The Hour With You

Author Note

Hey guys!

Thanks for reading this – admittedly, odd – short story.

I was suffering some writer's block and I wanted to get something down, and it turned into this, so I wanted to upload it and share.

What was going to be a short love story turned into something a tad more abstract and – uh – pretentious? I'm not sure how that happened!

There's a lot of room for interpretation in a story like this, and I'm sure you all have your own ideas about what was going on (or you're all very frightened and want me to return to writing about Japanese love affairs and vampires which I completely understand), but for me, this whole piece contained a great deal of metaphor and potential for adaptation and interpretation.

'I' is left without a name, gender, or any indication of what they're running from. They're meant to represent both the reader and writer, they are any person who has felt at some point in their lives that they want to just up and walk away from whatever is troubling them and to leave it all behind.

'He' is given a gender, but this may also be a title, and he could be anyone at all. He might be a dream, a figment of the imagination of 'I', he might be an odd stranger who happened to spot 'I' and thought that they could offer some wisdom (if you have been to Brighton, you'll know this is entirely possible), or possibly a person's conscience, a manifestation of their thought process, a spirit guide, or a deity.

I tried to incorporate rhythm and motion in the prose much in the way the character is 'in motion' and on a journey, physically and emotionally. The piece is meant to move fluidly like a poem or a melody, and the environment around the characters is also shifting and moving in new directions; the wind pushes, the sea rolls and claws, the starlight is embroidered like a dipping needle and thread, and the stones shift, sink, and clasp when the character walks across them.

He, on the other hand, is a steadfast point. He sits and doesn't move. When it seems 'I' is straying too far from the steady path that he intends for them to step onto, he says 'Hello' and brings them back to focus.

'Hello' is a word with a great deal of power when one considers how small it is.

Not only is 'Hello' a greeting or a way to grab the attention – something he employs – but it's also an invitation to converse, an indicator that you are open to communication. For 'I', the final 'Hello' is a sign that 'I' am ready to face who they are by embracing and greeting the complex person they understand they are after their short journey, and by being open to their own flaws and mistakes in life, realising that they don't make them any less perfect or beautiful, and are still a part of the masterpiece that is 'I'.

If this story were ever to be adapted into anything other than a piece of prose, I think it would work well on stage, with 'I' being played by a string of actors of all colours, sexualities, orientations, genders, and ages.

Again, thanks for reading.

Sorry it got weird?

Clarissa xxx