"You are such a wimp, you know that?"
I'm sitting on a stump halfway up the brick-covered hill leading up to the Ridges, rubbing my legs. My lovely roommate probably isn't judging me too hard, more making fun of me than anything else, but she looks impatient to keep walking while I dawdle and complain.
"Well sorr-ee to have actual, legitimate medical problems that cramp your lifestyle. Great merciful Keeters, my poor, enbunioned feet and I apologize for ever having inflicted our presence upon you--"
"Oh, shut up."
"...I seriously am a wimp though. We're not even halfway there yet."
"Don't worry about it. We've got time."
"Damn. Look at that moon."
"Sure is bright tonight."
"It really is. I don't think we're going to get much star-watching done this time..."
"Eh. It'll still be cool."
"...Okay, I'm good. Let's get going."
......
"Dammit."
"What?"
"I did take us the wrong way. We should have taken the path at the bottom of the hill."
"I thought you said you'd been up here before."
"I have! Just because I can't remember the exact way after half a year and in the dark--"
"Chill, Julesy, I was joking."
"I know. Want to check out the tower up here anyway?"
"Eh, why not."
"On second thought, I think it's actually a silo, though I have no idea what they'd keep in it these days, there's not exactly much call for corn storage in an insane-asylum-turned-admin-and-research-facility--"
"Ssh."
"What did you grab me for?"
"There are people up here."
"Where? And why are you whispering?"
"Ssh! There. Look, there's a bunch of them all on the edge of the hill."
"No, seriously, where--oh! Holy crap, there are a lot of them."
"Jules, you are seriously the most unobservant person ever."
"Shut up."
"Isn't that right where the TB ward used to be? ...What are they doing?"
"I can't tell. I think they're just looking at us."
"Do you think they know we're here?"
"Well, we were being kind of obnoxious--"
"Ssh!"
"What?"
"They're all looking at us now. Maybe it's a cult. Maybe we stumbled upon one of their secret rituals, and they're using the TB ward to focus their spiritual energies or something! Holy crap, Jules, we found a cult. An actual cult."
"...Maybe we should move on."
"Maybe we should go talk to them."
"I really don't like that idea. Come on, Keeters, I know you want to investigate but two girls, alone in the woods on a Friday night with a bunch of figures dressed in black and possibly carrying out strange cultish rituals, that is not a good combination--"
"Hang on, I want to see if I can get a picture."
"You--! Seriously? It's way too dark for a shitty phone camera to get anything."
"Ssh. Maybe if we're quiet they'll think we've gone away."
...
"I am so not okay with this."
"Ssh! I just want to get a picture!"
"They know we haven't left, you idiot, they're still looking at us and I'm sure they can see us a little bit at least--holy shit."
"What is that? No, seriously, what is that?"
"It looks like a laser pointer. I guess it's foggy enough that we can see the whole beam... What's he doing with it though? Wait... he's scanning the whole top of the hill and oh my god it's coming toward us Keeters what if they're not a cult what if they're aliens and we're about to be beamed in to space holy shit...!"
"Ssh."
"...That was seriously the creepiest thing I've ever experienced."
"But really, though."
"It stopped right on you, they definitely know we're here and it's still way too dark for a picture so can we please get out of here?"
"Fine, fine... jeez, you'd think you'd never seen a cult before."
"Shut up. I've never had a cult do a friggin' area sweep with a green laser while I'm trying to hide in the shadow of a silo to get shitty night vision pictures before."
"...Look, we're fine. They're not even following us."
"God dammit, Keeters, I wasn't even thinking about that but now I am...!"
"Sorry."
"I blame you for every time I freak out about something for the rest of this hike."
"Oh hey, now... that deer was totally not my fault."
"Ha, you freaked out about that one too..."
"I didn't even hear it! You just grabbed me and went Sssshit! and I think my jump was totally justified."
....
"Moon sure is bright tonight."
"You said that before."
"It's still true."
"Sure is pretty, though."
"...Just watch, they'll be gone by the time we're hiking home and we'll never find out what they were doing. Maybe we could go talk to them..."
"Mmmmm.... you had a point earlier. Probably not the best idea."
"Oh, and like yours was? 'I just want a picture, Jules, something to prove we found an actual Athens cult, let's just get close enough...'"
"But we did! We found an actual cult!"
"It was probably just a bunch of bandos smoking a joint or something."
"Whatever. I say it was a cult."
"Sure, you do that... Makes for a better story anyway."
"Want to keep walking?"
"Yeah. I want to see at least some stars before the cult catches up with us."
"Ha. You're so funny I don't know how you stand it."
"Well, now that you mention it, I could sit down again..."
Our low voices and the sound of our feet on the dirt-and-gravel path are the only things to break the silence, while the moon shines brightly overhead.
Jules,
ReplyDeleteThe dialogue, the word choice, the structure; everything in this piece reminds me of Eggers. I like how you took a simple topic, and put it into a conversation scene between yourself and your roommate. The dialogue flows, and is relatable to a typical conversation I might have with a friend of mine as well. I like how you showed the process of brainstorming between "Keeters" and yourself when trying to determine what the people could be doing there. I'm curious of what it could have been now too! Good work on this.
Like Eggers, your dialogue keeps me enthralled and forces me to read the text at a near-frantic pace. Being able to break my usual reading habits — making me read faster than I usually would is a sign that you've excelled in illustrating the scene in this piece.
ReplyDeleteI'm curious — how much of this conversation is constructed to smoothen the narrative and how much of it actually happened? I'm no Truman Capote and surely can't remember most of my conversations to a T long after I've had them, so I'm always interested to hear how much dialogue writers construct, rather than reconstruct. "Reconstruct" meaning you basically remember most of the conversation and are just not quoting it directly.
One other note: I would have ended the essay at the end of the dialogue. I was so immersed in the back-and-forth that I was disappointed to be pulled from it at all, even for one ending sentence.
Also, did you know that OU might be putting a conservatory (yeah, telescopes) at The Ridges? So odd.
If this was solely dialogue and nothing else, I think was piece would have been perfect. The back and forth is awesome and it tells a story all by itself. I almost didn't want to read the end because the dialogue was so solid.
ReplyDeleteThus, I agree with Jim. Ending at the end of the dialogue would make this piece complete. Bravo.
Replying to everyone re: dialogue--I agree that the tag on the end is unnecessary, but what do you think about the one sentence at the beginning? I tried taking it out but I think it gives the scene some necessary context. Thoughts?
ReplyDeleteI love the experiment. Telling any kind of story in dialogue is so difficult. All exposition has to get said somehow. Luckily, you're not bound. I say tell us more. As much as I like the friendliness of the conversation, I don't leave the essay feeling like the two voices are differentiated. I think I need more of the personality and more of the motivation somehow.
ReplyDeletewld b interesting 2 c what a straight scene of this would look like. With weird cultists laser-pointering you. Was there really fear? Has there been conjecture about this afterwards? What of these kinds of absurd moment? Do they make a friendship?
Dave