The road winds out for miles in front of me, stretching off into the unreachable yet ever-

approaching horizon. My body is urging the car forward, my own strong will fights off the
angry purring of the struggling engine. The vast distance I have travelled has passed almost
instantaneously, with my body never truly distinct from my destination, making the
unwavering(?) miles I travel, as meaningless and devoid of time as the years I’ve spent in the
mid-west.
As the road begins to trace its way along the harsh coastline, I see the sun sink down, drown
in its pink and purple and golden floods and overwhelm Cape Breton (he can see C.B.?
Because he is on the coast line, but he still seems far away from it in paragraph 1) with tides
of colour that make all the sharp lines disappear. The ocean spray crashes against the car, the
ferocity of the environment I enter is personified (might not want to talk about the
techniques) to me clearly through the harsh, whistling gale-force winds that hammer and
shake my car. (That is a long sentence) I cross the bituminized thread, the increasingly
narrowing connection between the homogeneity of the modern world and the traditional life
I feel emerging once again from within me. Summoned forth from the subterranean
reservoirs of my soul, the waves crashing alongside me bring back floods of memories. The
reigniting of passion within my soul is as apparent as Prometheus himself returning the
flame within me. I now know that this has to be my true home. (sounds a lot of telling of the
feelings) My life previously lived in the big towering cities is now unappealing, paling in
comparison to the possibilities offered by Cape Breton, both never-ending and forever
unfolding before me.
My sweet deliverance, however, is not met with pleasantries nor an elegant fanfare. (bit of an
odd jump, you’re and then you’re confronted by a dead guy, do you know this guy? Is this
why you came back?) Instead, my return is marked by a man who has been transformed into
a grisly jigsaw puzzle that could never more be solved. The lifeless carcass carried on the
shoulders of a group of men who appear devoid of any emotion. (Are you watching them? Or
do you know this because he was important to you) It is as if they had been so long in the
darkness of the mine that the blackness of their labour had become that of their lives and the
light was forever unknown to them.
The roads I follow now are all too familiar. The commitment to the past of these peoples is
shown in the forever unchanging houses dotting my route, the smiling faces of the children
playing by the roadside (seaside) and the ever-present salty cologne of the ocean. My heart
thumps more (beating stronger?) heavily inside my chest. (The thumping in my chest grows
stronger with every passing mile). With every mile passing, my return, after a short relapse
outside the confines of my true homeland, draws marginally closer.
It isn’t long before the driveway which had been my families’ for longer than history could
recall, despite my own inhabitancy being far more recent, came into view. Standing there
waiting for me was a tall, elegant women I had the honour of calling my wife. As I
approached I could distinctly make out weathered wrinkles corrupting her forehead, tear-
stained eyes and droopy (makes it sound comical) eyelids and an emptiness was visible in the
quivering nature of her demeanour. My heart sinks. What has (had) happened while I was
away?
The gravel beneath me is ground up by the exhausted tires of my car. The sense of urgency I
now feel overwhelming (overwhelms) me, throws all caution out the window. I jump out the
car and walk over to the now decrepit figure, with liquid diamonds flooding
(rolling/streaming) down her rapidly deteriorating face. She slowly, yet purposefully brings
her head up to face me directly. Tears still gushing out, her grief instantaneously morphs into
anger. With a heart of pure fire (use another one of those mythological metaphors, “with the
temper of a grieving Zeus”), she lashes out, accusing me of leaving her stranded, lost and
alone and afraid. It is then that the lag within my mind finally catches up. There is no one
standing by her side. (Doesn’t quite allude the fact that the son’s gone, sounds like some
other man should be by her side) The waist high ship captain and adventurer, scientist and
poet, who caused us both immense joy and great difficulty is not in his rightful spot clinging
to the waist of the woman who was his everything. (Clarification, it does sound like the father
should be there, as there was no indication of what he does. Took me too many read
throughs.)
Briefly and disjointedly (Audience should feel his shock) I stammered out (I strung together
a barely comprehensible sentence, tattered sentence) barely comprehensible words. A taunt
emptiness hangs over me, the recesses of my disconcerted mind are overwhelmed with the
now apparent reality I am faced with. The lively and energetic smile and sun-stained
golden(,) and mangled hair of my son has been swept up and snatched away too soon (It’s
too soon to be “too soon” should not have happened). A villainous destruction of innocence,
swallowed up by the Hadean depths beneath our feet.
The encroaching modern world had proven too tantalising to me. I realise now we may
change the wardrobe of humanity but not its very nature. For I was not of this place. That
journey I made all those years before with my mother and father had ignited something
within me. But the frequency between my heart’s desires and my brain’s inability to
rationalise my soul’s most vagrant wishes had led to my return. I had lived a life that wasn’t
truly mine. And it had cost the life of my own son.
In the modernised society I had begun my life, I was one of many identical,
incomprehensible gold fish, trapped in a life where everything had been pureed into bland
homogenised vanilla pabulum fit for the masses. In breaking free of the mould and
reconnecting with my roots so embedded within my ancestry in Cape Breton, I had lost it all.
We spent the waking hours that followed wallowing and contemplating what had, and what
could have, been. A brief walk down to the coastline brings me to the place of his burial. But
no body lies buried beneath the surface. It was, and forever will be, lost out in the great
vastness of the tumultuous oceans encompassing this place I now felt distant from. As I
stand staring down at a gravestone representing all I had loved in this world I felt for the
crumpled paper in my pocket. The crinkled dollar that was never to be spent, a dollar passed
down generation to generation through my family had stuck by my side all these years. And
now the chains of tradition could not be continued.
Tears now streaming down my face I hold the dollar up to the sky and let the wind carry it
out to sea. The ferocious winds snatch it up, taking with it all connection I have to the now
empty lands my feet fall upon. My eyes stretch out from the cliff, waves crashing violently
against its edge, my wife by my side. Together we peer out to the horizon. Somewhere lost
amongst the dark depths of the seas before us lies our child. Alone forever.

I like the last bit a lot, but there are a few questions this piece raises. Why is the father
coming back now? Did he get a letter telling him to come back? Is it a routine check-up?
I think in MacLeod’s writing a lot of things are to be inferred, but the story events itself are
quite clear. You always know exactly what’s happening with the character, in terms of plot
details, but the emotions and feelings aren’t stated explicitly.
Try putting a clear theme within the story. A thing that always comes back, or even an idea.
Just so your story can revolve around some meaningful point. It could be the idea of family,
where he is constantly thinking about it as he is driving.
Your story at points seem too fast paced, and the reader is left in the unknown. E.g. I had no
idea what the dead guy was doing, I know it was hinting at something later on, but it seemed
too random.