Writing Exercises for Improvement

"A Woman"

Charles Johnson's assignment on Thomas Bailey Aldrich's short story. It looked pretty interesting, so I thought I'd give it a try.

Advice, feedback, and corrections welcome always.

Source:http://invisibleinkblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/what-33-years-of-teaching-taught.html?m=1

Warning: Horror theme. Possibly traumatic in regards to death, suicide, and gore. You know your limits better than I do. Listen to them.

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A woman is sitting in her old, shuttered house. She knows that she is alone in the whole world; every other thing is dead. The doorbell rings.

Breathless, the woman coils her fingers around the wooden arms of her chair. Ring. Tighter fingers. Ring. Wider eyes. Ring. Colder blood.

The corpses are here for me.

A dense miasma of rotting flesh and stale blood wafts around her living room in the thick, summer heat as the doorbell persists. If the fear didn't choke her senses, the stench certainly would have. The carcasses grunt out gurgled demands of entry, but the woman lies still. She knows they want to take her away -- to pry her from life. Her life. She knows she'll never let go.

Corpses have loitered her home for months now, always trying to reach her somehow: the door and the windows and even the voicemail. The dead are relentless. She even recognized some of them from before when they could breathe. A daughter perhaps. Maybe an ex-husband. Though, when she considered it long enough, they were likely corpses long before they died. Perhaps that's why they burn with vengeance and longing to rip her world away from her. It matters little to the woman, however. She lived her life until now quite happily without them and she would continue to do so if only they could hurry up and find their graves again. Here, in her home, she finds peace in solitude.

Abruptly, the ringing stops. It is shortly replaced by a slam and splintering wood. Ah, she knew she should've replaced that damned door with something more durable.

"Ms. Joy?"

Crumbling bodies lurch closer and dread sinks into the woman's soul. They're finally going to kill her. Moisture builds in her eyes. She knows she's not ready to leave her home yet.

"Oh, God."

"How long do you think it's been?"

"I need to step out for a moment."

A police officer returns to the porch and shoves his face towards the creaking planks beneath him, gripping at his trembling knees. He releases a shaky breath as he hears the door open.

"Aye, man, you good?"

"Yeah," he swallows as another's hand finds his shoulder. "Yeah, just wasn't prepared to see all that."

"Mm, I understand..." Scratching the back of her head, the older officer pats his shoulder once and returns to the front door. "Well, uh, the coroner's been called. Help us lock down the area. Looks like a suicide, but we'll see. I can't imagine such a lovely lady doing this intentionally." She disappears into the broken doorway.

Nodding, he braces himself to follow. Immediately upon entry, his blood slows to a pace that rivals Mrs. Joy's. The small living room is trashed with empty liquor bottles and scattered pills. Dust and mold gather in insect-infested corners and tucked away pockets of darkness, inching slowly up the walls. Most of the furniture was shoved violently to the walls, tipped every which way besides upright. However, the officer does not notice the sorry state of the space; his gaze is locked onto the lump seated in the center, cold sweat beading on his neck. This isn't the young officer's first case with unnatural death. He isn't quite that young. The dried vomit and blood spilling from her chin to her feet are fine. The peeling cavities where skin and fat and muscle should be are okay. Even the toxic gases pouring from the corpse in waves are alright. That isn't the problem.

Ms. Joy's face.

For a woman who lived true to her name, she is nearly unrecognizable. Any leftover skin is melting across her gaunt, sagging face, gray and loitered by deep stress lines nearly cutting into her bone. Her strained mouth gapes to the world caught frozen in a tense plea for mercy. Both eyelids stretch into the abyss of her orbital bones leaving the empty whites to nearly fall from their sockets. The officer swears he can still see ridges of miserable tears scarring each cheek.

"Who is this woman?" he breathes lowly, finally finding the courage to release his lungs. Only months ago, the young cop saw Ms. Joy walking down a street on his daily route. He promptly slowed to her pace on the empty road. "Hey, need a ride?"

The woman beamed. "Oh! Thank you, Arthur, but I'm perfectly fine walking. Just heading a couple blocks down that way." She was pointing in the direction of the soup kitchen she was known to regularly assist. Then she began to chuckle as she pinched her sides, "I've gotta work off these old lady rolls, anyway."

He couldn't do anything to stop his grin. "Aw, Ms. Joy, you and I both know the kitchen is at least a mile down and it's the middle of July. Lemme help you out."

She waved the offer away with a smile, "No, no. It's really just alright."

"You've gotta be dying those scrubs," Arthur eyed her nursing uniform knowingly. His girlfriend was a year away from her BSN.

"Maybe a little," she laughed. Conceding to his offer, the woman heaved herself into the seat beside the young officer and bubbled up tales of her patients and the families she cared for when she volunteered. During the brief ride, Ms. Joy simply glowed with joy and Arthur's day was immeasurably brightened by her presence.

Arthur shudders.

What agony was the sweet woman stowing away that day? Did he miss something? How could he have when she smiled the way she always did? It must be a trick.

Shaking his head in hopes of clearing his thoughts, Arthur decides there's no way that this shell before him is Ms. Joy. At least, not Ms. Joy Ms. Joy. Returning his focus to work again, he can only wonder if the unknown woman regretted the decision in her last, sputtered breaths choking on death.

She knows she did.