Black Cherry Blossoms

[Weird Heather]

One of my favorite scenes in Act 1 inspired me to write a strange short story. Tonight, with the help of some tequila, I broke through the writer's block that was preventing me from writing it. Although this piece isn't typical of fan fiction, it probably falls within the broad umbrella of fan fiction since it was heavily inspired by a scene and a character in "Katawa Shoujo," although there is certainly some artistic license involved.

I won't say much about it yet (but I might say more if some comments appear). However, I will get a couple of obvious things out of the way. Yes, I did intentionally write this as one long paragraph, and I did have a reason for using periods instead of question marks after the questions (a blatant rip-off of a technique used by one of my favorite authors).

EDIT: Based on my own thinking about this, and on the first comment, I decided to break up the huge block of text. The breaks are rather arbitrary, and I intend them to mimic page breaks more than real paragraph breaks, although I decided not to be too contrary, so I put the breaks at the ends of sentences. The story is about 5 pages long, so I have broken it into five "pages" of roughly equal length. Hopefully, this will make it a little easier to read without breaking the continuity that the single-paragraph form provides. (This isn't my record for paragraph length, by the way. The longest single paragraph I have written so far is about 15 pages.)

I have been thoroughly corrupted by the experimental trends in twentieth century and contemporary literature, so I don't often write in conventional styles. This story isn't all that radical compared to some of the others I have written lately, so hopefully it is reasonably intelligible. If anyone cares to wade through it, I would be curious to see what people think.

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The orange glow of sunset dances in the sky. Clouds slide through the rays of light, and their colors shift. The light from the setting sun gives color to the white clouds, first painting them pale peach like a rare orchid, and then after applying several coats, gives them a bright orange color, and they resemble wispy orange peels floating in the sky. The land below responds with its own palette. Many shades of green resist the orange riot, but the rays of light paint them with a tinge of brown. White and pink cherry blossoms resist the painting of the sunset. Forming numerous pink heads in the trees, they laugh at the sky. Wahahaha˜! The ribbon of asphalt slices the green landscape like the wound from a whip. It dispels the harmony of nature as it winds down the hill to the village. Nothing blends with it. Nothing paints it. The orange of the sky deepens, the green of the landscape fades to brown, and even the cherry blossoms slowly give up their laughing resistance, but the asphalt stays black. Always black. Black as the dried blood from a grievous wound. Why must this wound so persistently refuse to heal. Why must it not yield to the blending harmonies around it. Footsteps sound from the hard blackness, slow and irregular but persistent, beating out the rhythm of a lost purpose. A breeze caresses the face as the speed of the footsteps increases. The downhill motion is easy and automatic, and it becomes forgotten. Boxy structures rise into view, disrupting the smooth flow of the lands. They do not appear as wounds but as scattered toys, gathered into place by children who have no grand plans.

A glance to the right reveals a sign. “Convenience Store.” A store where one might buy a convenience. What sort of convenience. A public convenience. Perhaps a man walks in and emerges carrying a coin-operated toilet on his back. Or maybe another sort of convenience. Could it be a ticket that one cashes in to cancel out the inconvenience of an inconvenient event, making it convenient. Nice idea, but not possible. The world is too inconvenient a place for a mere convenience that can be bought with money to be of any value. A little store cannot possibly sell such a great convenience. The name is wrong. It should be an inconvenience store. The store is too perplexing, so it must be removed from view. A short distance down the asphalt wound, another boxy structure enters the view. According to its sign, it is a tea house. A house for tea. Odd. Tea is supposed to live in fields. Does it need a house to keep it out of the rain. No. Tea likes rain. Without rain, tea gets dry. Does it need a house to protect it from things that eat it. Or perhaps to rest at night from the rigors of daily work in the tea field. The tea house has a mystery. Inside, it has a mystery. But inside, the orange of the darkening sky will not exist. Let the tea house keep its mystery, for the mystery of the sky is greater. Orange transforms to red, and the clouds darken, straining to meet the blackness of the asphalt wound. Trees blacken, only displaying hints of their greenness under the harsh glow of street lights. White and pink cherry blossoms are the last to succumb to the encroaching blackness, their devious laughter piercing the night until even they can be seen no longer. Wahahahahaha˜! The night has the last laugh.

The aimless shuffle of moving feet, the buzzing and chirping of unseen nighttime insects, and the occasional harsh roar of a speeding automobile are the sounds of the night. In the village at night, the air is still, and the odorless breeze is replaced by a varied palette of scents. Coffee invitingly swirls through the air, and it is joined by sizzling beef and frying fish. Sweet scents join this pleasant mixture, and chocolate is the sweetest of all. But one choking scent disperses them all. Like the asphalt wound, it cuts through the palette of scents like a whip. Tobacco. The herbal and smoky odor dominates the canvas of scent, and no other can penetrate it. A large, wrinkled hand passes the view from right to left, and then again from left to right. Its apparent owner, a wrinkled person, maybe but not certainly a man, dominates the view and shuts out the darkening sky. A burning cigarette hangs loosely from the maybe man’s mouth, and the pungent scent of the burning weed obscures all other senses. In the blur of the smoke, the maybe man stares. His lips move, but the tobacco scent is louder than his speech, so no sound is heard. The maybe man disappears into the vagueness of the night, but the smoke lingers for a time before the other scents can reassert themselves. The sky is now black. Tiny points of light pierce the darkness. A crescent moon hangs in the sky above the tea house. What is the moon. A blank canvas upon which dreams are painted, only to be erased as the moon wanes to nothingness over the days.

A big ball of cheese eaten by some unseen monster over many days, and then slowly vomited back out when the monster realizes he has overeaten. A dead sphere of cratered rock, as the scientists say. But that would be too dull. Under the dead surface, moon men, green cheese, or stale tofu must be present in abundance. Or is the moon a giant orange with a protective coating of dust, rocks, and craters. What would the moon men be like. Little green men with pointed ears and eyes on stalks, maybe. No. Everybody knows that little green men live on Mars. The moon men are out of view, hidden and mysterious. But maybe they see outside of their domain through holes in the craters. They see all and understand all. But do they understand themselves. Does any creature understand. Does the maybe man, lazily puffing on his cigarette, understand anything. Do the cherry blossoms understand. Does the sky. Does the asphalt wound. Does the village know itself. A cricket chirps incessantly as if it knows its purpose. A duck quacks exuberantly into the peaceful night as if to say that it understands. A whiff of coffee confidently rides the air like it has a destination and a plan. Can there be a plan or a purpose. Was there a purpose on top of the hill as the sky turned orange in the late afternoon. Forgetting has power over plans, destinations, and purposes. The purpose of the afternoon and evening was nothing more than food. It was dinner for the forgetting. It has been swallowed, and the forgetting has scattered its components far and wide over the landscape, where it has blended into the black sky, the black clouds, the black trees, and the black asphalt.

The black cherry blossoms do not laugh; they slumber, waiting for their color to return. All is black and peaceful. Black is the color of the forgetting, the opposite of the understanding, and the embodiment of pure serenity. Blackness envelops the crescent moon, the tiny points of light in the sky, and the harsh artificial lighting of the village. The sounds of the nighttime insects are painted with the black brush, and the scents of tobacco, coffee, frying meat, and chocolate all become black. An infinite sea of black. Exquisite serenity. Perfection in nothingness. Unending peace. Total forgetting. Nothing. But what. Something disrupting the nothing. A jolt pierces the forgetting. A signal from the shoulder. A gently tapping hand. The view of the night that had been emerges from the nothing. The faint lights of the night burn the eyes. Nighttime odors sting the nose. Buzzing and chirping drill into the ears. Intense pain. Two faces come into focus, and their attached bodies emerge from the blackness. The first to coalesce is an elegant yellow-haired woman with cloudy blue eyes, wearing an expression of serenity on her face. Does she experience the total blackness of night. Does she understand. She says nothing, but only stares into the night. The next face emerges from the gloom. A young man, appearing worried. His lips move, but the night distorts the sounds and the message succumbs to the forgetting. The night has not reached him, as it has his companion. His message refuses to yield. Sound emerges from the blackness. The serenity of the night retreats. The faces and the voices become familiar. Peace retreats, and reality rushes in to fill the space it leaves. But the forgetting remains, and the plans and purposes it has swallowed will never return.

[Acik]

Interesting. I like your use of imagery and the pacing feels nice. However, I am not a fan of the format. Intentional or not, a solid block of text makes it difficult to sift through. Honestly, I feel as if the pacing of your piece would only benefit from some line breaks (and it was already pretty good). I know it can be tempting to use a device you've seen elsewhere, possibly in a different context, but accessibility to your audience should be first and foremost. That being said, trying something new certainly isn't bad. Just something to think about.

Anyway, it was refreshing and different, but maybe break it up here and there.