“Oh, it’s you,” she said.
Her face looked calm through the thin sliver of a mostly closed door. Her voice sounded strangely disappointed.
You stood at the fringe of the doorway, dragging your roughened knapsack across your shoulders, an apologetic smile wryly waning across your face. The orange hue of a new sunrise peeked in behind you. It colored the bruises running up your bared arms a muddy orange.
She sighed and pulled the door open wide and stepped aside. “Come in, won’t you?”
Courteous as always, you thought.
“Thanks,” you said instead, and stepped in with bowed eyes and a hunched back.
She slammed the door shut behind you, and briskly stripped you of your knapsack. It was dropped unceremoniously into a shadowed corner of the living room, the impeccably clean living room. Then she pushed you towards the stairs by the small of your back. You flinched when her fingers dug a touch too deep into flesh through the fabric of your tank.
“Go. Have a shower. You know where things are. Borrow my husband’s clothes. You stink.”
You smiled and stepped up the carpeted stairs autonomously as her fingers pulled away. You stunk of turmoil and duress. When you stunk of turmoil and duress, you came here. She cleaned you up.
You were fond of this silly routine, this smothering dance of normalcy, of pretending everything between the two of you and the world besides were okay, okay, okay. You liked to think that she was fond of it too.
“Thanks,” you said again.
“How’s father?” she asked, turning away, wiping her fingers on the pink apron she was wearing. It looked new. Like something her husband would have bought. But pink wasn’t her color. It looked wrong. Pink was too mild, too soft, to pallid a shade for the woman who grew up as your sister.
You smiled. It was a crooked smile. Ah, sister.
“Still alive,” you said.
***
[To be continued.]
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137,435 Literary Works • 672,020 Reviews
Hi there Zen!
I quite enjoyed reading this little snippet, but I am itching a bit to read more as it's so short and there is so little. So I'll just point out some things you need to fix and some good points that I enjoyed reading;
// I don't think you described the characters as well as she could have. I just didn't see the interaction and connection with them; she seemed annoyed when he first walked in the door, but I read that she had to put up with him, but written in a way that I thought maybe they were in love, and she was trying to sneak him around the house..? Or maybe even the annoying neighbor who had to come over to discuss something? I never would've suspected the brother/sister relationship, but ah well.
// I haven't seen many people use second person in their writing, and not many are able to pull it off! I think you've done a pretty good job, but just be careful of not overusing 'you' too much because it gets a little uncomfortable for us to read.
Other than that, this has been great! I look forward to reading more.
{{ -wild- }}
Wow, this is really good. I can't find much to comment on.
However, that could also be because this is just way too short. Please expand, this ends so suddenly I can't really comment on much.
But I will say two things here:
1. Be careful with the character interaction. At first I thought they were husband and wife, then I thought he was her lover, then we discover that they are brother and sister? I don't know if this was intentional or not. If it wasn't be careful of how you describe and phrase things, because right now it could almost be interpretated as incest. (In which case this would need a rating... you should add one of those too.)
2. This is very poetic, and I loved it! The imagery is vivid and unusual. It's original and the prose flows beautifully and fluidly. I just have to point out that this is original-- I found zero clichés here. That being said, beware of using words in the wrong way, because it's easier to do so when you write like this. (e.g. "you roughened knapsack," while vivid and unique, seemed a bit awkward and incorrect to me. There are a couple of other areas besides this, but the same applies.)
The only other thing I can say is to beware when using second person POV. It's different, but make sure you can pull it off for the rest of the story. Otherwise you sacrifice clarity and reader interest in the place of delivering a "shock," and it won't be effective.
Expand on this!
~ED
Hello Zen.
Wow, this was really good. There's really nothing about it to change. I'll be looking forward to the rest!