I like several things about your story but it isn't a contest winner at this point. I suggest you read BlueAfrica's review well and consider her points. She provided you with excellent observations. I will try not to repeat them beyond agreeing with her comments about your character's motives.
I would like to focus on your plot.
Carrie needs a story idea. She seems to fall to sleep and then writes what she dreams. If you pay attention to beginning writers you will find it is common that new writers find ideas in dreams and they often tell the reader they got the story from a dream. They are so excited by the dream they want to share it. That is fine. The problem lies in writing the dream and not telling a story. Dreams have no cohesiveness. They only have meaning to the dreamer. A story needs to convey feelings, thoughts, meaning, and show those things with the characters.
Maybe since it starts as the woman's dream, the beginning seems like a joke. I expected to read some comedy: A businessman, a poet, a child, a scientist, an athlete get stuck in a freezer...
By the way, where is the actress? Is the waitress the actress?
Anyway, given this has no comedy in it, you might want to reconsider the beginning. If the dream opens that way then say so, 'the dream began with...', and go from there until things devolve from comic to tragic. Reveal the shooter is the reason for the entrapment via conversation or narration perhaps.
If this is not the woman's dream then I advise you reconsider the beginning for its comic sense. It is not in line with the sense of the story unless you begin with a lighthearted girl rather than one bored out of her mind. In other words, lighten up the beginning of the story then descend into a tragedy and forget about the woman writing at her desk.
So, your characters go in to a freezer to live but instead they die. There lies a story but your characters barely talk. They don't even get very upset. You tell us how some of them die. They are shot, frozen, but your characters do nothing to help beyond pushing each other into the freezer and the athlete giving a coat. Your story would interest me more if you explained what made Terio, the athlete, so content and how the rest of those trapped react to his attitude. He has the most interesting attitude of all. Why is he so damn content? Who is that content?
Where is their panic or will to live? Their actions make no sense. If someone is dying they will attempt an escape or at least help others. People do such things all the time. You can read about them in the news. Consider what your characters would do as real people.
You can write. You have good control of your vocabulary and punctuation. What isn't perfect isn't glaring. I suggest you rewrite considering the motives of your characters and have them react to each other rather than just a gunman who can't shoot them as long as they stay put and don't get too close to the door.
Good luck and thank you for your submission.
Points: 2149
Reviews: 16
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