I think you'd like this story: "When I Close My Eyes" by Jane_Owens on Wattpad https://www.wattpad.com/story/260679127?utm_source=android&utm_medium=com.tumblr&utm_content=share_reading&wp_page=reading&wp_uname=Jane_Owens&wp_originator=npDMi3OilUfDImcWFAFYeuE3V1AKMzl%2Fa%2F2Qjtmh50fIKO%2BJbuBKMWikyE8cJ2z65%2BgkvE2HTT%2FxnMwTgFJReY6S6bLPMbBOSCnU%2B%2FAI1C5bfRyAWzxMRnpv3rTa4Nk0
Most people close their eyes and see darkness.
I close my eyes and see fragments of stories waiting to be sewn togethe...
“To be a good writer, you not only have to write a great deal but you have to care. You do not have to have a complicated moral philosophy. But a writer always tries, I think, to be a part of a solution, to understand a little about life and to pass this on.”
Almost one year ago today a young woman named Mahsa ‘Jina’ Amini was murdered in Iran by the oppressive religious regime that still clings to power today. Her crime was ‘not covering her hair properly’ and ‘wearing tight jeans.’ Mahsa’s act of defiance embodied a fire of resistance that burns in the heart of every Iranian. This fire will soon consume the regime. On Sunday night I will begin posting the longest story I’ve ever written. The story will begin with a single post on Sunday night. The remaining 54 chapters will be shared throughout the week. A Persian translation will be provided alongside the original. I’d like to dedicate this story to every Iranian fighting for freedom. Especially the young. Especially the women. Especially Mahsa ‘Jina’ Amini. The final chapter will be shared at midnight in Tehran on September 16th, the anniversary of Mahsa’s murder.
6k into the draft of my new book, and i just realized i haven't written a writing update in over a year since i finished ested. almost forgot how this works. anyways if you missed it, you can find the wip intro here.
disclaimer: this is my original work and plagiarism of any kind will not be tolerated.
TW: suicide, manslaughter, blood, ghosts
here's the playlist because it encapsulates a lot of the vibes, especially the first ~20 songs
so this book is actually going really well! it was kind of a slow start, but i really like what i have so far and it's definitely favourite book concept that i've ever written. the main difficulty is the research, since the book is set in 1973, so there's a lot of googling what motels and convenience stores looked like in the 70s. but i don't mind it since the aesthetic is on point.
the book is written in very short vignette-like chapters, interspersed with full-length ones. there are technically four timelines that we go between, but two main timelines. the primary timeline is the storyline of martin after he returns to his hometown after accidentally killing gabriel, and moving in with rainey. the secondary timeline is the present, after his suicide, where his ghost observes rainey continuing with her life when he returns to haunt the house where they lived together. the other two more minor timelines are 1) flashbacks to martin at college and the development of his relationship with gabriel before gabriel's death and 2) flashbacks to martin's childhood, growing up in his hometown and why he never wanted to go back. its kind of complicated but its really cool and fun to write.
chapters & excerpts under the cut!
CHAPTER 1
the book opens with martin's suicide, which marks the beginning of the secondary timeline (his life as a ghost). it's pretty short so i'll just put the entire chapter here.
It was the hollow of night when I died. The sky was flat and weighty with clouds, street invisible, no moon. I shot myself point-blank in the quiet solitude of our living room, the refrigerator’s hum pulsing in the background. I tilted the barrel to my chin and pulled the trigger with a shaking hand, and I can say now that I’m gone, that I was thinking of you with the last frenzied ticking of my thoughts. I can also say that I’m sorry, for the things I told you that night, but mostly that I didn’t tell you sooner. Your face in the dark, eyes like two moons reflected by the soft jitter of a candle flame.
The gunshot rang through the silence of the living room and the bullet burrowed into my skull. The last thing I felt was a spatter of blood—blood on my hands, blood in my mouth, blood on the damask carpet—and then everything fell away.
I watched from the corner of the room when you found me seconds later, startled by the gunshot, riled from sleep. You in your nightgown, your red hair feral and static’d around your head. You knelt beside my head and cried until your face distorted and you didn’t look real.
I can only hope you don’t remember me dead and bloodied more vividly than you remember me living.
i think that might be the second saddest thing i've ever written ok onto the next chapter.
CHAPTER 2
In the main timeline, we follow martin as he leaves campus early in the morning following gabriel's death and travels home. he books into a motel and is sad and hungover. this is the longest chapter so far, at 2,371 words.
the chapter opens with:
The day after I killed Gabriel was the day I decided to return home for the summer.
I packed quickly in the lampshade of blue light that sept through my dormitory window, a headache ringing in my skull, the haze of tiredness making the room tilt as I shoved my few belongings into boxes and hauled them outside.
here's a bit from when he's driving out of the city, featuring the "you" that is rainey
It wasn’t like I meant to kill Gabriel. I should tell you that first, before my reputation is tarnished. I could never have killed him. I probably could never have killed anyone. Too much to lose, too much at risk. It was never a matter of blood on my hands, that didn’t matter, or at least that was what I thought as cityscape flattened into little towns, until massive skyscrapers and supermarkets turned into diners with neon signs and thrift stores and whitewashed steepled churches. I couldn't have felt less guilty than I did that morning, despite the hangover and the absence Gabriel’s death had suddenly bored into my head. He was gone. He was gone. He was never coming back.
shortly after:
My car ran out of gas halfway through a tiny rural town, ringed by a grayscale of mountains. The sky had lightened, and now stretched blankly above my head, bone-white and stark, like an empty room. The sun, pocketed in clouds, was almost invisible.
he goes into a convenience store (because there's something about convenience stores) and then arrives home and checks into a motel.
I had hardly slept in the past twenty-four hours, after lying awake for most of the night, listening to the hum of silence in my dorm room. Gabriel’s face like a ghost splotching against the darkness, a furrow in the static, something recognizable. Despite knowing where his body was, I felt his eyes on my as I sweat between my bedsheets, hair slicked to the pillow, heart scudding sharp and fast.
he tries to go to sleep but wakes up with an even worse headache and goes outside for a smoke. while he's outside he sees his old choir leader walk by, and goes back inside because he doesn't want to be seen by anyone.
I couldn’t even remember her name and she probably didn’t recognize me, with my overgrown hair and half-obscured face, but I immediately snuffed out the cigarette in my sleeve, ash cascading onto my shoes, and ducked back inside into the orange light.
CHAPTER 3
the next morning, martin gets dressed, decides no one will recognize him, and walks down to the beach.
I remembered walking down this sidewalk with my mom when we headed to her friend Mary’s house every other Wednesday, how I’d align my feet with the cracks that snaked through the asphalt like lightning. I stepped on the cracks now, peering at the house where Mary used to live, the empty driveway and shuttered windows. She was probably dead now, the breast cancer my mom had told me about finally catching up to her. It didn’t bother me like it might have then, didn’t bother me at all. I didn’t know any of these people anymore. I wasn’t obligated to mourn their loss.
he sees two women sitting under an umbrella on the beach but doesn't recognize them so he ignores them. here's one of many beach descriptions
The sand gritted beneath my shoes as I stepped off of the grass, grains sticking to the laces and sea spray wasping into my mouth. I spat it out, salt ringing on my tongue. The ocean sloshed, rims of foam pearling across the tiny waves. A kid in bright red swim trunks crouched in the dark sand where the tide had been, shoveling a grave-sized hole in the soft the sand. His mother reclined in a beach chair nearby, her face covered by a large tartan sun-hat.
and here's another beach description
I folded up the legs of my bell-bottoms and waded in almost knee-deep. Plumes of seaweed laced against my ankles like living creatures. I peered into the murky grey of the water at the minnows darting around underneath, black shadows I could only see if I looked closely.
The briny air feathered into my face and blew my hair into my mouth. I spat it out and winced around, wind searing my eyes. The women beneath the umbrella were watching me, but were still too grainy to recognize, like a blurry camera shot. I waded back to shore. The sand under my wet feet felt like contamination, but I hopscotched my way back to the strip of grass to wipe them off in the prickly cold.
“Holy shit, Martin, I thought it was you.”
so it turns out the woman under the umbrella is martin's sister, jasmine, who's there with her girlfriend, eliza. martin is happy to see jasmine, who he always got along with better than the rest of his family, but tells her not to tell anyone else he's back.
here's some dialogue
"What are you doing here?”
My throat dried, suddenly rough and scratchy. Sand was still imprinted to my shins, digging into my skin. “It’s a long story.”
“Well that’s not very satisfying.”
“All I can say is that it was time to come home. Don’t tell mom and dad I’m back yet, please. Or Leander. I’m not ready to talk to them yet.”
“Were you ready to talk to me?”
“No. But apparently I can’t avoid everyone.”
“It’s a small town, man,” said Jasmine. “Alright, I’ll keep your secret. It would be nice to catch up though. You just look so … I didn’t recognize you. It was just that Eliza liked your shirt.”
CHAPTER 4
this is the first chapter we have the goes back to the earliest timeline, which follows martin growing up in their town as a child. and no the town doesn't have a name yet and i need to come up with one. chapter four is about when his mother became catholic and brought his family to mass for the first time, and he has mixed feelings about it.
My mother was raised Catholic and had recently reconverted. She started wearing a crucifix tucked into her blouses, the chain leaving a red mark stamped into her neck. She made us hold hands around the dinner table to pray, and got us to memorize Our Father to recite every night before bed. My father was skeptical at first but came around slowly, as the house slowly filled with crosses nooked in odd places and colourful pictures of saints plastered to the refrigerator.
My mother kept my favourite rosary in the drawer of her nightstand, and sometime I’d sneak into their bedroom just to look at it, to twist the blood-red and midnight-blue beads between my fingers, feel their imagined hum, the holiness I couldn’t feel but knew had to be there. I thumbed the silver crucifix, the tiny metal man, his painted-on blood and crown of thorns. He didn’t look dead, not with his hanging head and the way his body rested, didn’t strain. He looked like he was sleeping.
i don't have any other excerpts for this chapter because the rest of it is kind of boring.
CHAPTER 5
shifting back into the secondary timeline, right after martin's suicide, where his ghost observes rainey crying over his body and calling body-removal people to take him away. it's in present tense now, since this is where martin is narrating from.
You dial the phone number with shaking fingers, and lean against the wallpaper while the phone rings, eyes set on my body, strewn on the living room floor, my eyes still open, still gaping at the ceiling fan, its silent whirring. Your hair tangles in the phone cord as you speak, voice slurry with sleep and shock. Your eyes are pink and your face is streaked, some tears already crusting to your skin, some leaving glimmering tracks down into the collar of your nightgown. You try to yank your hair free from the cord as the man behind the phone assures you that a team is on their way, to stay calm, not to worry. A knot of red hair is left in the phone cord when you untangle it, and the phone slams to the floor when you try to slot it back onto the receiver. You don’t pick it up.
right after:
The ambulance takes fifteen minutes to arrive. The distant sirens hover just above the silence, hardly breaking the curtain of shock, the static in the air. You sit on the damask carpet, arms curled around your knees, rocking silently, head buried in your arms. Your hair obscures your face, but you continue to jitter in the midnight chill, the moonlight glinting on the windowpane soaking the living room in underwater blue.
he wants to comfort rainey but finds that he can't touch her or communicate with her at all.
some men arrive to take away martin's body and he watches as they carry him outside, and tries to follow but finds he can't leave the house, which is his haunt where he will be stuck forever.
CHAPTER 6
continuing the ghost timeline, martin watches rainey for the rest of the day and tries to go to sleep beside her but can't sleep because he's a ghost.
You don’t get dressed all day and don’t eat and hardly move from where you slump at the kitchen table, fiddling with the napkin holder. When you check the clock, it’s 10:17 pm and the sky is inky through the shutters of the window above the sink. You skirt around the bloodstained carpet, something snagging in your throat as you try to focus on the ceiling, the whirring fan, the water stains. Anything but me. Your birds in their cages watch you disappear into the bedroom and I follow, slipping behind you into the dark right before the door clicks shut.
martin observes the neighbours having a good time in the window across from theirs but rainey shuts the curtains.
here's the end of chapter six:
For the first time, you sleep on my side of the bed, burying your face in my pillow, my scent probably still poignant in the sheets. You must know the last time I was there I knew what I was going to do, knew I was going to leave you. Would have rather left you be but now I’m here, in the dark room, sitting on the edge of the bed, not ruffling the sheets or making a noise. Your red hair laces across my pillow as you begin to sob into it again, the emptiness foreign, unfamiliar. My body heat gone, all that’s left turned cold and still.
I lay beside you on top of the sheets, on your side, and lean as close as I can into your warmth but feel nothing.
😭😭😭😭
this entire plot of his ghost wanting to be alive again is basically the saddest thing i could possibly think of and i’m just gonna have to deal with that for the next ~50k words wish me luck.
and on that note, that's all i have so far! i hope you enjoyed the update and if you read this far then you're cool. until next time, goodbye
-- silas
taglist (i just have one for all my wips--ask to be added/removed): @flip-phones @chewingthescenery @ghostsofmemories @dallonwrites @wildswrites @annlillyjose @letsgetsquiggly @strangerays @mel-writes-with-her-dragons @teaandtypewriters @kahaaniyaa @coffeeandcalligraphy @47crayons @writing-is-a-martial-art @childhoodlovers @zoya-writes @pepperdee @oceancold @unorganisedbookshelf @musingsbycaitlin @sunstone-iolite @femmeniism @raywritesstories @rodentwrites @cheerfulmelancholies @these-starrynights
Draco tried not to seem interested when she was mentioned by Zabini. He also tried to bury his growing anger and jealousy as Zabini questioned who she was and why he'd never noticed her before.
"Lookie! Zabini has a little crush on the half-blood!" Goyle mocked.
"Stuff it Goyle. At least I'm able to have crushes, meanwhile, you crush everything you either sit on or put in your mouth."
"Half-bloods are just as bad as mud-bloods in my book!" Pansy insisted.
"Honestly, would you want to date dirty blood? Snog one?"
Draco had the briefest of flashes in his mind. Of how sweet her lips tasted at the winter ball two years ago. How close they were on the stairs hidden from the usually flooded halls of Hogwarts. His heart leaped and it took everything in him not to think too much of it.
Instead, he decided to think about more important things. Like the task, the dark lord had given him. His heart gave a painful lurch at this.
As the next few days go by Draco found himself distracted. Zabini had started sneaking glances across to the Ravenclaw table. She'd glance back and they'd both smile before looking away once again. Then she'd look at him and that once bright smile faded to a tight-lipped frown. A flurry of emotions and words lay between them. None said nor ever will be he hoped.
It bubbled over when he caught them talking in the dungeons, alone in a corridor. He was standing close, too close for Draco's liking.
"What's this? Have you become a blood trader now Zabini?'
Zabini jumped slightly and turned to see Draco's piercing gaze run over them.
"What I'm doing happens to be none of your business Malfoy." He glared darkly. He stood in front of Iridesa like a shield. This only made the monster in his chest roar in anger.
"That's enough." Her hand stretched to Zabini's shoulder which he shrugged off. Her eyebrows knotted together in a mix of hurt and shame. She holds her hand closer to her chest.
"Potions will start soon." She muttered looking to the floor. She pushed between the two glowering boys and took to the classroom.
"Careful Zabini. You know what you know who does to blood traders."
Quite honestly Draco was the biggest hypocrite by saying this. He had touched her, kissed her. He had allowed her to touch him, the thought making his ears pink.
They head to Potions class. Today the classroom had a strong smell of lilacs and wood. It hit Draco so strong he paused coming in. The smell wrapped him in a warm reassuring hug, like everything will be alright. It brought on memories of hushed voices and sneaky glances.
"Can anyone tell me what this potion is?"
Hermione Granger's hand was up before he finished the question. Draco rolled his eyes.
"Amortentia, it's the strongest love potion ever made." She explained.
Professor Slughorn laughed, "Yes! yes, my dear! 10 points to Gryfindor."
"This potion can make one obsessed if taken in large quantities. The smell is different for everyone, as it's based on what attracts you."
That's when it hit him. That's where he smelled this scent before. Iridesa. His eyes shot to her and were surprised to already see it on himself. They were intense as if trying to convey everything she felt for him through them. An aching longing, a sad tragic impossibility.
I want you, her eyes said.
It's dangerous, he wanted to say back but he knew he should've been disgusted at the thought. Yet his heart flipped all the same. His lips parted and so did hers. Her lips. Heat spread through his body. He shook his head.
He ignored her for the rest of the class. As they rushed out the door being shoved along he pretended his hand didn't brush hers. Pretended she didn't reach out and grab it.
