[jackconure]

She lay on the couch in the dimly lit room, unsure of whether she was hot or cold. The distant sound of a passing train brought her mind back to long, caffeinated nights atop the parking garage, walking the dark and desolate streets of the surrounding area, smoking stress-induced cigarettes outside her building and wandering the halls and courtyard at 4am in search of similarly miserable company.

She longed for those days; a time when she wasn’t supposed to know what she wanted, a time when she knew exactly what she needed to do and when it needed to be done. Now, though, it was different. She didn’t know what she wanted, really, or what she should do next, or when it should be done, but she was doing it anyway. She needed to do something lest she go insane with boredom and indifference, and she was doing it on October 1st.

It was already August 15th; time was pressing in, and it seemed that the days were just getting shorter. Ryan and Luke were in the same boat, she knew, and wondered what their plans were.

Ryan… fuck.

He’s back now, she thought, and wondered when he would call her, when she would see him, what would be said and what would happen. She wondered where he was staying right now, assuming it was probably south with his sister. She wondered if they would be friends.

Saturday Ben would be back, and Sunday they would go golfing. She smiled at the thought, staring at the patterns the streetlights made on the ceiling. They’d agreed that when he came back they would start running on the beach, swimming, and doing push-ups together. She was excited, and couldn’t wait to see him. He was coming back just in time to see Rachel off.

Japan… half the world away. Will we keep in contact? Will we still be friends? What will happen?
She could only manage to keep in distant touch with her close friends from home as it was, and they were only a few hours away. She thought of Steve, her best childhood friend, and probably one of the few people she really loved and trusted. She hadn’t spoken to him in a month or so, and hadn’t IM'd or e-mailed him in just as long. He was only two and a half hours away; why hadn’t she at least spoken to him?

And TJ. She hadn’t spoken to him in months. He moved and got a new cell phone,the number for which she failed to save when he called to notify her of the change. For the past few weeks she’d been waiting to hear from her old friend, hoping that his curiosity would lead him to wonder how life was treating her, or at least if she was still alive. He hadn’t called, though, and she was becoming impatient -- antsy at the thought of losing touch with him.

How am I supposed to find him? I can’t remember the name of the guy he said he was going to work for, or the name of the company…
Who would have your number, TJ?

She thought about making a trip home and dropping by Jack’s house to see if they had his contact information. Or maybe she could camp out at that bar his parents frequented with the hope that they would all recognize each other and that his mom wouldn't think she was a crazy stalker ex-girlfriend or something.

Fuck. Now she’d never get to sleep. Too much stupid shit on her mind as it was, and now finding TJ. God damnit.

She got up off the couch, throwing the blanket off and deciding she was hot after all. It was late; she had to be up in six hours, and she knew she wouldn’t sleep well that night… she never did when she was over there. She sat down in the creaky wooden desk chair and moved the mouse around to wake the computer up. Fat rain spattered against the sliding glass door just to her left. She looked out over the street and considered how much nicer the corner townhouses must be than the ones sandwiched in the middle.

She pulled up Google and searched “white pages,” trying to remember when the last time she used the phone book was. “Results 1-10 of about 67,600,000 for white pages.” Well, there would be no shortage of places to look.

The first three searches found zero results. The fourth search found one Zekri, Thomas J, age 27, in seven different places in her home town.

Great.

She went through pages and pages of Google search results, trying each people finder search engine with no luck. Frustration set in and feelings of hopelessness and failure began to creep up. One more, she kept telling herself, and each time she either found nothing at all or found where he used to be.

“God damnit… I know where he was, but where is he now?” she asked; but they wouldn’t tell her.

Time kept ticking by and precious sleep continued to escape. The rain was coming down in sheets now, and her efforts were returning no results. She shook her head and moved the mouse cursor to close out the screen, but hesitated, knowing she would certainly not be able to fall asleep with these feelings of frustration and failure.

"Three more, and then that’s it, and then I’ll just go wander around Ft. Lauderdale until I find him myself." She did a yellow pages people search and got one result: Zekri, Thomas J, Ft. Lauderdale Florida, time at residence: 1 yr.

She stared blankly at the information on the computer screen, the heavy glow staring back evenly. "Is this him, or is it another TJ?" she asked. The computer screen gave no further indication one way or the other concerning her speculation.

She smiled slyly and said in a sing songy tone, “I found you,” adding less triumphantly, "I think."

[Jimbalaya]

The distant sound of a passing train brought her mind back to long, caffeinated nights atop the parking garage, walking the dark and desolate streets of the surrounding area, smoking stress-induced cigarettes outside her building and wandering the halls and courtyard at 4am in search of similarly miserable company.

I think this is the first time I've actually seen that word. I hear it all the time, but to see it, it's a wierd word!

She longed for those days; a time when she wasn’t supposed to know what she wanted, a time when she knew exactly what she needed to do and when it needed to be done by. Now, though, it was different. She didn’t know what she wanted, really, or what she should do next, or when it should be done by, but she was doing (it) anyway. She needed to do something lest she go insane with boredom and indifference, and she was doing it (on) October 1st.

This paragraph kind of interrupted the flow for me. Could just be me, but I think if you took out the 'by' in both of those cases and added the words in parenthasies it would flow better. Just my opinion. I can see using the 'by' in the second sentence, but I don't think it's really needed in the first.

I liked the narrative tone of the story, it was very easy to read and moved along at a steady pace. One thing I did notice and wasn't very clear on: You used the name Rachel in there somewhere. Is this the name of the MC or is it one of her friends? I think that if you are naming the MC, you should do it towards the start of the story, not in the middle, or just leave it out all together.

Anyway, you've done a pretty good job with this. I liked it, would even like to see more of this story, he journey to find her friend TJ. Keep up the good work!

[jackconure]

Thanks. I made the suggested changes. Hopefully it will flow better now.

Rachel is a friend moving to Japan. I'll see if I can make that a little more clear when I have more time.

[Bluejay]

This is one of those stories that I find myself going over and over, as if it were some sort of puzzle. I'm not sure if you intended it that way - the vagueness of what comes across is, I assume, a result of looking at it from her perspective. She knows what's going on, and when something like that eventually comes out in the end (when the reader finally figures out what's happening), it can be a true moment of discovery. Unfortunately, I didn't get that. I was left with - what happened?

The first part that snared me was this:

and she was doing it on October 1st.

It was already August 15th...

When I got to the first part, I thought "Aha! A fact." and what I reasoned was that today was October 1st. (like "she was doing it on a Saturday). Then the shift - ok, it's not October 1; it's August 15th. So I puzzled that out a bit - had she delayed nearly a year from her Oct. 1 date, or has it not come up yet? I settled on the latter.

Ok, so what is she doing on that date? That is the mystery set up. I don't think it is ever revealed, at least not that I could see. It's left hanging along with alot of other things. What "boat" is she in that Ryan and Luke are as well? All these questions - I really wanted to know. In the end, none was answered. It just became a phone number look up.

The litany of names compacted so was a bit tough for me. Without context, I had no place to put them, and I didn't know if they would appear later as relevant. So I started sticking them in spots in my mind, all of which were unnecessary later. (I'm bad enough with single names in real life without having a whole slew come at me at once.) I get that it's a bit stream of consciousness (even to the point of "She wondered if they would be friends." which left me thinking: are they meeting? But that had no relevance to the story either).

I hope I'm not sounding harsh. Perhaps this is exactly the effect you were going for. And on the positive side, I found your writing style refreshing, with well crafted sentences. But in the end, I felt that, despite great promise and a beautiful, energetic opening paragraph:

1) I don't know or care about the characters
2) I don't know what's going on
3) I don't know why I should care
4) It didn't seem to go anywhere interesting.

There was no change in character, no movement. It felt like perhaps it was just a scene in something larger.

Given that I didn't know what the main character was doing, when Japan came up and she talked about wondering if she would stay in touch with her friends (as I read it initially - a litany of names and then "will we stay in touch"), I thought it was about her (Rachel or no). I think you could ease that transition by saying "He was coming back just in time to see Rachel off to Japan." Then... ah. "Japan... blah blah". There is a connection now.

In the end, we didn't even learn who TJ is or why she wants to find him. Perhaps I'm looking for too much significance, but my ultimate question was "why do I want to read a story about someone doing a google search?"

It's possible I missed something here, and I'll admit that. If I didn't, then I would encourage you to expand this a bit, breathe some life into the characters and make us care enough that when we get to the end, it feels like a worthwhile effort spent.

(And I'm sitting here thinking that I just spewed, and the story may be crafted beyond my comprehension. If so, please be kind. )

[Venomous Vixen]

I myself suffered similar unanswered questions like Jay. What was the purpose of mentioning October 1st? It felt like this rush almost to get everything done in two weeks, but for what? The mentioned friends as well, is the world ending? A suicide pact? It is in the nature of the reader to imagine the most far fetched and/or dramatic reasons when things arise like these unanswered questions.

I am not sure if this is a complete story or a part of something larger. If larger perhaps a bit more elaboration on those facts and then an in depth explanation later. If this is an entire piece I suggest you scrap things like those or explain them.

Other than that bit I enjoyed the tone here, that obsessive need to find something and escape sleep in the process. For me personally I have been there, in that exact situation, counting down the hours and stuck searching for someone I suddenly fear I may never see/talk to again. Well captured.

I think you have something worth fine tuning here and I look forward to more of your writing.

[jackconure]

Thank you for the comments. I'm sorry for causing confusion and unnecessary name categorization... the story was just kind of a quick first post.

It was indeed meant to be vague, it is a stream of consciousness, and it is also part of something bigger. I wrote it on August 15th in 2005 and then sent it to my friend TJ completely anonymously after searching him out in the manner described. He called me two days later.
So, yes, when you say that it feels like the reader is supposed to be figuring things out, you're right, it's just that unless you're TJ none of the clues make any sense.

I'm glad you like my manner of writing, though. Next time it'll be something more comprehensive.

[Bluejay]

You've got something good going. Keep it up.

[Gurdit]

Hi dude, it's not too late at night here, but I've had an exhausting day and I might sound a little more curt than I intend to. Now that the statutory warning's out of the way, here's what I think about the story:

For one thing, there's no real "story" as such. It's rather a narration of events of one particular evening. There's a very good touch of reality there; it's something I felt throughout the piece. It's not as if I'm reading a story someone wrote, but rather like I'm reading a diary or an account of a day in the life of a real person.

What seemed to stand out a bit was the sudden change of perspective. From the beginning (and for a few paragraphs after that), you write the story as a narrator, from a third person's perspective. But in the middle, you give words to the protagonist's thoughts. This would have been ok had you done it subtly, but I can feel the sudden shift, sometimes into the first person. This isn't too much of an issue, but I'd have encouraged you to either find a subtler way of doing that or just italicizing the first person parts.

[Peppy]

Originally Posted by jackconure

It was indeed meant to be vague, it is a stream of consciousness, and it is also part of something bigger. I wrote it on August 15th in 2005 and then sent it to my friend TJ completely anonymously after searching him out in the manner described. He called me two days later.

Vague? No, it's more like it's private. There are a cluster of thoughts only you would be able to understand in the story, fill in the bulk or so into between the lines. That is why the names and middle part of this story is unnecessary for readers, unless they interpret it as change between friends who will seperate.

Plus, the whole vagueness thing seemed to scatter your thoughts in all directions.

I was about to suggest this going to Stream of Consciousness or Non-fiction because this oozes PERSONAL to me, but you considered it and I'll stop there.

Aside from the middle chunk of the story, the first few paragraphs and the end showed a lot of promise. The beginning and end doesn't estrange the reader. I liked the beginning and end because, well, you seemed to put yourself on track - back on to the horse some might say. You gave us a sort of direction, a perspective to follow. Plus, it was well written too.

Just remember estrangeness and vagueness are two seperate things.

Good read, Jack.

[Ambrose]

A story doesn't have to have a beginning and an ending. Sometimes a glimpse can be just as effective in communicating something. I like the strong voice here, and unlike the rest, I can appreciate all the names and facts, which add to the veracity of the writing. I was admittedly confused as to who was going to Japan though.

Still, a brief but well executed piece. Hope you decide to share more with us.