The Silent Man (one-shot)

[Gavin Luper]

G'day.

This is a (very) short story I had to write for Uni, so I thought I'd post it here as well. I tried using a different technique here, but it didn't turn out quite as well as I thought it would, so criticisms and suggestions would be great.

The Silent Man

Not everyone is cut out for my line of work.

So many people think they know everything about what I do. But they don’t know how many people struggle in an occupation like mine. They don’t know of all the silent casualties that nobody ever talks about.

I gave myself a small shake. It was hardly the time to be drifting off into deep thought. Through the misted windscreen I scanned the dark car park around me and gave a sigh: there was still no sign of movement. I was still alone.

I stifled a yawn and swilled the dregs of my coffee around in the bottom of the take away cup. It was probably cold by now. I drained it and grimaced. Yep. Stone cold and bitter as hell.

No solace there.

I returned to surveying the car park. What was taking so long? The digital readout of the car clock said it was ten to five already. Had they slept in? It wouldn’t have really surprised me if they had, because I’d found it hellish to haul myself out of bed at 4am. Leaving my wife and baby alone. Stumbling through pitch darkness and frigid needles of rain to get to the car. Driving half an hour only to sit in waiting.

The things we do for money.

Finally. The headlights appeared from nowhere. The van rolled up to the opposite end of the car park, close to the warehouse, and shuddered to a halt with an unearthly rattle. Two blokes got out, both taller and more muscly than me. Without giving any indication that they had seen me, they approached the back door of the neglected-looking warehouse and disappeared into the darkness within.

So. I guess that was my cue.

I jumped out of my car. It was even colder outside than it had been within the cabin – my breath was coming out in icy puffs of mist. Keen to get inside as soon as possible, I double-checked that I had my knife in my pocket before pelting across the wet metal dust to the back door of the old warehouse.

I opened the peeling blue door and emerged into total blackness. The other men hadn’t turned the lights on. I stood stock-still and listened for a minute, but the warehouse was silent. It seemed like the others had disappeared. I shuffled forward slowly, feeling along the wall for the light switch as the silence and the darkness pressed in on me. Just as my finger flicked the switch, I felt something rough snare me by the ankles, and I hit the concrete like a sack of potatoes.

~

Ouch.

The lights blazed on as I opened my eyes. I put a hand to my head and looked down at my feet to see what I had tripped over. It was a thin, snaking piece of rope, looped at one end so it made what looked like a noose. It reminded me of a bloke I’d heard about a few weeks ago. He had the same job as me. He hated it as much as I did, felt as useless as I always did. He never said a word to anyone.

His wife found him hanging in their garage one morning.

I picked up the rope and examined it closely.

Imagine never having to do this shit job again …

Before I could even stand up, there was a shout.

“Dave!”

I spun around, rope still in hand. The two blokes stood at the other end of the warehouse, staring at me with disdain and confusion.

“David! Whadda you thinka you doing down there? Itsa five o’clock! You late again!”

I sat there like a dumb rabbit caught in the headlights. “Uh, but Mr. Scolari, I was here at four-thirty – you only just got here!”

The big Italian man pretended not to hear me. “Basta, basta! Get up! You listen to Rocco now, he tell you what to do.” He shuffled off into the store angrily.

The bigger bloke, Rocco, scowled at me from the other side of the warehouse.

“Got yer knife?” he grunted.

I pulled the box-cutter from my pocket and flicked it open. “Yeah.”

“This the first time yer done this shift?”

“Yeah.”

He smirked and waved his hand at the left wall of the warehouse. “Twelve pallets come in last night. You gotta split them and organise them properly onto these ten empty pallets. Should take you all day. Got that?”

“Righto,” I said. And he left me to it.

[mistysakura]

Lol, my last thought: "what's a pallet?" (Wikipedia is my friend.) Good job -- you had me totally convinced that he was an assassin (and I thought he was dead once the wife and baby were mentioned). I agree that the style wasn't as effective as it could have been. Usually with this type of things you have really nitty-gritty details which create a vivid image, like in paragraph 4 and 6. This was a bit lacking as the story went on, so teh image faded a bit. "Paragraph" 3 after the break was really effective though. But looking back, the guy's thought seem a bit too dramatic for his line of work, no? Maybe that's just because I still don't really know what pallets are. The other thing was that I thought the italics were effective in the beginning, to make his thoughts stand out. And then I realised that basically the whole thing was his thoughts, which made the use of italics inconsistent.

You asked for criticism, you got it. Good luck with uni stuff! Ah, if only I took creative writing...

[Gavin Luper]

Hey Ada. Thanks for the critique.

A pallet is pretty much as it's described on wikipedia. I used to work in the warehouse of a supermarket like this dude, Dave, in the story. Splitting incoming pallets just involves a lot of lifting heavy boxes, etc, and even though it wasn't bad work, it gets samey very fast. I was only at the job for - well, nearly four years - but it was temporary. For this story, I thought I'd take on the mindset of a bloke who's a bit older, probably in his late twenties or early thirties; who'd been stuck in the same, mindless storeman job for a decade or more, and who knows that he'll keep being stuck there for life (he has a family to support). It does create a drab picture, especially if you're not happy at work. So that's really where Dave's thoughts are coming from - we caught him on a day where he's dreading starting an early shift ...

The whole 'dramatic' thing was just a technique I wanted to practice. As long as it seems like he's some kind of espionage-y character in the beginning, that was pulled off alright. I wanted to start off with some pseudo-action and then reveal the reality. I think it might have come across as a bit contrived maybe, but I still want to stick with this attempt and see how it holds up under scrutiny.

Finally, the reason it probably didn't work too well was because it's supposed to be 500 words, and it went well over 700, so I was being really economical with words. Towards the end I was barely putting in any description at all, just so it wouldn't be catastrophically over the word limit. It probably still is, though: this idea might have been better suited to a longer story.

Maybe this will be a failed experiment, but I'll see how it fares tomorrow: we have peer-reviewing of people's short stories, so I'll see what others think of it too. The final copy isn't due until the end of May, so there's plenty of time for me to edit things and change them around.

Anyway - thanks for reading and giving me some good feedback, Ada.

Other readers - criticism would help a lot if you've got any!

Cheers!

[Phoenixsong]

Wow. I wasn't expecting that ending, that's for sure, although I do admit that the minute I heard Mr. Scolari speak I could sort of tell Dave's job wasn't nearly as dramatic as he was making it out to be. Certainly does sound mind numbing, though... mind-numbing enough to have someone hang himself, though, I dunno. After we realized that he just works behind the scenes at a supermarket, eh... looking back on that line, it almost seems kinda... not all that necessary, really.

The description and details were quite good, although as you said it's pretty rushed at the end. Short sentence-lengths may have been your intent, but perhaps varying the line length a bit more every once in a while might have been good; a few semicolons wouldn't go amiss. Lastly, the use of the word "muscly" bothers me a bit... if it's even a word, is it spelled correctly? "Taller and more muscly than me" also sounds awkward. I think the word "muscular" would have been a better choice and would fix both little nitpicks.

Even if it was overly melodramatic, that was the point, it worked well and I liked it. Good luck with the peer-crits tomorrow.

[Sike Saner]

Heh heh… Well, the ruse definitely worked: this story had me certain, through most of its length, that I was reading about a hitman. And then, how about that—Dave’s no hitman after all! XD Guess that just goes to show that a job doesn’t have to involve matters of life and death and stone-cold brutality to suck away a person’s will to go on—the job just has to suck. XD

Sorry, no crit from me. XD I found the piece to be pleasantly surprising: something that comes across as very gritty and serious at first, and then brings itself back down to Earth as it shows the true nature of Dave’s situation. Clever stuff, in my opinion. I enjoyed it.

[Gavin Luper]

Well, I had the short story 'peer-reviewed' at the last class, but it's all pretty informal. The person who read it thought it was good, though: I made a few alterations based on what you guys have said, toning down the melodrama a bit, I think.

Phoenixsong: Cheers for the read and the review! I'm glad the ending was unexpected, because that's the technique I was trying to practice. I agree with your point about the melodrama ... I think it was a bit too much. I probably need to practice subtlety. I dunno about "muscly": the proper term would definitely be "muscular", but myself and many people I know use the former quite frequently, at least in spoken conversation. But either way, I see how it could have sounded a bit clunky. Thanks again for critiquing!

Sike Saner: Glad you liked it man. I was kind of going for either a hitman or someone involved in drug trafficking; I'm pretty sure it could work both ways. But in any case, Dave's a humble storeman. In my head the ruse would have played out much more smoothly, more believably, but as long as it worked, I'm happy. Even if it didn't, I've learned from it. Thanks for the read and reply!

Cheers!