Young Writers Society

“Sarah!” My mom calls in through the door. “I’m leaving!”

I mumble a response to her, still lying in bed.

“I’m taking Becca with me!” she pauses. “Are you awake?”

“Yeah…” I say groggily, burying myself deeper into the covers to try and deny the fact that I would have to get up in a few minutes.

“Alright,” Mom says. “I’ll see you when we get home.”

“Bye…”

Downstairs I hear the two of them heading out the door and then the final slam as their finally gone. I smile and pull the blankets up over my shoulders. The house is mine.

My alarm suddenly blares and I hit it to turn it off, rolling over onto my back. Slowly, I open my eyes.

Nothing.

I sit up suddenly, straining to see anything in front of me. There is only blackness. I put my hand up in front of my face and wave it from side to side. I see nothing.

This is all wrong. This can’t be. It isn’t possible. Why can’t I see?! I slam my hands into the bed on either side of me. Who knows why. Maybe it’s one of those, hit it and it’ll work things.

It doesn’t. Everything’s still black.

I slam my hands down again and my left hand catches on the edge of my desk. I clench my jaw and cradle the hand against my chest.

My brain begins working a mile a minute. This can’t be real. Maybe someone’s playing a joke. Did they blindfold me? That seems like a ditzy mistake that I would make. Yeah. That must be it. I’m making a ditzy mistake and in a few minutes someone’s going to come bursting through the door and laugh hysertically at how dumb I am.

I laugh hesitantly, slowly reaching my hand up to feel for the blindfold.

It’s not there.

My breath starts to catch in my chest. It’s a joke, I tell myself. It must be something about this room. Must be.

I swing my feet out of the bed and stand up. I put my hands out in front of me and begin to edge my way over to the door. My hands find the doorknob and twist it open. No light floods in. No one appears in front of me. There’s nothing.

I walk out, feeling my way along the hallway, looking around frantically, though my eyes see nothing. This isn’t happening. It isn’t possible. It isn’t real. It’s not. Where are the stairs?

The floor falls out from under me and I tumble forward. I hit my shoulder and twist around to try and catch myself at the bottom and scrape my shin along the stairs. When I come to a rest, I lie there for a moment, hardly daring to move. I look up to where the ceiling should be, but there’s nothing but blackness.

It’s not even an interesting, going-on-forever kind of blackness. It’s just this blank hard wall right in front of my eyes.

“It needs a window,” I mutter to myself and then laugh at my own stupidity. I can’t see a thing and I’m wishing for a window.

Slowly, I sit up and feel along my shin. I wince as my fingers run over the raw skin. When I pull my hand away my finger tips are covered in something warm and sticky. Blood. Great…

I turn my head, trying to get away from the blackness, but it moves with me. And suddenly I can’t stand to be where I am. It’s too closed in.

I stand up uneasily and feel my way over to the front door. I open it and walk out onto the porch. The breeze gently brushes over me. I stumble a few steps forward to find one of the support beams and them sink to the ground beside it.

Somewhere in front of me a car drives along my street. The dog barks next door. One of the neighbors’ kids rides by on his bicycle. But I can’t see them.

I close my eyes and lean my head against the beam, starting to cry. I pray Mom will get home soon.

While this stayed very true to the topic at hand, the action is broken up so sparsely. I felt like you needed a longer paragraph or something, just to keep my attention for a little longer. You say I do this, and I do that a little too much, and it gets a little repetative about halfway through.

A side note, generally, when someone cant see, the first thing they reach for is their eyes, instead of swinging their arms around violently. You had that in the opposite order.

We also don't know why she's all of a sudden blind. She just woke up that way. So the story doesnt seem finshed when you get done with it. There was a problem, but no reason for it, and there was no resolution at the end. She is just crying waiting for mom. There are other options, call 911, call mom if she has a cell phone. Where's dad? any other siblings? There must be a neighbour she knows. But she's just standing outside crying to herself. How did she know where the beam was?

It just seems unfinished, there are so many details missing, and it moves so quickly We barely have time to take in that she's blind.

Other than that, we do understand some semblance of charachter, with as little information we got on her. Though I felt it could have used more, the comment about the window was enough to tell us a little bit about kind of person she is.