Short Story: The World Below

Author's Note: As I blow off the dust that's gathered on my poorly neglected blog, it occurs to me that despite the fact that all I ever talk about is writing, you most likely haven't had the opportunity to see anything I've written. I feel like this is a mistake, one that I'm going to correct.

This was a short story that I wrote about a year ago for one of my final Creative Classes. It's one of the few short stories I'm particularly proud of, although I'm not a big fan of the ending these days. Perhaps I'll revisit it in the future. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it.

-MC

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"The World Below"
By Matthew Ciarvella

           Nobody alive today remembers the old subway tunnel under the bridge on Broad Street. It used to be part of the Erie Canal, but that was an even longer time ago, or so our father told us, back during the lazy summer days of late July when the plant would close and we'd sit out in the backyard under a shady tree with beers that we weren't old enough to drink, but did anyway. First, it was a canal, he'd said, and then later, it was a subway, and then it was nothing at all, just a tunnel that ran under the entire city like an empty vein. Parts of it had collapsed over the years, and one time, it took out an entire section of Broad Street and killed an old lady who was walking her dog. Or maybe it killed a taxi driver who stopped to have a smoke, or a bike messenger, or a hundred other different people, or nobody, depending who was telling you the story.
            We grew up hearing stories of that old tunnel, even though nobody knew how to get in, or how much of it was left. The section that collapsed was filled in after the accident, but you'd still hear stories about people finding old stairways in their basements that led down into the tunnel. But nobody really knew and so it was just this place that we all knew but never saw, had all heard about but only in stories. Kids ran away to live down there, winos carved out shitty little homes there, and some people (stupid fucking idiots, my father would say) would go down there to play at being explorers and were never seen again.

For The Sake Of August

I couldn't let an entire month slip by without writing something. Well, actually, I could and indeed almost did. Which would be bad. But even worse than not writing anything for an entire month (well, actually longer than that, if you look at the last entry, but who's counting? Not me!) would be yet another "writing a post just to have a post." I've come to realize how pointlessly self-indulgent such things are, which is not to say that the entire act of blogging itself isn't self-indulgent. It's just that I think some things are higher on that particular scale than others.

Dead Tree Books

I want to have the option to own my book in dead tree form someday. Books printed on paper, in other words; you know, that thing we used to use back in grade school to write reports and sometimes print out in TPS reports (with cover sheets!) and other fun stuff like that. Currently, this is the format that books are made into. Format may not be the correct word. Let's call it a medium.

The problem is, I want to walk into a brick and mortar store and buy a dead tree book some day, and yet the world seems to think that both of these things are archaic and doomed to be as relevant as horseshoes and blacksmiths are in today's world. Everything is going to be e-books and blogs and whatever, which makes it somewhat amusing to me that I'm pondering the very subject on a blog.

Who Owns The Story?

After yesterday's brief foray outside of my normal stomping grounds, I return to you with a post that is the bread and butter of this blog: more randomly formed, barely cogent thoughts about writing from somebody hardly qualified to be so opinionated. But that's what blogs are all about, baby; you don't need to know what you're talking about to feel strongly about a thing. You just need to be convincing. Or not even convincing; interesting would probably do just fine, in a pinch.

I was looking over the manuscript for "the book formerly known as the Fallen, except there's already like a hundred goddamn books with that title, so some good friends helped me come up with a much better title." No, that's not the new title; it's just a personal anecdote that's masquerading as the title, since this new title is so good and for some reason, I'm feeling strangely protective of it at the moment. I don't know. It's also why I haven't posted any chapters or excerpts yet. I just have this feeling, like that this thing is a fledgling and if I let too many people touch it, its mother won't take it back and it will starve to death or be eaten by a hawk.

Under Fire

I'd like to talk about something different today. And don't worry, I'm totally sober right now, so it won't be a long, rambling, mostly pointless discussion about deserts, or whatever. Most of the time, I use this space to talk about writing and either the struggles of trying to succeed as a writer, or just general thoughts on the medium. Because, you know, the musings of an unpublished fiction writer are totally important and this isn't at all an exercise in my own narcissism. Nope.

Today at work, I had my first incident. By incident, I mean a situation in which I was required to take action that included calling an ambulance, relaying information to the dispatcher, keeping calm, etc. etc. I'm keeping the description vague, since I use my real name on this blog, it's conceivable that somebody could make the necessary leaps of logic and piece together the real story and I'd rather respect the privacy of others. Anyway, the details are not important. Sufficient to say, an individual needed help, I helped, and remained calm while doing so. Was it a life threatening situation? Not for me. For the other individual? Maybe. I'm not a doctor. Hard to say where the line is between actual emergency and imagined one; most of the time, you won't find out until it's all said and done, and God help you if you assumed incorrectly that it was all imagined.