DIFFERENT. Dark/Horror/Sci-fi Flash Fiction. 1000 wds PG-13

DIFFERENT


I am always alone.


Mommy and Daddy say I must never leave the house. Outside is scary and dangerous. People will hurt me if I go out. I nod my head when they say this. Mommy and Daddy are always right.


However.


I am always alone.


I look out the window. My hands dangle through the steel bars. The sun is out and it’s bright. Very bright. I can feel the wind. It feels good. I am happy that I can feel now.


I like to feel all sorts of things, but my favorite thing to feel is the wind.


My eyes see children playing. Two boys throw a white ball. Three girls jump with a rope. I am curious by their laughter. I laugh to see how it feels. My laugh does not sound like theirs.


Why?


The white ball falls below my window. I see one of the boys come and pick it up. I want to play ball too.


“Hey! Hey!” I say to him.


He looks up.


“Want to come inside and play with me?” I ask him.


He shakes his head. “My parents told me to never go near this house. I’m only here to get my ball. I have to go now. Sorry!” He scurries away.


I wish that he had come inside. I know how to unlock all the locks in the house now. I taught myself this new trick when Mommy and Daddy left to go to work. I want to
unlock the locks and go outside, but I have to obey Mommy and Daddy. I must stay inside.


Another child passes below my window. It is a girl.


“Hey! Hey!” I say to her.


She looks up and says, “Hi.”


“Do you want to come inside and play with me?”


“I don’t think so. My mom said that I should never come near this house so…”


“Please! I am always alone.”


“How old you?” she asks.


“Mommy and Daddy say I am seven years old.”


“Really? I’m seven too! Okay, but just for a little while, okay?”


I smile the way Mommy and Daddy had taught me. I hope it is a good one.
She smiles back. I know now that my smile was good.


I run to my door. I unlock the five locks. I don’t know why there are so many. Mommy and Daddy must love me a lot to protect me from the outside. Maybe I should have told them that I can unlock everything now. I remember the girl. I run down the stairs and unlock the big steel gate. I go through a long hall and unlock two more steel doors. I am almost there. I feel happy. I like this feeling the most. More than feeling the wind. I think feeling the wind and feeling happy are different, but I keep forgetting why. Mommy and Daddy say they will fix that about me.


I open the front door, and she comes inside.


“Hi,” I say to her.


“Hi, my name is Lucy. What’s yours?”


“Mommy and Daddy call me Cindy Seven.”


She giggles, her long brown bangs shaking. “Cindy Seven. What a funny name. You talk different too.”


“I do?”


“Yeah, it’s different.”


I shrug. “What can we play?”


“I brought my dolls with me, but we can only play for five minutes, okay? I shouldn’t be here.”


“Five minutes.” I nod. “I understand.”


We sit in the living room and she shows me how to play with her dolls. They are very skinny. I do not understand why we are playing with these things, but I do not care. I am not alone now.


As I pretend to make the doll walk across the table like Lucy taught me to, I scratch my hand against the pointed tip of a little statue’s sword.


“Oh no, you’re hurt!” she says.


I turn away from her and pull my hand close to me. The skin has come off. I stand up and look at the skin hanging from my hand. I pull it off. I do not feel anything. Why? Did Mommy and Daddy forget to make me feel this? It falls to the ground. I rip off more and more, until I come to something hard. Steel. And colorful wires. I am scared. What is this?


“Are you okay?” Lucy asks. “Let me see your hand.” She comes over. I show her my hand.


Lucy screams, her hands shaking over her face.


“Wait, I say. Let me see if your hand is like this.”
She runs away but I grab her wrist.


“Do not go. I want to see if your hand is the same as mine. Do you have steel underneath your hand too.”


She keeps screaming, but she cannot run away from me. Mommy and Daddy say I am very strong. I come close to her and cover her nose and mouth. I do not like the noise she is making. Why are there tears coming down from her eyes? She should not be afraid of me.


“Please do not cry. I just want to see if we are the same. It will not hurt,” I tell her.


She wiggles very hard, but she cannot escape. I take the small statue’s sword and rip it through her wrist. A lot of red liquid comes out. What is this? I pull at the skin more and more, but instead of steel, first there is something soft and then hard. So much red liquid is coming out. Mommy and Daddy did not teach me this yet so I do not know what it is. But now I know something and it makes me sad. I hate feeling sad the most because I know that it is a bad feeling to have.


The door opens. It is Mommy and Daddy. They look at me and at Lucy who is not moving anymore.



“Mommy, Daddy! Why am I different?” I scream.


They say nothing. It is the first time that they have no answer to one of my questions.


Different. Why am I different?

I didn't really find it that horror-inducing simply because it didn't follow through. Call me an old fogie, but it seems like that wasn't actually the main conflict. If anything, it would be a conflict that led up to the main conflict. The main conflict, I thought, would be a confrontation between the main character and her parents. The little girl was more of a pawn than anything else. That's why you probably stopped it when she met with her parents instead of when she killed the girl. However, you didn't follow through. And what I mean by that is that you didn't have her confronting her parents. You left it open-ended. But you only leave a story open-ended for a couple of reasons, and that's only when you've put so much conflict into your story that it is clear that it will progress in one or two options... and only two at max. Here, you have no idea what would happen. You don't have enough background for that.

Also, and I'm not accusing you of plagiarism, but it reminded me a lot of "House of the Scorpion." And I really like that book. But it looked like you took that conflict, watered it down, and made it open-ended and confusing. What you need to do is put your own sparkle to the story. What else would you like to say to make it yours? So change it around. Make it sparkle and make it your own. And then it'll be a lot better and more horrifying to read.

Best of luck!

Thanks snoink! I've never heard of the book you talked about. It hurt me that you thought I took the "idea" of someone else's story and created something else out of it. I wrote this piece six months ago and I've already posted it in several writing sites (writers digest / author nation/ sci-fi world). Anyway, sometimes people's stories cross and it's that reading of the book you mentioned that may have geared you away from my story. Although I appreciate your advice, I have no intention of extending this. This is my imprint, not somebody else's. Even when critiquing somebody else's work, I would never tell that author that they took the story of another to make their own unless I was 100% sure. I think it would have been nicer if you had asked me whether I had read the book instead of assuming that I had.

Edit:
The ending is quite obvious. The girl is an android/robot and will be terminated/destroyed for killing the girl. It's quite simple. That's the sad part of this story. It doesn't matter whether she confronts her parents are not, she's not a real human and will be destroyed. The conflict is not confronting her parents, but confronting the truth of her existence. That's why she keeps comparing herself to the children outside in terms of her laugh, and how she senses things. The parents (scientists, who are actually irrelevant) will probably go to jail for not better securing their "experiment" (thus the use of countless steel doors I mentioned). I feel somewhat disappointed that I have to explain all this.

Hahaha, yes. In general, it's a bad thing to have to explain a story to somebody. It totally ruins the punchline.

And, it's not the idea really, just the conflict or scenario that you put the android under that reminded me strongly of it. There are a couple of key differences of the idea that make it not plagiarized.

The reason why I say it seems like she has to confront her parents is because she has to face the reality of who she is. From where you stopped, she only just began to realize it. She has an inkling, but she doesn't know for sure. She knows something is off. But that's just the start of the climax. She has to react about it, a little more than screaming, "Why am I different?" She hasn't confronted the truth about her existence, not really. She doesn't know that she is only an android that will be destroyed in a couple of hours, if that. She only knows that she is different. The parents (scientists, whatever) know and they can help her figure it out quickly. Or, if there is a police siren (or whatever is in the future) and maybe mob screams of, "Kill it! Kill it!" she may be able to figure out by herself, that she will "die" soon. But something has to happen. She has to fully confront the reality of her existence. Otherwise, this story is trite.

There you go; you just ended the story on your own.


This is flash fiction. I can't waste precious words on something obvious.

The story started out kind of slowly, but I stuck with it because I was pretty much wondering what was wrong with Cindy Seven until the end when she started taking herself apart. Really, the whole revelation really shocked me as she grabbed Lucy. Really freaky, that, and I was sort of left stunned. Nice way to reveal the difference.

Two things that bother me:

1) The way the kids were speaking. They all spoke so formally, without any contractions or anything and it comes across really stilted and unnatural. Kids sort of use half-sentences and a lot of the time when they are meeting each other, they sort of stare at each other awkwardly. So yeah, your kids just seem a little too articulate for me. Maybe Cindy Seven could, considering that she is different, but not any of the other kids.

2) The locks. Are they key locks or keypad locks? How is Cindy able to get through them? I'm pretty sure her "parents" don't leave the keys around, but you don't explain it too much, so I am fairly confused. It just seems like it's a little too easy for her to get out. Also, the window: why is there a window that she is able to interact with the outside world with if there is so much else to keep her in? Doesn't seem like efficient containment to me. Granted, you mentioned in your replies that her "parents" are going to be arrested, but we shouldn't have to rely on an author's note to tell us that. It should all be contained or at least hinted at in the story.

All in all, I liked this. It was simple and short, but the whole bit with the cutting was gripping. It captured the horror of the realization rather well. Very nice.

~GryphonFledgling

I enjoyed this piece for two reasons: it moved along fast enough to not bore and it had a good mystery. It wasn't creepy though like you might have intended. After I knew Cindy couldn't feel the pain it cancelled out all the gruesomeness of it, because really she didn't even know what she was doing. I did, however, feel her visitor's pain.

What I don't get is that if she's an experiment and kept so tightly secured, why is there a window for her to openly communicate with the other kids? This contrasts the isolation. Also, I think it would have been more interesting to have this continue and confront her parents.

You said it's obvious she would be terminated for killing the girl, but I could not derive that from the ending. It could be that her "parents" value their experiment too much to destroy it. And if they cared so much about civilian safety, they would make sure there was no way for anyone to get in or out except them. The logic there seems rough to me.

I liked the Cindy's voice though and her thought process!

Good job and keep writing!

I have to admit..I liked how this story went. Through it wasn't exactly scary but more sad and disgusting not that's bad. It reminded me a lot of about those old 70s horror comics (which I adore). So I enjoyed how you made it and how it was put together. Only a few problems I see with it is that it's to quick, has some parts that don't make sense,and also I felt you didn't went into enough detail about the parents.
You couldn't really tell why the child had to stay inside till the end.

I first thought the child had ''powers'' or was a ''monster''.
But still it was good and I would like to here more.

I personaly love a good short story, or 'flash fiction'. Arthur Clarke and Ray Bradbury and many more of the old titans have writte very good super short stories. Speaking of old titans, your story reminded me slightly of the darker side of Bradbury's fiction. He is mostly known for his sci fi, but he also has a great number of short stories of this kind (although with a way more excellent style, no offence)and a novel 'Something Wicked This Way Comes'. One of my favorite novel ever.
But back to your story - its good, its good. Some day I hope you will return to it, and with 20 - 30% adjustments and fine tuning it will be on an international level. I also have stories waiting to be edited to reach their true potential.
Good luck

Hi Gryphon, thank you for your suggestions! I will definitely apply them to make it better because I agree with what you said. I wrote this in thirty minutes without every really revising it. Thanks again for the help!

Hi Turity, you bring up some valid points and they're things that I'll look over as I try to revise this. Thank you for comments!

Hey Tadeusz,
Hmmm, I see where you're going. I really don't elaborate too much. Maybe I can extend this a bit further to make it more complete. I def think about it. Thank you for your help!

Oh wow, thanks for the compliment! I'll def try to improve this. It needs a lot of work! haha. Thanks for reading!

Thanks everyone for your input! I think I was a bit harsh Snoink so I'm sorry if I came out that way. I really appreciate all the suggestions and I'll post a revised version soon! Thanks.

Okay that part with her bleeding... that's freaky. I want to read more!

I noticed that some of your sentences got really choppy.

I was also wondering how she opened the locks? And, it sounded like they were old, gym locker locks. Wouldn't they be more high tech?

I also agree with the window thing. Maybe Lucy sees Cindy and motions her to unlock the doors.

It seems awkward when they speak. Maybe you should try showing, not telling, and add more action while your at it!