Student Spotlight: Heather Dooley

Why do I write?

I didn’t know writing was some­thing I enjoyed until I entered college as a return­ing student. Though, once I real­ized it, it made sense. English was my favorite class in high school, and these days, I love telling tall tales, exag­ger­at­ing the facts, and placing clever twists on every­day events if it gives a good laugh to those who hear it. Back in the days where letter writing was the primary form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, I could give someone a migraine with a twenty-five-page letter. For real.

Is there an author who has most pro­found­ly influ­enced your work?

I know writers say read, read, read, and most have read their whole lives, and that one book they loved is at the tip of their tongue. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, that wasn’t the case for me. My parents didn’t buy me books, so reading wasn’t a habit I had ever devel­oped. I spent most of my time outside as a kid, and as an adult, I gen­uine­ly loathed book­stores. It wasn’t until I entered college that I began to read. I can’t claim any one author as a favorite or an inspi­ra­tion, but I wish I could.

Why did you choose Stonecoast?

When I was working on my bachelor’s, a class­mate men­tioned Stonecoast, putting the bug in my ear that a low-res­i­den­cy program existed. When I decided to get my master’s, I called Stonecoast and spoke to a woman, though I can’t remem­ber now who she was. She made the program sound so excit­ing. I only applied at two col­leges, Stonecoast and Emerson College in Boston, MA. Both accept­ed me. Stonecoast, however, had a more rig­or­ous program than Emerson, and I believed it would better benefit my writing career. The concept of a mentor guiding me through the draft­ing of a novel psyched me out. Not to mention when I spoke to the staff at Emerson and Stonecoast, the team at Stonecoast was WAY more per­son­able and wel­com­ing. Can I say that without Stonecoast getting sued? It’s true.

What is your favorite Stonecoast memory?

My res­i­den­cy was virtual, which may, for some, deaden the expe­ri­ence, but not for me. I gen­uine­ly loved the work­shops, talking to the other writers, and I LOVED lis­ten­ing to Lady Zen express her writing through song and music. I had goose­bumps the whole time. Loved it. I can’t wait to see what mem­o­ries my second virtual res­i­den­cy brings.

What do you hope to accom­plish in the future?

I came to Stonecoast to learn to write novels, and that’s what I intend to do. Whether it’s through tra­di­tion­al pub­lish­ing or self-pub­lish­ing, I plan to write dark, gritty stories that shed light on mental illness. It’s such a taboo subject that, more often than not, society sweeps under the rug.

If you could have written one book, story, or poem that already exists, which would you choose?

Not having read much leaves me at a little bit of a dis­ad­van­tage with this ques­tion, but I do have two favorites. I really enjoyed Game of Thrones—the books, not the tele­vi­sion series. However, I DO wish Mr. Martin could get the next book pub­lished already. I also wish I would’ve written the series. He made bank. The second (I know the ques­tion says one book, but, oh well) is Gone Girl. It’s dark, and Gillian Flynn makes some great points about how women bend them­selves to be more liked by men. She also writes one mean female character.

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Powder

By Heather Dooley

Carmen trekked across the hos­pi­tal parking lot. The space where she left her car was so far from the build­ing, she might as well have parked in China. The lot was dark. Visitor safety clearly wasn’t a concern for Burling­ton Hospital.

The night­time sur­round­ings were a wash of greys. Light grey clouds, illu­mi­nat­ed by the city’s lights below, drifted beneath slate clouds above. Nickel-sized snowflakes fell, fat and lazy, from the sky and brushed against Carmen’s cheeks like soft, cold kisses. The tufts grew fatter by the minute, thick­en­ing the white cloak that smoth­ered the city’s bustling sounds. Carmen’s feet crunched the snow flat as she walked, and a distant highway rumbled in the dis­tance. Oth­er­wise, all was quiet. She remem­bered her father used to call snow powder. ‘Powder as deep as that makes a man feel trapped, mis­er­able. I hate that powdery stuff,’ he’d say in the dead of winter, hands in his front pockets, stand­ing in front of the window, scowl­ing at the snow-covered yard.

And right now, Carmen agreed. She cursed at the snow that poured over the rims of her tennis shoes, packed itself beneath her heels, then melted into her socks as she paced forward. Carmen had a bigger chance of finding a lep­rechaun than a pair of winter boots at any store in Charleston. She’d wanted to stop at a Walmart along the way—but her brother’s words on the phone repeat­ed in a loop in her head. “I thought you should know, ma’s in the hos­pi­tal,” Billy had said. “She’s been asking for you.”

“I don’t know if I can make it home, Billy.”

 “The doctor thinks Ma’ might’ve had a stroke. She looks real bad.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” Carmen wanted to be there for her brother. The boots could wait until later.

Each of the hospital’s twelve stories of windows glowed with cold, white light. Carmen’s stomach tossed and turned as she neared the front door. Even as her mother lay on her death bed, Carmen couldn’t trust her not to run her mouth, make a snide remark about her hair, her weight, her clothes, her aging face, her failing marriage.

Carmen worried about some­thing else as she trudged along: Seeing her family’s mon­sters. She remem­bered seeing them when she was a child, lurking behind the closets in the shadows, their pupils shining like silver dollars deep within the basement’s gloom. The crea­tures trailed her parents wher­ev­er they went as if mag­i­cal­ly teth­ered to her mother and father’s ankles. One day, Carmen mus­tered the courage to ask her parents where they got their mon­sters, but they both denied that mon­sters existed. Still, Carmen knew they existed because she saw the beasts’ wan­der­ing eyes every day as they passed each other. She couldn’t help but feel like they watched her and her brother with yearning.

What if she saw the beasts again? The image of her last encounter with her father’s beast appeared like a mirage in her distant memory, hazy and frag­ment­ed, but she knew she saw the crea­ture plain as day the night he had died. Carmen and her mother had found him inside the car, garage door shut, engine running, but her father wasn’t quite gone. The doctors labeled it a suicide, asphyx­i­a­tion from carbon monoxide.

Later that night, Carmen’s mother had forced her and her brother to drive with her to the hos­pi­tal. When Carmen entered her father’s room, the beast stood next to his hos­pi­tal bed, wring­ing hands like a gorilla’s, black, massive, and leath­ery. Its brown eyes shifted between her father and her brother, pupils dilated as big as saucers, and the thing’s nos­trils snorted with excite­ment as it watched her father dimin­ish. Carmen’s father released one last breath as his gaze emptied and drifted to the ceiling. Then it was as if the magical tether snapped: the beast lum­bered to her brother. Billy stared at the monster in horror as it approached him and stood at his side like it chose him. Carmen knew he didn’t want it, but from that day on, it had fol­lowed him wher­ev­er he went.

Carmen stood outside her mother’s hos­pi­tal door, just beyond its thresh­old, prepar­ing to step inside. Anti­sep­tic fumes lin­gered in the stale air; they were the smells of disease and death.

She stepped into the room. Were those people tucked in the corners or shadows? Carmen didn’t look. She focused on her mother lying in her bed, arms at her side, eyes closed, asleep or uncon­scious. Billy was right. She looked bad, like someone else. Her mother typ­i­cal­ly wore her hair in neat, short curls, but now it lay in a tight silver mat against her head, and loose strands clung to hal­lowed cheeks. Her eyes sunk into two purple circles, and her thin lips pulled into the frown Carmen had seen for most of her child­hood. That frown was the only thing that made her mother look like herself.

“She’s already gone,” Billy said from a chair planted next to their mother’s bed, in Carmen’s peripheral.

Silence hung in the room, thick as humid­i­ty, no hum of life-giving machines, and no IV lines vining her mother’s arms. Someone shifted and moved from the corner toward the door where Carmen stood, but she couldn’t take her eyes off her mother. A second hor­ri­ble chapter of her life had come to an end, and she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“I did. You didn’t answer.”

“I was driving. I prob­a­bly didn’t have a signal. Did you leave a message?”

“Yep.” Billy kept his eyes on his mother.

“I’m sorry, Billy. I got here as fast as I could,” Carmen’s voice stuck in her throat and came out as a whisper.

Silence sat in the room so long, Carmen looked to her brother, certain he was angry with her, and, stand­ing behind him, tucked in the corner, big and men­ac­ing, was his beast. Its big emerald eyes locked on her face as it emitted a warning grumble, low and gut­tur­al. Carmen’s heart ham­mered against her ribs.

The Davis house­hold had but one family rule: don’t talk about the family beasts, so Carmen bit her tongue and averted her stare, hoping to avoid a con­fronta­tion. Yet she noticed the beast resem­bled her brother more than it had when they were younger. It once had umber eyes, dark as strong coffee, and thick and shiny ebony hair like their father. Except for the two-inch fangs that pressed through its glossy upper lip, it used to have perfect teeth. But chest­nut hair now covered the beast’s hide like a shag carpet, like the tangle of red hair piled on her brother’s head, and one of its fangs poked out at an irreg­u­lar angle, a snaggle tooth. Yes. She was certain. It used to resem­ble her father.

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