Story

I got into a conversation with another grad-school-bound writer I know and we decided to do a quick writing exercise. The rules were as follows: 15 minutes writing time; nobody may die at the end; must be set in winter (or a wintry setting); and it must include fire or water, but not both. Here's mine.


"The Riddle of the Albatross"

There was no food. I stood on the shore and watched Andrei search through the flotsam brought in on the last tide. No food floating in the water. All of it had been in cans. Tin cans of tuna. Beans. Vegetables. Any and all of it something we could have eaten if it wasn't on the bottom of the ocean. Lost forever. Like us. I stared at myself in the gunmetal water. My face was like a corpse's—drawn and thin. I grinned and my teeth stood out for miles.

When I looked up at Andrei, he was hefting something out of the water. Something big. A sack of potatoes, maybe, that had floated when the ship went down. I ran over to him to see what it was.

A body. A little girl, still dressed in her Sunday dress. A thick nylon coat and a lifejacket covering her torso. She must have gone down at the same time as us. Three weeks and her body was still as fresh as the day the ship sank. Frozen solid. Nothing thaws in that water, so nothing rots. Her face was like a porceline doll's. Pale alabaster and serene. Only the eyes betrayed the fear she must have felt when she first touched the water. The knowledge she wouldn't make it. I ran my fingers down her face from her forehead and closed her eyes.

Andrei smiled at me. He told me this was a good sign. All this drift from the wreck meant we were on a current. Probably a strong one. The rescue ships would know to follow it. They'd find us. And anyway, we had food now.

I shook my head at him. Three weeks on our little island, while the provisions in the life raft ran dry. I didn't have Andrei's sense of hope.

I abandoned the shore for the camp—our life raft upturned over a pit we'd scraped in the ground—and hid from the wind and the cold as best I could. No food. No trees, so no wood for a fire. Just Andrei and I and the girl and the cold. Waiting for the moment we'd both know we wouldn't make it.

Vonnegut

I don't usually mourn the deaths of famous people, even the ones whose work I really enjoy, simply because I don't know them. I always figure I'll miss their work in the world, but leave the mourning for their friends and family. I think I might rescind that policy temporarily for Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut, to me, was more than just a writer who I liked. The first book I ever read on my own, without anyone prompting me, was Cat's Cradle, after which I read almost nothing but Vonnegut for about two years. At a time in my life when I was still forming a lot of my ideas about politics and humanity, his books gave me a great deal to chew on. I'm genuinely sad to have read that he's gone.