Novel Manuscript
By
C.A.E
Part I
1
Despite the stalker following her, Hilary York was feeling unusually optimistic. Even the sky seemed to share in her joy.
Months of sweat, blood, and hours of overtime at the Waffle House had led to her brand new, perfect, pink laptop, complete with 40 gigabytes of memory. Her name was even engraved on the top of it. Months of hearing costumers complain about her service had finally paid off.
The laptop was a fair reward for working a fifty-hour week in hell. With it she could finally start living out her dream of being an author. She had so much to tell the world, and not even the strange man following her could crush the happiness she felt while she held the laptop in her arms.
She hugged the laptop with all her might, convinced that if she let it go it would vanish. Or worse; the man in the black hooded raincoat would steal it. She quickly brushed the thought away, although her arms gripped the laptop even harder. Her pace quickened and she broke into a jog in an attempt to run home faster.
Just as she expected, the strange man broke into a jog after her. She was sure that the man meant no harm, but even so, just looking back at the man she couldn’t help but feel chills run up and down her spine.
Her long legs carried her effortlessly through the sidewalk, but the man had seemed to have no trouble keeping up with her. As she jogged, she seemed to leave all happy feelings behind her. Goosebumps had broken out all over her normally smooth skin. A small breeze blew her long blond hair in her face.
Even the sky seemed to have turned against her. What was once sunny and full of hope, was now cloudy and filled despair. In just a few short minutes the scent of rain quickly overtook her senses and she stopped jogging. The man following her stopped too. An uncontrollable anger rushed through Hilary’s veins and she turned to confront the man, laptop still in hand.
As always, Hilary was unable to see a thing about the man. The man was wearing the same thing he had been wearing last week, and the week before that. A long black hooded raincoat and dark sunglasses that covered his face and body. Even his feet were covered with black boots. This alone stuck her as funny. Why would he wear boots in the middle of summer in California of all places?
Before the sky had changed on a whim, the man had seemed oddly dressed and suspicious. But now, under fading light of the sky, the hooded raincoat seemed the perfect choice of clothing. Maybe the man had seen the weather channel and knew the forecast had called for rain. That would explain the odd clothes. But it didn’t explain the Goosebumps or the gut feeling in Hilary’s stomach.
“Why are you following me?”
From under the sunglasses, Hilary could feel a cold stare aimed directly at her.
“Are you deaf? I’ve seen you follow me every day for the last two weeks. If you think your going break in my house to rape me, just know I have pepper spray in my purse. Oh, and I know how to use it,” She warned.
The man seemed unfazed by her accessions. His breathing did, however, speed up. It was fast and uneasy. At first Hilary thought the man was having a heart attack. She was about to ask him if he was alright when she realized the man was panting. Panting like a dog on a hot summer day.
“What’s wrong with you? You freak!”
She turned to leave, whipping her soft black hair in his face. A cold hand caught her arm and pulled her back. At first she was frightened by the unnatural coldness of the hand. The grip was firm but not tight, but the hand was as cold as ice. It reminded her of painful memories.
She glanced at the hand, half afraid that the thing it belonged to wasn’t human. The hand was human alright, but cocooned in a black leather glove. She felt another cold hand grasp her other arm. She froze with fear and dropped the new laptop. Surly the man didn’t plan to rape and kill her in the middle of the day and in the view of other people.(‘Course it happened all the time.)
She was suddenly convinced that she would end up on the six o’clock news. People would tune in and say to themselves, “Oh, isn’t that sad? I should have helped her. And to die at such a young age. Now, who wants tea?”
All twenty years of her life flashed through her eyes like lightning. Years of pain and torment struck her almost worse than if the man had killed her. To die at twenty when she was just beginning to be happy felt like the worse torture she could think of.
“Noooo! Get off me! Help!!!” She screamed as loud as her lungs would let her. The people driving by the sidewalk on 19th avenue stopped to look in awe of her and drove off faster. An elderly couple a few blocks in front of them didn’t even so much as throw a glance at her. She was really going to die in the middle of a street during Monday five o’clock traffic. No one would help her.
Dear God, she prayed, what did I do? I don’t deserve this! Please, Lord, send me a miracle and an angel. I’ve stopped crying, so you have to keep your end of the bargain. It was the same pray she repeated every night, the same pray that was never answered. All it brought was a moment of self-hatred and rage.
“I don’t deserve this!” She screamed in helpless rage. Not just at the man but at all the bastards in hell. No matter how long they burned, it would never be enough. It would never heal all the pain they had caused.
A voice whispered in her ear. It reminded her of playing the telephone game. “I know you don‘t. Only two things in this world are immortal; love and death,” the voice said, “I’ll trust you to pick the right one.” The man’s cold hands let go of her.
Hilary’s heart raced. What? Love and death? What did that mean? And who said it? Hilary wasn’t so sure the man had said it. The voice was male, and also, somehow, female. It sounded old and at the same time young. It was British with a hint of American. It was just like stew. Yep, throw together stew, with a hint of everything.
She turned around expecting to see her bright green eyes in the man’s sunglasses. What she saw was far worse. There was no man. The man in the black hooded raincoat and sunglasses was gone. Hilary’s heart skipped a beat. The only other person close to her was a girl. A cute, harmless, girl with braded black hair and gorgeous green eyes.
The girl seemed about fifteen and was at least a block away from her. Where was the man in the raincoat? An overwhelming feeling of insanity crossed her mind. Had the man been there at all? Was that why no stopped to help her? Was it all in her head?
“No, no. I’m sane,” she assured herself.
The girl looked at her with caution.
“Are you OK miss?”
Hilary thought about the question. Was she ok? A man wearing a black hooded raincoat on a sunny day,(that wasn’t sunny any more), had threatened her life. She probably had another panic attack and a strange voice(that was male, female ,old ,and young) had asked her to chose between love and death. And to top it all off she had gripped the laptop box so hard her fingers were bleeding.
“No,” she decided, more to herself than the girl, “I think I need to get help.”
The girl nodded as if that were to be expected. Her green soulful eyes felt like they could see straight to her soul. People who thought they heard voices and saw imaginary people had to be crazy. Help was just another word for an insane asylum.
The girl walked up to Hilary and put her hand on Hilary’s laptop. “You need to see Mommy’s therapist.” Hilary’s eyes widened with shock. She wasn’t sure what was worse; that a fifteen year old and just called her insane or that the girl was right.
Hilary smiled at the girl, her head filled with thoughts of strangling and murder. “Thanks, but I have a therapist. Tell your Mom, you shouldn’t be out here alone with out anybody to watch you.”
The girl’s face had a sly smile that said she knew something Hilary didn’t. But did it really matter? Was the girl ever real?
“Mom doesn’t know I left,” the girl said, “You won’t tell her right?”
Hilary could almost feel God laughing at her. Not that God was a bad person in Hilary’s eyes , but he must have had a weird sense of humor. Otherwise he wouldn’t have sent her a young run away.
“You ran away from home?”
“No,” the girl said, a little irritated, “I walked away from home. There’s a difference.”
Hilary sighed. “My bad. How stupid of me to think that you would run away from home. All the cool kids walk away from their parents these days.” Hilary put more sarcasm in her voice than she meant to. She sounded like an jerk. Even worse, she was an insane jerk
The girl was used to sarcasm. Very used to it after years of being called “shit” and “worthless”. “You’re the one talking to yourself,” she pointed out.
Hilary’s grip on the laptop loosened. “At least I didn’t walk away from my parents.”
The girl looked offended. How dare the crazy lady make fun of her. She didn’t know anything about her! “The bible says not to judge other people. Your judging.”
Hilary felt a pinch of guilt. Of all people she knew what it was like to have to run away. To feel like death is the only way to escape the pain. “OK, lets try this again. I’m Hilary York. What’s your name?”
The girl perked up, “I’m Melissa, just Melissa. But I was Melissa Jones.”
Melissa seemed happy to have someone to talk to. But Hilary couldn’t shake the man in the raincoat from her mind. She felt like glass, if she even saw him, she would shatter into a million pieces and that would be the end of Hilary York. The girl who exploded from seeing an imaginary stalker, who of course, was real. Hilary sighed from confusion.
“Are you feeling alright,” Melissa asked, “Mom used to feel bad, but then she would get drunk until she couldn’t see straight and pass out. That made her feel better. Do you want to get drunk?”
Hilary was not expecting that. She raced to think of something to say. Something that would make Melissa feel better but not make her think she was pitying her. It came out as: “Oh, sorry, you have to be strong. I know about being drunk, but so do you. Did you not want to get drunk?”
Hilary grabbed at her hair. “I’m a mess!” Her heart was still beating at thirty miles an hour. At any moment the man in the rain coat would come back and rape her in front of Melissa. That was, if the man in the raincoat was even real. Hilary collapsed on the sidewalk at 19th avenue. The people driving by still didn’t stop. The world moved on without Hilary or Melissa.
Melissa sat on the ground with Hilary. “You aren’t a mess. Your special, in your own way.” For some reason that didn’t make Hilary feel any better. Maybe a bubble bath later?
The Goosebumps on Hilary still hadn’t gone away. “Melissa, can I trust you to tell the truth?” Melissa nodded.
“Melissa, did you see a man in a black raincoat?” Her voice was calm but on the verge shaking. Her sanity depended on Melissa’s answer. If Melissa said she didn’t see the man then Hilary was sure she would have a mental break down. She was long overdue for one. The girl’s eyes seemed to brighten at the question.
Melissa answered instantly, “You mean the man in black raincoat with glasses on?” Her voice sounded so sure that there was a man in a raincoat that it made Hilary wondered why she ever doubted her eyes. Of course there was stalker following Hilary. Why wouldn’t there be?
Relief and more fear crossed Hilary’s mind. She was paralyzed for a moment. She searched deep into Melissa’s eyes. Melissa looked so pleased with her self that she had to be telling the truth. Hilary couldn’t contain herself any more and grabbed Melissa’s black t-shirt.
“Don’t lie to me! You can’t lie to me! Did you really see a man in a black hooded raincoat? It’s really important that you tell the truth.” Any calmness in Hilary’s voice had abandoned her. She felt like she was going to cry, and tears were already starting to swell up inside her.
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Canary word: Present
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125,018 Literary Works • 672,855 Reviews
"Despite the stalker following her" is confusing. It suggests that currently, someone is following her right at that moment--but it's also vague, so it can also easily mean that someone has BEEN following her. If it's the latter, then it should be Despite the stalker that has BEEN following her recently(...)
It also seems like a really random place to start. To go from talking about a stalker to the weather is abrupt, and they aren't exactly opposite enough to create a nice juxtaposition; rather, as a reader I feel FAR more interested in the stalker than I do about what the weather is outside, and as a reader, it's weird to get more information about the weather than the stalker.
You're doing a lot of telling and not a lot of showing. I would have rather have been introduced to the stalker by some chilling detail. Instead you're just telling the audience she has a stalker, and the weight of something like that loses it effect completely.
Now I'm really confused--since she kept mentioning the stalker as a passing thought, I thought that meant it was a consistent stalker. Now he is actually, in the present of the story, following her. A detail like that should not be secondary--it should be first priority. You would forget ALL thoughts about the weather and your pink laptop as soon as a scary guy in a trench coat starts following you, don't you think?
The goosebumps would be a better detail if you didn't include the "normally smooth skin" comment. The information is very unneeded in this context. The same goes for the second sentence. The breeze has nothing to do with a stalker following her, and neither does the color of her hair. You can leave details like her physical description for better moments, because right now the reader wants to focus in on the fact that she has a stalker and very little else.
That's pretty melodramatic. For one, it's not subtle at all, so trying to make parallels between the weather and her mood just come off as over-the-top more than metaphoric or anything. For two, the juxtaposition of bright sunny day vs. very sudden clouds and rain is almost cartoonish, especially since the sentence makes it sound like it's happening within a few seconds. For three, again, the readers at the moment are not concentrating very hard on the weather. We want to know about the stalker, not the weather, and I'm pretty sure if you were in a situation like that, you wouldn't concentrate very much on the weather either.
I notice that you're not using her name a lot. You want to, since I forgot that her name was Hilary the next time you used it.
So he HAS been consistently following her. This is a detail that was not obvious to me, and I was very confused about it for most of the scene up until this moment.
I'll also take the time to comment a bit on stalkers.
For one, why is he doing this so obviously and out in the open? If I were a stalker, I wouldn't want my victim to know I was trailing them. For two, why does he need to follow her so closely? Most stalkers who consistently stalk their victim don't need to walk on the same street as them. Most of them just stay inside their car, watch them, and then move when needed. It's a lot more subtle than showing up in a trench coat and running down the street after them. Stalkers don't want to get caught, and Hilary, if she were thinking with her whole brain for a moment, would yell and scream for help until the guy ran away, or call the police. A stalker's best option is to stay hidden, thus removing power from their victim--"I can see you but you can't see me" type of deal. Lots more creepy than having a guy obviously follow you down the street, I think.
Goosebumps doesn't need to be capitalized.
And... huh? That last sentence doesn't make sense. Why would him knowing about the weather beforehand explain Hilary being scared? And I already thought she knew why she was scared--she's being stalked by a creepy guy in a trench coat!
I find that unlikely. What would be more likely is her feeling uneasy because he can't see any of his facial reactions.
Why hasn't she done anything about this guy before? If he's been obviously following her for two weeks, you'd think this confrontation would have happened after only the third day of it happening.
Also, you don't need to have the dialogue tag "she warned" after all that--it's pretty obviously a warning just given the dialogue itself.
I'm not sure what word you're going for, but I'm pretty sure "accessions" isn't it. She isn't agreeing to anything.
Wasn't she blonde a few paragraphs ago?
Also, I feel like this has mostly been from Hilary's limited perspective, so I don't think she would realize that she had whipped him in the face with her hair. I knew I didn't realize I did it when I had long hair.
And wow, I didn't realize how close she was. She'd have to be standing less than a foot away from him to be able to whip him in the face with her hair. Doesn't seem very smart of her or the stalker to be standing that close.
First sentence: REALLY? That's the first thing she was scared of? Not that he was grabbing her? It seems unlikely to me, and it fits in with what I was saying about the weather and all that--it seems like a detail no one would pay that much attention to if they were in a situation like that.
Last sentence: Way too vague. As the reader, I have no idea what you mean by that, and it sort of seems useless there. I'm not even entirely sure what it means; does it means that cold hands reminds her of something specific, or the sensation of the cold hands are like when you remember a painful memory?
How come she had to look back to realize his hand was in a glove? She would be able to feel that. Also, it seems unlikely, again, that she would take in the temperature of his hand, especially so if he was in gloves.
"Cocooned" doesn't seem like the proper word to use at all. It makes it seem alienish, when really, leather gloves are pretty normal things to come by.
Lastly, again, I can't imagine her first reaction being to look back and check what his hands look like. I can only see her screaming for help and writhing in his grasp, trying to get away.
"Surly" should be "surely."
For one, she should be shocked that he's grabbing her in front of other people at all. On top of that, why isn't she screaming for help?! Why isn't anyone taking note of any of this? They should have as soon as she started yelling at him and asking him why he was following her. I'm imagining this entire scene taking place on a completely empty street, which is odd since it's the middle of the day and apparently just outside of a computer store.
Secondly... "Course it happened all the time." I seriously said "Since WHEN?!" aloud. Is this an alternate universe? Because in my experiences (and I watch a whole lot of documentaries about morbid stuff like this) that's not the case at all. People might get kidnapped in plain view, but not raped or killed!
Awfully humorous paragraph for being in the middle of a tense, scary scene. I can't imagine anyone thinking this, again, while they're being attacked.
FINALLY. This sentence? Move it to an early portion of the scene. Like as soon as he grabbed her. This needed to happen AGES ago.
And again I say: Since when?! Are the people in this story pod-people? No one would do this. Someone would at least call the police. ONE person would have to go up and ask if everything is okay. People are private these days, but if it was obvious someone was being attacked, I can't fathom no one standing up to help. Unless she's passing through a ghetto or something, but even then.
This is really angsty for a scene like this. Her first emotion should be scared and trying to get away, not thinking about how unfair it all is--she doesn't have TIME to think about all that. She's trying to get away and survive. She can think about that after she's kidnapped or after she's gotten away, but not as it's all happening.
That's a really, really weird comparison to make after having what I would think was a pretty compelling experience.
I've never been able to see color in sunglasses. I'm pretty sure everything turns out black or grey when reflected, or otherwise really, really darkened. Certainly nothing bright green.
See this? I wanted to see some reaction to no one helping her before. When she cries out for help, I want her to look around, and then get pissed off and desperate when she sees no one helping her or paying attention. The way she reacted seemed so passive, as if she expected no one to help, which is why it left me confused as a reader. If she were to react the same way I did, with incredulousness, then I would be in the same boat as her and understand that this is NOT an everyday occurrence for people to just ignore someone in need of help.
I thought she dropped her laptop. And how did it make her fingers bleed? I can see her fingers getting tired and strained, but how can a box make her bleed?
Jesus. Hyperbole works in some situations, but not when you're on the topic of your main character needing psychiatric help. When you're using it in that context, then I can't tell if it's hyperbole at all--I can only hope it is.
Didn't she just call her a fifteen year old girl? I was always out on my own when I was fifteen--I was a teenager, not a little kid.
Did we switch perspectives suddenly? How does Hilary know what the girl is used to? Also, sarcasm does not necessarily equal verbal abuse. My whole family is sarcastic and I don't suffer years of being called horrible names.
Again, did we switch perspectives again, or is Hilary being ironic?
"Your judging" should be "You're judging."
The girl didn't even mention anything about escaping through death. She just said she ran away.
Also, I'm a bit confused about why Melissa would suggest Hilary see her mom for therapy when she knows her mom is a drunk and doesn't have very good feelings towards her. If it was just her being cheeky, she could have just said she needed to see any old therapist, not her mother specifically.
I'm confused. I don't know what she's talking about, and I'm not even entirely sure it's Hilary speaking.
I sort of get what you mean by the bubble bath... but considering it seems like Hilary is having a nervous breakdown, it doesn't seem like anything she would think in that moment.
I don't get where this outburst came from. It said she felt relieved, and then all of the sudden she's yelling. It's confusing.
Overall, it needs a lot of work. I would rewrite it so there's more tension and less confusion. Give more concentration to what the readers need to know in the scene and give us less superfluous details that we can do without.
I think the story can be really interesting if you restructure this scene, since the concept of watching a character go crazy in a story is always an appealing one to me. Keep writing, but try to keep in mind what the reader needs to know and how we can connect with the scene so everything gives us its full effect.
I'm not usually one to get on people's case about the ratio; but make sure you know its there. For every piece of story you post; you must do two reviews. That way your work, as well as others, gets read and reviewed.
A couple nitpicks:
The Hilary has long blonde hair in one paragraph, then soft black hair a few paragraphs later.
I kind of want to know what pain Hilary went through; not necessary some stagnate passive voice stuff but a hint at a night or a smell or a feeling associated with an object. Fear and a futon; sickness and strawberries, something to help me feel the character a little more. Right now we have a girl with two different colors of hair who saw and man and thinks she's crazy for seeing him. The situation is engaging but I don't care about the character enough to feel for her life or her sanity.
This is a good desctiption; but it's a little too close to the first paragraph about the happy sun to have enough impact. You could add some fluff in between the two to get the desired effect.
This is good; which is why i think you should change the word tea to coffee or some alcoholic beverage. It would be more true to the mindset.
Besides these little nitpicks and the addition of some Hilary-memories, I think this is a great beginning. I will be looking for the next installments.