Warning: This work has been rated 16+ for violence and mature content.
Annabelle Chapter 2: The Truth
For around a week after Drake got back, he and Anna were inseparable; They were constantly kissing and laughing, which was making Anna feel a lot better after what had happened; However, things over the last couple of weeks, have been really down, causing Anna to relapse with her depression. All it has been being fighting, shouting and to make things worse Anna has been constantly let down by Drake. He misses dates and bails on her all the time, she just can't take it anymore, she needs a proper explanation.
"Drake!? For gods sake Drake I wish you'd just tell me the truth for once. PLEASE DRAKE! Pl-please...!" Anna was sat, balling outside Drakes apartment.
"PLEASE DRAKE, I-I'm begging you, just talk to me! Drake, Drake, please... PLEASE!" Annabelle sat, crying and sobbing for at least an hour.
Eventually, she gave up. She left and went home. As she walked through her door, she was still sobbing uncontrollably, she was completely drained.
"You want to talk about it?" Payton looked at her
"No, " as Anna fell into Payton's arms she began balling. She hugged Payton tightly as tears streamed down her face.
"God what happened?" inquired Payton.
"I-uh it um, it's nothing, I'm just, just tired" sobbed Anna as she stumbled toward her bedroom
"night," shouted Payton
"night." She sat on her bed and she opened her bedside table draw. Anna looked at her sleeping pills,
"maybe I, maybe I could take a few, a few extra. Maybe I could just drift off to sleep and not have to wake up, not have to deal with this crap..." she thought to herself
"I could just... No, I just have to go to sleep."
It was early in the morning, and Annabelle had managed to get some sleep. She was laid there on her bed, still sobbing about Drake, she felt like she couldn't mover. Then Payton walked in,
"hey are you ok?"
"Um yeah, I'm fine." Payton was looking around the room , then all of a sudden she stopped and began to stare at something.
"Hey, what's wrong?"
"Annabelle why do you have pills?" questioned Payton.
"I um, I can't t-talk about it ok" replied Anna,
"no tell me."
"I can't you um don't need to know, its fine" Anna replied
"no, I'm your best friend, and I have been since college, I deserve to know"
"please don't make me tell you, please" Anna pled.
"Tell me, please I deserve to know, I'm your best friend." Payton Exclaimed.
"I-um, fine. You remember when I went out to that bar a couple months ago and I didn't come home for a few days." began Anna
"yeah but, whats that got to do with anti-depressants and sleeping pills, you told me you stayed with your mom?" Snapped Payton.
"Well um, on my way out of there, a guy, about twice my size, grabbed me and pulled me into an alleyway. He started t-to strangle me, then h-he beat me" Anna began to sob as Payton stood there, completely silent.
"A while later, I-uh woke up in a dark room. From what I could tell, it looked like a basement. Payton, he did stuff to me, stuff that for the moment I-um am not comfortable talking about. After I finally found a way out, found the police and asked them to keep it confidential, that's why its not on the news. For the moment only you and my mom know. " finished Anna.
"You can talk to me about it whenever you need to, ok?"
"yeah..."
A while after she had told Payton, she decided to go out for a while after she took some of her meds. Anna headed downtown to a simple bar. All of a sudden, her heart began to beat faster and faster, the smell of gas and smoke reminded her of the attack. She had to breathe in and out, in and out. After a little while, she felt a lot better and entered the bar, upon entering she realized this was also a hotel. She saw many people sat, enjoying their drinks. Anna walked over to the bar and decided to order herself a couple of shots of Jack Daniels. Then, a couple hours later she was a little tipsy.
"Hey my name is Lewis, can I buy you a drink"
"Uh yeah, why not, oh and my name is Annabelle but just call me Anna," replied Anna.
"Yeah sure."
Although Anna didn't know the guy, they really hit it off. Throughout the few hours, they were chatting they also had a couple of beers. After all their chatting, Lewis leaned toward Anna and gave her a kiss. "Hey, come on let us go to my room." The minute they got into the elevator, they began kissing each other. It all happened so fast. Anna barely knew what she was doing, but it was too late...
"Morning, you've slept I for ages it's already four o'clock" smiled Lewis.
"Hi, um, so about last night" began Anna.
"This can't continue, I am just getting out of a relationship plus I was drunk so I-" Anna was then interrupted
"no this will continue, whenever I call you this will happen again, OR ELSE!" Threatened Lewis.
"But I-"
"NO, shut the fuck up and do as your told" BANG.
"Please, stop!" whimpered Anna. Lewis looked at her with devil eyes.
"PLEASE NO LEAVE ME AL-"
BANG, BANG. Lewis had shoved her up against the wall, held her by her neck and hit her, multiple times across her face. He let go and she fell to the floor.
"S-stop p-please, p-please," begged Anna. Lewis kept her here, doing this until nine o'clock, until finally.
"You can go now, and don't be telling anyone about 'us' or there will be SERIOUS consequences," advised Lewis.
"Y-yeah I-I uh promise," assured Anna.
Anna left that night, balling her eyes out in pain. For the moment she was safe to be around Payton as her bruises were not showing yet.
"Hey Anna, You remember Jason, my brother, don't you" Explained Payton.
"Oh yeah" answered Anna, still a little shaken.
"Hey, Anna" smiled Jason.
"Hey."
"So Jason is now a fully trained cop and will be working in this city, and oh he needs to stay on the sofa for a few days." Explained Payton.
"Oh yeah it's okay, anyway night" replied Anna.
"Night,"
"night," replied Jason and Payton.
Anna searched her night table for sleeping pills, she couldn't wait to sleep after what had happened. After she took them she laid in bed for a few minutes and thought about Lewis.
"This whole thing with Lewis, it's my fault, just like the attack, just like everything, everything is always my fault." Then slowly she drifted off to sleep.
"Ding, ding, ding, ding."
"Ngh" groaned Anna.
"WHAT? Why is Drake calling."
"Hello, Drake?"
"Yeah uh hi um Anna I need to talk to you, please, I need to explain everything to you. I'm heading to yours now I'll be there soon"
"Drake, Drake??? Ugh, damn it" Anna jumped out of bed put on some clothes. As she looked in the mirror, she realizes she could see her bruises. Frustratedly, she cleaned the cut on her face and put some makeup over the bruises. then sat on the sofa to wait for Drake, luckily Jason and Payton were out at lunch.
"Knock, knock."
Anna was struggling to breathe, however, she sucked it up and answered the door.
"Hey, um you shouldn't have come here, I'm still angry with you..."
"Hi, I know and I am so sorry, but I'm going to start from the beginning, ok" began Drake
"okay go" replied Anna.
"So, from the moment I met you I loved you, recently I have been a complete douche bag to you and I'm sorry, but recently that I realized I loved you as a friend. The reason I've been bailing out was because I couldn't face you, I couldn't face anyone. I've finally got enough courage to tell you."
"Tell me what, Drake?"
"Annabelle, while I was gone, I met some amazing men and it kind of changed my life. It also helped me figure out that, that um-"
"THAT WHAT!" Exclaimed Anna.
"I'm gay..."
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125,004 Literary Works • 672,792 Reviews
Hello hello! Happy RevMo!
I apologize that I haven't read the previous installment of this story, so I'll be looking at this story as a part of a greater whole. I also haven't read Blue's review, but I'll try not to repeat too much of what they said.
I also think it's really cool that you have the guts to share your work on this site! (I didn't have the guts to do that until I was in high school). Please don't become discouraged, and please continue to write!!
Overall, I found this chapter a bit hard to follow. I'm sure part of the reason is that I'm coming in late and I don't know what has already happened or who the characters are. But there are also a lot of layers here and layers are good, but you have to be careful with how they are crafted and shown. I think you have too much going on in this chapter. A good way to see if you have too much or too little happening in a chapter is to try to summarize the entire chapter in one sentence. If it takes more than one sentence, there is too much going on and you should either cut some of it out, or break the chapter up into multiple chapters.
All of the different events you have going on here are all individually interesting and exciting and definitely move the plot forward. The problem is that so much happens, as a reader, I don't have time to really digest and understand each part before we've moved on to something else. Plotting can be really hard and figuring out what should happen in each chapter can be really hard (I feel like I've only recently learned how to properly plot a story). If you would like more in-depth feedback about plotting, let me know and I will do my best to help!
Once you cut the chapter up into multiple chapters, you're going to need to add to each scene to make the scenes long enough to support a chapter (or maybe a couple of scenes to support a chapter depending on your style). To do that, you're going to want to show us everything.
Remember that the reader is new to this world. You have a much broader understanding of everything happening in this story because it's your story. You created it. The reader doesn't have the same window you do, so you have to take us there and show it to us the way you see it in your head. That's easier said than done! But think about the senses. Describe where the character is, what it looks like, sounds like, smells like, feels like. Show the reader how the character feels and what is going through their mind. Show us their personality through what they do and how they interact with others. Take us through the scene like a movie, show us each thing that happens and take us through what the character is experiencing through the senses and through her thoughts and feelings.
You're young, and I think it's really cool that you're writing such an intense, gritty story. (I tend to go for those).
I recommend the YWS knowledge base if you haven't seen it already. There are some really great posts in there about just about anything you could ever want in regards to writing. I'm constantly looking things up in there! I also recommend that you read as much as you possibly can and read lots of different types of books and different genres of books. The more you read, the easier writing will come.
I'm going to leave things there for now and skip on over to the next chapter! Let me know if you have any questions or if anything I said was confusing!
Okay, so you dealt with a lot of heavy things here, but first I wanted to say that I think you handled some of it extremely well. Especially the two attacks Anna faces. I find it incredibly realistic that she kept both attacks to herself rather than telling anyone, that things like smells can trigger panic attacks and bad memories, and that she blames herself for the things that happened to her. Plus the fact that Drake realized he was gay but wasn't sure how to tell Anna and was afraid the people he cared about wouldn't accept him for it, but finally he had the courage to tell Anna the reason he had been bailing on her.
I think your biggest problem right now is that things move way too fast in this chapter. Like for a couple paragraphs, Anna's flipping out because Jake is bailing on her. Then for the next little bit, she's telling Peyton about the first time she was attacked. Then she goes to a bar and gets attacked again but doesn't tell anyone, even though Peyton's cop brother is there. And then Drake comes over to tell her that he's gay.
It's so much happening in so short a time, and it seems even faster because of all the dialogue. Not that dialogue is a bad thing--it's good, actually--but you need to balance dialogue with narration to slow things down. Rather than having all this rapid-fire dialogue and nothing else, slow the scenes down with narration. What are the characters doing while they have these conversations? What are they thinking? Mostly Anna, since she's our viewpoint character. We get a little of that from her, like with this part.
Here, we see that Anna needs to get out of the house after telling Payton about the attack. We see her head for a bar, get triggered by the smells of gas and smoke, have a panic attack, and deal with it by controlling her breathing and having some drinks.
But that's while she's walking around, not interacting with anyone else. What about literally any time she's talking to another character? What is she doing and thinking then?
Also, minor question.
So Anna can see her bruises in the mirror, but Payton and his cop brother didn't notice anything when they came home? Geez. Payton, you're supposed to be her best friend, you idiot. And I realize your cop brother is off duty, but still. I'd expect him to notice something.
Also, I know in an earlier line you say her bruises aren't showing yet, but if she was in a room with Lewis ALL NIGHT I feel like that doesn't fly. Surely her bruises would've formed hours ago.