Henry looked down at his watch. Moisture had gotten in under the glass and clouded the face. He couldn't think of what he had in his house to make into a decent meal, and his tap water had started to yellow. A restaurant appeared across the street, and he absentmindedly began to move toward it. He was nearly across before he realized he had stepped out into traffic without first checking that it was clear. He quickly glanced on either side of him, saw no cars but for distant lights at an intersection a block away, and jogged the rest of the way. He paused in front of the restaurant and looked back at the street. A rush of cars sped by on their way to the next red light. Turning back, he pushed through the glass door. He felt momentarily lucky to have not been hit, but then wondered: Perhaps it is the sacrifice of my body that will reveal the nature of my prison and free me.
Inside, the walls were painted a yellow cream. Red vinyl benches formed booths—red vinyl was upholstered to the chair seats, and red and white checked, thin plastic sheets adorned the table tops. Henry hung his coat and hat on a hook by his booth, then slid over to the window to wait. It was crazy to think of taking his own life. He had to will the path to open in front of him, not turn his hand to kill himself. The menu was printed on the paper place mat in front of him. Slipping on some ice and falling too hard on his head, encountering a gun toting murderer, choking on a bone in his food, these were the situations that could give chance to his will. Hawaiian pizza, he decided. A small child ran past his table, and a young woman ensued. She crossed again with the child held in front of her by the armpits. Henry glanced at the window and caught his filmy reflection glancing back. His sparse hair looked thin and unkempt. His face looked tired and contentedly sad. A gray shadow had crept across his cheek and slid under his chin. In his eyes he saw the layers of life slowly burying the child he could remember seeing in mirrors long ago. He ran a meaty hand over his scalp and peered into the darkness. We trap our souls in moments of time so that we cannot embrace their infinite nature.
A woman approached from behind him in the window. She wore a white, button-up shirt and a black apron. She flushed a pad of paper out from a black pocket, and a pencil rolled out from somewhere in her hair. Henry ordered a Hawaiian pizza and a water. Three small families were seated at different tables, and a pair of teenagers sat drinking from a single, pink milkshake. Looking around, Henry felt deeply connected to all of them. Here they were, all eating together, joined forever in the revolution of life. Here sat Henry, eating alone.
The Hawaiian pizza was sparsely topped. Henry chewed down a couple of slices before the white flour gluten started to tear into his stomach. He imagined what broken glass would feel like if he were to eat it, and decided it would feel similar. A man walked in through the door and took a seat at the table two rows over from Henry's booth. His brown and gray hair was tussled, and missing from the crown of his scalp. A wispy bang hung loosely off to one side. He had a dark blue jacket on with a black, winter hat shoved into one pocket. He patted both pockets, then unzipped the jacket, but did not take it off. He looked over at Henry, catching him watching. His eyes were wet and dirty in their recesses—opened wide as if shouting something. Henry noticed one of the small families rising from their seats and preparing to leave. A young boy buttoned up his jacket while his father thanked the waitress. They passed in front of Henry's booth, and both he and the man two rows over watched them leave. Cold air drafted in over Henry's face as the door swung shut, and he breathed it in deeply.
The waitress was walking toward the man with the blue coat when he took the black hat from his pocket and pulled it down over his head and face. He stood up, and from his other pocket he pulled a small pistol and pointed it at the waitress. She dropped her pad and pencil. A woman screamed from a table four rows down. The two teenagers slid under their table and huddled together, hand in hand. Henry sat forward. The man turned to him, then back to the waitress. “Move over to the cash register and open it. Bring all the money here to me. Please hurry, or someone will get hurt.”
The waitress didn't move. He straightened his shooting arm and leveled the barrel directly at her. Her body shook noticeably, then she turned and hurried toward the register. Henry's mind raced to catch up. A murderer, he thought, and his eyes went suddenly moist in their sockets. He began to stand up. The man in the mask turned to look at him. Henry could see his eyes blink behind the holes alloted them in the mask's design. The robber's arm slowly swung the pistol over. “Dying will not make you a hero tonight.”
Henry wet his lips. His tongue considered their bitter taste as it drifted over his pallet. “Will you?” he asked. “Will you let me go?” There was an anxiousness to his voice.
“This will be over soon, and then we can both go.” The robber took a step toward Henry. His pistol was raised. It looked into Henry like a third eye.
“Shoot,” said Henry quietly. “Please.”
Henry bled his focus from the barrel of the pistol along the man's outstretched arm, and met him where his mask exposed his eyes. The moisture drained out of them. They looked red and veined, like real eyes. Henry stepped out from the booth and stood in front of the robber. The waitress pleaded from the back, “He just wants the money.” She came from behind the counter, running with both hands full. Change spilled out as she moved across the floor leaving a trail from the cash register to the man in the mask. “Here,” she volunteered. “Just take it and go.”
The man took the money, then turned back to Henry. He disengaged the gun and spun the barrel open, showing empty chambers all around. “I cannot help you, brother. I am not a murderer.”
He sped out of the door and into the damp night. A blue and red lit car stopped in front of the restaurant, and let out two police officers. “Stop,” they yelled. Guns were drawn. “Put the pistol down.”
Cold air drafted in over Henry's face as the door swung shut. The whole restaurant had come out of hiding to witness the unravelling of the scene. “I am not a murderer,” the robber said, and he raised both hands above his mask. The pistol was held loosely in his right hand, while the left hand leaked change out onto the sidewalk. “I didn't hurt anyone,” he said. “Ask.”
“Stop!” the officers screamed.
As he turned to look at Henry through the glass, he motioned to him with his right hand, pointing him out inside the restaurant. The robber's left hand let go. Henry heard a gun fire from somewhere across the street, and the man under the mask rippled. Money floated away into the night. His jacket burst open with a bright, red flash. His hands reached out in front of him, trying to stop his soul from leaking out. Already he was not there. The entire room breathed out with his release.
It was a few minutes before the police entered the restaurant. An ambulance arrived and took the masked body away. Children sobbed into their mothers; a young woman leaned into her lover, staring blankly in front while his arm moved rhythmically up and down her side; Henry sat back down at his table to hold his head. The owner came out from a back office to survey the scene, catching the waitress up when she fell into him. One of the officers approached Henry. “The waitress says he threatened you.” He had a notebook like hers.
Henry searched the officer's face. “He could have killed me.”
“We saw him aim to shoot you.” The officer looked down at his notepad as he wrote something quickly onto it. “We shot him before that happened.”
Henry looked down at his hands. “Can I go?”
The officer pulled at a form tucked under his arm. “We'll need a written statement and some contact information.” He handed over the form and a pen. Henry looked it over and began to fill it in. “Thank you, mister,” he heard a young voice say. A boy had walked over to his booth with his parents. Henry emptied his smile into the young boy's eyes.
“Get everyone home safely,” he said.
He finished his statement and passed it in to the officer. He found the waitress and asked her for his bill. She said: “You are a hero tonight and your meal is free. We nearly lost our entire day's profit. You kept him here until the police arrived. Thank you. Please return another time.” And she smiled and turned away. Today he was a hero. He collected his jacket and his hat, and let out into the night.
Outside, Henry Wrenhe breathed the night air in and stepped out onto the street. His tongue reached out to moisten his lips and tasted roses. From far away, he heard a car horn sound. He looked up into the dark sky and watched a light slowly brightening the East. It couldn't possibly be morning, he thought. He heard a child screaming as if for the first time; it sounded like tires squealing under brakes. Henry looked down to check his watch, but he did not see the face.
- Tristan
While I can finally say that I believe there is promise to the short story I wrote for last night's class, I cannot say that it has been fully actualized in the draft handed in. In The Release of Henry Wrenhe, I feel that the terms of the story are very near realized, but fall short of conveying the essence that I wish to give to the reader.
In terms of characterization, I feel that Henry himself is described well, but that his motives are made unclear due mostly to my poor grammar. The major character aspect that I wanted to pass over to the reader was that Henry feels trapped inside an ever repeating day, so that time is not actually passing in the same way for him as it is for those of us that prescribe to certain norms. This is what guides his actions throughout, but I don't feel it is properly fleshed out. I may have cut too much or written too little, but I feel another draft may help to clear this up.
The character of the man in the mask/robber is slightly more archetypal than Henry—as is the waitress, but I also don't feel he is as human as his potential to be allows. I found it hard to kill him, and may have held back from creating a deeper, inner man because I found it difficult. I think the dialog needs to be rouged a bit, which is to say it is a bit ugly. The waitress sounds unconvincing when I hear her deliver the lines I gave her. The police are maybe too archetypal, but I don't know what more they need to do. I also wanted to play with them being kind of mythic, universal caretakers that maintain that status quo of events that need to pass. I just employed them to kill the man in the mask because it was easier for me, and I thought it fit well with the story. It was not my aim to flush out good and bad within the world of Henry, other than that direct suicide is not a character option. I am going to wait and see if I get any more insight into what I could do to make them more. Perhaps just have one cop, though two of them lessens the ego impact of a single cop.
The setting I think is fairly well flushed out as a wet evening. Any changes I plan to make are grammatical. I think that any more detail of the restaurant interior would slow down the pacing in an awkward way and in an area where I don't want it to slow down with detail. I originally had Henry start on a bus, but prefer him to be alongside a nameless road which he unconsciously crosses because he feels hungry.
The POV is Henry's, but I think I structured it as an indirect discourse, to allow the narrator to address the reader more directly at times. I am not sure if it works well, such as the case where the narrator presents the line, “we trap our souls in moments of time...” I am going to wait to ask the group how they feel about it, and whether I should add more “he thought” 's. I believe it is a consistent POV throughout. I originally had a lot of internal monologue, but decided I wanted to concentrate on the story elements and how they might be used to explain his mind a little bit. This area needs more work, I feel, and I think it will benefit from a few more clearly stated ideas that come directly from Henry's thoughts about his surroundings.
The development of th plot is a little cliché, but I decided to go with a white idea (as in not yet green). Because it was so fresh, I just used the scenario of a robbery to allow the main character to act out his wish to have his life ended, but not to end it himself. This was originally the moment that I wanted to convey, so a lot of the movement is just direction toward it. I tried to give the reader Henry's mindset in a way that would prepare them for his dialog with the robber, but again I feel I failed at the initial construction of his inner POV. I eventually realized that I wanted him to be released in an abstract and unclear way as a means to conclude the story. I feel the ending has resonance, but I think it could have more resonance if there were a clearer sense of unease in Henry's mind. I don't think the elements of his controlled psychosis are properly revealed in the beginning. I struggled with whether or not the robber was a murderer. I decided that he wasn't, and that Henry would not experience the bullet first hand, but that the horror the robber put the people in the restaurant through would allow readers to deal with his death in an easy to let go of way. This also held me from developing the robber's character too much, because during his death it is more that Henry sees him go as a release for his own yearnings to have his body die, than that a human being is killed. I want to develop in a later draft the idea that Henry sees the people in the restaurant as a more literal extension of himself. I added one line that sort of suggested that, but I am not sure that it will be understood as literal enough. I'm waiting to hear from the group, but I think this will make it even easier to deal with the death, because Henry will see it as an extension of himself being released. I also don't like that the robber asks for the money in a bag. He doesn't need to ask it, and I prefer the loose change that enters the story.
I like the pacing through the sequence inside the restaurant, but I feel the pacing through the opening is jostled by poor grammar. I also think the sequence after the death of the masked man is a little slow, mostly due to poor dialog choices and uninteresting character performances (what does the child look like who thanks Henry? How does it make him feel?) The pacing becomes very action oriented through the restaurant sequence, which I like, but I think it needs to balance somewhere. It feels like a long set of simple sentences, which I fell into using to give more hurry to the robbery. I don't want that to be the entire story. I want to slow it down more in the opening and have a more lyrical and swinging denouement which leads to the conclusion. I think that the narration should begin with Henry, move into the quickness of the robbery, slow down a bit for the interaction with the robber, move back to a like quickness for the experience of the death, then ease Henry out of the restaurant more smoothly, so it is not a pain to read—then conclude. I tried to grasp this idea during my second draft, but didn't quite get there.
The mechanics are my weakest area. I blame my poor grammar on the Scarborough Education System, which is now no more. I seem to never have perfect grammar in anything that I write. I have noticed a number of mistakes already, including a non sentence in the first paragraph, and a mistyped word (has=his). I have made some notes on my own copy of the draft, but am super welcome to all kinds of grammatical help as I move toward a final draft.
- Tristan
Some of the mechanics discussed above have been changed already in this draft
before || after
