Thanks for the astute comments on the piece. POV shift is very subjective… few people have singled this out as an issue. I tend to agree, however, that too many shifts can be distracting or can cause much annoyance for the reader. Thanks again.
Novel Treatments / Sundown in the Sinkhole (III)
Sticking out from the sprawling crevasse before her was a trunk-shaped metallic protuberance, stretching fifty feet tall and running down into the ground, the likes of which left her speechless. It was something she could never have pictured in her wildest imagination or even through the pages of Carroll. Towards its tip, it spiralled through a series of corkscrewing loops attached to a chrome-plated surface, hiding the apex of something far greater resting beneath the surface of the earth. Around the menacing contraption were a sequence of over twenty tents, arranged systematically left and right, with elaborate night-lights surrounding the hundreds of technicians and scientists gathered in clusters.
“Come on down,” Shilton said, descending a safely-constructed wooden ladder.
“What the… what is this?” Caitlin asked, bursting with curiosity.
“Come on down and I’ll show ya!”
Caitlin made her way towards the ladder and cautiously followed Shilton into the chasm. Once down, Shilton pulled her through the bustling community of strangers and across to the magnificent erection with infectious enthusiasm, like an inventor desperate to reveal his creation to the rest of the world.
“It ain’t from this planet!” Caitlin said, awe-stricken. As she made this remark, a tall, vivacious man sprung from one of the many battered tents at uniform distance around the site. Caitlin looked startled at his arrival, backing up against the length of safety chord extending around side of the contraption that sealed off the deeper, subterranean hole.
“It most certainly is,” he said, his accent unrecognisable. He threw an arm around Shilton and the two of them looked at each other and smiled as though close friends. The man, upon first glance, appeared to have inflated gums that pushed his top teeth from his mouth, bestowing him with an unusual rictal grin, in equal measures unsettling as it was friendly.
The stranger sported a white Stetson hat atop his raffish, turnip-shaped head. It effectively shadowed his well-preened black moustache and visible layer of stubble, stretching down his neck and beneath his shirt. The headwear he had selected was different to that favoured by nefarious cowpokes or outlaws, lending him an air of refinement and poking up almost like a top hat. It reminded Caitlin of some Englishman she had seen in a book, the title of which she struggled to recall as he kept his grin at its strongest setting.
“So, Shilton Jr, who is this delightful lady you have brought with you this evening?” he asked, his accent even more English than Mr. Franks at the York Council, the only English voice she had heard.
“This is Cait’in,” Shilton replied.
“Pardon me, Shilton? I think you mean Caitlin, don’t you? Remember what I told you about pronouncing your L’s, little man?” the Englishman admonished. Caitlin giggled at this. Shilton scowled at the ground with wounded pride.
“I met her when I was out measurin’ like you ask me to,” he said.
“Like I asked you to, Shilton. Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Caitlin. It’s a privilege to have you here with us,” the man said. Caitlin blushed and looked at her feet.
“What is that?” she asked.
“Oh, my goodness me! Has Shilton not told you yet? Well, he is a forgetful Jubjub now, isn’t he? This, Caitlin dear, is my little project. Twenty years in the making and now only one week until its launch! And then everything will be on its side as it should be,” he said, giving Caitlin no further clue as to what its purpose was.
The man took Shilton to one side for a moment and whispered something in his ear, inaudible to Caitlin but evident it was negative from his body language. She gauged from the sudden flash of irritation on his face that perhaps she was not as welcome as his enthusiasm might have lead her to believe. Shilton smirked and pushed a cretinous chuckle from his nose. The Englishman dashed back into his tent and Shilton turned to Caitlin with a casual sidestep.
“What was that? He don’t want me here, do he?”
“Yeah, he do, he do. He just always in bad mood.”
“Seemed mighty pleasant to me. He don’t explain what this was. Who is he? Am I askin’ too many questions?”
“No, you not. It’s all right. He the scientist, Mr. Lewis. He built this here thing and he helpin’ me and Pa at attackin’ the council. He say he gonna flip York onto its side and tip everyone into North Carolina,” Shilton said.
“What? That’s crazy! You can’t tip folks into somewhere else!”
“Yeah, it sure sounds crazy, but he damn serious about it. He say he been makin’ this thing for over twen’y years and he ain’t gonna leave this place until he done it. Say it his life work.”
“He wanna tip York upside down? How he do that?”
“He say he got other big ol’ shiny spike things planted undergrou’ in York, and once he turn this on, he move the ground and tip Whiplash all down to the left or somehin’ like that.”
“My goodness me. That is kinda funny!”
She released a tiny chuckle and smiled broadly without any forced effort. The laugh was such an unusual sound for her to make that she immediately craved another, as though she had discovered a new kind of drug and developed an addiction within the space of a second. Her cheekbones almost hurt at the unexpected appearance of the smile, and she rubbed her face to try and ease the expression back onto her resigned features.
“Yeah, it is kinda funny. But he serious. Pa says it be a great way to get revenge on the York Council for tryin’ to de-molise ol’ Whiplash,” Shilton said. Caitlin nodded and looked up at the giant, chromatic edifice with longing and amazement. At once, she revelled in delirious thoughts of York County Council being flipped over onto its side, in the same way she might flick some beetle over in her sinkhole. It was sort of thing she could only dream of, and the fact it was even remotely possible filled her with unfettered glee.
The scientist stormed out his tent to their left, swinging his arms erratically and shouting at people who appeared to be slouching on the job. It looked to Shilton as though he was heading towards the main control panel, located in the large marquee half a mile towards the other side of the creation. From where Caitlin was standing, she spotted eight grizzly men lurking around inside the tent and assumed an argument had broken out between them. From all the bottle-smashing and physical violence, she gauged that the scientist was in complete control here and everyone followed his precise instructions.
“Is he a madman?” she asked. Shilton looked at the scientist as he walked away, muttering an apology to his machine, and pondered.
“Yeah, I damn well think so.”
After a brief silence in which Caitlin lost herself inside the hypnotic sheen of the spike, and Shilton the soft hum of her legs, the scientist came charging towards them, breathless and running on an oppressive, manic energy.
“Listen… Caitlin, was it? This pulchritudinous creation of mine has been in existence longer than yourself and Shilton here, all right? So I would ask you politely to keep a respectful distance between yourself and it at all times. You are welcome to stay, of course, but unless you want to be severely hurt, pained and tortured by it, please keep within eight yards of the safety rope,” he sniped, his pleasantness fading into eccentric façade.
“Oh, sorry. It’s beau-ti-ful,” Caitlin said carefully.
“Yes, yes it is, young Caitlin! It absolutely is. Shilton, your friend here has a very keen eye for the sublime. You never told me that! Well, I never asked you. But Caitlin, despite its imposing grandeur, it is a tactile, delicate flower, and as such requires you to treat it like so. All you have to do is respect it, Caitlin, do you understand me?” the scientist pressed.
Caitlin looked into the eyes of the scientist with the most reverence she had ever given another person and nodded. She had never handed over such unquestioning respect to any of the adults in Whiplash before, but this time she sensed it was appropriate to do so.
“Caitlin, in one week’s time all of your suffering will be over. You come from Whiplash, yes? I know how difficult it must be for you, living there in that swampland with all those ghastly people. But when this is launched, well, you can forget that life, young, pretty thing. Join us, won’t you?” he asked.
“Oh yes, please! I’d love to!” she enthused, a quiver of pathos in her voice.
“Well, OK. You can help the cooks feed my wonderful staff. I am giving you merely one week to say goodbye to anything you hold dear in this revolting, backward dump before we flip it forever,” he said, an audible tremolo of contempt in his voice as he spoke.
Caitlin ignored his harsh words, swept away in the wonder of it all and thought about things she was particularly fond of in York. Her mind drew an absolute blank. York, to her, meant a series of officious buildings she was not permitted access to and an endless procession of scorn-filled streets, brimming with citizens who knew her face from the hate lists posted across the town. It was a place where even priests and the homeless frowned upon her, and where civil servants were permitted to spit and curse at all ostracised folks should they so wish. She thought about the library for a moment and had a brief pang of conscience. She would be able to say goodbye to her sinkhole with little sorrow, as this was the first opportunity she had for a proper beginning, but she had more of an attachment to York County Library.
The freedom she felt inside its harsh brick walls seemed the only thing she had ever owned for herself outright, and it would mean sacrificing the one pleasure she had in her life and her secret retreat from the world. She saw in the library an establishment bursting with shelf upon shelf of hope. Each book she nabbed placed her slowly but surely above every member of Whiplash and she could exert her own imagined superiority over everyone on this basis. But this chance was real. She would have to let go of her idle daydreams and petty victories. This far surpassed those. She looked over at Shilton, who continued to run his eyes across the length of her body, and asked him one important question.
“Is he serious?”
“Oh, he serious. He done been here a long time and he say he defin’ely not gonna fail. He even say if he fail he done go and hang himself. That mean he truly serious,” Shilton said.
“No, it mean he crazy and serious. That make him dangerous.”
It turned 9 o’clock. A series of stars pimpled the opaque sundown clouds and a quiet chill nipped the air. She took one large gulp and made her way back towards the ladder.
“Wait, where you goin’?” Shilton asked.
“I gotta get back home now. Tomorrow I need to go and see York County Library for the last time. Then I come and join you,” she replied.
“OK, but you make sure you come back here tomorrow, you hear, or I’ll come lookin’ for you!”
“I’ll be here again. You can bet on that!”
“Caitlin?”
“What is it Shilton? I gotta go…”
“Even though you a nigger and all, I sure think you pretty,” he remarked as she made to climb the ladder. Caitlin smirked at this compliment even though it insulted her a great deal. Its suggestive nature would not be enough to keep her from returning tomorrow. She was not afraid of Shilton. The scientist, on the other hand, was another matter.
“Shilton… gonna not use that word? Done makes me feel bad,” she said.
“I never use it again. Hell, I’m sorry, Caitlin. I done heard it used all the time, I didn’t damned well know it was bad.”
“That’s fine. I’ll be back tomorrow!”
As she reached the top, she wondered if Ma had arisen from her comatose slumber yet, and if the whole experience had been a strange hallucination. The tip of the scientist’s magical spike faded into a tiny glint on the edge of the flatland before her, a glint she had often spotted shining in the blur of the night. She climbed back into her sinkhole to retrieve the Carroll book she had left inside, then scampered towards the shack. She entertained the idea that everything she witnessed had been some sort of waking Jabberwocky, and were the clouds to fall from the sky or the trees melt down into puddles, she would not have been at all surprised. Anything was possible after tonight.
Even her fear of Ma had dissipated somewhat. She felt galvanised by the knowledge that in a few days, Ma would tumble with the rest of the town into North Carolina. Just the thought of it! She laughed out loud at the image, the smile now comfortable upon her lips and illuminating the verdant glimmer in her eyes.
“The slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe,” she said, picturing Ma plummeting towards the ground like a rhinoceros, spinning through the sky in cyclonic loops and landing splat-down into a stretch of quaking marshland below. She prayed this kind of ecstasy would never leave her.
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Rayn reviewed Version 1 -
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This is the first chapter of this work that I have read, and I find it very entertaining. I had no trouble following the plot or understanding the language (including the dialect) used—the only rough spot for me was the description of the machine. I couldn’t make it resolve into a clear picture in my head.
I love the scientist: his intensity, the way he molds the people around him, the way he only notices people and things that impinge on the boundaries of his project, the sheer audacity of his project. The dialog was entertaining (especially the snippet discussing the scientist’s sanity), and I could hear the distinct voice of each character. The Carroll references are a nice touch as well, and said much to me about Caitlin. I lost the rhythm momentarily at “the hum of her legs”; it was an awkward description for me. The rest of it, though, flows very easily and naturally.
I know why Caitlin wants to see York flipped; I’m very eager to find out why the scientist feels it should be so. I hope you post more soon.
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campb26593 reviewed Version 1 -
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I enjoyed this piece. The dialog felt genuine and you used simile effectively in the narrative. This is your work of art, but here are my humble suggestions:
First paragraph: “…the hundreds of technicians and scientists gathered in clusters.” This could be a Point of View (POV) violation. Is it Caitlin who is observing the scene? How does she know that the other people are technicians and scientists? To fix this, just say “what looked like hundreds…”
Since we are in Caitlin’s POV, “Caitlin looked startled at his arrival” should be “Caitlin was startled at his arrival” because how does Caitlin know how she looked at the moment.
“The scientist stormed out his tent…” Again, I’m not sure how Caitlin knew his profession.
“It looked to Shilton as though he was heading…” Should that have been “Caitlin” instead of “Shilton”? If not, then it’s a POV violation.
If you are looking for a constant dreamy quality, you’ll need more narrative surrounding the dialog because the dialog makes the story too real in the reader’s mind and there are long stretches of dialog exchange without narrative. It’s in the narrative that the prose can communicate the slight and omnipresent disorientation to the reader.
Good work.
TwentySeven reviewed Version 1 -
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Well, I have to say I’m impressed. You have a very high opinion of yourself, I see, and for the most part you live up to it. The way you characterize your characters through dialogue is absolutely excellent, and if stories were just dialogue you’d get published in about a second. Of particular note was your excellence at the self-refection in the second half of the story. Most writers would make that part so trite, but you make it honest.
But, obviously, I don’t love everything. Your writing is pretentious, and I’m not just talking about the big words. Your sentences are overlong, and you can see the opening sentence as an example. “The likes of which left her speechless” could be omitted and the sentence would be all the better for it. “Pages of Carroll” annoyed me at first, but when I saw the whole Carroll tie-in in your story I found it much more tolerable.
Other quibbles? Pointing out the ladder was “safely-constructed” confused me: why did you feel the need to point this out? Another thing that bothered me is that “vivacious” isn’t something you can really tell from a first glance. And the part where Caitlin spends a paragraph talking about how she laughed is fairly pointless. You’re a good approaching great writer, but you should really pay attention to your sentence length, and work on your description skills.
thisisnotanexit reviewed Version 1 -
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this is fine stuff. i have had a cursory glance at other sections, but not enough to inform my opinions. the prose is nicely done, engaging but never obnoxiously so. it is strung through with tiny little jokes – ‘as he kept his grin at its strongest setting’ – but the overall tone is not of something striving for humour, or for too much surface gloss. the careful detail and deft choice of vocabulary, as when shilton ‘pushes’ a chuckle out, cohere into something pleasingly readable, but never forbiddingly dense. that’s good.
in its intent and its execution, this excerpt seems to verge on magical realism. this is sustained, though, i think – enough for it to work, though i am interested to see what it might bring to bear on the rest of the narrative. the scientist is certainly developed with enough depth and enough inherent, characterful ambiguity to stand as fully as caitlin or shilton, and his existence seems to bolster that of the dreamworld. there is enough detail that isn’t simply enumerative description, too – his pleasantries disappearing beneath his eccentricities, the dynamic between the men. all this creates a distinct feeling of a world, which makes the contrast all the more powerful when you do collapse it, and proceed to describing york generally as a kind of nasty southern dystopia.
that last exchange between shilton and caitlin is, i find, rather touching, and the ending is nicely contrived. the jabberwocky stuff works well, i think, and (from what little i’ve previously read) adds to the essential strangeness of caitlin’s character. this is something that is prevalent throughout – caitlin always seems slightly sidelined, slightly to the left of centre. of course, there is the one instance where you allude to it explicitly, but there is a pervasive feeling, more generally, that caitlin is different, misplaced, with a scope and range to her that sets her apart.
ah, yes – finally, the dialogue is excellent. superbly observed, and, though it seems churlish to elevate one thing, certainly a strength. the accents are expertly rendered – just enough, and you use dialogue to demonstrate character very well. there is a palpable, likeable sense of characters speaking, in three very distinct voices.
by and large, this is as capably executed as i’d expect. nothing needs to be drastically altered in the prose, and the spelling, grammar and other mechanical stuff are exemplary. i have one or two tiny points. here they come: ‘in equal measures unsettling as it was friendly.’ – it seems you have conflated two expressions (‘in equal measure…’ and ‘as … as’) without it quite coming off. a tiny point, but it reads rather oddly. i think shilton needs to lose himself in ‘the soft hum of her legs’ for that sub-clause to work as you intend it. following ‘quiver of pathos’ very closely with ‘tremelo of contempt’ seems to me slightly unstylish – aside from pathos/contempt they are synonymous in meaning and construction, which is – i think – why it jars a little. and there is an erroneous extra space when the scientist says ‘merely one week’. that is all, though. this is very good indeed, harold. i’m surprised it’s so serious.
smitisan reviewed Version 1 -
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I like the idea of a young girl entertaining a revenge fantasy and finding a way to fulfill it. And such a novel way too! I don’t know why Caitlin is ostracized, though I’m sure that’s explained in earlier chapters. That said, however, I find it hard to understand why a place like York would need hate signs; small towns don’t need any such media to get the word out. And why would a scientist with all these resources bother with such a project? That could play into the likelihood of this all being a dream, as the references to Carroll suggest, but there’s a problem with dream writing. Anything can happen in a dream, and I’ve often worked with student writers who insist that everything that happens is dream logic, and so there’s no real need for the story to hold together. For instance, the eight grizzly men (I think you meant grizzled, but there’s that dream logic thing) fighting in the tent. If this is a dream, then for Caitlin to assume that their bottle smashing and violence means the scientist is in complete control fits; we do think that way in dreams, drawing irrational and often contradictory conclusions. Likewise the scientist’s strange use of the word pulchritudinous just after Shilton gets a little carried away with Caitlin’s legs. And there’s that whole Freudian business of going down into a crevasse to find a spike. The problem is there’s too much here that’s dreamlike, and not just down in the crevasse. The town too seems quite unreal. As they might say in Texas, it needs tippin’. Is there anyone in York worth saving? Save Shilton, and he knows about the plan already. Where’s the conflict? Shoot, tip it and be done with it. But that won’t make a story. Here’s a suggestion: have Caitlin wake up in a real town with real parents who love her. She finds her little adventure in York was just a dream. Then, on a bicycle ride, she finds a swamp and a town in that swamp just like York, but deserted. Curious, she goes looking for the crevasse, finds it, and the spike. There’s no one there, but the machinery seems to be running by itself, . .
DCAllen reviewed Version 1 -
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I’m so glad this story has taken this unexpected turn. It was the right time. My observations (more in comments):
flick some beetle over in her sinkhole (nice)
even though you a nigger and all (love it)
My one criticism is that Caitlin should be speaking better English. She reads. She is the exception in her world. “Done makes me feel bad” sounds beneath her. And then she says, “I’ll be back tomorrow”, which sounds like standard English. Her voice – because she is the protagonist here – needs to be rock solid.
Proofreading notes:
“the likes of which left her speechless” (Wouldn’t this phrase refer to other things like this protuberance? How many times has she seen something like this? In the next sentence you make it clear that she has never seen anything like this.)
Is “What the . . .” 1913 language?
around Shilton and the (comma before the conjunction or eliminate the conjunction and use the semicolon)
might have lead her = led
stormed out his tent (Can you leave of out in British English?)
grizzly = grisly ??
“you never told me that” (Have you made it clear that Shilton has spoken of Caitlin before? If not, it’s not logical for the Englishman to say this.)
officious means “eager to offer unwanted services or advice to others” Is this what you mean?
hypatia reviewed Version 1 -
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I did not notice the long words so no problem there. I love the way your character the scientist is larger than life he outshines the other characters and yet Caitlin evokes the dreamy child that is alive in all of us. I love the ‘is it class/culture divide’ you get as a reader the importance of this, but a plus is you don’t preach or ram it down my throat. It is well written especially the attention to detail describing the characters features and you do this smoothly. Not one sentence jarred my senses. “The slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe, = brilliant, original and surreal. Jabberwocky I have heard before but stupidly I can’t think where. Is it in context? I mean original or does it have a wider meaning?
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