In the Margins

I thought I had it planned. I thought
planned it I had. I
had planned it I thought. Planned
thought it I had. Plan thought I plan.
It planned me.

---

“Daddy,” she blows into my ear like a calm, night wind. Soft. Innocent. Still, through the breeze, I ignore her. She doesn’t like that.
“Daddy,” she moans.
“Lemme ‘lone,” I mumble and roll over on the bed, covering my ears with the pillow. It is quiet for a moment before I hear her whimper.
“Daddy, it hurts.”
I blink the thick sleep out of my eyes and quickly turn on the lamp by my nightstand. There is a moment of shocking blindness. Then I see. My eyes widen, and my heart
jerks and
te
______________ars. I clench my pillow between
my fingers and sque
_______________ eze.
My daughter’s standing next to my bed, in her pink fairy pajamas, clutching her blanket in her clammy hands. Her face is
bloodstained,
like someone had squirted ketchup over her precious cheeks and she is crying, crying, moaning.
“Daddy. Daddy, please. Daddy, it hurts. It hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it—

---

--stings,” Marissa complained as she applied her nightly acne medicine to her face. She liked the feeling of the cream between her fingers, but when it touched a zit, she winced. Her face was heavily populated with acne, so it was impossible for the cream not to sting.
“Try some other products,” Carol Lee advised, rubbing her face with a dry towel. When Marissa wasn’t looking, she flashed herself a smile in the bathroom mirror and winked. She loved the way her teeth glowed after she got her braces off.
“I have. My mom’s getting all pissed ‘cause I haven’t found one that has actually worked yet. It totally sucks,” Marissa stated, rubbing the cream on her face.
“Yeah. Well, I’m glad I don’t have that problem,” Carol Lee replied, and sighed. She leaned against the wall and waited for her friend to be finished.
“Yeah, well go audition for Miss Wyoming if you’re so perfect. Not everyone’s so lucky to have your hair you know,” Marissa spat at her, playfully. She smiled at herself in the mirror and exited it, Carol Lee following closely behind.
“Yeah, well not everyone has a total hottie for a boyfriend either,” Carol Lee reminded her, and Marissa blushed.
“Well, you snooze you loose,” she joked, and laid down on her bed. Carol Lee’s foam mattress was rolled out beside it. Marissa’s mother had even given Carol Lee fresh sheets to sleep in for the night. They smelled like laundry.
Carol Lee silently sat down on her pillow and leaned back on the wall, looking at Marissa flipping through pages of a magazine. The only sound that could be heard was the TV that was left on downstairs. Mark, Marissa’s older brother, was probably just getting home from work, and her parents were most likely waiting for him.
“So,” Marissa whispered.
“So, what?”
“Are you going to tell me or not?”
“Tell you what?”
“You know.”
“No, I don’t,” Carol Lee laughed, shaking her head.
“Yes! You totally did, didn’t you?”
“Totally did what?”
At that moment, Carol Lee’s cell phone began to ring, and it frightened her so much that she jumped and uttered a scream. The two girls both busted a gut laughing. She pulled out her phone and looked at the screen.
“Who’s calling at midnight?” Marissa asked, still laughing.
“I don’t know. I don’t recognize the number.”
“Answer it! Maybe it’s a guy from school.”
Carol Lee smiled and pressed “Accept Call”. She put the phone up to her ear and listened. The smile on her face remained for a moment, and slowly the edges began to frown. Her eyes opened wide and her face drained of color.
“What’s wrong?”
It was silent for a moment longer. Carol Lee’s mouth hung open as she ended the call. Her eyes were beginning to redden, as if she were about to cry.
“Carol Lee? What’s wrong?
“I… I have to go. Right now. I have to go right now. Oh no. Please. Oh, please. No. No. No no no,” she muttered as she bolted for the door, barefoot and still in pajamas. She left her phone by her pillow. Marissa was bewildered, and didn’t know what to do. She sat on her bed for a moment, the magazine still open. Her heart was frozen. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong. Carol Lee had never done that before. She was always known as being cool and able to withhold emotion.
Marissa glanced down at the cell phone. She reached down.
She grabbed it.
Looked at the number.
Didn’t recognize the area code. Without realizing what she was doing, she called the number.
It rang once.
“Hello, Marissa.” Male.
She paused. “Who is this?”
The voice at the other end of the phone disconnected the call, and she was left with a buzz in her ear, and questions racing through her head.

---

MAUREEN: It’s about time. You’re forty minutes late.
RICK: Sorry, ‘Reen. Traffic was terrible. All the blasted rain that suddenly came down this morning. There was an accident on 78th that caused a twenty-minute delay. Sorry about that.
MAUREEN: Do you have it?
RICK: Yeah, give me a second. It’s in my briefcase…. Ah! Found it.
MAUREEN: Good. Good. Yes. Thank you. You don’t know how much easier this will be now that

---

just when you think it couldn’t get any worse, it starts to rain. oh joy. just my little bowl of sunshine. yepidedoodah. rain rain go away come again another day, you asswipe. gah, I can’t believe they served rotten peaches with that breakfast. absolutely a waste of time and space sometimes I wish that the world would just pause for a moment so I can go and kick the ass of everyone who messes around with me. i know i know. i can be a little prick sometimes, but when it calls for it, I need a little kickin’ to get me started. jesus rain. can’t you wait until I at least find a cab? i won’t find a cab at this hour. who am i kidding. BETTY won’t want to see me anyhow. What’s the point of standing out in the rain if all I get is drenched and a runny nose?

HALLELUJAH a cab. jesus mary’n’josef ‘bout time. i was just about to turn around and head back--christ this cab smells weird. man, what’re you smokin’ up there? have you bottled a fart recently and released it in the car? ugh. 75 cents a mile my ass. what’re you tryin’ to do? jibberlablam my wallet broke? zoom in buddy boy. zoom in on my empty wallet.

jeez. take the long way, why don’t you? why’re you taking 78th? do you even know the way to 3211 s langston crcle? no? i didn’t think so. jeez, slow down. I aint in no rush. seriously. no. no, SLOW DOWN. SLOW DO—

--




-Jared

Wow, Jared.

This is - well, I'm not sure how to describe it but it's certainly good writing. Wonderful writing. Every little section was well done, very different, but well done, and they all ended right when I wanted to know more, which I'm sure you did on purpose. Vexing.

So the only thing I didn't like was that there didn't seem to be so much plot in this - it seemed more of an exercise than a real story. Or like a bunch of little beginnings of stories that you could expand if you wanted to. It shows off the talent you have for words, but nothing else, really.

I like how you started off with what was in my opinion the most shocking one (the bloody little girl) because through the rest of the piece, I was thinking about her.

No real criticism in here but I hope this helps anyway ^__^

Hey Jare-bear!

I liked this a lot. It was written well, there wasn't really anything for me to nit-pick but it was certainly jumbled. Jumbled in a good way, I mean. I don't know if you meant to write it this way but every piece had it's own spot. I cringed after reading the first part, where the girl has blood all over her face and then it switches to two teenage girls...but after that whose Maureen and who is this guy at the end?

Sorry for the lack of constructive criticism but this was good, if not a little confusing.

Keep writing,

~Angel

Hey Jared. Just saw this and thought i'd pop in with my two cents.

I have the same problem as Mars here, in that I'm having trouble finding a plot here. If these are a lot of short stories, then you probably should give us a little warning, since otherwise we're going to assume it's all supposed to be connected.

I actually liked the one with Carol Lee and Marissa the best. I really felt a connection to those two characters. I also liked how you semi-connected the story before it with that one. I felt like if you had done that with all of these little snippets, this would have felt a little more complete.

Good job, but you really ought to expand on these more.

Good luck.

-Conrad Rice

This was probably the most irritating piece of literature I have devoured,
but hell.
I did devour it.
It wasn't until the end that I realized each section wasn't connected to the last...

or were they?




Great writing.

BABANUUK

Your writing her is great great GREAT, but like everyone else said - it was confusing. Kind of irritating. Because it's not just a piece of writing, it needs to be a STORY too. I think you could totally pull it off as three connected stories, but you're probably going to have to work at it a bit more. Keep stringing us along with your fabulous writing, but try to give us SOME sense of a connection, a conclusion.

That's my two cents. Great job!

~Sunny

Wow, this is amazing.
The way you began your story was absolutely astounding.
I was totally not prepared for it. =)
This is really good.

I must say that you caught my attention quickly with the beginning of the story. But as I continued to read it seemed to go all random. I don't know what you're driving at, but I am for certain that if you focus on a single story idea so a plot can be created. Short simple and somewhat easy to read, but at the same time eccentric in its own way. If you ever construct a plot for the story, I wish to see it.

-Chaos Angelfish

That was a twisted piece of writing indeed! The writing itself, I absolutely loved, but like some other people before me, I would have liked some sort of plot. I don't mind each section being abstract, but I felt the need of some sort of conclusion. By conclusion I mean that I needed to at least know what was going on by the end of it, or if each section had some sort of connection. Abstract is good. Bizarre is good. Mystery is good. Confusion is not good. A mystery interests you, but having confusion in a book only annoys the reader. The story was mysterious to me, and I greatly enjoyed it, until the end. There was confusion at the end and so ultimately I was a little disappointed and annoyed. A plot is what this needs. Maybe you are planning a part 2 to this?

I will end this by saying, that I found this story most intriguing, and I hope there will be a part 2. Great writing, too!

-Zehra