RE: Finish The Story Contest - Week #48!
(Hey I read the ending, but there was a reason @calluna got mentioned in the contest page - give her some credit as well. Regardless, we coprompted it [despite yada, yada, yada and so on and so on]. Also stop with this cult of clearness, this one is equally vague when yah stop to smell the roses. That and I wonder what the actual criteria is for @curie upvotes, I swear I get them for varying qualities and differing levels of obscurity. Also I really wonder if yah had read my stuff since December 2018 with the 16 days of literature...)
La filosofía del texto (The philosophy of the text): So moving unto the ending itself :^D - It very much slowly cracked down Matt's reality, even if not by significant parts, to a broader reality he wasn't expecting. From the offhand toss-away comment of the city being underwater and mentions of coffee tasting different, to loosing teeth (never normalized in fiction, those crackheads) and then to knowing his name. I mean, this elder man's not that well, she said so herself - because he's breaking everything to make the reader uncomfortable! Gasps And that's the true horror, the creepy old guy who's clearly too well and just trying screw with us. I mean how else if Matt is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO certain and can't explain away this problem of knowledge? :p Or I can just be really bored with work and I just wanted to see if I can make a silk roll from cobwebs.
La forma: of course we get into the inner thoughts of the dope who probably told his name on accident when he was quoting his love-mate. And we get to see how the old man just screw with him, because maybe he's sane and just loves screwing with people, with just little details that make Matt wonder what the Old man is specifically doing. The one sin that's worth it in writing is saying "X said," but I almost universally avoid and stick to using dialogue markers and character accents. Then again, I don't really care if the language is free-flowing and never stutters unnecessarily - which this story does well to feel free-flowing. So blep :p
I don't try to think too much about philosophy or form when I write, much beyond finding a 'story' then just going where it leads. Maybe I might give it some check after to make sure I don't betray some subconscious bourgeois garbage, but point being, I really think fiction (for me) is about finding a thread and following it. Writing skill and mechanics is just the method of getting the story out clearly.