'The Red Lady' - Writing Exercise

Today in a third-year university class titled 'Experimental Poetics', we were given a writing exercise.
We were to "envisage a contemporary situation in which one person watches another watching, watching an act or acts of conspicuous consumption".

This was my piece. I called it The Red Lady.

An explanation comes after the piece which is heavy on the detail and particulars. Only read the explanation if you're keen on having the mystery ruined.

I hope you like it:


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Thumbing through the clothing racks, I caught you, eyes wandering, down and up like a thermometer rising, across the body of those people in the building.

Though different pieces caught your eye, and you pulled them out to weave your fingers through their lace and cottons, none entranced more than the body and the face of that nearby woman in red.

She, a statuesque figure of seemingly effortless divinity, crimson skirt sequinned, elegant design, and you, an acne-scarred adolescent, pant-tears stitched by grandmothers hands, eyes moaning and glimmering blue and chasing hope and dreaming and expectation.

The Red Lady smiled and laughed at the speaker before her, one who slipped fingers between hangers on the racks, donning dresses and shirts with cuts as fine as the lashings of his tongue. One who cast words like spells and plush pillows, beckoning bodies to fall between them, seemingly entranced by his script.

And when the speaker brought out that long lace gown, off the racks you so flippantly thumbed through, with threads that weaved diamonds through your imagination, The Red Lady blushed. As only she could blush. As you might one day blush. But only in your dreams.

Because what you knew, is that this world is but an ocean, with tides ceaselessly throbbing, and you are an outcast stranded in a craft at sea.

And only red ladies gain a sail.

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Explanation:

I based the piece off a recent experience shooting at a fashion festival.

The festival partially hinges off the selfless acts of volunteers; from dressers to ushers to interns. These people fantasise endlessly about the prospect of becoming important parts of the industry.

And standing before them, so often, are the endless parade of beautiful people. The important faces. The stream of names. The VIPs. The entrepreneurs.

A volunteer might look affectionately up towards these entrepreneurs, who gain access with a flick of the wrist and a name dropped of a successful person whom they've known for years. Thus, the lady in red, being seduced by the salesperson wiles of the speaker, said speaker and seller of garments representing conspicuous consumption.

A volunteer might aspire to be them, and work tirelessly, for hour upon hour a day, at no profit to them, in the hope they might one day make those dreams a reality. Thus, the one being watched who watches another.

But what reality dictates is that so often these entrepreneurs were often born into circumstances well-off enough to allow their goals, strives and businesses to blossom. Whether by luck, by genetic lottery, or by sheer calculated exploitation. Such is the nature of the entrepreneur, one which is becoming far too apparent. 

Like those beautiful people never had to don pants sewn back together by grandmothers hands, so too might the volunteer never don her red dress.

And the red lady gains her sail.

Remember flame.

Short creative piece. 1387 words.
Enjoy it, and give me comments and critique x






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No matter where I turn, fire is all that I can see. Everywhere around me, burning flames, scalding my flesh from every possible direction. Burning, smoldering, choking me to the very edge of my will to go on. A sea of impermeable, devastating flame. I notice something spinning – a gargantuan part from a giant machine, twirling blades within a cylindrical case of decrepit metal. On the ground around me are giant hulking pieces of metal, scattered about the earth like a ruined city, a wasteland. The spinning machine from before spins even faster now – and spits flame like vomit hurled from Satan’s belly. The flame laps at my clothes and skin, hot licks with tongues like razorblades. I feel my lungs fill up with smog, my body falls - I hear a bloodcurdling scream.

            I open my eyes. That is where the dream ends.

            How strange, how… disconcerting. The dream fades very quickly but for one bizarre element – the giant spinning machine. The one that spat flame like projectile vomit from within its hulking core. I have never seen a machine quite like that in my life, but something about it – the chaos, the power, the metallic clanging as it spun as though a fan were encased in its ring of steel – sent hot flushes through me, as though the fire from my dream still ravaged my body.

            I rise, slowly at first, and look around. Ah, the bedroom, intact as per usual, although looking a little strange to my eyes. Something about it seems unusual. Strange, as though something about it is out of place. Did we move the dresser again? Blast, yesterday seems so far away. Jamais vu, to experience something that is familiar yet seems oddly unfamiliar. Surely it is naught but my hazed-over early morning mind playing tricks on me.

I turn to my side, towards other half of the double bed, and notice something else unfamiliar – Marissa, absent.

Tsk tsk, no need to terrify yourself. She’s not missing, just gone. Gone to work, no doubt, the hard little worker bee that she is. Although – and I chuckle at the thought of this – she’s more of a queen bee on her days off, if you let her have her way. Demanding and needy, but always in a way so dignified it’s positively endearing. She’s a hearth; burning brightly and without any shame at all. Bless her heart.

I haul my legs over the edge of the bed and reach for my slippers – only to find them not in the place I’d left them last. Hah, they’ve taken flight like my mind this morning. I reach down and fumble around under the bed – with an ache; I’m not the man I once was in my youth, although at thirty-three one could hardly call me old – and finally locate the damn things. I look up – and see a photo atop my bedside table, a photo of a young boy.            

Tony, smiling widely with not a care in the world, blue eyes shining with joy and youth, brown hair messy and tattered with dirt, a soccer ball in his right arm, mud smeared across his arms – a complete gem. My son.

Today is the twelfth of August. Today is his day off. I beam brightly, with the same fervor as him in the photograph. Finally, after so long, I’ll be able to spend some time with him. Finally, I’m ready to spend some time with my son. I reflect.

We nearly lost him some time ago. With my job as an English professor at two separate universities, and Marissa the darling flight attendant, we barely get to spend time with him. That was until he came down with pneumonia, which afflicted him so badly that he was in hospital for months. We were certain he was going to die – yet even when he came to and we were as happy as we’d ever be, still our routines went unchanged. What a shame, two parents incapable of caring for their blessed child. A mere parody of parenthood. A ruse.

Today, though, things are going to be different, I tell myself, and my heart picks up speed in anticipation. Today, I’m going to spend some time with my son.

I get up with a start, still grinning like a little trickster, and move to tear open my bedroom door. I throw it open with a swift turn of the knob.

“Tony! Tony, are you awake?”

My heart feels like it stops. Something is not right.

I stare into a large room – quiet, undisturbed, with chairs lining the walls and proceeding forward to form several rows. All around me there are people – young women, mostly. Somebody steps forward.

No. I don’t understand. I don’t… No. This isn’t… This isn’t right.

“Where… where is Tony?”

One of the women steps forward. “Sir… sir, listen to me.”
            “No!”

I slam my bedroom door, and stagger back into my bedroom. The room starts to spin as I feel like I’m losing my mind. I hurl myself into the bathroom feeling the need to vomit from confusion, look into the mirror – and everything stops.

The face I see before me, illuminated in the dim light, is not one that I recognize. Hair grayed, lines creasing my brow, eyes weary.

Blue eyes. Tony’s eyes. My eyes.

I stop, and my jaw falls.

I… I remember.

The spinning machine from my dream, the chaos and ruin all around me, the hot licks of burning flame. There was a chaos, a frenzy. Marissa was on board, calming me - I’d never boarded a plane before. A journey on the twelfth of August – for Tony. The spinning machine that spat flame like vomit hurled from Satan’s belly.

I stare back into my own eyes, and I remember. But that was forty years ago.

The person whose scream I heard was Tony.

All I can do from that moment – is scream.

I blink once, and then blink again. The man in front of me does too. I forget myself, and smile – to which the man smiles back.

What was that sound earlier? And who is this man before me?

I hear a door open and close – then footsteps. I turn away from the man and see a woman, stepping forward. That is when I realize I’m in a small room, adjacent to a bedroom.

“Hello, do we know each other?” I ask the woman in front of me. She is wearing a white dress, very uniform, and a white cap upon her head.

She smiles at me. “Yes, Daniel, I’m Gisella.”
            I smile back at her. “Gisella, where am I?”

The woman’s smile falters, and I sense a touch of distress.

“You’re safe. You’re safe here. Are you okay?”

“What do you mean?” I asked perplexedly.
            “I heard you yelling. I thought you might have had that dream again.”

“What dream?”

“… Never-mind.”

She takes me by the arm and leads me out of the tiny room. I turn to wave goodbye to the strange man – but he’s gone.

As she leads me, I notice something sitting atop a table in the bedroom – a small photo of a boy. One with blue eyes and brown hair, clutching a soccer ball, face brimming with life and colour.

“Who is that?” I ask Giselle with a smile.

She stops us, and turns to look at the photograph.
            “That’s Tony. Do you remember Tony?”

“No…”

“Oh.” She frowns. “He’s your son.”

“Does he visit me?”

There was a very long, drawn-out pause – and Giselle sighs. I sense a labor in her breathing. She is struggling, like she might choke. I worry.

“No, Daniel. He doesn’t come and visit you.”

She leads me out into a very large room. A lot of people are in the room, and I look around at them smiling, although I have no idea who they are. Giselle sits me down in a giant chair, and I stare out of the giant windows at the end of this large, large room.

There is a rumbling. A plane flies overhead. I see it through the window, gliding off into the distance until it remains a tiny speck on the horizon.

I’m sweating, and I don’t know why. A hot flush goes through me like nothing I’ve felt before.