TITLE: Sunset School
Wordcount: 550
Name: Hitomi Kelsey Ko
The blazing sun shot red through the entire sky, scarlet light bleeding across the horizon. Green summer leaves turned black in the waning daylight, swarming around a single white high school building. On the pale concrete, now bathed in a tangerine orange, sat G, nine storeys above the ground.
G’s eyes wandered across the empty basketball courts, the color of bright algae. They could smell it from where they sat; the faint scent of sweat and paint, reminding them of the hours they spent standing outside, watching boys shoot hoops, the girls wandering around and gossipping. It spanned around the building, framing the whole block until it reached the edges of mossy black trees. From there on, the dark foliage seemed to go on forever into the distance, blocking out sunlight wherever it went save for a few small patches of civilization.
The building was empty. Long shadowy corridors cast murky violet against the dying dusk, stretching down into two turns, the hallway forming one big zigzag. A gentle breeze hummed quietly through the windows and open classroom doors, echoing down the spiraling stairs. The July heat ballooned in the air, announcing its silent presence as it swelled all throughout the nine floors and three blocks, suffusing every room. You could feel it everywhere, from the overrun science labs filling up with G’s plants, to the lonely art studios where they often hung up photos in the red rooms. The hot summer air travelled all the way into the bathroom stalls where it seemed to deflate into a swampy humid mess, hanging itself on the walls like a wet towel.
The ungodly red sky marked the whole island with five o clock, the final squeeze of life in the day. It gasped for air, clinging to anything it could before it would be swallowed by the shadows and disappear behind the hills.
G sat, red sneakers dangling nine floors off the ground. Sweat beads clung to the nape of their neck, where the length of their brown tresses were cut short, swaying towards the sun. Their beanie and jacket lay in a small pile. It really wasn’t the weather to be bringing either of those but it was the only decent company they’d ever made in this whole school.
Closing their eyes, G let the wind carry their burdens away, falling into the deep black forests that coated the whole mountain beneath their feet. Tilting their head back, they blocked out the quiet murmurs and whirring of the rooftop plumbing stacked up behind them. The astro turf was too open to other humans so they had to settle for the West wing rooftop, sealed off by a plastic red fire alarm just ten feet away by the apex of the stairwell, where teenagers often disappeared between classes.
There wasn’t any other way through unless you had the keys, which were only ever found on leather belts worn by the security guards in navy sweaters and silver badges. Fortunately, there were enough pipes lining the architecture that let G climb their way up – the security cameras probably didn’t go that far up anyway.
G should’ve had the space to themselves.
Yet, here they were, furrowing their brows, reluctant to open their eyes at the sound of gentle footsteps approaching behind them.
PROGRESS LOG
- Good job, Kelsey
- Writing this felt exciting and nostalgic. I had to dig into personal memories without making it too personal but to help develop my character’s mood and perspective.
- I want to learn to write about places more, with character. Most of the time the best pieces of literature i’ve read have an immediate ‘theme’ or ‘aesthetic’ to them that pack enough of a punch – i don’t feel like my impressions are quite at that level yet but i’d like to make my writing more impressionable that way.
- I think Benjamin Percy’s piece was most influential, as it gave me more perspective on writing, like i was gaining insight into the construction of a visual painting. Freewriting began feeling more like ‘sketching’ – while the first draft (the ‘down’ draft as Annie Lamott puts it) did feel kind of painful, ultimately i got to pick what felt most natural to me, and go through the process of adding/taking away and it felt like drawing/painting.
- The prospect of describing a location was very daunting – i’ve never been good with backgrounds be it in painting or writing, so i was very nervous and found the ‘down draft’ very painful to create, but once i had my starting foundation it got a lot easier. I think because this character themselves is not fully developed, the mood wasn’t as strong straight off the bat, so i’d like to try that again maybe with another character, another context (i didn’t add any specific context to this piece either so that could be another factor), another mood, another scene.
