This site features some selections from my portfolio of creative writing.
Part of a collection of short stories written for college class — 2023-2024
It was on loan from a private collection, allegedly. The museum was hesitant to say whose private collection it was, and the fact that so little was known about the statue implied that it hadn’t necessarily been obtained in the most legal of means.
Sabrina had received the invite to the unveiling from one of their professors, probably because they had talked a lot about their love for Renaissance sculpture and always looked attentive and nodded during class, which was all it really took to get a professor to like you, generally.
They weren’t even going to go originally, but their roommate and best friend, Gibson had pointed out that a statue unveiling seemed the type of event to have free food, and if Sabrina was very lucky, free alcohol.
Gibson had a point. They were a broke college student. And maybe there were networking opportunities to be had.
Most people at the unveiling were dressed to the nines in their best black tie, long gown looks. Sabrina was dressed in a simple rose-patterned sundress they had borrowed from their freshman year roommate and never returned. Said roommate had transferred at the end of the year, so Sabrina figured they were in the clear vis a vis having to return it. It was a nice outfit, but they still felt severely underdressed compared to the obviously wealthy museum donors. But the food was eons above anything their college dining hall could provide, and the bar was fortuitously open. So even if they were feeling distinctly out of place, at least they were accomplishing their original goal.
While the museum curators made their grand speeches about how lucky they were to be allowed to display this statue, Sabrina hovered by the buffet table. Just one peek, they figured. Go take a quick look and then cut their losses and head home.
There was a gasp from those assembled as the light sheet that had been covering it was pulled off the statue.
It was beautiful. Carved from fine marble, the statue depicted a young woman, curled into a sleeping position on her side. Her hands were clasped next to her chest, legs bent slightly. A light nightgown covered her body, the folds of fabric falling toward the floor. Her hair spread out around her head like a mass of vines. Her eyes were closed peacefully, but there was a slight furrow in her brow. She was almost unbelievably lifelike, like she been a real woman who had gone to sleep and then been encased within the stone. Sabrina was captivated, abandoning the buffet table to push their way through the crowd and stand next to the statue. They leaned over to looking at the small plaque that identified her. Woman Sleeping, it said. Artist unknown.
There had to be more.
~
The professor that had sent Sabrina the invitation didn’t have any more information on the statue, but promised to send it their way if anything else came up. The library was a bust as well, even though Sabrina checked out pretty much every book they could find on Renaissance sculpture. Woman Sleeping wasn’t mentioned in any of them.
Gibson started acting worried around the third time they blew her off for coffee in order to continue reading one of the books or inputting different key words into search engines to see if anything new would turn up.
“I get that it’s a cool statue, but normally when the artist’s been unknown for five hundred years, it stays that way,” she said, handing Sabrina a cookie she had written This is an intervention! on in pink icing.
“I don’t care who the artist is,” Sabrina tried to explain. “I want to know who she is.”
Gibson furrowed her brow, tilting her head in confusion. “She’s a statue. She’s not anyone.”
But Sabrina knew that wasn’t true. When they had looked at Woman Sleeping, they had felt something. A spark. A connection. She was someone, and only Sabrina could find out who.
“Are you in love with her or something?” Gibson joked. Sabrina ignored her, taking a bite from the intervention cookie and carefully bookmarking the article they had been scouring for later, when Gibson wasn’t paying attention to them anymore. They’d never been in love with a person, so the idea of them being in love with a statue was ridiculous. They were just curious. No, not curious. They were determined.
~
That night, Sabrina dreamed of a castle covered in thorns. In the dream, they had a sword in hand as they sliced through a never-ending torrent of constrictive greenery. After what felt like an eternity, they reached a chamber in which Woman Sleeping lay on a massive canopied bed. Unlike the last time Sabrina had seen her, she was built from flesh instead of stone, and her chest rose and fell gently as she slept. But it was Woman Sleeping. Every part of her was the same, just in vibrant color.
Sabrina had enough knowledge of fairytales to know what they were supposed to do next. But their feet felt like they were made of lead as they approached the bed, watching Woman Sleeping’s rhythmic breathing. In the fairytales, the prince woke the sleeping princess with a kiss. Sabrina was no prince. They reached out their hand to Woman Sleeping, placing it on her warm, soft shoulder and shook her. Her eyelids fluttered as she began to stir from sleep, and Sabrina froze like they were the one made of stone.
Woman Sleeping smiled at Sabrina once her eyes opened. Unlacing her hands, she crooked a finger, gesturing for them to come closer. Sabrina leaned towards her at a glacial pace. Woman Sleeping cupped a hand to her mouth, brushing aside Sabrina’s bobbed hair to whisper in their ear.
“My name is —”
Dreams always seem to end at the most inopportune times.
~
Two weeks had passed since Woman Sleeping had been revealed, and Sabrina was none the wiser to who she was. No book, nor article, nor webpage had any hint of information. In fact, it almost seemed that Woman Sleeping had simply not existed until the private collector had offered her up for loan. Sabrina was just about ready to give up.
There was a new message in their inbox. It was from a no-reply email address, and contained a link. Sabrina would have thought it was spam had it not been for the subject line.
In regards to your questions about Woman Sleeping
Gibson had a friend who worked in tech support. If their computer got a virus, they could go to him. They clicked the link.
It was an article, one that had obviously been scanned onto the internet, since it was from a 1937 newspaper. An interview, with a sculptor. A woman named Maeve Adkins. Part of it jumped out to Sabrina.
Woman Sleeping will be my last work. I am not well, and I suspect I will be taking a turn for the worse. I want to leave her behind, a sleeping sculpture with my likeness. That way, perhaps I will not truly die. Perhaps I will only be sleeping.
~
It wasn’t a dream. Or at least, it probably wasn’t. Sabrina took Gibson to the museum to see Woman Sleeping, so she could understand what the whole thing was about in the first place. Gibson liked the statue, but she got distracted and wandered off, leaving Sabrina still staring.
The more Sabrina stared, the more it looked like Maeve was breathing. She was made of stone, but was there color in her cheeks. Sabrina always followed the rules of art galleries, even as a child. They were respectful of the art. They didn’t touch. But still, they felt their arm reach out, just like in the dream. It was fine. There was no one else in the room. No guards, no other patrons to see and judge. Just Sabrina, gently placing their hand on Maeve’s warm shoulder, and shaking her awake.
The stone beneath their fingertips turns to flesh. The colors of Maeve’s dream self spread throughout the marble. The statue, the woman, the artist. She takes a breath.
Excerpt from a longer (unfinished project), a novella written for a college class during the spring semester of 2025
It was close to half past five when there came a rapping at the door of the apartments I kept in Grosvenor Square. Although I sat in the small parlor that the entryway led to and could have easily seen who my guest was, I had a disparaging view of most of the persons who wished to call on me uninvited, especially so close to suppertime. Instead, I simply turned the page of the latest issue of The Mysteries of London, my absolute favorite penny dreadful (the reading of which I was sure would be considered beneath a lady of my station, but I had a penchant for the cheap twists and turns provided within) and ignored the noise.
The rapping repeated itself, more insistent and now paired with a voice declaring, “Lot! I know you’re in there!”
There was only a single person who called me Lot, so I carefully dog eared my page, setting it on the mahogany side table next to the brocaded red chair I had situated myself in and slipped into the entryway, stepping past the coat rack to open the undecorated front door. As expected, the person on the other side was Mx. Ivy Claremont, who pushed past me into my dwelling without so much as a hello, gesticulating wildly with a newspaper clutched in their hand. Without bothering to stop, they let themself into the parlor, tracking a small amount of mud onto the Persian carpet that I had recently had installed, an issue I made note to report to my housekeeper at the earliest convenience.
Despite all of this behavior, I was still pleased to see Mx. Claremont. We had met at a rather boring gala a few years back, and we had been close friends ever since, as I appreciated having someone else around with a healthy level of disrespect for the society we found ourselves in. Mx. Claremont was an American, so they tended to be overly rude, since most would brush it away as a characteristic of their birth nation. They were all of six and twenty years of age, a short height with hair that was choppy and pale red, often tucked under a paperboy’s cap. They were dressed tonight like they usually were, wide legged trousers and a slightly wrinkled collared shirt under a pinstripe vest.
Shaking my head fondly, I shut the front door and followed my friend into my sitting room, taking my seat once more as they grinned at me, paper in hand.
“Lot, have you seen the evening paper?” they asked, despite the fact that the copy they now held was almost certainly the one that had been dropped on my doorstep about an hour ago.
“I’ll admit, I’m curious to see what is in it that would garner such a reaction from you, dear Ivy,” I replied. “Won’t you take a seat?”
“You’ve no sense of drama, Lot.” Instead of taking the offered seat, Mx. Claremont tracked a few more spots of mud past my cleanly carved coffee table to hold the paper up for me, unfurling it slowly until I could read the headline on the front page.
LORD RAVENWOOD HAD AN HEIR, SAYS FORMER HOUSEMAID
Despite my penchant for dramatics in stories, I tend to think of myself as much more levelheaded in real life. However, I am not too proud to admit that when I read those fateful words, I let out a very loud gasp.
Essay written junior year of college on the origin of vampire fiction in the Victorian era.
Essay written senior year of college analyzing the work of Polish poet Wisława Szymborska.
© Untitled. All rights reserved.