Young Writers Society

I pop the pink pill. The one little pill that keeps me from slicing my wrist open today. The pink pill which in the world of pills I’ve seen is a medium size, with a poisonous effect.
“Who the hell do you think you are.” I glare at the bottle of so called happiness that I hold in my hand. As if the bottle turned to fire in my hand I throw it across the room, knocking down a picture from the wall.
I regain sanity and walk across the room as if stepping on nails the whole way. I pick up the picture of a small girl sitting perfectly posed upon a stool. Fake, so fake. Still things must be kept orderly or the world will end. So says mom.
The girl has blond hair, and in the picture in about four feet tall. A smile is spread consistently across her face exposing teeth she had yet not grown into. This girl was a perfect, pale picture. You'd do anything to see that again, right mom? I place the picture on the wall of perfect pictures.
I slowly draw to the conclusion that taking pills is just a ritual to make moms happy and actually have no effect on the person taking them. I stair at the wall of perfect pictures till my eyes end on one of dad. He stands tall, actually smiling. I think back to the days we used to go fishing together, the whole family, even mom. Those days are gone. They don’t mean shit now, Erica.....

I know.

It seems some flow of evil runs through my veins and persuades me to pick up the photo. I trace dad’s outline, like I have so many times before, and carry the picture to my bed. Mom will be home soon! The little girl stands next to dad in the picture, her arms wrapped around his leg. He was never hers. Envy is sparked inside me, I used to be that little pale, picture perfect girl.

He would of stayed if I had stayed that way.
You know that is not true.

I know.


The clock must hate me as it shows 2:23 p.m. so proudly. Seven minutes Erica! You promised. This time for real.

I know.

I march to the bathroom after grabbing the bottle of pills off the floor. In the bathroom, I stand posed in front of the mirror as a perfect picture of failure. My hands shake violently while unscrewing the lid. I look up at my reflection in the mirror. Bad mistake.

Who are you? I scream but the words never touch my lips
Who are you? I scream loud and only whispers are heard.
WHO ARE YOU?My reflection screams it back at me.
My fist, clutching an opened bottle of pills, goes flying at the mirror. Pills go flying all around me as my fist collides with the glass and sharp pain flares up. Four big shards of glass landed at my feet. One dug into my leg. I pull it out in a swift move. You asked for it. I promised it.

I know.

Blood soaks the end of the shard of glass, and I rub it against my finger tip. Little specks of blood appear. Do it. NOW. I plunge the glass dagger into my stomach, first only a little, and then again further. Two holes in my once perfect shell. C’mon bitch, they can’t save you now.

I know.

For the last time I take the glass shard and slam it into me, puncturing a lung. This is it! The excitement is to much to bear, until I hear the door open.

“ Honey, I’m home!”

...............oh my god.


Um, I'll come back and review (if I remember) when the shock wears off.

I actually liked the writing aspect of it, but didnt like the end. It could also have been a little longer, but I like really disturbing stuff like that so that just my opinion. Some minor spelling and punctuation errors, but other than that it was good. If you like distubing stuff like this, please check out my stories i have posted and leave me some feedback. Thanks!

Hi there! Lavvi in as requested.

Okay. The first thing I have to say is: I don't think the title is very suitable. Sure, she looks at some pictures in the beginning, but that was a total of, what, two? And usually a title goes with the most major part of a story and to me, that part didn't come off as major whatsoever. Maybe I could suggest re-naming it something like Glass Shards? I don't know, but the title just doesn't seem to fit.

A) Similarly speaking.... Okay, I noticed that you like similes. Like, a lot. And it's too much. The thing is, you shouldn't have more than one simile per paragraph and that paragraph better be of a moderate size because too many similes is like writing a sentence with five adjectives. A total overload. It ruins the writing, to put it plainly. You need to get some variation. It also jams it up and gets boring.
Also, when you write similes or metaphors, make sure you have good ones or it just fails epically. If your simile/metaphor isn't very good, your story might come off as juvenile and unprofessional despite the content. Just a warning

B) Pay attention to grammar. Grammar is /so/ important and I hate to press this on you, but you need to work on it. It's not terrible, but nor is it acceptable. You have some run-on sentences that are only missing periods or commas. I'm not going to point them out because I'd like it if you found those yourself. This can easily be done by reading your short story aloud or having someone else read it, whether aloud or in their head. Your dialogue punctuation is pretty much perfect (and you have so little dialogue anyway) except for the first line of it. There should be an interrogation mark (?) where the period (.) is.

C) Be realistic, not random. This is General Fiction after all. I thought your story was fairly decent up until the part where Erica started, like, totally stabbing herself. That felt just out of the blue and really random. It destroyed completely the fluidity of your story's prose and kind of made the story sound and feel juvenile and unprofessional. Which is not the response you want (for your story). If you insist on having this ending, lead up to it. Maybe write about Erica and her life a few days before her stabbing so it is not such a shocking end. The end also felt a little rushed.

Overall, it was a good story until the ending. The ending was complete slaughter to the story and...ugh, I really hated it. I think you need to lead up, if you insist on this very ending, like I said beforehand. But the before was good. I was interested in the way you tackled such a socially debatable problem.

Yours,
Lavvi

I find it almost freakishly ironic that my psychology class, which I just left, is watching Sybil. Not quite suicidal but she’s a definite loony bird!

You have a great story (Wow, almost wrote poem. I think I’ve been reviewing too much poetry. ^^) but you do really need to focus on the clean up as far as Lavender said. In fact, she was spot on about your grammar. And when you write something that has obvious grammatical mistakes, sometimes it can make the reader think that you don’t really care about what you’ve written.

Now for what I really want to mention. The wall. I think you really did mean to make that wall the focus of the story and the main point of her torture but I can’t really conjure up a picture of this wall mentally. Don’t just describe the pictures on the wall. Maybe there is a “subtle shift in the plaster where momma patched over a nail hole” or a “knot in the wooden panels.” Perhaps there is some sort of distinct crown molding along the top or a green plaid wall paper. Things like that can make an idea so much more distinct and that’s really what you lack here. Make that wall more distinct and your idea can become a bit more distinct too.

Another thought that crossed my mind, a tiny suggestion really, would be to exclude the bathroom. Condense the scene to just that wall of pictures. Instead of bathroom mirror glass (which if you ask me is a total cliche now a days) use the glass from a picture frame, a family portrait. Just a creative suggestion of course but definitely some points I really thought could improve this piece.

If you have any questions, feel free to PM me or leave a note on my wall!!

~lilymoore

Will there be more to this??