Walking Through The Spiderwebs - I

[xthread]

A Doctor came to talk to me today. He says he wants to make me well, but he's not very good at listening. I will talk to him anyway.

"I had a pet Spider."

The Doctor has a Nurse with him. I like Nurses better than the Doctors. They have pretty gowns, with little name tags on them. I would like a name tag.

"That's very good, Rachel. Tell me about the spider."

The doctors and nurses have white gowns, like the walls. Some of the other girls have green gowns. I wonder if their walls are green. I wonder if red would wash out of a green gown.

"I named it Spid."

The Nurse is sitting very still. Doctors always move around, but Nurses will sit still for hours. I wonder why Nurses know how to sit still. I wish I could sit still like that.

"Tell me more about the spider, Rachel."

This gown is white, and scratchy, and it has a name tag. I don't think it's my name. I didn't think it would be scratchy when I put it on.

"Spid didn't love me."

They want me to go home. That's why they come and talk to me.

"How could you tell that your pet spider didn't love you?"

I wish they would let me keep a pretty gown, but they always take them away.

"Spid ran away."

I don't want to go home. I never meet any new friends at home.

"Then what happened?"

I would like a red gown best of all. But the Doctors always take my red gowns away.

"Spid died."

The Nurse isn't sitting still any more. Now she's yelling and it hurts my ears. I wish she would stop. But the Doctor is talking to me.

"Where is Nurse Meyers, Rachel?"

Tomorrow I will try to make my gown red again.

"See what happens when you don't love me?"

Comments

[finagler.livejournal.com]

Not bad! Appologies for the unrequested constructive(?) criticism, but I think I like the start better than the ending though -- by the end there's too much action going on outside of her head and the impact of "see what happens when you don't love me" line is kinda lost.

I'm curious to see the next versions...

[xthread.livejournal.com]

oh, thank you.
I agree with your criticism, the beginning is much tighter than the end. It's not a style I'm used to, that's part of the point of the experiment.
I think that I can evoke some very different perceptions of the scene, the circumstance of the character, etc, just by varying the style a bit. So, this piece is very much a straight psychological horror piece, by the end of it I want the reader to be realizing that the girls gown is drenched in the blood of the missing nurse, and I want to evoke that realization and the attendant image in as few words as possible.
In another of the renditions, I'll be treating it as straight tragedy, trying to convey the impression that the girl is delusional and lonely, but not that anything bad is happening, just that she's lost in her own world.
Two other styles I plan to try are a very descriptive style, with very detailed descriptions of what the viewer is seeing, and a dialog style where you're really only hearing the conversation (stolen fair and square from the hard-boiled crime novels I've been reading). This version probably gives you the most detailed view into her internal dialog.