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Writer In Motion | The Hellishly Messy Draft
Hello, Valkyries, and welcome to my ink-stained hot mess of a first draft of my Writer In Motion story. This week of getting words on paper was nine levels of HELL, mostly because I am a dedicated plotter, but I didn’t have much time to flesh this out prior to writing it, so it was a real adventure to sort out the details. The urge to draw out the character ARC for Asra Aeilstrom or map the world of The Janus Project and the parallel universes was just…well…I wanted to do it SO DAMN BAD, but again…no time. Over the next few weeks, I will likely go all out in terms of filling in the world and deepening the character before tightening the scenes and killing off all my little metaphor darlings. My usual process is to show way too much and tell too little. This is something I’ve been trying to balance for awhile, but, er, that’s a whole other adventure. Normally, I lay out the basics of the story up front with character overviews and world-building details, but this time around, I’m going to save all that for the end of this post. A few things you SHOULD know before reading:
- Market & Genre: Adult Science Fiction, Parallel Universe
- Word Count: 635
- Loose Comparisons & Inspirations: Stories of Your Life by Ted Chiang, Orphan Black, Orange by Ichigo Takano, Coraline by Neil Gaiman, Inception, and Black Mirror.
- Trigger Warning: Five Glass Flowers is set in a world with assisted suicide and touches on mental health. This isn’t fleshed out entirely at the moment, but it’s pretty obvious in this draft.
FIVE GLASS FLOWERS
Or, The Fractured Lives of Asra Aeilstrom
1.
The Janus Project
The causes of death on the state-issued certificates gently floated along the tinted hologlass walls, staring down at Asra with permanent conviction:
Xu Heng, 32, Inconsolable sorrow after absorbing displaced emotions.
Torin Thallos, 17, An uncontrollable desire to be full.
Lucho Gálvez, 23, The belief that nothing–including oneself–exists.
Ella Walsh, 47, A longing for things that cannot be named.
Lorne Thale, 50, Fell Hopelessly In Love With Annihilation.
Ian Ito, 38, Hysterical fear of drowning in air.
Every forty seconds, the certificates flicker out of existence, new ones appear, and this cycle repeats. A discreet tally of the day’s successful journeys to Oblivion tick, tick, ticks like a clock: 66, 000.
“It’s a painless and peaceful process.” The office hissed open and the Caseworker shuffled in. He gave Asra a reassuring smile, gray eyes shining with manufactured empathy through crooked frames. As if rehearsed to a habit, he reached out to console her with a light squeeze of a gloved hand. Asra slipped hers off the table and into her lap. The Caseworker fell silent as he pulled up her chart and settled into his seat.
Asra shifted uncomfortably in her chair, crossing her arms as she gave the room a sweeping glance–for the thousandth time–before settling back on the man across the desk. Like all Oblivion Caseworkers, or OCs as everyone generally called them, he wore the standard lapis lazuli colored tunic that covered him from neck to ankles. An inverted triangular insignia sat snug against his adam’s apple, shifting everytime he swallowed, which wasn’t often. The name tag on his chest said Julian, and she wondered, doubted, whether that was even his real name. The OCs all looked freakishly similar, almost like priests.
Except priests don’t usually help people die.
She cleared her throat. It was a harsh sound in the manufactured silence of the counseling room. “How long will it take?”
“Less than the time you’ve been suffering.” Julian’s smile grew softer, more pitiful. “The Janus Project prides itself on providing only the most compassionate state-issued Oblivion in the country. It will only take as long as you need it to. You’ll be transported to the doorway at –” he checked the location on his tablet “–the Howlan House. Everything you need is already there, including the funeral materials, and alternative pathways, should you want them.”
“I don’t.”
The words left Asra as an exhausted exhale. She waited for the anxiety the pamphlets warned her of, for the stirrings of potential regret or second thoughts, but as always, she felt nothing. Even as she touched the tablet the Caseworker slid across the table to her, she felt neither the warmth of where his hands had been nor the coldness of the glass, which reflected back an unfocused glimpse of her cheerless, pale face and muted green eyes. She couldn’t be sure because she couldn’t see her own face anymore; it was diluted with their images, and with only vague imaginings of what she might have looked like over the years. Didn’t she have freckles, like her father? Dimples like her sister? A round mouth like her mother?
She had parents….didn’t she?
“Given your….situation….we want you to be as comfortable as possible. When you’re ready for Oblivion, it will embrace you. And, as requested, they will be there. Waiting for you, I’m told. Shall we…put it up?” The Caseworker nodded to the sea of faces on the wall, the legions who’d found Oblivion, and indicated to the tablet. Asra stared down at the screen, the emptiness sinking to the depths of her stomach.
Asra Aeilstrom, 26, Fractured, Irreparable feeling of being out of place & time.
NOTES ON THE WORLD OF “FIVE GLASS FLOWERS”
Five Glass Flowers (or, The Fractured Lives of Asra Aeilstrom) is an Adult Science Fiction short story set in an overpopulated Earth with doorways to several parallel universes. Charged with overseeing the strange occurrences that impact those closest to these other worlds, the Janus Project studies the odd mental and physical afflictions that unfold–such as people drowning in air, waking up with the ability to speak a language no one else can understand, remembering the life of an alternate self–and provides an existential service of closure for those unable to exist in their born universe: they can seek Oblivion. To some, it means taking the place of a deceased alternate in another universe; to others, it means wiping the slate clean with a new memory and a new life; to many, it’s the form of permanent self-annihilation. These are all, in one way or another, forms of death and as I venture into Five Glass Flowers, I find myself wondering which Asra will choose. I kept thinking of Inception and Orange as I played with the aesthetic or made small notes. Both were open-ended with a tinge of heartache, which is pretty much my brand.
I haven’t completely fleshed this world out, nor do I have a deep character sketch for Asra Aeilstrom, but these are things, I think, that will come as I venture further into this short story. I want to dig further into this world where empathy can be as traumatizing and invasive as a cancer and where the very meaning of existence is more feeling/thinking than a tangible, rational thing trapped within physical forms. Not sure if that makes sense…but I’m hoping by the end of Writer In Motion, it will! Also, random point: my science fiction is always oppostite my fantasy; I almost always focus on the world first in SF and the characters first in Fantasy. It’s so weird! Anyone else do this? Please say yes LOL
It’s impossible to say just how long this will be by the end, but I’d love to do it all in 5 medium-sized chapters overall, not counting the initial chapter.
The upcoming chapters have already been named:
- Howlan House
- Severed Roots Weep Red
- Five Glass Flowers Bloom
- Little Sorrows Shatter
- The Grave of Asra Aeilstrom
Musical Inspirational
