Broken, Dead and Gone

He hasn’t been home in so long, this town paved with broken promises and dreams long dead and gone.

He got a text from Ken, there’s a party at tenth.

Everyone will be there.

Keystones and Busch Lights spilt everywhere, the whole place reeking with sweat, heartbreak, and cheap beer. The bass was shooting, everyone was cracking. His throat was dry, his mind was itching. His eyes wide open, he was looking.

He saw the back of her head from across the room.

“Who’s Helen?” asked the girl.

“I’m sorry, I thought you were someone else.” He glanced at her down and up. “Where’s your boyfriend, girl?”

She looked up at him through her dark, hungry eyes. “Don’t have one this evening.”

He smiled. “That’s amazing.”

He pulled her towards the giant tide of sweating bodies, throbbing to the beat of the music, hearts pumping in this party. His hands rested low on her curving waist as her hips bounced with T.I.’s rhymes. Her hands on her knees, jutting out, digging in, teasing back out, she can have whatever she likes this time. He shut his eyes and drowned in wishful hope.

She leaned her back against his chest. White girls can’t dance to Kanye West. They listened awhile, feeling his heartbroken style.

“Need a ride home?”

She licked her lips. “Where’s your car?”

He needed this. He needed her. Can she help him? Melt him into nothing? Help him live tonight? He hoped so. Yet, he laid there emotionally empty, entangled in her porcelain arms. Who was this bitch snoring piss water at his face? Why was she her and not her? Can she ever be her?

He got up and searched the floor for his clothes. Headlights snuck in through the window blinds. He gently shut the front door behind him. Helen should be in town. He took out his phone. There she was between Harold and Howard. Just press call so he could hear her voice ask hello, so he could ask her what’s up. You back? How are you? It’s been a while. We should catch up. Want to go grab some lunch some time? He’d meet her and make some small chat with laughter and smiles and ask her some questions, then eventually see her more regularly, engage in longer conversations with longing looks and shy suggestions, asking bigger questions.

He closed his phone. He did this before, and she welcomed him to heartbreak. Don’t forget what she’s done, she whispered broken promises of love and a future dead and gone.

This is a very oddly written piece.

He hadn’t been home in so long; this town paved with broken promises and dreams long dead and gone.

The tense is wrong, compared to the rest of the piece.

He got a text from Ken, there’s a party at tenth.

Will Helen be there?

Don’t know. Maybe. Just go.

ten? Or is that a street. Also, I suggest you italicize the messages to distinguish from the prose. Like so:

He got a text from Ken: there's a party at ten.

Will Helen be there?

Don't know. Maybe. Just go.

The reason I'm suggesting that and not a more definite, contextual change is because I think the haphazard imagery, description and action is deliberate, as part of a deliberate style. If this is not the case, well, then you need to fix this up so description and action link up; as it is, you jump forward quite a bit.

For instance, from the messages, to the party, from the notation of the back of a girl's head, to speak to her. The 'in-between', the mortar of most stories that keeps it all together, is missing. But again, if intentional, I guess its okay. Of course, that only applies if this meant to be a short, flash piece. If it's going to be an actual story - with real, fleshed out characters and a plot of some kind, then you have some building to do. As it stands, we have impressions - of a party, of a guy who's feeling hurt and lost, but that's it. Not much at all, really, and nothing but the slap-dash style makes this stand out. There's nothing new to this, nothing to make the character something more then a cliche, and that more then anything is what you should work on.

Cheers