I have realized that in order to get the best feedback I can, I need to post the full chapters, not excerpts. So, I'm going to take a few steps back and post the first three chapters in full, even though I've posted excerpts from them previously. I agree that the first chapter is weak; it'll likely be reworked into a later chapter. I'm still going to post the chapters that I've written to this point just so you can see where I'm going with this, then I'm going to start reworking things and you'll see that. This is scary for me and my stomach always drops when I first read any negative feedback. I have an initial feeling that I should quit. But I take a breath, read the feedback again and start thinking about how I make changes that will make a better story.
So, here is the current Chapter 1 in full. You've seen most of it already, actually: She was bathed in sunbeams and Mark couldn’t make out her features. It didn’t matter. She was radiant as always.He was lying in that field of unnamed and exotic flowers, the one he often dropped softly into in his dreams. The air’s warmth plastered him back into the short grass, the blades massaging his tanned muscles.
Mark was naked from the waist up and his skin rippled when she laid a thin hand upon his chest from above. Mark inhaled a breath and pulled her down. She fell onto him with a laugh.
Even with her face in front of him, she was still a sunshine blur. Mark reached for her chin and felt it slim and warm against his hand. He bent up to meet her lips and she obliged. There was no sensation, though, as if he had just been shot through with Novocain. The sun’s hot glow began to subside into numbness and Mark fought to block out the thoughts that had reared up like a furor as he held onto what he wanted.
Mark knew the scenario wasn’t real; not in the way he wished. The colors and sensations were much too vivid to exist. He recognized that he was back in his bed in his North Carolina apartment. Mark was never suckered into his dreams. His consciousness always held anchor in reality; his sleeping mind no longer possessed the ability to sweep him away.
This dream, though, the one in which he saw her, was different than any of his other flat fantasies. Mark knew he wasn’t really in that endless field with her under a sky tinged purple. The girl he saw on top of him, her brown air hanging down on his cheeks; she could not cross that barrier in his mind. He was not able to believe that her physical presence was real. Her voice, however, transcended his reason. Mark couldn’t deny how full her voice was, how soothing it felt, or how he was unable to control what she was saying with his imagination.
“I wish you could stay,” she said.
“I was thinking the same thing,” Mark admitted, relaxing under her weight in the grass. “This field…endlessly,” he muttered, hugging her head to his chest. He still could not make out her features but her presence was enough.
“But you can’t,” she whispered with regret in her voice.
“And why not?” he asked, half-grinning. “I’ve got at least three more hours before the alarm goes off.”
Through the shadow that covered her, he could feel her maintain her seriousness. “You have to go help him,” she said.
“Help who?” Mark already sensed her response but wished to avoid it.
“Jeff,” she said, the word echoing through her cheeks to his bare chest.
Mark paused and sighed. “I know. I haven’t seen him in a long time. It’s…difficult.”
“You have to,” she commanded, in that way she had of being domineering but endearing all the same.
“What’s wrong?” Mark asked, pushing aside any hesitation out of concern.
“He’s in trouble. He’s in a bad place,” she cryptically stated. “But more than that, you have to help him move on.”
“I’m not sure that’s possible,” Mark said, feeling his bottom eyelids puff out. “I would know.”
She moved up a bit, pressing her small, firm breasts into his chest, and once again hung over his face, her dark hair obscuring what he could make out of her features. “I know you can save him,” she said confidently. “Do it for me.”
“It’s not just him I want to save, Samantha,” Mark said, his voice choking up as painful memories gripped him.
She ran her fingers along his cheek. “I wish that were possible.”
Mark leaned his head up, defiantly looking into what he imagined he could see of her eyes. “Who says it isn’t?”
Her expression, he could feel, was a mixture of pride and sympathy. She kissed him again and it actually began to feel real this time. Then, the phone rang.
***
Mark jumped off of his bed and dropped to the floor where he hazily recalled leaving the cordless phone a few nights before, under a pile of CDs and clean clothes he hadn’t felt like putting away. Mark was still clothed in half of his baseball uniform, a reminder of a season that had just ended the day before.
Furiously, the phone rang again and Mark snatched the receiver just a ring before the answering machine sprang to action. He began to relax a bit as he sat in the nest of clothes and offered a tired hello but he stiffened up when he heard who was on the line.
Lisa Montiero hesitantly greeted him and immediately addressed what he had hoped she wouldn’t.
“Mark, I know you wouldn’t normally hear from me but I don’t know who else to call,” she said, practically whispering. It’s Jeff…You’re his oldest friend…”
Mark swallowed away the dryness in his throat and felt an eerie pang in his chest upon hearing that. It was a mother’s desperate concern for her son he was listening to but even through the quickly retreating memories of his dream he remembered a similar message.
“He’s hasn’t been himself ever since she died, Mark, you know that. But lately, oh, his breath always smells like alcohol and I found-” She stopped short and Mark her voice quiver out a sob. “I was in his room. I shouldn’t have been but I was concerned and when he wasn’t there I went in and, oh god, there was a note. It was half-written but it sounded like…It sounded like…”
“Ms. Montiero,” said Mark, his voice still gravelly from sleep. “What can I do?”
“I know you two haven’t talked much since you left town but if you could just, talk to him. You’re the only one he can relate to about this. I hope you can find something out. He won’t talk to me. If you could call him,” she pleaded.
“I’ll try,” Mark offered, not confident in his ability. He had already started planning his excuses when the words from his dream came back to him and punched him in the ribs, giving him a cold stop of breath and stunned conviction.
“I know you can save him. Do it for me.”
It hadn’t been Jeff’s mom saying that. She was still fumbling over her plea for Mark’s help. The words had felt like they were in the room, coming from somewhere eternally out of sight.
“I’ll do you one better than call,” Mark said to anyone listening. “I haven’t been home in a long while. It’s time.”
As Jeff’s mother thanked him, Mark said goodbye and gently laid the phone down, taking a breath. He didn’t know how to help Jeff, though he desperately wanted to. Where was in his friend’s head? Jeff could be a cipher, even when in a normal state of mind. Jeff’s Mom wasn’t one to over-worry, was she? Whatever the case, Mark had just agreed to go home. Home. What was he thinking? How would he… Mark shoved the questions aside, clenched his hands into fists and blasted himself up with a pushup, hurling away the last hesitance. No, he had promised. And he had to. He owed it to Jeff. To…her.
It was a whirlwind that followed. Mark gripped the walls of the shower as the hot water engulfed him. Once dry, he pulled on a tight, blue-sleeved raglan shirt and tossed what he would need in an old suitcase and a bookbag. He was at the door, taking one last glance at the mess be called an apartment and a life, before he locked it away and entered his rusty car. His steel bat, a sort of comfort item, stuck between the seats, he roared out of his complex’s parking lot. Mark’s eyes hypnotically watched the roadside sights as he sped homeward: an out-of-place windmill caught in the sunset, a pristine ice cream shop that had been abandoned for years, a lady in a purple flapper hat and matching dress standing motionless on the shoulder in the middle of the night. (A sleep-deprivation-caused phantom, perhaps?)
Mark’s lips sang unknowingly along with a song on the radio, mouthing, “I still love the way you feel.” His focus was on the road but his mind was elsewhere, replaying the good memories of the past like flickering film. Mark moved through all of it with the driving realization that, while his dreams might be composed of images beyond possible beauty, the message he had received was from a place other than his mind. Mark made the trip back to New Jersey in record time.
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