(This is a short story. I don't plan on continuing it or adding much. Any sort of comment/review is welcome. Just let me know what you think.)
There’s a room, and it’s full of reflections. It’s shaped like a circle, each wall hidden behind mirrors. There are many of them, all different shapes and sizes. They’re just like any other ordinary mirrors, except they aren’t.
In the center of the room stands a girl. She’s smiling, her face bright with happiness, not even the slightest of hints of depression shown. As she looks around though, she becomes confused.
Each mirror is reflecting her, nothing unusual there. But as she looks closer, she realizes that every mirror has its own image. It is still the girl in the center, but shown in different ways.
One mirror shows her frowning, tears slipping down her face. The clothes she wears are different too, longer and darker.
Another shows her angry, eyes clouded with burning passion, hair cut short and blunt. This continues with all the others, every ugly emotion shown.
The girl starts to get overwhelmed. Beads of sweat line her forehead as she struggles to figure out what is happening. Her hands shake and her eyes grow frantic, jumping from each and every one of her twin appearances.
She snaps and moves forward. Glass scatters the floor as she pulls her bloody hand back. But as soon as that mirror disappears, another one takes its place. A different image. She smashes that one too. Another comes back.
She’s frustrated. She can’t think. She only wants them all to be gone. More and more mirrors shatter, more and more come back. The floor is now covered in glass. Her fists are red and bloody, but she doesn’t care; doesn’t stop.
Finally, tired and destroyed, the girl collapses; gives up. Her eyes close and she covers her ears. It almost seems as if the images are mocking her.
“She cracked!”
“No longer can she hide from us now!”
“Our time to shine!”
“Cant pretend any longer…”
It almost seems as if they’ll never stop. And it seems as if she can’t take any more. Screaming, she raises a shard to her wrist and trails it along. Now she’s bleeding from her arm as well.
The girl is about to do it again when she’s restrained. Her eyes are closed, and she doesn’t know who it is. But when a whisper sounds in her ear, she knows. And at once, almost like magic, she’s calm.
“It’s going to be okay. Don’t let it get to you. Only you can control what it does.”
The girl’s eyes open. She understands now. Turning in a circle she stares at each image, and gives in to each and every one. She won’t hide from them any longer, but will conquer them. With these arms wrapped around her, she could do anything. One by one, they disappear, until only one is left, directly in front of her.
The last mirror shows the girl sitting there. The reflection is exactly how it should be, with his arms around her, chasing away all worries. She smiles this time. For real.
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140,235 Literary Works • 673,048 Reviews
I'm not sure this was my favourite work from you, but I didn't dislike it particularly. It was a whole lot of telling, not enough showing, for me. You're usually so good at that. I loved the concept of this piece, but I think you could give it more power by showing us the room. The switch from the first paragraph, which is told from a distance, to the rest of the story, which is more immediate as if we're actually in the room with the girl, is a little choppy for my taste. Personally, I would start in the room and describe it that way.
Normally, your sentence beginnings are very diverse, but you started a lot of sentences with the subject in this piece, which is sort of hard on the flow.
This shouldn't be a semicolon. I think it should be a comma, but maybe a dash. I'm not entirely sure.
You use the word "seems" a lot, and while it does add to the sort of surrealistic mood of the piece, you don't want to overuse a word, especially in a shorter work.
Yay!
Carly covered all the nitpicks I had, so I won't go into it.
Please don't take this review too negatively. Again, I loved the concept and the message you got across, but no piece is ever perfect.
Happy writing, Brie!
-Sea-
Hey!
Nitpicks:
I think this opening line could have a lot more impact. It's interesting, but needs some more oomph. You could take out the comma. You could take out the comma and "and it's". Or, you could divide it into two sentences. "There is a room. It's full of reflections."
This sentence is a little cumbersome to me. I get what you're trying to say, but I think it could be worded a little differently. Something like "they reflect the way your average mirror would, but they also reflect so much more."
This sounded a little awkward to me. There's a lot of "of" in there. I would try to take that out. Something like "not the slightest hint of depression"
Make this active instead of passive. "She looks around and becomes confused"
I would put "appearance" after "her" because at first that's all it does and that's what a normal mirror does.
I love this description.
Why is she overwhelmed?
It's not exactly clear what happens here. She moves forward and then the mirror is suddenly broken and she has a bloody hand. I mean, you can conclude that she punches the mirror, but I would make that image and that action a little more clear to the reader.
This sounded a little odd to me. Maybe try taking out the "almost seems" so you have "It's as if..."
I'd put these in italics. Also, maybe differentiate who is talking. It's the other versions of this girl, right? Maybe say which version is saying what.
Same thing here. I'd take out the "almost seems".
Makes the statement a lot more active.
Who is talking?
What does she understand?
Whose arms?
Who is he?
I really liked this piece and I think you did a really nice job. I loved your descriptions. I could really visualize where she was and what was going on. I think the only description you could have added was what this girl looked like normally and who the guy was at the end.
I really loved how you chose to end the story. For a second I thought she was going to kill herself and I was like "oh well that's depressing..." but I'm glad there was the turn around and she conquered this alter-ego things. I think the ending could have been slowed down just a touch and some things could have been explained a little more like who this guy is. Is he actually there? Is he a figment of her imagination? What's the deal?
Lastly, I also liked that there are multiple ways you can interpret the story. I'm not going to try and write out the couple ways I came up with to interpret it because I'm really bad at explaining things but overall I think you did a really nice job!
Let me know if you have any questions or need anything else!
-Carly
Hello Bhayden!
First of all I must say this is amazing. The concept and moral to this is. . . wow. I love how you made it fantasy-like and imaginative. But there a few sentences that kind of didn't make sense:
I can't get my head around this (sorry for the pun). But it doesn't make sense. If it's a circle, how can it have different walls? Perhaps a rephrase would be best suited here.
And:
Mmm, I don't know. This wasn't very satisfactory. I was enjoying the different descriptions you came up with for each emotion. It just seems slack the way you generalized this.
That's all I saw to nit-pick. Hope it was helpful for you and that you can put it to good use.
This is a beautiful story, with a meaning all girls can relate to. Very good job. I wish you the very best for your future writings.
~Crazy