Came up with an idea for a absurdist / weird fiction short story last night and managed to write this up. It'll be around 5000 words once finished and this is scene 1. any thoughts?
~ Scene 1, The Interview
Hannah placed her hands on the knees of her jeans and stared across at the triumvirate of interviewers on the other side of the table. Each of them - two women, and a man - were dressed in plum purple suits (one of the women in a pantsuit, the other a skirt) over stiff white shirts, and they each held a tablet computer whose manufacturer was hidden by the plethora of gaudy referendum stickers they’d plastered across the back.
Vote YES! one sticker proclaimed.
Vote No is a No-Go! another one cried.
Another showed a pair of disembodied Jaggeresque lips contorting themselves into an “O” shape, shouting, “YES!”
Against the unanimity of the interviewers’ apparel, the stickers became more alive, more enticing. Maybe that was the point.
The man, his face pulverized by Brylcreem and Botox into agelessness, was betrayed by the aging baritone of his voice. “What’s your name, then?”
“Hannah.”
“Hannah! Ah, what a perfectly palindromic appellation!”
Hannah gave a nervous smile. “Yeah, I guess so.”
The woman in the pantsuit asked the next question. Glowering blue eyes peered out upon the world from an angular face, crisply framed by a short blonde bun tethered with military uniformity. “What makes you want to join the Yes campaign, Hannah?”
As Hannah composed an answer mentally the woman stared unblinkingly at her, waiting for an answer, a slow creep of impatience infecting the performative polity of her smile.
“I suppose I want to, you know, make a difference. In some small way. I’ve thought about the options for this referendum, and I came down on the side of Yes.”
A slight frown from the pantsuit woman. “So until recently you were undecided?”
“Well, I hadn’t really given it–“
“How could you not have decided?” The woman seemed to grimace a little. “You weren’t seriously…” she looked away, towards the large window overlooking the city, before jerking her gaze back towards Hannah, making her start. Hannah looked to the other two interviewers for succor, but came there none. They simply moved their gaze from Hannah to their tablets, flicking and scrolling and tapping the odd note out. Pantsuit continued. “You weren’t seriously thinking of voting No, were you? Throwing yourself in with… with them? With those deplorable hounds? I’m sorry, I can barely bring myself to name them.”
Maybe this is some sort of test?
Hannah composed herself. This was a spring job to put a bit of money in her pocket before the next semester. She’d expected to be asked her personal details, about any criminal records and health issues, and when she could start. This third degree she had not expected. “I just hadn’t come across much of the campaign literature. When I did, after some thought, I decided to vote Yes.”
“After some thought?” Pantsuit asked, raising her eyebrows. She placed her elbow on the table between them, and pinched the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger while she took composed breaths. She then turned to her colleagues and said, “Do you see the hurdles we have to overcome? The lack of penetration we have? This referendum is the most important plebiscite vote in a generation, and these people aren’t even aware of the basic issues! Why is our campaign literature not cutting through?”
The air in the room was, despite being quite cool, suddenly oppressive. Hannah’s heartbeat ratcheted up a few beats. She was wearing a wide-collared tee-shirt, and the flesh around her throat felt clammy and exposed. The idea that perhaps she should’ve listened to her mum and taken the job at the supermarket crossed her mind. She decided to be bold. If she had been undecided and come down on the side of Yes, wasn’t that one small vindication of their argument? So, helping with their distribution and dissemination campaign would undoubtedly help.
“Um, could I just, you know, because this is, like–”
It had sounded better in her head.
“No no no no no no no,” the woman rabbited, cutting Hannah off. She put down her tablet, held a finger in the air and offered up a smile that had no humor in it. “Don’t talk. We ask the questions. How committed are you to the project?”
Hannah froze. “The project?”
“The Yes project, you…” up came that finger again, this time to prevent herself from saying something regrettable. Hannah used the spare second to compose herself anew. Let’s decide something. Make a difference to something.
“Yes, of course I’m committed to it. All the way. To the end. I’ve made my choice.”
That seemed to placate the woman for a space. “Good,” she said. She picked up her tablet again and made a couple of little notes.
That left the other woman, hitherto silent, to ask the next question. This woman, again in a plum suit, was softer; her face rounder, and caramel hair hanging in gentle waves around black eyes. “And, Hannah, how would you define your own political beliefs?”
Hannah exhaled, feeling the worst must be over. “Well, I suppose, on balance, given the range of issues covered by the parties, I’m a bit of a centrist.”
“A CENTRIST?” the pantsuit woman cried. She leapt from her chair and raised her tablet high above her head, clutching it so tightly her knuckles were like alabaster sculptures. Visceral strains of malevolence were carried to the edges of her face by a million well-worn capillaries, while her black scowl seemed to make the very air around her poxy and grey. With an almighty scream, she brought down the tablet upon the table, once, twice, a third time, until the glass screen smashed, at which point she thrust it down a fourth and fifth time, before hurling it at the window, where it died with a splintering crunch, leaving her standing there, her plum suit creased, her pin-perfect bun ragged, and her face and bosoms heaving with effort like a prize bull.
Hannah, pinned to her swivel chair by the shock of it, curled her knees up at her chest and sat there, trying to be as small and still as she could be. At which point the man smiled, and gestured with a hand towards the door. “I’m Mark. We’ll be in touch about getting you onto one of our leafletting teams. I’ll show you out.”
He ushered Hannah, stricken and shaking, cradling her hands to her chest, towards the door. When she was out, he poked his little plastic head into the corridor and called out towards the reception desk, “Janet! We need another iPad in meeting room 4.”
~ Scene 1, The Interview
Hannah placed her hands on the knees of her jeans and stared across at the triumvirate of interviewers on the other side of the table. Each of them - two women, and a man - were dressed in plum purple suits (one of the women in a pantsuit, the other a skirt) over stiff white shirts, and they each held a tablet computer whose manufacturer was hidden by the plethora of gaudy referendum stickers they’d plastered across the back.
Vote YES! one sticker proclaimed.
Vote No is a No-Go! another one cried.
Another showed a pair of disembodied Jaggeresque lips contorting themselves into an “O” shape, shouting, “YES!”
Against the unanimity of the interviewers’ apparel, the stickers became more alive, more enticing. Maybe that was the point.
The man, his face pulverized by Brylcreem and Botox into agelessness, was betrayed by the aging baritone of his voice. “What’s your name, then?”
“Hannah.”
“Hannah! Ah, what a perfectly palindromic appellation!”
Hannah gave a nervous smile. “Yeah, I guess so.”
The woman in the pantsuit asked the next question. Glowering blue eyes peered out upon the world from an angular face, crisply framed by a short blonde bun tethered with military uniformity. “What makes you want to join the Yes campaign, Hannah?”
As Hannah composed an answer mentally the woman stared unblinkingly at her, waiting for an answer, a slow creep of impatience infecting the performative polity of her smile.
“I suppose I want to, you know, make a difference. In some small way. I’ve thought about the options for this referendum, and I came down on the side of Yes.”
A slight frown from the pantsuit woman. “So until recently you were undecided?”
“Well, I hadn’t really given it–“
“How could you not have decided?” The woman seemed to grimace a little. “You weren’t seriously…” she looked away, towards the large window overlooking the city, before jerking her gaze back towards Hannah, making her start. Hannah looked to the other two interviewers for succor, but came there none. They simply moved their gaze from Hannah to their tablets, flicking and scrolling and tapping the odd note out. Pantsuit continued. “You weren’t seriously thinking of voting No, were you? Throwing yourself in with… with them? With those deplorable hounds? I’m sorry, I can barely bring myself to name them.”
Maybe this is some sort of test?
Hannah composed herself. This was a spring job to put a bit of money in her pocket before the next semester. She’d expected to be asked her personal details, about any criminal records and health issues, and when she could start. This third degree she had not expected. “I just hadn’t come across much of the campaign literature. When I did, after some thought, I decided to vote Yes.”
“After some thought?” Pantsuit asked, raising her eyebrows. She placed her elbow on the table between them, and pinched the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger while she took composed breaths. She then turned to her colleagues and said, “Do you see the hurdles we have to overcome? The lack of penetration we have? This referendum is the most important plebiscite vote in a generation, and these people aren’t even aware of the basic issues! Why is our campaign literature not cutting through?”
The air in the room was, despite being quite cool, suddenly oppressive. Hannah’s heartbeat ratcheted up a few beats. She was wearing a wide-collared tee-shirt, and the flesh around her throat felt clammy and exposed. The idea that perhaps she should’ve listened to her mum and taken the job at the supermarket crossed her mind. She decided to be bold. If she had been undecided and come down on the side of Yes, wasn’t that one small vindication of their argument? So, helping with their distribution and dissemination campaign would undoubtedly help.
“Um, could I just, you know, because this is, like–”
It had sounded better in her head.
“No no no no no no no,” the woman rabbited, cutting Hannah off. She put down her tablet, held a finger in the air and offered up a smile that had no humor in it. “Don’t talk. We ask the questions. How committed are you to the project?”
Hannah froze. “The project?”
“The Yes project, you…” up came that finger again, this time to prevent herself from saying something regrettable. Hannah used the spare second to compose herself anew. Let’s decide something. Make a difference to something.
“Yes, of course I’m committed to it. All the way. To the end. I’ve made my choice.”
That seemed to placate the woman for a space. “Good,” she said. She picked up her tablet again and made a couple of little notes.
That left the other woman, hitherto silent, to ask the next question. This woman, again in a plum suit, was softer; her face rounder, and caramel hair hanging in gentle waves around black eyes. “And, Hannah, how would you define your own political beliefs?”
Hannah exhaled, feeling the worst must be over. “Well, I suppose, on balance, given the range of issues covered by the parties, I’m a bit of a centrist.”
“A CENTRIST?” the pantsuit woman cried. She leapt from her chair and raised her tablet high above her head, clutching it so tightly her knuckles were like alabaster sculptures. Visceral strains of malevolence were carried to the edges of her face by a million well-worn capillaries, while her black scowl seemed to make the very air around her poxy and grey. With an almighty scream, she brought down the tablet upon the table, once, twice, a third time, until the glass screen smashed, at which point she thrust it down a fourth and fifth time, before hurling it at the window, where it died with a splintering crunch, leaving her standing there, her plum suit creased, her pin-perfect bun ragged, and her face and bosoms heaving with effort like a prize bull.
Hannah, pinned to her swivel chair by the shock of it, curled her knees up at her chest and sat there, trying to be as small and still as she could be. At which point the man smiled, and gestured with a hand towards the door. “I’m Mark. We’ll be in touch about getting you onto one of our leafletting teams. I’ll show you out.”
He ushered Hannah, stricken and shaking, cradling her hands to her chest, towards the door. When she was out, he poked his little plastic head into the corridor and called out towards the reception desk, “Janet! We need another iPad in meeting room 4.”
