Flash Fiction: Dark Rain

Walking forward, one foot slowly at a time, my shoes sank into the mud. Cars were zooming past me on my left as I looked up to the sky, rain hitting my face, admiring the night sky. This would be the last time I would have a chance to see anything like it. I shed a small tear, but it was hidden by my soaked face. My arms felt cold, but I refused to wear a jacket, I wouldn’t need one for long. Stepping from the grass onto the black pavement on the bridge, the sky thundered as if the empire state building had collapsed again.

I looked to the left, taking notice of a group of teenagers my age; they looked happy, care free, as if everything is alright. They are the lucky ones; they don’t have as much bull shit in their life to deal with. No mother dying after birth. No drunk, abusive father. Handed everything, from food, to encouragement, even a place to stay. I lost all of that a long time ago; I’ve had to work hell on myself just to get by. I couldn’t take it anymore, staying in a society that just abandons children when they get a parent that is an incoherent moron. The last thing I had to live for was love, and I had lost that too as my girlfriend broke up with me.

Halfway through the bridge, I stopped, and looked over the edge of the railing. Looking over this wide river, I asked myself how quickly it would take to die. Would it be at impact, or would I have to drown myself? Pills would had been a much easier method, nobody cares about me enough to do something about it if they found me, but I could not afford that. With nothing left to live for, I slowly put my legs on the other end of the railing. All I had to do was fall back, this was it. My life didn’t flash before my eyes. I just did it. I let go of the bars, falling back to my intended death.

Quite morbid, this. Not sure what to do with it. Interesting, but horrendous (not the writing, the topic). Sharp, brutal, quick. Nice traits for a short story. Unfortunately, I never grow attached to the narrator. But I think the coldness of the piece was intentional? Anyway, I 'liked' it.

Anyway, some edits you might want to take with a grain of salt:

"Walking forward, one foot slowly at a time, my shoes sank into the mud. Cars were zooming past me on my left as I looked up to the sky, rain hitting my face, admiring the night sky. This would be the last time I would have a chance to see anything like it. I shed a small tear, but it was hidden by my soaked face. My arms felt cold, but I refused to wear a jacket. I wouldn’t need one for long. Stepping from the grass onto the black pavement on the bridge, the sky thundered as if the Empire State Building had collapsed again.*

I looked to the left, taking notice of a group of teenagers my age. They looked happy, carefree, as if everything is alright. They are the lucky ones. They don’t have as much bullshit in their life to deal with. No mother dying after birth. No drunk, abusive father. Handed everything, from food, to encouragement, even a place to stay.** I lost all of that a long time ago; I’ve had to work hell on myself just to get by. I couldn’t take it anymore. I wouldn't stay in a society that just abandons children when they get a parent that is an incoherent moron.*** The last thing I had to live for was love, and I had lost that too as my girlfriend broke up with me.

Halfway through the bridge, I stopped and looked over the edge of the railing. Looking over this wide river, I asked myself how quickly it would take to die. Would it be at impact, or would I have to drown myself? Pills would had been a much easier method, nobody cares about me enough to do something about it if they found me, but I could not afford that. With nothing left to live for, I slowly put my legs on the other end of the railing. All I had to do was fall back, this was it. My life didn’t flash before my eyes. I just did it. I let go of the bars, falling back to my intended death."

*The first thing that went through my mind was "WHAAAT?" Then I realized this was skiffy. And thusly I was made morbidly happy, because I love skiffy.

**I love the narrator's oblivious nature here. They don't know if the kids don't have to deal with some of that, but they imagine so--because, hey, they aren't about to commit suicide, right?

***Incoherent? Not sure if that is the correct word for that sentence. Hm.

So, yes. Nice job conveying what you wanted to say so briefly. *tips hat* I hope to see more from you (writing-wise), then.

-Casper

Hi. Rosea here, watching pink and purple hippos battle it out in a raging rainbow fight as I review your work.

First things first, then~

Walking forward, one foot slowly at a time, my shoes sank into the mud. Cars were zooming past me on my left as I looked up to the sky, rain hitting my face, admiring the night sky. This would be the last time I would have a chance to see anything like it. I shed a small tear, but it was hidden by my soaked face. My arms felt cold, but I refused to wear a jacket, I wouldn’t need one for long. Stepping from the grass onto the black pavement on the bridge, the sky thundered as if the empire state building had collapsed again.

There are a lot of ways to make this shorter and to make the flow smoother, because as it is, it appears to be a bit... choppy. Just an opinion. My way of rewriting this paragraph would be...

I walked forward, one slow foot at a time, watching my shoes sink into the filthy mud. Cars zoomed past near me, leaving a mechanical drone in my ears. I couldn't quite hear anything. I looked up, the rain pelting on my cheeks and the rest of my face, admiring the night sky. This would be the last time I'd have the chance to see anything like it. A tear made it's way down from my eye, but it was hidden among the droplets on my soaked face. I felt cold, but I didn't need a jacket. I wouldn't be here for long, anyway. I stepped from the dirt to the black pavement on the bridge, the sky thundering as if the empire state building had collapsed again.

...Ahaha. I kid. It actually got longer. *cue embarrassed cheek scratching here* But I added a bit more detail, and I hope you can see what I'm getting at when I render it that way... I hope that makes sense~...

I looked to the left, taking notice of a group of teenagers my age; they looked happy, carefree, as if everything is alright. They are the lucky ones; they don’t have as much bullshit in their life to deal with. No mother dying after birth. No drunk, abusive father. Handed everything, from food, to encouragement, even a place to stay. I lost all of that a long time ago; I’ve had to work hell on myself just to get by. I couldn’t take it anymore, staying in a society that just abandons children when they get a parent that is an incoherent moron. The last thing I had to live for was love, and I had lost that too as my girlfriend broke up with me.

There are a lot of things you can twist up and alter to make this scenario more... unique. This just screams 'cliche' all over the place. That's just every manifestation of cliche problems that a person could die for all rolled into one. We've seen this a million times already. The readers need something fresh and off the hook. I'm pretty sure you can pull that off well. Pointing it out, the cliche parts are:

-Jealousy of the people around him because they have "perfect lives"
-Mother dying after birth
-Father being abusive and alcoholic
-Poverty, juvenile work
-Being abandoned
-Girlfriend breaking up with him

See? It may seem sad, but all of these combined is actually a bit awkward. Give him, the main character, unique problems, if you will, so that the reader wouldn't get bored, roll their eyes, stop caring, and move on to the next paragraph to see if there's anything more interesting burning on the grill. That, in my opinion, is sadder that all these cliche attributes combined.

Halfway through the bridge, I stopped, and looked over the edge of the railing. Looking over this wide river, I asked myself how quickly it would take to die. Would it be at impact, or would I have to drown myself? Pills would had been a much easier method, nobody cares about me enough to do something about it if they found me, but I could not afford that. With nothing left to live for, I slowly put my legs on the other end of the railing. All I had to do was fall back, this was it. My life didn’t flash before my eyes. I just did it. I let go of the bars, falling back to my intended death.

(*Take note of what I said earlier.) And after this? What? It just... ends, is that it? Where's the suspense? The thrill? The chase? You built up an atmosphere and then... nothing. It just disappeared. The main character is dead. Where's the essence? What's the message? What were you trying to tell us? It left me with a lot of questions that I'd appreciate being answered soon.

So far, all is well, just needs a bit polishing up... and it needs a certain point to, well, pinpoint. That's all I can say. Hope I was of good use to you. Bye, then~

Hi, DarkRain, I see you're new around here, so welcome to YWS!

Cars were zooming past me on my left as I looked up to the sky, rain hitting my face, admiring the night sky.

When someone mentions the night sky, I assume that they mean things like the moon and the stars, but if it's raining there would only be clouds and so none of that would be able to be seen.

This would be the last time I would have a chance to see anything like it.

Halfway through the bridge, I stopped, and looked over the edge of the railing. Looking over this wide river, I asked myself how quickly it would take to die.

We have another sort of contradiction here, is this planned or spontaneous? I got the feeling that is was the latter, but then the language in the first paragraph indicates otherwise.

I think that this plays into those stereotypical images of a person who is depressed and contemplating suicide. As someone that's been in that position herself, and has a number of close friends that have too, I can see a few glaring issues in relation to that. If this is planned, then the entire mindset is wrong. With depression, one of the warning signs that someone is about to attempt to commit a planned suicide is that they suddenly cheer up, they've lost that last little bit of self-preservation that was holding them back and have come fully to terms with what they're about to do. Secondly, they tend to dress up. It's the last thing they're going to do in this world, and they want to do it looking their best. And, lastly, they do actually tend to care very much about what happens when their body is found, they know that it's going to disturb and cause great upset to the person that does, and try to make accommodations for that.

But, in any case, I don't really know that much about the character to be able to feel that much about what happens. In flash fiction you have a very small space to try and squeeze in development and personality and everything else. At the moment we have all of the reasons that the MC wants to end it, but it still feels very flat, and you need to give him a few more dimensions. What are all the things that he has going for him, but his clouded thought processes prevent him from seeing? What are the things that would make us run up to him and say "Don't do it, look at how great you are!"?

When we're young, I think we all go through a phase where we want to write morbid things, violent things, things to shock people, except that don't because we've seen, or even already written, it all before ourselves. As a result of that, this doesn't really have that much in the way of originality, sadly, because it's been done to death so many times before. If you want this to be able to catch a readers attention, you're going to have to come up with something unique.

I hope that I've been of some use to you! If you have any questions or anything, just let me know!

-Tinny