h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Somebody Else’s Tragedy - A19944453
Author: Flameisgold - U1652413

Valerie recalls her own tragedy as she watches another unfold....

It's been a while since I've written so I'm a little rusty. Thoughts, comments and suggestions will be very welcome.

Excellent writing as ever, Flame.

A couple of comments straight up :

I saw the twist coming, and I think most readers will. I'd therefore be tempted to try write this the other way round, to make it clear from the start what Valerie has done and to play on her detachment for the power of the piece.

Don't lose the original, of course - it might still turn out to be the most effective telling, but re-writing from different angles with the same core material is good for you! (So says I, anyhow)

Also, I'd lose the Twin Towers bit. There's no real similarity to the scene described, so it's a distraction, and derails the reader's train of thought.

See you around (as usual, I should be doing something else...)

Pin

Hi Pin,

Nice to hear from you. Thanks for the comments. As suggested I lost the Twin Towers bit but I'm feeling rather lazy. Rather than re-write the whole piece I've attempted to delay the twist. I'm not sure if it works so maybe I'll come back to this story another time.

This is very good, using all the senses to create an atmosphere.
I agree with Pin that we rather suspect Valerie from the beginning. If you want a twist ending, perhaps she could realise that the people killed in the fire were not the people she intended.

Hello minorVogonpoet. Thanks for your comments. An interesting idea one that helped lead me to one of my own...

I've made all my changes - and I'm more or less happy with this story.

Thanks for your comments!

Hello, Flame.

Pin and mvp have said everything.

A chilling tale - I loved it !

Hello Chips,

Thanks for reading. I'm glad you liked it. I'll stay with this story for a bit longer - and then I'm moving on to another. The writing bug is catching....

That was neat .

I had three 'hang on a minute's while reading that gave a sense of something being off, and two of them made me wonder about Valerie. But I put it down to her detachment due to her own experience, and didn't see what the twist was so I got the chill.

I think you've judged the length of it just right, by the way.

Thanks LLWaz

I just saw this thread after posting at the original piece and am really surprised that everybody else came to the same unpleasant conclusion that Valerie is criminally insane. I was less sure, perhaps because I read a later revised version, so I'll copy my comment below for the record:

"Interesting. Curious twist at the end, clearly revealing just how deeply her own tragedy has impacted her. Also, in hindsight, the possible suggestion that she may the person who started the fire. But somehow I'm not sure you intended that interpretation.

Did you only mean to show that her grief has caused her to become sympathetically self destructive? I definitely got the message that she was deeply 'disturbed'. It comes as a surprise and quite forcefully at the end so I may have just allowed that she might be more than merely disturbed and was now truly criminally insane.

Like many of your stories in which people die or struggle with crises that take all the joy out of life I found myself squirming more than a little. This uncomfortable feeling leaves me with no defense except to be hyper-critical and I want to point out the one cliche of the 'screaming' fire engine.

And even to ask why the first one screams but later they all just 'hum'. Don't they know the words?"


~jwf~

Interesting - Flame doesn't make it explicit.

I wondered if Valerie set the fire after the 'still' in 'flicking open the lighter she still clutched in her hand'. That suggested the lighter had been part of the story already. Then 'pretty, pretty fire' and the impulse to laugh confirmed it... it's the 'still' that really does it though. The rest could all be the effect of what she's gone through herself.

Rereading, knowing the twist, the bit that would make me think again is her feeling almost like an intruder when she's watching the fire. Having set it, you'd think she'd feel it her stage.

Pretty amazing what one word can trigger, isn't it?

I mean to different degrees in different people I know, but for me, it's that one word. Without it I'd have stayed with maybe.

Yep, we all read different cuts.

Me, I don't think she's insane. Criminal, sure, but completely with it. The baby-talk is just self-comfort, don't you reckon?

~jwf~'s interpretation, no, I don't really see it.

What’s insanity? My lazy definition would cover this, but in the sense that she’s aware of her actions and their consequences, she’s not, in my reading, insane. She’s most certainly living in her own distorted universe though.

If baby talk’s the pretty fire bit, I can understand it as more an expression of partnership than comfort. And control even - she’s petting it? Even rewarding it.

But for that word ‘still’, the interpretation that the pretty fire whisper was a wondering at the contrast between the pretty small flame and the ugly consequences of the fire would still be possible. The laugh being explained away as that nervous impulse some people have when faced with something they can’t deal with.

We could have a trial, on-line.
You be Counsel for the Defence; I'll be the Prosecution.

M'lud, the defendant deliberately set fire to the house, and moreover she's entirely sane and responsible for her actions.

In the Wig and Pen over the road, we can discuss the number of distorted universes (suggestion : always one less than the number of people present). No place in Justice, that kind of thinking, though has it? You shouldn't go round committing homicidal arson just because you have an unusual point of view.

But maybe Flame had better be the judge.

You’re going to prosecute on the sole piece of evidence of possession of a cigarette lighter ?

Witness for the defence -‘The defendant has smoked like a chimney since the age of 10’.

It all begins with Valerie 'putting down her shopping bag'. Like the preacher in California Dreaming who lights the coal, y'just know she's 'going to stay'.

Now I don't really know if this bag is of the old fashioned brown paper 'grocery bag' variety, some throw away plastic jobby or a genuine foldable cloth bag with some sort of leather or wooden handles. Was it carried against her bossoms (presumably the ample bossoms of post-partum dementia) or hung at arms length by a handle.

But since there is no further mention of it, especially when she 'still' has the lighter in her hands, I have to wonder what might have been in the bag. A dead baby perhaps?

Oh I know this is all 'stage business' as they say in the theatre but such business is important to establishing and revealing the character.

And, for the record, I used the term criminally insane because I believe that random homicidal arson is considered an act of insanity since unlike most crimes, it has no profit margin.


~jwf~

Speculation, pure speculation! Would the Judge please instruct the jury to unhear that.

The contents of the bag ... magazine, toothpaste, pint of milk, tin of tomatoes, box of firelighters?

Putting the shopping down is a tell tale I didn't pick up. It was rather collected of her. Would a passerby make such a positive statement about stopping to watch?

I've decided it had to be a bag with handles if the lighter was 'still' in her other hand. Though I'm still unsure about its contents.

Was it a conscious prop to fool onlookers into thinking she was just passing by? Or did it contain fire-making materials? Or perhaps even something she had "rescued" from the house.


~jwf~