The Rooster

The original assignment was to write the beginning of a short story to the “then” moment (see Clark Blaise’s essay, “To Begin, To Begin”). This assignment was to rewrite it, having received notes on it. I’m not going to bother with the original version because I don’t like it, but the second one came out twice as long and light years better. This is the beginning of the beginning.

For the summer between her second and third years of university, Stephanie Chau had decided not to go back to Halifax. Instead she stayed in Montréal, where she could hold her job at the supermarket and where her boyfriend Ryan came over every night to make dinner and water the cacti on her windowsill.

For two months it had been absolutely perfect. Stephanie hadn’t missed the salt water or the beach, or her sister, or drinking at the Marquee until 3 AM. She had found a sort of Zen in carrying crates of milk cartons and in the mysterious pink and orange flowers her cacti sprouted. The dinner wine tasted sweet and full. She couldn’t remember what it felt like to sleep alone.

Then Ryan stopped coming, and she wished she could forget what it felt like to sleep with someone else beside her. The cacti, grieving, shrivelled into themselves. Stephanie started eating instant noodles for dinner every day, alone in her apartment in front of the computer or an endless stack of books. She cut her hair to her chin and stopped drinking. She considered getting a cat, but knew she would only kill it.

Tags: class work, fiction