Love Story
-- Willa Shakespeare
Written for the B7Friday 'First Lines' Challenge
Challenge sentences in bold.
This is the saddest story I have ever heard. I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.
Dr. Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.
Where were the gentle lovers, the compassionate ones she read about in the ancient novels?
Where now? Who now? When now? "For a long time, I went to bed early," she told me. "And then another woman dressed in prison khaki was sent to be mutoided, a girl with shining white hair, and eyes the colour of rubies."
Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress. It was love at first sight. The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. People marry for love there and it was in the past Dr. Weiss dreamed she lived. She stole Miss Brooke away and took her down into the Delta levels, where
it was like so, but wasn't. For several weeks they were very happy, taking pleasure in the simplest things, simply because they were together.
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. For their bonding, their landlady,
Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. But —Money . . . in a voice that rustled
spoke, and they were betrayed. The lovers tried to flee.
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting. They shoot the white girl first.
The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.
All this happened, more or less.