The DHI Autistic Book Club
Shadow Dream Girl
by Bennet “The Sage” White
Chapter 1: Snoozers is for Losers (what I'm naming the chapter)
protected by Fair Use, bitch
First paragraph.
In the far corner of a musty waiting room, a man had slumped in his chair, his head drooped low enough for his chin to meet his chest. With thin legs awkwardly splayed out, and bony hands left to dangle limply at his sides, he would have appeared to be dead; if not for the soft snores that struggled to escape his mouth, as well as the occasional twitch and jerking shift of his slight frame.
So far, the only thing I can criticize is he's a little heavy on the descriptive words, but then again we are just getting started.
It would be a guess as to the man's age, as he seemed to be in the aggravating center of life; either young enough to be forty, or old enough to be thirty.
"YoUnG eNoUgH tO bE 40, oLd EnOuGh To bE 30" Oh go fuck yourself with your wannabe profound horseshit. And why is the age between 30-40 aggravating? Maybe for INs whose net fame and fortune is fading and they are forced (by their man-wives) to go back to school (like they should have 12 years ago while they were young) and get a real job.
I'm beginning to wonder if this is going to be Bennet whining about life and how unfair it is. We shall see, I suppose.
My gawd. Get a load of the description of this person.
Carbon-dating the man was complicated by his intentionally piece-meal clothing and appearance: well-worn jeans and low top sneakers, a loose, green-colored plaid shirt and a black undershirt. Long and unkempt strands of dirty blonde hair covered his face, concealing a pointed nose and protruding, puffy pink lips. He simply looked as if he had come from no place or time in particular; just as much a part of the scenery as the ubiquitous potted fern that hugged the corner to his left, or the landscape paintings of journeyman quality that hung from the cream colored walls on all four sides. The man was a feature of the building, same as the air conditioning and running water.
Oh no. I think this book is going to be a bore. He's making the typical rookie mistake. Using big, descriptive words to sound more literary. “piece-meal” “unkempt” “ubiquitous” “journeyman” all in one paragraph. Dude, calm the fuck down and just get to the story. Your audience jerks it to Japanese cartoons, they ain't exactly the Tolstoy or Hemmingway crowd.
Then a long paragraph describing the contents of the room. Good gawd, dude. NO ONE CARES!!!
A National Geographic was precariously balanced at the summit that appeared to be mere millimeters from finally relenting to gravity's pull.
Fuck you, you over-writing hack. You could have saved a thousand words just by saying, “Yeah, he was, like, in a hospital waiting room.” EVERYONE KNOWS WHAT THESE ROOMS LOOK LIKE, YOU DUMB FUCK!!! Stop padding your word count!
an old, black and white analog clock that ticked away the seconds; a metronome to keep the otherworldly buzz of the halogen lights in the ceiling in perfect time.
Otherworldly? Or did you mean one of the most common sounds to modern man? Except, you're describing a pool hall from some 40s film noir, not a modern hospital. Unless you're in some shithole in Zimbabwe or Mexico.
Paragraph: describes a woman at her desk typing
Paragraph: The magazine finally falls.
Bored.
AH! We finally get a name. Ian. The main character' s name is Ian, and he finally wake up.
Paragraph: describing the National Geographic that fell to the fucking floor. Even gives us the date: Vol. 187, No. 6 June 1995.
I'm not kidding. This is actually in a novel.
Paragraph: describing one of those medical posters we have all seen in Doctor's offices. This one is of the arteries in the human brain.
Finally, something happens. (page 6 of 251 of my Kindle)
The nurse just says hi. It's not even worth copy and pasting. So moving along...
His mind searched endlessly for his last memory, waking or dreaming. He clawed for details, anything he could hold onto, but his fingers ran through formless, shapeless shadows. He could only wrap his mind around an out-of-place, tingling sensation that bordered on the feeling of a burgeoning sunburn that crossed his cheeks, as if he had just spent the last few minutes staring at a campfire.
“A fire...” He muttered.
“Excuse me?”
Ian blinked a few times, refocusing his gaze as the sensation left him in the cold, “I don't know”.
“Oh dear, you look like you're in a bad way.”
I... I don't know. The nurse is concerned. Ian seems confused. A doctor comes in to retrieve
*checks book “Mr. O'Riordan.” Ian O'Riordan. That fucking name.
Ian is Dr. Rosenblatt's one O'clock. But just call him Luke.
rubbinghead.jpg
”had another attack, Ian?”
Ian says yes, and thinks its gettign worse. Blah blah blah. Ian asks about the new nurse and why Lauren left. None of this matters, but padding the word count...
I guess LUKE is a therapist. We're not told, we have to infer, I guess. Just a lot of this kind of dialog.
“So, how are you?”
“You mean besides the attacks?”
“Well, sleep-attacks notwithstanding,” Luke pulled himself closer to Ian, letting out another grunt as he sat himself down again, “how's life?”
The question was met with a shrug before an answer, “It's life. Could be better, could be worse.”
Then we get a hint of Ian's profession.
back. “I mean, there's new movies I have to stock, and there's some new customers every now and then.”
He's a 40 year old working at a Blockbuster? Still more honorable than whatever the fuck Bennet does.
“Uh, there's a new Mexican place that Stan and I order from sometimes. It's good. You know, for Gringo-Mexican shit.”
Stan. *fingers tapping on the keyboard
If...
If this guy is a fag, I'm not completing this book. I'm telling you right now. Sorry. Life is too short to waste on this homo shit.
More riveting dialog.
“I mean, it's all good right?” Ian's voice shook at the question,
“Like, it's hard to fuck up a burrito, so I don't know how much me saying it's good really means. I mean, it's not ALL good, you wind up shooting out both ends for the rest of the day if you eat bad Mexican. It's like, you either make yourself sick, or you have an okay meal. There's, like, no varying degrees of quality.”
“I don't know about that,” Luke sighed, “If you've been to Mexico, then you know how good Mexican can actually be.”
“Have you been?”
“A couple of times. Used to live near San Diego, and every once in a while, I would go across the border with a few buddies into Tijuana. Had some great tacos at a little hole-in-the-wall. The beer was warm, but man those tacos.”
This taco conversation goes on for THREE PAGES!
“Wait,” Ian leaned forward, as a thought occurred to him, “is cow brain and tongue even Kosher?”
I guess LUKE is a jew? They talk about yiddish for awhile. Holy fuck, Bennet.
Luke flatly rolled his eyes, “Do you think this is a good use of your hour?”
Mother fucker is trolling us? No. That would require cleverness.
...I work a boring job, I eat boring food, I live a boring life. That's it. Done. Close the book, there's nothing left.”
...in a boring book.
ParagraphS: describing the Doc's office, and a spot Ian has been picking at on the couch over the many sessions. Also, Ian is in his own head. Nothing profound revealed, but it reminds me of Lindsay's main character, how she also wrote pages of introspective narrative. And I quit reading that book out of boredom.
He finally starts talking about himself to the doc (as opposed to thinking of himself). It's a lot of “you're most alone when you're with other people” shit.
“Where do you feel you fit, Ian?”
“Goddamnit,” Ian surprised himself with how quick his volume rose, “I don't know. I'm thinking out loud, for fuck's sake! Alright? This is hard.”
Sigh. For you and me both, fucktard.
“I'm sorry,” he grumbled, “I didn't mean to yell. I'm just tired of feeling like that there will always be something wrong with me. You'd think the anti-depressants would help with that, since they can't stop me from conking out.”
“Your narcolepsy medication isn't a magic bullet, Ian.”
I'm guessing this will play a big part of this book.
“Then why do I feel like I'm stuck where I've always been? I still have my shitty rental job, I have no friends, and I got a broom closet that calls itself my apartment. Oh yeah, and let's not forget the fact that I still can fall dead asleep on my feet like that,” Ian snapped his fingers violently, gritting his teeth to punctuate the pop, “That isn't going away anytime soon. So please, excuse me if I call bullshit on my so-called progress.”
What about Stan, you sissy?
A few paragraphs of Ian looking around the room, and descriptions of it.
Ian's eyes rolled at Luke's dismissal. The two of them knew that any kind of conversation, at this point, would only be in service to draw out the clock. That there were no visible clock in Luke's office was by design, even Luke's computer monitor was tilted in such a way that trying to see it from the couch was impossible. Since Ian had no means of telling time, he would only have Luke's word for when their hour was up, which he rarely relied on.
Pointless. Nothing useful getting done. A perfect telling of a therapy session, I imagine.
“Alright. Take care, Ian.” Luke offered, having to turn toward Ian, as he already was halfway out the door, “Until next time?”
“Always and forever.”
End of chapter.
According to Kindle, this was 6% of the book already.
Oh, I get it. The psychological horror is on the reader.
I got jokes.
