I'll Be There
One of the most important assignments this unit was to create a piece of narrative writing limited to just 700 words. Writing fitting that limitation is known as 'flash fiction.'
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full graphic novel
The world went dark.
His monitor stared back at him, black, unlit. Did his motherboard blow? He glanced at his alarm clock. There it sat, dim, unblinking.
“It must be the fuses...”
He wasn’t even sure where the fuses were.
The hall looked much more eery when the lights were out. He made an effort to swallow. Was his throat always this dry?
Step.
Step.
Step.
Why did his shoes feel so tight?
The bolt flipped open, with a KA-CHUNK.
He threw the door open, and the light of day hit like a hammer to the forehead. Kneeling on the porch, he shielded his eyes until the fire in his head decided to die down.
Upon removing his hands from his face, he was greeted by the nose of a large white dog.
“Hey there, puppy,” he said softly.
The dog bounded off down the street, barking madly. A woman was jogging up the street towards his direction. Holding a leash!
The dog in question, however, was no longer visible.
“Weird,” he thought. “He can’t have gone that far, can he?”
“‘Scuse me!” She called as she approached. “Did you see a dog run past just now?”
“Uh, actually, I did. I just stepped outside, and he was right in front of me. I tried to give him a pat, but then he ran off that way.” He pointed towards the opposite end of the road.
“Oh, crap...” She said under her breath. “Would you mind keeping an eye out here while I go look for him?”
“Yeah, no problem I suppose.”
“Great, great,” she said while running off.
As if on queue, once she’d run a good twenty yards away, he saw the dog emerge from behind a parked car.
“You sure are trouble, aren’t you?” he said. Just as he was about to yell out, he heard a rumble from his left.
The dog was now smack in the middle of the road, investigating what must have been a particularly interesting bit of roadkill. A sedan was swerving ever closer, veering side to side, like a drunken elephant thundering across the road. Its subwoofer thumped loud bass notes that rattled its license plate, and it looked as if it was quickly spinning out of control.
He stood there, stunned.
Screams penetrated his eardrums from his right. From his peripheral vision he saw the girl shouting and waving at her oblivious companion.
The car was forty-five feet away now.
Thirty-five.
Twenty-five.
This couldn’t happen. He steeled himself, pushed his glasses further up his nose, and blasted into full sprint. The pavement hit his feet with every stride, sending a wave of impact rolling and coiling all the way up his spine. He was mere feet away from the dog now. It was still sniffing away at the road’s last victim, unaware of its own peril. The car continued in its haphazard path, closing in on its prey.
He dove at the dog and wrapped his arms around its midsection, just before the flash of steel, paint, and glass went barreling past.
And then he hit the ground, rolling with the yelping dog, quickly coming to a halt, face up, looking towards the sky.
A few seconds later, he saw the girl run up, anxious. The dog began to run circles around him.
“Oh my god, oh my god, are you alright?”
“Yeah, fine... Your dog sure gets focused on whatever he’s sniffing, huh?”
She let out a laugh despite herself. “I suppose he does. He can get pretty stubborn on walks, but he’s never done anything like this before. I’m so sorry, I have no idea how to thank you... You saved his life!”
“Don’t worry about it, really. Anyone would’ve done the same.”
Even him.
“Actually, I was putting these invitations in mailboxes while I was jogging.” She handed him one of the papers.
“It’s something new I’m trying out. Just a block party, maybe an annual thing? Once a summer or so. Well, interested? I’d love for you to come.”
A smile danced across his lips. It came easily enough, but felt unfamiliar, like his face was out of practice.
“Well, it’d be good for me to, you know, leave the cave once in a while.”
She giggled. “Hey, at least you’re honest. Promise I’ll see you there?”
“I’ll be there.”
“Great!” She turned away, whistling for her dog, resuming her jog.
“See you there!” She shouted over her shoulder.
“Yeah!”
“You will,” he thought to himself.
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The story first came together in the form of the graphic novel. I've read comics ever since I could read at all, and I've drawn ever since I could hold a pencil, so making the graphic novel itself wasn't the most challenging bit. I had a fair sense of how to set up each panel and vary each 'shot.'
The most difficult part of the whole process was coming up with a compelling story given the limitations placed on us. I was largely inspired by the Disney short 'Paperman' (which played before Wreck-It Ralph), as it was a beautifully animated, scored, and written narrative that manages to do so much with seemingly so little.
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