“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift of God, which is why we call it the present.”
― Bill Keane
The duality of limbo and the concept of Heaven and Hell
The Bus Stop was one of those stories that I couldn’t get a clear thought out of how I wanted the story to go. This was one of the Christian Science Fiction stories that could be polarizing if not done respectfully. But that wasn’t my main concern. It was a concern but not the main one. My main concern was that I wanted to do something different for each story and I was running out of ideas as I getting closer to the end of Phase One. It took me a couple of days to figure out how I was going to tell this story and the solution was pretty simple: do what I did in reverse.
See, the first short story I release, A Crack In A Wall, allowed me to take the unreliable narrator approach to storytelling and I found that it worked perfectly. Especially when I added the fact that he didn’t care for the response of the correspondent. So, I thought it would be a good idea to take that and make the narrator not only reliable but genuinely interested in the conversation. Then, things started to come together.
Halfway through the writing, I got the idea to give the narrator the idiolect of my fabulous Aunt Sherry. I’ve always loved her as she was my favorite aunt. She was always candid and never sugarcoated things for you. She also had zero tolerance for foolishness and had no problem calling you on it. But it was always out of love and respect and that’s what I wanted to convey in the narrator.
Now, because I had made that decision, I had to write the story all over again so I fit it to my vision. That part didn’t take long. No, what actually took a while to complete was a timeline of her life before her death because I wanted it to be a reflective piece. A woman looking back on her life as she’s wondering where she’s going to go. And, all of this while comforting and sympathizing with a much younger soul.
I told my aunt about the story and that the fact that I used her speech pattern for the character. She was ecstatic and honored by the news. I guess she always wanted to be in one of my stories. She didn’t even mind the fact that the character was dead and in limbo. In fact, she found that bit to be fascinating. However, she did ask for an inner of the character’s fate. I didn’t give her an answer; I didn’t even tell her the character’s timeline. I told her that I was going to leave it to the reader’s interpretation.
As we continued to talk about it, I told her that I was going to be using her likeness for another character for another project. She asked me if she, too, was dead and I assured that the character will be very much alive and very lively. Again, she was ecstatic. She’s always happy to hear about my work. Next to my brother, she’s a big cheerleader of mine.
The story began to write itself as I replayed all the conversations I had with my Aunt Sherry. The character only has her idiolect. Not her past. Not her physical appearance. Just her speech pattern.
It was so much fun writing this story because it was a story that was harboring a question that was clearly on everybody’s mind, especially mine. Where are you going to go when you die? Heaven or Hell. I’m a gay man. People are telling me that I’m going to Hell but I have other people telling me that I’m a good person so I’m going to Heaven. So, I wrote this story to help me understand the question even more. Honestly, I just have more questions after finishing it.
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