally the story included a bit about him finding some solace on his computer, but it didn't fit in where it was so it was erased.
I think most people who have a chronic illness (mental or physical and in Craig's case it's mostly mental, but at that state it's obviously also threatening his physical well-being) haven't really accepted it. I know that I haven't accepted mine. Even if you have acknowledged the fact that your life isn't getting anywhere and you might as well die, you're still probably not accepting the illness. Even if you deny all hope there is always a small glimmer of it left, even if it's more destructive than productive.
I think that Craig is rather suicidal - pretty much everyone in that state is - but he probably isn't going to do anything about it, even if the story doesn't exclude the possibility that he kills himself. In fact I think the last paragraph could even be taken as a hint that he does commit suicide (the hero thing, as many people consider those who commit suicide to have been "cowards"), but it's not actually implied. He might just die from a heart attack at the age of 67. This is one of the parts I want to keep as slightly vague and ambiguous. Whether or not he is suicidal or commits suicide doesn't really matter, IMO.
Remember that hospitalizations aren't always voluntary. People who seek help from mental health professionals (not necessarily because they want to do that, but they are told that they should) can be involuntarily hospitalized for opening up about their thoughts a bit too generously. In some countries like the UK those who have been hospitalized in the past are frequently assigned a social worked or some other professional, who visits them regularly and if they notice something "alarming" the person will probably end up in the psych ward again. Also, people who are feeling desperate sometimes sign up to the hospital themselves, even if they know it won't help anything.
Thanks for spotting the error too, I've never managed to properly grasp prepositions - Finnish doesn't have them, we rely on morphems and their intepretation about whether something is done inside, outside or at something often differs from English. The people I asked to proofread the piece didn't spot any errors.
The first paragraph already says a lot, it makes a good introduction without actually looking like an introduction. Craig's day starts right away, but the reader is still introduced to his life from scratch. The sentence "You can tell some things by looking at the mirror, but there are much more of those that don't show up" anticipates the general feeling of the story, the way Craig goes unnoticed, living an anonymous life.
In the fourth paragraph, I had some trouble understanding what "this three-letter thing" was referring to, because there's a sentence between that one and "Irritable bowel syndrome is one thing he can confirm", so it's easy to forget. It could work better if you switched "three-letter thing" and "condition" like this:
"Irritable bowel syndrome is one thing he can confirm. It's likely that the origin of the three-letter thing is psychosomatic, but no one has been interested enough to find out. This condition means pizza is banned, but what else would you eat if you were Craig."
It doesn't sound as good, but I see it as a more logical order.
My favourite passage in the whole story is "a mother who stored her family in cheap plastic". The way it's worded is perfect, and the meaning goes way beyond the yellowish photos.
I have a lot of issues with the ending, both positive and uncertain ones. The last sentence feels a little too obvious at first, which makes me think that there's some deeper meaning that I can't grasp. "Who would buy flowers for someone who is dead?" is thought-provoking because it obviously contradicts the usual ritual of leaving flowers to the dead ones. But isn't there something more?
I agree a lot with ~TBCorpse, "there are more metaphors and analogies here than I'm even aware of". That's why I spent an entire day thinking about that last paragraph (and that's why I didn't comment before). Unlike the rest of the story, it's not written in present, except for that last sentence. I came to the conclusion that it's because Craig can already be considered dead in the sense that he doesn't exist as much as other people do. But I don't know if that's intentional or just my interpretation.
That last paragraph feels a lot different than the rest of the story, probably too much. You make an exhaustive and detailed description of a random day in Craig's life, and then you switch to the long-term future. I think the previous paragraph should end with some words about the next day or something like that, to create a smoother transition.
I wonder why you chose the name "Craig". I know it's common, and it's a good choice, short and not too descriptive. But is he named after someone? It's the kind of name I would expect to see in a memorial or a grave, but rarely in real life.
Sorry for the long comment. It's because your story made me remember the times when I was a prose critic and writer for my school magazine. Not that I know anything about literature.
Great work.
You're probably right about the fourth paragraph, I just think it doesn't sound as good if I change the order of the words like that. I believe that an American (or someone from another English speaking country) would probably understand it easier since IBS is a very common thing and I think the abbreviation is also well-known, but I could be wrong.
I think the last sentence has many different connotations and meanings. It not only indicates it's silly to buy flowers for someone who's dead - especially if you didn't care about that person while he was still alive - but that Craig's life was so meaningless that people would find it silly to buy flowers for his funeral, even if they would happily do that for their wife's boss grandma's funeral, if you know what I mean. On another level it's kind of supposed to reflect the way how the whole world is crazy, meaningless, how people are fixated on silly rituals like buying flowers to show appreciation for someone who's dead and will never know.
To me the story isn't really a description of a day in Craig's life, it summarizes his whole life and that's why I placed it in Life Stories. Like the narrative says it doesn't matter what day it is, it's not really "any day", but "every day". It's a life story that ends in death (even though he doesn't really die in the story), so I don't think the last paragraph is too different. It's not really in "distant future". If you want to intepret the story as being about one day, how do you know this is not the day that he dies? I rather like your idea of moving on to the next day, but I'd like to keep this possible intepretation.
You have a good intepretation of the ending anyway, but also keep in mind that it's not just about Craig's life being insignificant, it's how all of us are fairly insignificant in the big picture. Craig knows more than most people, because he's aware of this, unlike most people who believe they're important and unreplaceable. In a way it's the problem of "existential angst". He's not too fussed about his death, because he knows it doesn't really matter and other people seem to share this opinion.
I wouldn't name a character like this after anyone. In fact I would never name a character after anyone in particular, it's just silly. Craig is just a name that seemed more fitting than eg. Matt or Jack or Robert. And because I don't know anyone named Craig it was easier to totally distance myself and not accidentally feel like I'm writing about a friend or something. I guess I knew the name due to the famous website craigslist.