| Why is a picture worth a thousand words? Because it takes a thousand words to explain what a picture means. |
Challenge 82 theorizes that flash fiction is a one- or two-scene drama. A flash is so short that it has to emphasize characters, situations and actions that are symbolic rather than realistic; and the story — such as it is — is rarely if ever complete in itself. Dustin LaValley’s “She Waits in the Moonlight” exemplifies that definition: it’s a “thumbnail” view of a larger story. What might that “larger story” be? We’ll get to that: it’s not the full Challenge, which will take some explaining.
It’s a little too easy to say, “Oh, it’s obvious: the father is a perverted slob, and the girl is relieved when he drops dead.” Maybe so; the places where Mr. LaValley has published before may justify such a reading. But what if we didn’t know about titles like Sick: an Anthology of Illness? What if we interpret the story by itself, as readers rather than as historians?
“Moonlight” has almost no action; it’s practically a pure tableau. It contrasts the girl, who is nearly motionless, with the father, who ascends a staircase in a shadowy parallel scene and then falls back down. Of the two characters, only the father attempts to do anything, and he is, shall we say, interrupted by an accident.
The story is mostly description. The girl’s appearance and clothing are standard visual emblems of purity, innocence, submission, devotion and neglect. The father looks like a toy-store ogre: fat, hairy, sweaty, slovenly, and beetle-browed. And with a blemished nose.
Is a realistic account of victimization worth publishing? Yes, in a newspaper. We’re intrigued, rather, by Mr. LaValley’s adopting an unusual and difficult point of view: partial omniscience, almost entirely in a pictorial mode. It shows mostly externals (material objects) while internals (thoughts and feelings), though present, are kept to a minimum, in the background. Here’s a notable exception:
Only her lovely blue eyes move. They look away from the trail of her finger upon the lace and set themselves into the moonlight. They are not afraid this time; they’re not worried or anxious. They know.
The word “lovely” and the reference to past emotions are loaded; the author intervenes to plant emotional clues for the reader. Otherwise, the story only paints us a picture. The eyes are symbols — that is, a metaphor with one element unstated — representing the girl’s thoughts.
But what are those thoughts? The eyes “know” what? The girl hasn’t seen anything unusual; she’s only heard noises from the stairway. The reader must imagine what knowledge is hidden behind the girl’s eyes.
Similarly:
He grows more exhausted with each step, feels the quickening of his heart and knows what it wants. He’s known for some time.
“His heart” seems to be meant both literally and figuratively. The mixture shows where the picture ends and words must begin: he knows what his heart wants, but we don’t.
The conclusion is mysterious:
It does not startle her. Her eyes remain closed as he tumbles down the stairs; the sensation inside her belly flutters upwards and tickles her throat as it rises, she exhales and opens her eyes.
We’re told explicitly that the sensation is not due to fear. What is it, then?
Like a sculpture, painting or photograph, “Moonlight” is profoundly ambiguous. And that ambiguity is what forces the reader’s personal involvement in the story to such an extraordinary extent.
What, then, might the “larger story” be? Your challenge is to imagine one in which, despite all clues and physical evidence to the contrary, the father is not a villain.
Copyright © 2004 by Bewildering Stories
