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Entry tags:
The Burrow
Title: A Tragedy and a Rainbow
Author: eiremauve
Rating: PG
Warnings: Off-screen death of thousands of civilians
Word Count: 508
Prompt: Good Omens
A/N: Based on a true story. This probably should have been a poem. >_<
One bright fall morning, my family was gathered around Mom’s computer looking at the path of Hurricane Erin. Dramatic as it was, I had to go upstairs to the schoolroom in the attic to deal with my arch-nemesis: math. Homeschooling has advantages, but sadly one still has to do math. I was plugging away when I suddenly heard the sound of thundering feet.
“The United States is under attack!” my brother Mat shouted.
“What?” I said, completely stunned. I had a vision of airplanes flying over a map of the US and dropping bombs.
We sat there in total silence until Mom came up, hands shaking.
“Suicide bombers attacked New York City and Washington D.C. and they’re worried about Boston.”
“Boston!?” I said, horrified. My beloved city attacked, on top of goddess knows how many people dying.
“Buildings can be replaced. People can’t.” Mom said. She sounded so upset, I gave her a hug.
We talked about the terrible certainty of war coming in a kind of numb fog. After Mom left, we tried to do school work.
“In World War Two, students did their work.” I informed him.
He gave me the look only annoyed little brothers can give and went downstairs. I attempted to do work, but it was no use. What did I care what X equaled?
I got up and looked out the small window in the school, which gave a good look of the town’s street. It was a classic fall New England scene-lovely blue sky, leaves just starting to turn orange and red and yellow. It was the sort of day that people come from Florida to see. And yet, lots of innocent blood had been spilled this day. I went downstairs.
We spent a lot of time just staring at the TV that day, finding out about the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and Pennsylvania. Words crawled by on the ticker, telling a tale of nightmares. Images that should belong on disaster movies were playing on the news. Seeing the towers fall, the Pentagon a total mess.
My uncle, my mother’s brother, worked in the Pentagon. He is going to retire shortly.
“There’s an 80% chance he wasn’t where the plane hit. “ My dad was trying to be reassuring. Work had been cancelled for that day, so he had come home early. Professors from my dad’s college had been dropping by all day.
A soft rain started to fall as we tried to figure out where his cubicle was. We had taken a tour of the pentagon just that summer.
The phone ran.
“Hello? This is the Williams house-Scott! You’re alive!” Mom exclaimed.
They talked for a while. He explained how a huge filing cabinet had saved his life, how the man in the next cubicle had died, how he along with everyone else had been recruited to try to clean everything up.
‘Look!” said Jason, pointing out the window of the parlor. It was a beautiful double rainbow shining through the gloom, promising and reassuring. It gave us all hope.
Author: eiremauve
Rating: PG
Warnings: Off-screen death of thousands of civilians
Word Count: 508
Prompt: Good Omens
A/N: Based on a true story. This probably should have been a poem. >_<
One bright fall morning, my family was gathered around Mom’s computer looking at the path of Hurricane Erin. Dramatic as it was, I had to go upstairs to the schoolroom in the attic to deal with my arch-nemesis: math. Homeschooling has advantages, but sadly one still has to do math. I was plugging away when I suddenly heard the sound of thundering feet.
“The United States is under attack!” my brother Mat shouted.
“What?” I said, completely stunned. I had a vision of airplanes flying over a map of the US and dropping bombs.
We sat there in total silence until Mom came up, hands shaking.
“Suicide bombers attacked New York City and Washington D.C. and they’re worried about Boston.”
“Boston!?” I said, horrified. My beloved city attacked, on top of goddess knows how many people dying.
“Buildings can be replaced. People can’t.” Mom said. She sounded so upset, I gave her a hug.
We talked about the terrible certainty of war coming in a kind of numb fog. After Mom left, we tried to do school work.
“In World War Two, students did their work.” I informed him.
He gave me the look only annoyed little brothers can give and went downstairs. I attempted to do work, but it was no use. What did I care what X equaled?
I got up and looked out the small window in the school, which gave a good look of the town’s street. It was a classic fall New England scene-lovely blue sky, leaves just starting to turn orange and red and yellow. It was the sort of day that people come from Florida to see. And yet, lots of innocent blood had been spilled this day. I went downstairs.
We spent a lot of time just staring at the TV that day, finding out about the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and Pennsylvania. Words crawled by on the ticker, telling a tale of nightmares. Images that should belong on disaster movies were playing on the news. Seeing the towers fall, the Pentagon a total mess.
My uncle, my mother’s brother, worked in the Pentagon. He is going to retire shortly.
“There’s an 80% chance he wasn’t where the plane hit. “ My dad was trying to be reassuring. Work had been cancelled for that day, so he had come home early. Professors from my dad’s college had been dropping by all day.
A soft rain started to fall as we tried to figure out where his cubicle was. We had taken a tour of the pentagon just that summer.
The phone ran.
“Hello? This is the Williams house-Scott! You’re alive!” Mom exclaimed.
They talked for a while. He explained how a huge filing cabinet had saved his life, how the man in the next cubicle had died, how he along with everyone else had been recruited to try to clean everything up.
‘Look!” said Jason, pointing out the window of the parlor. It was a beautiful double rainbow shining through the gloom, promising and reassuring. It gave us all hope.
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Anyway, gutsy to talk about this, especially in light of recent events.
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ROAR
Thank you for sharing.
I like the fact that you recognize that you father used "80%..." as a way of distancing himself from emotion. When ever numbers are brought into an emotional piece they feel like ice water.
I would have like to have read the two last paragraphs from "Hello..." at the top, as the first paragraphs. The first paragraph is not strong enough for this story. It also immediately brings us to those hopes and fears that we all felt on that day. There is no worry that the rest of the piece won't hold our attention.
Thank you for this. It is well written and heart felt!
Re: ROAR
Edit!
Well, my first comment is about your formatting - although you've clearly used paragraphs, you haven't used extra spaces between them, or indents, to indicate where they start. It would have made this easier to read, I think!
"on top of goddess knows"
<-- I'm not sure if you mean "Goddess" or "goodness", but if you mean Goddess, that should probably be capitalised, as God might be?
"we tried to do school work" & "students did their work" & "I attempted to do work"
<-- These phrases are very close together in your piece; repeating the word "work" maaes it feel quite stilted. You can vary how you say things to make sentences more interesting and diverse!
"I informed him."
<-- It's not entirely clear that this is directed at the brother, so perhaps you could be careful to keep in the reader's mind who is where.
"I got up and looked out the small window in the school, which gave a good look"
<-- Like with "work", repeating "look" is stilted - the second one could certainly be "view" instead!
"It was a classic fall New England scene-lovely blue sky"
<-- I think that when you use dashes like this, take care to put a space on either side of it so it doesn't disappear amongst the words and make them seem like hyphenated words. Same goes for later on when mum answers the phone.
"He is going to retire shortly."
<-- Here you have a tense jump; do you mean he was going to retire at the time of 9/11, or he is due to retire now, in 2011?
"figure out where his cubicle was."
<-- As you've just been talking about dad, it's confusing to jump straight across to your uncle with no cue, so be careful! :)
"We had taken a tour of the pentagon"
<-- Would need a capital letter.
"The phone ran."
<-- "rang"
That's all of my constructive comments - I hope you found them helpful. :) The piece was a calm read, despite the content you're dealing with. You manage to imbue it with a dreamlike simplicity, which is a breath of fresh air when writing about something so tragic. Well done! :)
Re: Edit!
Re: Edit!
roar time
As for the rest, your friendly editor has shown all I could plus more so I shall merely say good job and jump on the ROAR cart and bundle off.
Re: roar time