Justifying revenge

Spoiler

Hey! So this is my second entry to the 150 word contest. My first entry can be found here - viewtopic.php?t=85080

The theme I had was 'justifying revenge.' I don't know if I've hit the nail on the head with the prompt here, and it needs a lot of improving. Any comments will be greatly appreciated. This is 145 words. Thank you!

The plan wasn’t to kill, but maim. Distract the enemy long enough to get what I wanted.

My hands shook as I grasped the newspaper. He twitched as I approached and my breath caught, temporarily immobilising me. He stilled and I continued forwards.

I’d never been late in my life and today wasn’t going to be the first. Teeth gritted. Eyes set.

If only I hadn’t whimped out yesterday. He’d escaped by the time I’d recovered from the fright of seeing him inches from my face. A life long phobia. Kids can be so cruel.

My car keys were within reaching distance but so was he. Long legs. Spindly body. A ripple of disgust shot through me. Just do it.

Monday traffic was awful. No time to waste. Eyes screwed shut. Thwack. His body curled as he fell to the floor. Dead.

Blame my brother.

I liked that. You made the time and place clear. You also made it clear what he was killing without saying it actually was.

"A ripple of disgust shot through me"

"Eyes screwed shut"

It gave me lots of images in my head and I liked how you said they shut their eyes so tight it was screwed tight.

Flash fictions short and hard... but I think you did it However, it wasn't really clear how they justified revenge.

Keep Writing!

Mac

I'm going to be extremely critical of this and try to stay within 150 words (impossible so I take that back. But perhaps my words will steer you in a general direction). Words in pink mean I would add a word there to sound it better, but it'll probably increase the count too much. Orange means I don't understand the significance of the line.

To be honest, Ahmadblues was right. I do get a great picture of what is going on. The style you're going for is a quick paced, fragmented sentence one. It would generally work well for a scenario like this, but you throw in too many. I found it difficult to concentrate on the story itself. Your theme was "justifying revenge" however I feel like you don't spend enough time talking about the reason. You mention a "life long phobia" and "kids" but you need to expand on that more. You throw in a lot of thoughts from the narrator, but they honestly have nothing to do with the act of killing. I suggest just removing them (why does he care about work when he's about to kill someone? I would be more worried about the police or even that person's family). You could use those words and talk more about why he's going to kill that person or even just describe more of the environment.

I hope this review helped you and I didn't come out too hard.

The plan wasn’t to kill, but to maim. Distract the enemy long enough to get what I wanted.

My hands shook as I grasped the newspaper. He twitched as I approached and my breath caught, temporarily immobilizing me. He stood still and I continued forward.

I’d never been late in my life and today wasn’t going to be the first. I gritted my teeth and set my eyes.

If only I hadn’t wimped out yesterday. He’d escaped by the time I’d recovered from the fright of seeing him inches from my face. A life long phobia. Kids could be so cruel.

My car keys were within reaching distance, but so was he. Long legs. Spindly body. A ripple of disgust shot through me. Just do it.

Monday traffic was awful. No time to waste. Eyes screwed shut. Thwack. His body curled as he fell to the floor. Dead.

Blame my brother.