Young Writers Society

Jump.
The man motions to the cliff.
I shake my head.
It is too far. I will die.
I know.
You want me to die?
It won’t hurt.
I let the tips of my toes extend over the cliff. Through the mist, the waves silently meet the rocks and with a roar spew foam into the air. My body shivers violently. I take my shirt off and lay it on the ground. The sun is hot. The sky is grey.
Jump.
Why?
It is what you want.
Why do I want this?
It will take away the pain.
The pain that I feel every day? I want to jump to make it all go away.
The man nods in agreement. My shoulders sag under the weight. The weight has been there my whole life. Sometimes it is too heavy to even carry on my own. But everybody just leaves me alone, pretending there is no weight. To acknowledge the weight it to be weak. I am weak.
The mist seems to sway. Music comes from inside me. A low murmur of melancholy misery. I do not silence it like I should.
Who are you?
I am you.
You do not seem like me.
I am your feelings Peter. A part of you that has been lost.
Why can’t people see you?
They do. They just are just too busy hiding their own emotions to see yours.
I see a twinkle in the man’s eyes when he says those words. My gaze adverts to the cliff side.
Are you sure I want to jump?
More than anything.
To take away the pain.
Yes.
The wind runs through my hair. I suck in all I can.
Peter!
I freeze and turn.
Jess.
She smells wonderful. Like peaches in summer. I hear music from her. A ballad that sweeps through me.
I followed you.
Why?
I care.
Nobody cares.
I love you Peter.
A tear rolls down my face. It feels warm against my skin. She wipes it away.
I refuse to let this world corrupt you.
I take a step forward, resting my forehead on hers. Her breath is gentle, her eyes liquid brown, gazing into mine.
Run away with me.
Death is not a road to run down Peter. It is the end of the journey.
Her voice is a whisper that hits like a wall. I weave my hand through her hair and try to steady my breath.
Then where do we turn?
To joy. And love. Those without which there is nothing.
You are my joy.
And you my love.
The music inside of us bubbles white hot and spills out. A sound that is forbidden and forgotten. A song that the birds used to sing. My lips press against hers. And just for a moment, the weight is lifted.
The man is there the whole time. I refuse to hide him any longer.

this is beautiful. *following valentine

Thanks! I got worried when somebody voted that the style wasn't interesting.

Hey there, Valentine. I'm here to review as requested.

I clicked yes to the poll question, by the way. This is definitely an interesting style. I like it. It's almost like poetry in some ways, so I think what you've done here is clever. Because of that though, I'm a little worried that this review may not be too amazing. I'm quite bad at reviewing things that are a bit different from usual, and even worse at reviewing poetry... Nonetheless, I hope I can help you out with this.

Considering this is a review, I better see if I can give you a critique or two. The main thing that bothered me here, I think, was the simple fact that I want to know more about the background to the whole situation. Okay, so we've got a guy who's thinking of killing himself. Why? Who is he? I mean, we know his name's Peter, but that's it. What about Jess? I'm assuming she's a girlfriend. How long have her and Peter been together? What struggles have they faced? The biggest questions I have though is why he wanted to jump off a cliff. Does he get bullied? Has a hard time at home?

The problem that lack of background causes, for me anyway, is that I can't really get close to the characters. If I don't feel like I know anything about them,I can't understand, let alone feel their emotions. (I loved the whole metaphor of a separate person being Peter's emotions, by the way). I can see how this may be a bit hard though. The style of this is rather different, and it involves rather simple, short sentences. To give us readers information on a characters background, it does tend to involve more complicated sentences and sentence structures. Nonetheless, I do think it could work here. You could always give us some background information that is given bluntly, or maybe even hinted at, but not completely revealed. That could work with the style of this, I guess.

This is a bit of an opinionated thing, so you may disagree with me on the above. To be honest though, that's the only thing I can really critique you about. In general, I tend to comment a lot on plot and stuff in my reviews, but it's a bit harder here because there isn't a complicated plot, and we don't know anything about the background of it, so I can't comment on that either. You did ask me to focus on the characters in this review, so I'll see if I can help you out with that.

The critique above can actually connect to characters. Like I said, the main problem the lack of background is causing for me right now is the fact that I'm struggling to get close to the characters. I don't know much about them or their lives, so feeling emotional towards them is hard. It's annoying because after reading this, I really think that these could potentially be extremely fascinating characters. I mean, you've got a boy who wants to kill himself. This kid must have loads of depth to him. I just want to see that depth. As for Jess, we don't really see much of her, so it is hard to feel close to her too.

Another reason I think I'm struggling with the characters is because I think you could express their emotions more. Peter's emotions, anyway. This is a bit of a weird critique though because metaphorically, his emotions are actually a separate guy. That could complicate things... Nonetheless, I would like for you to maybe try and do something with emotions to make the reader's connection to the characters tighter.

Negatives aside, I do genuinely like this. It's different, and certainly interesting. With a bit of work, I think it could be really great.

Keep writing,

xoxo Skins