I wrote this short story as an assignment we were given in class last October. Personally, I enjoy writing challenges like this the most in this class because they allow us to expand our literary knowledge through the outside reading we do, while also giving us the opportunity to exercise our imaginations.
Trigger Warning: Violence, language, and disturbing imagery. Also, a grammatical disclaimer: I included some intentional typos and a subject-verb agreement error for the purpose of an immersive experience.
……….
The city stopped breathing for eleven seconds. A noxious wind came charging in from the west, dragging with it the last pink embers of dawn until they drowned in the cracked pavement. Buses idled mid-intersection, crosswalk signals flashed into nobody’s eyes, and every head tilted toward the sky—or rather, toward what had just fallen out of it.
@coastalert: brooo what just fell outta the sky??!?!?
#onlyinohaio
Last night, the sky cracked open so many times that one might have thought Zeus had Hephaestus hammer at it until it shattered and scattered millions of cold glass shards onto the waiting ground. At first light, something—someone—lay sprawled on a wet car top from where the rainwater trickled toward the drains. From her back, something like branches, slick with gasoline, shone like obsidian under the streetlights that still clung to the night.
@piercoffee: that’s called performance art i think
No one rushed to help. They just filmed, their reflections flickering in the iridescent puddles around her.
Only when the shape twitched did someone gasp.
@marcyinmotion: NAH SHE’S MOVING
A city worker in an obnoxious orange safety vest finally made his way over. “Hey—hey, miss?” His voice wobbled on the uneven rocks below.
The opaline creature stirred like a child roused at an unwelcome hour for her dreams. With effort, she lifted her head, the motion slow and deliberate. Her face was striking—too luminous for the smogged light—but her eyes shimmered, wet with something between fury and grief. She drew a sharp breath as she took in the scene before her: the sprawl of a world that had forgotten itself.
“Uh…, miss? Outdoor art installations were cancelled because of the rain!” the worker called, half to her, half to the crowd.
“The sea is weeping.”
The worker wrinkled his nose.
“Okay…, sounds rough. Let’s get you inside before the tide decides to eat you,” he offered, still not touching her, though. Instead, he waved up at the gawkers. “Show’s over, people! Move along!”
@dockstream: hope she’s not contagious lol
@fadezontop replied: i am NOT doing 2020 again
The man led her along the boardwalk toward a beige municipal building that hunched over the sidewalk. Inside, the hum of fluorescents flattened the world, and it smelled like Venti Caramel Crunch Frappuccino and Evelyn’s mind detox aromatherapy spray.
“Sit here,” he urged, handing her a half-used roll of ecological tissues. “You got a name?”
“A name is a mere sound,” she murmured. “It defines no one.”
The man half-laughed, half-sighed. “Alright, philosopher. Where’re you from? LA?”
She didn’t reply. Instead, she pressed a wad of tissues to her arms, smearing the black sludge on her skin. Outside the window, crows gathered on the ledge, peering in through the glass. Their feathers gleamed slick like the asphalt outside.
The fog stretched out without end, wrapping the island in a pale gossamer. It looked all but ethereal. For such an evil omen, it was as worthy of admiration as porcelain.
“Are you hungry?” the worker inquired.
She nodded, lips parting as if to release a thought that vanished into the fog. The worker handed her a paper cup of water, the kind that collapses if you hold it too long.
“Got any money?”
She blinked, something seemingly upsetting her at last. “No, I have no money. Money makes people forget their neighbors.”
He snorted, pressing his thumb to the monitor’s sensor.
“Well, there’s plenty of ways to forget yourself these days. As for the money, you could always film your breakdown for TikTok. Or hell, invest in crypto—people get rich losing money nowadays.”
When the woman stepped outside, crows followed, creeping along the curb through the snarl of morning traffic. The city was already awake: traffic coughing, gulls crying overhead like alarm clocks that never quit. She walked barefoot along the waterfront promenade, where the air tasted of plastic and ozone. Billboards promised luxury condos and “eco-living,” though the water beneath them shimmered in toxic rainbows. She passed people who never looked up. They were talking, yes—but into small glowing rectangles, their voices swallowed by Bluetooth halos.
@coastfeed.live
that girl again?? barefoot??
reply: it’s giving Raye
At the open-air market, stalls crowded the sidewalk—flowers wrapped in plastic, fruit stacked like jewels. A pop song leaked from someone’s earbuds, but it wasn’t too imposing over the college student who was arguing with his girlfriend through earbuds.
A young woman typing on her phone glanced up long enough to whisper, “She’s kinda pretty. No phone, though—like, how does she live?”
Her friend didn’t look up. “Maybe she’s filming us instead?”
The creature stood lissome in the marketplace, burning with the discipline of a flame. She found the only green in sight was a traffic light. Nearby, an abandoned planter slumped beside a cracked bench lay groaning, cigarette butts half-buried in the dirt like fossils. From the torn pocket of her mud-stained cardigan, she drew a handful of seeds—where she found them, no one knew—and pressed them into the lifeless dirt.
A security guard hovered nearby.
“Ma’am, you can’t do that here,” the words tumbled automatically. Her emerald eyes looked up. “Then where can things grow?”
He hesitated. Behind her, the planted patch glimmered faintly in the midday haze, as if the ground remembered a time when it was alive.
The guard stepped back, muttering into his radio, “Yeah, she’s harmless. Just planting something.”
She watched him go, her gaze drifting over the market’s wilted colors. Even the flowers were tired of pretending to be alive.
As the day scrolled on, clips of her walking barefoot racked up millions of views, each caption more daring than the last. Some admired her beauty; others called her crazy. Some even pitied her and the frail remnants that unfurled from her back like withered leaves, which was the greatest bravery of all.
By nightfall, the peculiar woman was cosseting a scrawny pup that plodded its way to her. Brushing the dust from its matted fur, she lifted it tenderly.
“People breathe smoke,” she murmured, her voice soft as poesy. “Forests sound tired.”
Nearby, a group of drunkards spilled from a dive bar, gibbering all the nonsense of the world like politicians. When they spotted her, their slobbering and yodeling sank to a susurration, and they closed in, circling with a single mind. Momentarily, the same frigid wind from the morning swept back, thickening the darkness across the street. The men pressed on, slow and unsteady, dragging themselves forward as heavily as the shadows gathering round the lamps.
“So, this is what goes viral nowadays?” one of them scoffed. “Guess pity’s trending again.”
Their laughter rattled like coins in an empty cup, but the creature focused on the uneasy pup, whispering to it while the fiends’ knives clicked open in drunken disharmony.
Whimpering, the pup leapt from the woman’s arms and dashed off clumsily. At that, the men swarmed her, pinning her clumsily, knees and elbows jamming her arms. The knives tore more than they cut. The growths from her back split with the sound of breaking wood. They did not part cleanly; they ripped apart like flesh under wolves’ claws. The men cursed as the blades jammed, twisting and wrenching. They wrestled her against the stones, grunting with their own exertion. Their boots slipped on concrete, and all the while, she did not resist.
Upon finally staggering back, their hands raw with blisters and coats stippled with mud, the woman lay still in the gutter. In the violent stillness, the sea turbulently awakened, billows swelling like lungs beneath the wind keeper’s hand, ebbing with each hiss against the shore. The men trudged off, scraping the dirt in the other direction, but one lingered to drive a final kick into her side. “Go back where you came from, freak!”
Laden with pity, no bird took flight that night, and the sky wrapped itself in gray. Dawn crept in, pale and tired, over the skyscrapers and found no trace of her outside. She found her way to a greenhouse—one half-swallowed by dirt—and folded herself among the wilted leaves. Blood seeped into the potting soil, tracing delicate rivers through the dirt, as though something still fought to take root underground.
When she woke up, the same city worker from the day before stood in the open doorway of the greenhouse, rubbing his temples. She lay curled among the overturned trays. Dust floated where sunlight used to fall.
“Jesus,” he muttered. “You again.”
She opened her eyes, smiling faintly. “I only wanted the flowers to live.”
He crouched beside her. “Lady, you can’t keep doing this. You’re bleeding all over the place. And this greenhouse is condemned anyway. The city’s cutting funding—no one’s gonna fix it.”
Her gaze drifted upward, to the fogged glass panels catching a bit of sunlight. “Nothing grows anymore, anyhow.”
He sighed, exhaling through his vape. The irksome smell of artificial mint curled through the air. “Ain’t that the truth?”
He turned toward the exit, the vape still glowing faintly between his fingers. The pod landed flickering, half-buried in straw. Nobody even noticed as the ember kissed the dry stalks, breathing them into flame. By the time the first crackle stirred the air, the worker was long gone down the road. The flames licked greedily at the wood, swallowing the barn whole. Sapling screamed and kicked against their pots; their stomping sounded like thousands of snapping bones.
Onlookers gasped, one of them crying, “Someone’s in there!”—whereupon the roar of the flames seemed deafening against the silence.
What was there to say?
The barn sagged in on itself, groaning as it spat sparks up into the sky. Just as the crowd resigned, the bristled foliage inside turned to ash, the doors split, and a figure stumbled through. Her shirt was as charred as her skin now. She was hunched over, limping out of the light. Gasps rippled through the public. Some crossed themselves—some laughed. “Takes more than fire to kill a freak.”
For whatever reason, Zeus was angry again that night. From the looks of it, he might have personally hammered the sky, as though he was consumed by the kind of anger reserved for the wise—not for those who simply didn’t know any better.
By morning, only the skeleton of the greenhouse remained—melted steel, warped glass, soil scorched to gray.
The world wide web scoured the pictures of the charred skeleton of the greenhouse, whispering to each other that she might still be hiding in the smoke. Nobody could agree whether she’d died or simply vanished. Some swore the footage of her crawling from the fire was edited; others said it was a marketing stunt for an energy drink. The thread trended for a few hours, then sank beneath newer events and ads for skin serums and oceanfront apartments.
Down by the pier, the water lapped at the rocks with its same tired rhythm. Plastic bottles bobbed between the stones. The water shimmered like a mirror, reflecting nothing clean enough to save it.
. . . . . . .
García Márquez, Gabriel. "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings." Collected Stories, translated by Gregory Rabassa and J. S. Bernstein, Penguin, 2024, pp. 186-193.
García Márquez, Gabriel. "Death Constant Beyond Love." Collected Stories, translated by Gregory Rabassa and J. S. Bernstein, Penguin, 2024, pp. 219-227.
García Márquez, Gabriel. "Eyes of a Blue Dog." Collected Stories, translated by Gregory Rabassa and J. S. Bernstein, Penguin, 2024, pp. 43-49.
García Márquez, Gabriel. “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World.” Collected Stories, translated by Gregory Rabassa and J. S. Bernstein, Penguin, 2024, pp. 212-218.
In revising my story, I aimed to modernize the atmosphere and reshape the central message to reflect pollution as a more pressing and contemporary issue compared to the more timeless theme of bullying. I chose to retain the “water” motif, but now it serves to highlight the irony that even when nature appears abundant and conditions seem ideal, pollution still destroys life beneath the surface. I also reworked the townspeople’s reactions to the alien creature—rather than giving everyone a uniform personality as in A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings, I introduced more variety to their responses to reveal differences in character and social standing. These changes helped the story feel more dynamic and layered. Additionally, I reimagined the creature as a symbol of the fatal consequences of ignorance—perhaps even as a personification of Mother Earth herself. Through these revisions, I tried to blend a modern setting with a tone reminiscent of Márquez’s magical realism, hoping to preserve some of his signature atmosphere while making the story’s message resonate with today’s environmental anxieties.