Maryna wanted to know what the hell the neighbors were doing.
“Oleg,” Maryna said.
“Yeah?” he grunted, flopping a hefty moving box down onto the bare floor.
“Come look at what they are doing.” Maryna was standing at the window, gazing out at their neighbors, who they hadn’t met yet, having just moved in that day. The neighbors were frantically jamming their green Subaru Forester with armfuls of clothes and bags of loose groceries. Like they were going on a trip to grandmother’s, but had forgotten that suitcases exist.
As Oleg and Maryna watched, the father seized his daughter’s shoulder, the girl couldn’t be older than fifteen, and nearly shoved her into the back seat. He made for the driver’s seat as his wife slammed the trunk shut. Then the girl pounded on the window of the car, apparently remembering something they’d forgotten. Father looked dismayed, but mother raced back into the California bungalow. Father started the car. Maryna thought he was considering leaving without his wife. He put the car into gear, the white reverse lights came on. But he waited. After long seconds, the woman hurtled out of the house, clenching a scrappy brown canine. As the Subaru screeched backward out of its driveway, it ran over their white mailbox.
“Perhaps they were late for something,” Oleg murmured.
“They left the front door open.”
“Hm,” Oleg said. He hoisted another box onto his shoulder, one labeled ‘guest bedroom’ and started for the stairs.
Maryna went outside.
She padded down the steps, crossed their lawn and set foot on the neighbor’s white concrete driveway. She admired their house. The entire neighborhood had been attractive to them, one of the reasons they settled on buying this one. A peaceful, settled neighborhood.
The door to forty-one hung open. Maryna came onto the porch. In the doorframe, she leaned side to side. “Hello?” she called. “Everything all right?”
She heard a murmuring, so she crept forward, placing a sandaled foot inside the house. “Hello?” she called musically. She felt, suddenly, how cold the doorknob was in her hand. “Hello?” She took another step inside. The TV was on, in the kitchen, the source of the murmuring. A sports talk show.
Maryna quickly strode out of the house. She shut their door. From their porch, across the street at forty-four, she saw a similar sight. A man hauled two brimming suitcases to the family’s minivan. His wife followed behind, arms full of food boxes, as though she’d just scooped them straight out of the pantry. They hurled their loads into the vehicle.
“Marshall,” the man screamed. “Marshall.”
A boy came running out the front door and clattered down the steps. He carried a video game, the cord dragging behind him, threatening to trip his unlaced shoes.
“Wait,” Maryna called. She’d crossed her neighbor’s yard to the edge of the street. Her feet balanced on the curb. “Hello?” A red car shot between them, going far too fast for the residential street. “What’s going on?” She’d been nervous about moving to California; all she knew of the place was pot, weirdos and wildfires. She glanced around the sky—the town sat in a valley—but saw no plumes of black, warring smoke.
The sclera of the man’s eyes gleamed at her like beacons. Terror possessed his eyes. Terror. As though he had no time to waste on speaking to Maryna, so his eyes would tell her what was happening.
“Leave,” was all those petrified eyes could specify. “Leave.”
Would you be a doll and answer these questions in the comments?
What does the main character, Maryna, want?
What are your expectations for the rest of the story?
What do you see vividly?
What do you struggle to see?
What do you suspect you should know at this point in the story, but the author has left out?
And if you enjoyed this work, please share this post so we can keep getting new readers! Thanks.
1- Maryna wants to know what is wrong- why is everyone behaving so oddly?
2- I expect to learn what has suddenly driven the neighborhood to evacuate with such fervor. I expect to learn some impending disaster is coming- a bomb, army, swarm of beasts/insects/undead, tornado.... I also expect to discover why Maryna and Oleg were seemingly last to know.
3- I vividly see the teenage girl pounding on the car window, car waiting in reverse, the open door "hanging" at 41, the speeding red car, the sports show on TV in the kitchen, Marshall and his video game, and the LACK of smoke in a clear sky over the trees (of my own neighborhood; not this one in a valley with maybe? trees?).
4- I feel Marshall's father's eyes viscerally- but for some reason I need to know their color to see them. I struggle to see the houses; are they big or small, on top of each other or with yards, in need of maintenance or well-kept? I intuit a classic movie picket-fence neighborhood by the end with some of the lighter imagery, but at the outset I imagined 41 as a 40+ year old ranch in mediocre condition. I am unsure of the weather- my mind first had sun, but that clouded (pun intended) as I read and was less sure.
5- Not much at this point- probably just the weather.
1. Maryna wants a comfortable home in a quiet neighborhood.
2. Looks like she's not going to get the quiet neighborhood - (or maybe she will because everyone else will move away.) But it looks like something horrible is coming (or the neighbors are believers in a new conspiracy theory??) I feel something evil is about to happen and Maryna and Oleg are unaware. There's anticipation about what the evil will be. Doesn't look climate related or they'd be aware of that.It can't be something like toxic water because that wouldn't cause such urgency to get out So....a supernatural evil?? I'm anxious to find out.
3. I see Maryna looking around her new neighborhood with confusion, the dog who almost got left behind and the boy with the video game.
4. I think it's a pretty clear introduction. I wonder what the rest of the neighbors are doing? Are they leaving? Have they already left? Where is everyone going?
5. So many questions about what is happening but I think they will be answered as the story moves along. I think I know what I am supposed to at this point in the story.
When do we get more?