Narrative assignment for my English class. Contrived and personal, but, I like it. It was cold. The snow had settled soft on the ground, but by noon it'd frozen over so that it crunched with every step I took. Clouds blocked out the sun while they blew around at the mercy of the wind, like glitter in one of those little plastic globes. I swear if I'd have cried my eyes might have sealed shut forever. I'd been walking for almost two hours; straight through the woods to nowhere in what the clouds had made a perpetual darkness. A crust of ice formed around my boots and my lips were chapped white as the earth, nearly peeling off with the breeze. I was well-covered, with at least two layers of every type of clothing possible on each inch of my body, aside from my reddening face. Eventually, I gave into the weight of it all, plopped over under a mighty pine and hunched my arms and legs together to keep warm. Christmas was tomorrow. Everyone had draped Indian Trail in red and green and the Christ child was sleeping peacefully in every fourth yard or so. The way the clouds covered up the sun and how it'd been snowing for the past two weeks made me think back to Georgia, when it was nothing like this at all, just hot and muggy with a bit of frost if we were lucky. That's why when my dad retired he hauled us up here to Spokane, where we could finally have a nice white Christmas. Just how it should be, so all his meticulous planning and cooking and light-stringing wouldn't be spoiled by the taunts of an unholy atmosphere. But, he'd since moved to Seattle, and my mom didn't care too much what color it was outside. She was just mad that he'd gone and that Christmas was up to her when everything else was so much more important. All she thought about then was nursing school, and the divorce and what a brat I'd been ever since, and her trials began to take a larger toll on me than herself. So, long before she knew I'd woken up, I left, and climbed the icy asphalt hills up past the newest construction site to freeze myself in the wild for a few hours. White flakes fell from above and blew into my face. I guarded my eyes and aimed them at the branch they came from, where a squirrel had just slipped out and half-thudded on the hard snow. He shivered as he ran, panicked and freezing, scurrying away to be swallowed by fog. His brown body was speckled with white, just like everything else in view, and it would've looked beautiful if he didn't seem so miserably cold and hungry. Only the trees seemed comfortable, green and tall as they'd always been, proudly giving shelter to all the out of place summer creatures that walked among them. I admired the evergreens, they looked immortal. A lone bird stood squawking atop a magnificent pine, bobbing his head back and forth across the wood. He let out a pathetic succession of "twah's!", like he was calling out "over here!" to some bird friend of his. I chuckled at his desperation. He had wings and feet, and two good eyes, but all he did was sit there and call out to some hoppy brown companion of his that'd probably drowned in the white by now. Dumb little thing. Regardless of his ability to fly, his high-pitched moan continued on and on, until I scared him with a well-placed rock at the heart of the tree. Fluttering away, he mocked me with one last "twah!" and glided reluctantly through the forest. He'd likely freeze that night, if not prey to a hawk or an owl by then, but at least he'd be midair when he finally went. Stupid bird flew straight into a branch on its way and plummeted a good fifty feet to the ground. I would've quoted Vonnegut then if I'd known who he was, but instead I just let out a sad little laugh. So it went. The clouds shone a darker gray than before. I figured I'd best head home before I froze or fell prey to a coyote, and had to answer to the laughter of that insolent little bird's ghost. "Twah-twah! You idiot, think you're so clever with your lil' rocks, chucking 'em at nature when it don't suit your comfort? Pompous little brat, look what got you now, not so bright, are we, or warm for that matter? Twah, twah!" Dumb, cockney little thing. I decided to survive, just to avoid ever hearing that annoying squawk ever again, and followed a path of crunchy, backwards footsteps back to the neighborhood. The nervous little squirrel from earlier had found his way across my path at the very edge of the road. He stood there looking up at me with puffy, nut-filled cheeks. To his left was a chubby little female, paying no attention to the giant creampuff of plastic winter wear that towered above her. She just kept driving her nose into the ground and piling up shiny gold walnuts behind her, stacked neatly by her counterpart. The male kept staring at me until his girl looked up, and at once they took up their abundance and bolted off to hide wherever it is that squirrels do. Cagey little things, clever like that. They were scared and weak and unimportant, just like that stupid bird, but they knew it took more than just standing there to get on with it. I laughed for the last time that day and continued home. I tore off any noisy articles of clothing and snuck in back past my mom. It proved a hard feat to accomplish as she sat at the computer, furious and overwhelmed, but more importantly, only a few feet away from my room. Impressively enough, I quickly managed by the office and leapt about five yards from my door to my bed. For a few minutes that stupid bird flew around in my head. My thoughts began to feel dissonant... tense and numb and eased almost simultaneously. Words rose from my chest and teetered on the edge of my lips, but I kept them shut, chewed the words up like mush and sucked them down my throat. I felt like that bird, standing on the top of the tallest tree I could find, just bobbing my head left and right while I froze to death. But unlike him, at least I was keeping nice and quiet. Dumb little thing. When I woke up, I'd forgotten what day it was. I nearly headed out for the wood again.
This is not bad, but the overall style needs work. It's hard to point to any specific thing. Spelling and grammar are good. A kid going for a short winter walk and noting the wildlife doesn't really grip the reader. When I wrote "Anacapa" (on this thread), I faced the same problem. I wanted to deal with myself, sitting quietly on a deserted beach and contemplating my life. It wasn't long before I realized that this wasn't story material, that the reader would fall asleep or lose interest. I attempted to solve the problem by adding an original plot -- boy meets girl. How well I succeeded is debatable, of course.
I try not to sacrifice a quote unquote "interesting" plot for my own personal interest and insight, especially if its just a short, borderline inner-monologue story. When I write a novel, it will have a much more interesting plot. The style goes back and forth, though, I realize that, I need to work on that aspect more than anything.
