"That Lady Next Door"

An unedited story.

Dear Subscribers,

I took my own writing advice yesterday and wrote a short story inspired by the prompt from “Writing Advice #11 *Heroin edition*” which I published on Friday. (If you’re not a paid subscriber, you wouldn’t have had access to the prompt because I put it at the very end.)

Here it is:

“Imagine a normal person. Not you. Not someone you know. Just imagine one totally normal person. Do your best. Where are they, what are they doing, what do they look like, where do they live, what do they wear, who are their friends, do they have a job, what’s on their bedside table, what’s in their fridge?

I emphasize normal again because there’s a phenomenon that occurs when you write in the voice of a normal person. I don’t want to explain how this works; it should be yours to discover. Why not try it? Normal. Normal. You can even begin with a dumb line like:

I’m just a normal person…”

I made myself write this from start to finish with no pauses, which is what I think you should do when you’re practicing writing.

P.S. The best way to practice revising and editing is to interview someone, transcribe it, take out your questions and distill what the person said into a monologue. Then edit it so that it makes for a compelling story told from the first-person point of view.

Here’s what I came up with:

“THAT LADY NEXT DOOR”

By Ottessa Moshfegh

I’m just a normal person. When I wake up in the morning, I open my eyes. When I breathe, I suck air in through my nose, or in through my mouth, but only through my mouth when I’m panting after running hard or doing something physically intense because if you breathe through your mouth your face will get ugly. You’ll develop an overbite, and your jaw will get very weak, your chin will start to droop, and your nose will become slack because it’s not being used. You can’t expose your gums to air all the time, it causes gingivitis. I think your tongue will get very thick, too, and this is why, when you see some dead people, their tongues are hanging out of their mouths. Because they’re too thick for their mouths.

It’s a lack of facial integrity.

Those same dead people usually die from preventable illnesses. I’m not judging them, perhaps their mothers just never told them how to do things: not how to breathe and not how to prevent illnesses.

Did you know that you can use plain old margarine to heal dry, cracked skin?

Did you learn in school how to safely evacuate from a building?

The evacuation plans at my place of employment are very clear. Walk calmly down the hall and take the stairs.

The hotel is from the 1920s but was renovated once in the 1960s, and then again in the 1990s. Soon after that renovation, we were in town for the parade, and I had to use the bathroom. My mother told me to go into the hotel and use their ladies’ room.

“But I can’t sneak into that hotel, that’s trespassing. Can’t you come with me?”

“Oh no, no,” my mother said.

It was the first time I saw her make up her mind to tell me to do something that she wouldn’t do herself. She pointed through the glass doors into the hotel lobby. You could see the attendant at the desk very clearly from the sidewalk if you were walking by. Now the reception desk is off to the side. And when you walk by the hotel you just see an enormous vase of fresh flowers. It’s not a normal vase. It’s really very big. They get on a ladder to take the old flowers out and put the new flowers out.

“This is what you do,” my mother said outside the hotel. “You go in there and you go up to desk. Say that you’re looking for Mr. Murphy, and you think he’s waiting for you at the hotel bar.”

I was thirteen but I was tall for my age. I remember my mother gestured for me to wipe my mouth—I’d had a cherry Italian ice even though it was cold outside. I’d used my own money to pay for it. My lips were very red.