For this experiment we need to imagine that fiction writing conventions have been forgotten and we must invent them from the everyday.
We begin with a man, a real man, who, in real life has just received a call from his daughter. His daughter calls and says, “I’m on the other side of town and I’ve run out of gas.”
The man accidentally writes (meaning he does so without considering why he’s written this down) that his daughter has just called and that she’s on the other side of town. “I received a call from my daughter. She’d run out of gas and needed a ride.” He then, as real people do, changes his mind as to the accidental nature of his recording because, after all, the event is true.
He lists his options. He can 1) leave his daughter stranded 2) take the can in his garage and purchase gas and fill his daughter’s tank with just enough for her to complete the job 3) pick up his daughter and go back for her car in the morning, repeating option 2.
The man records his choice, which is option 2 (although using links and separate documents he could follow all of them).
The man fills a gas can at the filling station, drives across town, and as he approaches his daughter’s car he notices, then understands, that the car is empty. He parks and begins a search. Of course, his daughter is neither in her car nor does she respond to his shouts, so, he writes, “I parked behind her car. She was no where to be seen. I called for her. But there was no response. It was a dark street. On one side was a chain link fence and a section of city reservoir, filled due to recent rain. Rows of low-roofed warehouses on the other side curved toward an intersection, whose lights blinked yellow.”
The man fearfully wonders what his daughter was doing here in this section of town. Is there something about his daughter he’s missed all these years? Does she lead a secret life? As he considers this, as he fills his daughter’s gas tank, (why should be obvious), he hears a horrific scream for help.
He writes, “The shout came from behind one of the warehouses.”
He considers though that he is an average man. He has no training in self-defense, law enforcement, or urban warfare. And he has no weapons other than a lug wrench. But we also thinks that this is his daughter and that he would die for her. He doesn’t, however, write the latter, as he has no time to think about his personal and learned abilities.
He writes, instead, “Without thinking, I ran between the structures and turned at the corner of a warehouse, thinking, his daughter is shouting. He called out with anger. Two men, who had been assaulting another figure, dashed away into the darkness. I went to the person under assault, saying my daughter’s name. I kneeled to her. I took her face into my hands and said her name again.”
The man saves her. He has run behind the warehouses and scared away the attackers. Perhaps the attackers inferred that he was just one member of the police and they should run before more arrive as law typically come with backup. In any case, the attackers have gone, the man has knelt, and he realizes that this is not his daughter but a young woman he doesn’t recognize.
He must write this. He must write what comes of things. “I looked into her face. In the dim light, I saw that this was not my daughter but some other, young woman, who looked at me with thankful distress and terror in her eyes. I wanted to shake her. I wanted to force her to tell me about my daughter. A great bruise was forming on her face. I could feel warm blood at her side. She needed immediate medical attention, attention I would have to provide.”
The man gathers all of these events. The call, his daughter, this girl, the attackers in flight, and the fact that he’s left his cell phone in the car. He concludes that everything he needs is here, in these events, in the call, this bleeding victim, and this empty, mysterious place, where, unfortunately, his daughter remains curiously absent, lost in the terrible and persistent present.
