I’ve cut another large chunk of text to make the newest draft easier to read. However, I’ll post the full story once I complete it. I’m going to compile it into another e-book and publish it in my portfolio. For now, enjoy the latest draft.
As the seasons passed and Eun-Ji grew, her parents took more notice of her outdoor activities.
“Shouldn’t there be more lettuce than this?” her father asked inside the restaurant. Eun-Ji had picked all the biggest leaves and washed them outside. Of course, she had given the monster its weekly snack first.
“Our bean paste seems to be diminishing rather quickly,” her mother added. “Honey, try to put out less when the customers ask for it.”
At the town market near her school, Eun-Ji spent some of her allowance on extra lettuce and bean paste. The kindly old woman at the vegetable stall threw in some green peppers in for free. Though she worried they would be too spicy for her monster, Eun-Ji left a few outside the tunnel after smearing them with bean paste. They disappeared like all her gifts, and after that, she added a few of the thicker peppers to her shopping list.
As she grew Eun-Ji’s ability to go unnoticed vanished like the winter’s final meager snowfall. The garden seemed to grow smaller each year, and passing college students saw her head peeking above the tomato vines. Her face grew hot when the handsome young men glanced her way caught her eye, even if it was only for a second. With changes to her body, she wished more than ever for her monster’s ability to remain unseen.
Her friends at school always invited her to one activity or another. Some days they chased each other around town, filling their bellies with spicy rice cakes and corner store ramen. Other days they watched a free movie at the community center alongside kindergarten children and half-snoozing elderly residents. Upon returning home, Eun-Ji spent her remaining time outside. She watered the garden, stacked a stone on each of a dozen piles, and caught her monster up on the day’s events. (Make a shift from the monster to her monster, and then give it a name. Even the name could start formal and become casual.)
In the fourth year of the monster’s residence within the tunnel, Eun-Ji stood beside the entrance sharing her the latest gossip with her silent, unseen friend. A cricket chirped nearby and an orchestra of frogs croaked in a distant rice field. In her narrow window of free time before dinner the sun sank behind the mountains, spilling deep orange light across the sky.
“The school stopped giving homework,” Eun-Ji said, her voice bouncing against the tunnel’s walls in a comforting way. An unbuttoned spring jacket whipped against her body, and she stuffed her hands into its deep pockets. “Miss Okee said too many students are given self-study books at home on top of the school’s homework. I wasn’t using those books, but now…because we don’t have homework, my parents are forcing me to study more at home.”
As it had ever since she gifted it the baby blanket, her monster answered. It squeaked like a dog’s rubber toy.
“I know!” Eun-Ji exclaimed, taking the monster’s noise as a statement on how unfair her life had become. “Mom used to talk about our people’s connection to nature, but between school, helping in the restaurant, and self-study–I hardly have time to tend my garden let alone visit with you.” She punctuated her rant with a solid stomp of her foot.
Her monster barked its displeasure and scraped a hard appendage against the tunnel’s stone floor.
“Eun-Ji? Who are you talking to?” Her mother’s voice stabbed the night like a bolt of lightning. Eun-Ji startled, almost slipping on the stream’s wet bank.
“Just complaining to myself,” she said, imagining her voice more controlled than it probably was. Eun-Ji drew closer to stand in her garden and saw the worry on her mother’s face. It was the worry of a mother protecting her child, but it scared her.
*make sure to show her panic and alarm — build to this by showing more ways she anticipates/avoids this moment — lying in bed listening to the night, hearing the monster and hoping her parents will take it for a bird
“I heard a noise,” her mother said. “It came from that drainage pipe tunnel. I never liked them building that thing right beside your garden. Kee-Han! Bring your flashlight.”
“It was my voice echoing,” she said. Between a row of lettuce and other of cabbage, Eun-Ji felt secure. The garden had always been her place, just as the tunnel was the monsters. Fighting her panic–a chill in the deepest recesses of her heart–she controlled her voice. “There’s nothing in the tunnel but water and stone.”
“You’re acting strange. Are you playing with one of your friends? It’s okay, honey. Who’s out there?”
Dad stepped into an evening quickly thickening with mist, flashlight slicing the dark with wild sweeps.
“It’s not one of my friends, Mom,” she said, crossing her arms across her chest. “There’s nothing in the tunnel. I like it, that’s all.”
“What’s wrong? What’s all this noise?” Dad asked, blinding her with the flashlight.
“I don’t know, but I think there’s something in the drainage pipe,” her mom said.
“I talk to myself. It’s embarrassing,” she said with a hand over her eyes. Dad caught the hint and dropped the beam to her feet. Still, she felt like a suspect in the American crime dramas they watched together some nights. “It’s fun to hear my voice echo. All my friends live down in town, and I get lonely. If I talk into the tunnel I can pretend someone else is there.”
“You’ve been playing with your friends almost every day, Eun-Ji,” Dad said.
“Are you caring for an animal in there? If it’s a stray cat from the mountain it could make you sick.” Unlike Eun-Ji, the tunnel’s mysteries were too much for her mother. She had to know. To her father, Mom said, “Go and check.” *Don’t forget to give them names
Eun-Ji was caught like a bird that had once flown into their restaurant. She could admit the truth. Maybe her parents would laugh it off and return inside, still chuckling about her fanciful imagination. Except she recognized the set of her father’s jaw and the determination in her mother’s narrowed eyes. Something was amiss, and they wouldn’t rest until they uncovered all the facts.
She held out a final hope. Her monster had hidden from everyone but her for so long, surely it could take care of itself. Probing the tunnel’s darkest depths, the flashlight would shine upon stone and water, nothing more.
Her father crunched toward the tunnel across a carpet of fallen leaves. Mist swirled on the edges of light, and a car passed on the nearby street but felt like a visitor from some other world–one where life was normal and boring. Eun-Ji watched from her garden, tense as a rabbit in the presence of a predator and ready to run, placing herself between her father and the monster if need be.
Near the tunnel, her father kicked over a pile of the stones Eun-Ji had stacked with her monster.
“Damn,” he whispered. Stones plinked into the stream. “Sorry, Eun-Ji.”
Her monster raced from the tunnel headed for the nearest mountain. In the limited light, it appeared to be a water deer, cresting the slope beside the parking lot. Its hooves clacked as it bounded across the asphalt. (show the flashlight focused on the tunnel, getting closer, then he knocks over those stones, and in that moment of distraction, the monster runs out.)
Eun-Ji was halfway up the slope before she realized it, scrambling for purchase with fingers deep in loose dirt. Catching up to her monster overruled any other thought. Her parents called, panic in their voices, but she felt no compulsion to obey. The secret she had concealed for so long was free, racing away from those who had discovered it. Another child might have felt relief–no more hiding and lying.
Eun-Ji cried, caught between conflicting emotions.
She cried because life was unfair.
She didn’t want to grow older, her limbs elongating, chest swelling outward, hips rounding, blood leaking out every month. Stolen afternoons with her friends weren’t enough balanced against all the evenings and weekends helping in the restaurant. Even if she snuck outside to study in the shade of a tree, her education was a chain binding her for another decade, at least. (*make the garden more of a magical place–it’s in her blood, just as her mother wanted, but show how the garden is connected to the monster–it’s a place they share because of the food she gives it, because of the droppings which nourish it, because of the stones around its edges they stack. The garden and tunnel (i.e. the monster) are a connection to her innocence and youth, which is fading as she becomes a teenager with more responsibilities)
She cried because her monster was beautiful. Dark fur bore patches of white like drops of splattered paint which shone in the dying light. Tiny tusks also caught the light where they protruded from the upper lip. Unlike the traditional water deer which her monster resembled, it bore three pairs instead of one. The creature’s grace was indescribable to Eun-Ji as it bounded away like a rabbit.
Long legs raced to the end of the parking lot and leaped to what remained of the grassy field. The dirt and fog-moistened grass felt more solid beneath her feet than the asphalt. She pumped her arms as the earth gave way gingerly with each piston kick of her foot.
Her monster paused on the edge of the tree line and watched her approach. Mist tickled its long thin legs as if inviting the creature to dance. When she reached the foot of the mountain, it turned and walked purposefully between two trees, its fluff of a tail flicking at a strand of mist.
“Please!” she screamed, the desperation in her voice strange and unfamiliar. “Wait for me!”
describe the night–fog, sounds, smells, her physical condition (out of breath, clothes damp with sweat and the dewy air)
Without looking back she entered the forest. *describe the forest
describe the deer just ahead, always stepping behind a tree, a flash of movement like an arrow pointing the way
the mist thickens, and she finds a deerskin, steps into it, and the mist thickens around her, embracing her until she feels thin, like a razor that can cut between worlds, she steps into a thick bank of white, slicing her way through it and on the other side, she sees her monster
I’m one good writing session away from the end. Though determined to get there today, I’m not sure how much longer I can stay focused. I’ve been waking up early the past few days, so I’m much sleepier than normal. My youngest daughter slept in my bed between me and my wife last night. When she wasn’t kicking me or slamming her chubby bottom into me, she was throwing her legs on top of my lower body, often hitting parts I would rather she didn’t hit.
From the height of a mind,
Mike
heightofamind.wordpress.com 