Sleeping
How many words do you think it takes to tell a good short story? It's probably less than you think. Have you ever been a situation and nothing overt happened but as it dragged on things began to add up and you realized....something was wrong? Spoilers for this week's story in the content warning.
The Facts
Text: Sleeping Author: Katherine Weber
Genre: Flash fiction, Modern, Drama Year: 2003
Available: Flash Fiction Forward Anthology
OR Available online (Free!)
Content Warning: Implication of miscarriage, some discussion of this in my post.
The Fiction
If we're going to talk about short stories then we should talk about short stories. Some of the stories I've talked about on this blog have been over twenty pages long! Lets talk about a real short short story. Say 1,000 words? Maybe 1,500 max? While opinion on the internet seems to vary on what the exact cut off is this week we're talking about a popular modern genre of the short story: flash fiction!. Flash fiction, sometimes called postcard fiction (as in stories you could fit on the back of a postcard) are the shortest of short stories. Flash fiction asks the question: just how few words can you use to make a powerful and impactful story?
Flash fiction cuts away all the fluff, all the purple prose, and extraneous detail; it cuts to straight to the heart of a story. It doesn't have time to do anything else. Some may think, oh smaller word count, less work, it must be easier. Arguably flash fiction is actually harder to write because it requires such concise and powerful writing that has to entertainingly and effectively show big scale ideas in such a small space. It often uses the tools of traditional short stories we've talked about in past weeks such as a unique character voice, the twist, and/or clever formatting to convey a compelling story in a small word count.
This weeks story is Sleeping by Katherine Weber. It tells the tale of a young girl, Harriet, babysitting for a couple. She is told the baby is sleeping, and to please not disturb the baby by opening the squeaky door. She wont have to change a diaper, feed him, or even look in on him. As the evening wears on we get a few more strange details such as the fact that the baby's room is locked, that Harriet doesn't know the Winter's at all and was approached by them randomly in the community center to babysit, and that she has never seen Charles, the baby or even knows how old he is supposed to be.
After being paid too much Mr. Winter drives her home and says, "My wife...you understand don't you?" and without ever saying it out loud we and Harriet understand what this story is about.
The Feeling
This story does a few classic short story tricks really well. As we saw in The Lottery there is that creeping sense as you read that something about this situation is wrong. She is told the baby wont wake up, and to not even open the door to look in on him because it squeaks and could wake him. As the night drags on Harriet finds that the door to the baby's room is locked so she can't open it even if there was some kind of emergency. She listens and can't hear any sound coming from said room, not even of a baby breathing. We then learn that the Winter's don't even know her and approached her at the local pool to babysit because she was that age and gender often associated with "babysitter". But upon reflection it is extremely odd for a couple to hire an adolescent girl they don't know or have any references about and trust her with their baby. She also doesn't know what baby Charles looks like, clearly never having seen him, or any pictures of him in the house.
One classic bit of writing advice is "show don't tell" which is another thing this story does excellently: None of the character's or the narration ever say it out loud but by the end of the story the details and behavior of the characters make it clear: there is no baby in the Winter's house.
The line about "depressing wedding photos" that Harriet finds also lends to a clue as to what has happened here. Depressing wedding photo's is such an odd phrase it took me a couple of reads to realize what Weber was implying: that Mrs. Winter's is pregnant in the wedding photos requiring the need for a marriage. The clues outlined in the paragraph above leading to the conclusion that there is no baby then allow us to realize that Mrs. Winter's must have had a miscarriage, and unable to deal with the trauma is living out some kind of fantasy of "baby Charles" with her husband, requiring him hire a "babysitter" so that he can get her out of the house for a couple of hours.
This story is a stellar example of show don't tell. Everything that I've laid out above is implied, and if you follow the clues makes sense, but none of it is told to us, or even to Harriet. We are left to puzzle out this strange and sad night in the same way this young woman out of her depth had to put the pieces together. The way Weber presents the story through strange observations works so well with the character of Harriet. It makes the reader feel the same sense of confusion and then understanding that the young girl does.
This story is a page and a half. It contains a beginning, middle and ending. It sets up a situation: a girl babysitting, and then creates a sense of wrongness through the small observations laid out throughout the night, and then presents that classic short story twist, what a writing professor of mine once called, "the moment of epiphany". The oh where we go to the top of the page, re-read and realize "oh, yes of course that is what's going on."
Of all the stories written about on this blog this one is so far the shortest, and can be read in less then five minutes. It is masterfully subtle, and yet gives us just enough to figure out what's happened to Harriet on this strange night. This is one you can definitely spare some time for.
Comments