Prompt 3: Ventriloquy Writing, Janice, FPS
Shit… what’s his name? How do I not remember his name? Brad? Benji… Bowen? God, that’s so embarrassing. 5 months here and I don’t know the name of the only dude who works Monday midnight shift with me. Jesus. Moments like these make me think I could make more of an effort at work-- be more of a “team player”, or whatever WorldMart told us to call ourselves during training. But then I watch our manager get in his car and hotbox for so long that the smoke practically turns opaque, and I think I might actually be the most involved employee here. I mean, aside from Brock. Brian. Shit.
Anyway, Blake just pulled a finger from his pocket- Has he been holding onto that?- and the zombie across from us is motioning for him to hand it over. Look: I’m not jealous of a dead woman. That’d be pathetic. But Bryce and the zombie are like, flirting right now? She’s asking him to choose between an orange or red skirt for tonight and sweet, stupid Billy is telling her she’d look pretty in orange even though it’s obvious that orange would look just disgusting with her green undertones. I can’t believe he’s humoring this at all. She’s not even pretty.
She’s kind of pretty.
But she’s dead, and also has terrible taste in fashion anyway.
They’re heading back to the makeup aisles together. Gross. Just flaunting their fucking chemistry in my face. Anyway, WorldMart sells guns. And pretty zombie lady, for whoever’s keeping track, is already dead, so I wouldn’t be able to really hurt her.
“I’m in Firearms. Stay low.”
This is stupid. I recognize that, objectively, this is a stupid idea. But my stupid hands are still picking out a stupid hand cannon from stupid WorldMart’s stupid large collection. Does no one even realize that she might be a threat? Maybe she wants to eat our brains or like, make us experience hell or something. Beck's just fallen for her deceptive charm. If anything, I'm protecting us.
The phone’s ringing now. It’s Blaine, trying to talk me out of killing his zombie girlfriend. And he’s defending her, too, because how could I not see that pretty zombie lady has a heart of gold actually?
I hate this job.
[editors note: the narrator of FPS isn’t named, so that’s where the stuff about Janice not remembering what to call him comes from. Sorry that it gets repetitive lmao. Writing is hard.]
I really like how you interpreted part of "First Person Shooter" in Janice's perspective. The way you capture how fast the mind can be is great and the way you use the narrator not having a name is well played. You are making the scene seem even more real and when reading it, I could picture elements of having a job in real life where you are both competitive when it comes to the job at the same time as trying to be helpful to your coworkers. I really enjoyed it.
ReplyDeleteI think you captured Janine's spirit pretty well. Like, we didn't get a super in-depth look at her, but if I had to imagine her internal monologue, it would probably sound something like that. It's interesting that you interpreted her motive behind attacking zombie lady as jealousy over the narrator. We never really learned what kind of society they're in; neither Janine nor the narrator are surprised at the existence of zombies, so I guess we can assume they're a somewhat regular occurrence (?) idk. If that's the case, this seems like a more realistic motive than fear alone. If I saw something possibly dangerous (like a bear or something) in a grocery store, I like to think I would first exit the store, then try to call authorities to safely remove the bear instead of heading straight to the hand-cannons to deal with it myself, but if said bear were flirting with someone I kinda like I might j go for the cannons ya feel.
ReplyDeleteSince the story does not provide any explanation of what Janine's motives or emotions are, if you are writing the story from her point of view, it is necessary to interpret what is going on inside Janine's head yourself. I think that you did a very good job with this. In your story, Janine's thoughts about the zombie do make sense, given what little we have to go on from the original story. I think your story was interesting because used Janine's thoughts to hint at what emotions could be driving her actions. For example, the jealousy she feels towards the zombie seems to be what drives Janine to arm herself. I also like how the story seemed to follow the progression of Janine's thoughts as she watched events unfold. The style that you wrote in has an almost "stream-of-consciousness-esque" quality to it.
ReplyDeleteI think you did a good job of showing what Janine's thoughts would sound like. I liked how you dealt with the story's narrator not having a name in a funny and interesting way by giving him a different name every time, saying that Janine forgot his name. It was cool to see her perspective of what was going on, since the story we read didn't provide such insight.
ReplyDeleteI like how your ending shows Janine's point of view and the fear and disgust underlying her motives. It's funny that she's kind of jealous of her co-worker flirting with a zombie lady, and yet she still hasn't learned his name. Clearly, Janine views herself as the most rational and competent person in the situation, which is different from the narrator viewing her as irrationally panicking in the original story. The "team player" comment is good, since it shows that Janine has the same boredom and distaste for her job as the narrator.
ReplyDelete