"This is not what it looks like," he said. Even though the rain had ceased, water still dripped from his heavy stubble, tiny droplets splashing against the hard tiles of the restroom ruins. Through the holes in the ceiling, he could see the black clouds hesitating to unleash their raging cry once more.
His greasy hair shone in the dulled sunlight. It appeared as if it would have ignited without delay, should the solar rays have pierced the empyrean. His eye twitched with each and every drop of tainted water from the broken sink to his right. His ear had already got used to the sound of something swimming in the toilets to his left.
The entire world had ended, yet his clothes still had that sweet smell of lavender and strawberries his fabric softener used to have. A pair of jeans, tattered leather shoes, a mauve shirt with one sleeve pulled up. On his wrist – a gold watch. On his face – a frozen gasp. On his upper-arm – the belt his waist was lacking.
Tightly strained around his frail muscles, it served as a tourniquet, preventing all blood from flowing in and out of the feeble limb. From one of the veins that were popping out, in the midst of countless healed dotted marks, hung a small, plastic syringe, blood slowly squirting its way inside it.
A little girl that shared his hazel eyes stood motionless at the broken entrance of the restroom. It was exactly what it looked like.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
Are you sure you want to delete this comment? This cannot be undone.
Mark this comment as a review? Points will be awarded to the poster.
Your comment was posted, but it wasn’t long enough to count as a review. Reviews need about four complete sentences (at least 250 characters). Try writing another review that explains your thoughts in more detail — the author will appreciate it, and you’ll earn points for it.
125,015 Literary Works • 672,845 Reviews
Hello! I love this piece and don't have any major critiques, so I'll just give a line level edit:
"should the solar rays have pierced the empyrean." Love the line, questioning the grammar.
"The entire world had ended, yet his clothes still had that sweet smell of lavender and strawberries his fabric softener used to have." Great description. I also love that it says the world has ended, but it just seems to be referring to the man and girl's personal world, which is really bittersweet and really well-worded. I love the phrase in this context, it does something really interesting.
One thing that this story could benefit from is a slightly better sense of place. I get that it's short, so you don't have to do too much world building, but I wish it was a bit clearer whether this restroom is in his house or some sort of public restroom, or even a hotel. I think knowing that would help ground me just enough to paint in the rest of the setting from the great descriptions you're already giving of the sink and the water on the tiles and all of your glorious descriptions.
Hope this review helped!
-tgirly
Hey! Thanks for reviewing ^^
I just checked, and the grammar is correct. Thanks for pointing out the thing about the setting, though. I agree that it's not clear where exactly it takes place. I wasn't even thinking about any particular place when I was writing it, and I had a word-count requirement of exactly 250 words, so that's probably why I didn't write more of this.
Anyway, thanks again for your review!
Hi~
This is God-awfully beautiful.
It took me forever to review this (forever), and it deserves a better review than I have to give you—luckily, it looks like @steampowered has you covered. Something about this just clicks into place for me. It's just one of those things I read that, once I get into it, I read it ten more times just to zoom in and fall in love with every single detail. That doesn't happen very often for me at all. I don't know what it is about it; I never know, maybe it's the eloquence of the way you say things. I'm not sure.
It may seem like a stupid little thing, but I want more about the clouds. The first time I read this, I didn't understand the plotline at all, which is perfectly okay (in fact, I love that enigma). But I guess when I read this, I just wanted a lengthier description of that one environmental attribute for the sake of foreshadowing. Stephen King does that in many of his shorts, the ones that come to memory being "Strawberry Spring" and "The Man Who Loved Flowers" (Mindbogglingly amazing. If you haven't already, read them.). Plus, I think that the characteristics of a storm described during many short stories center on the clouds. I want you to amplify that (if you were to disregard the word limit). It may be selfish of me, but I think incorporating literary techniques like foreshadowing by enlarging your metaphors in a story so short would just perfect this piece.
No, where'd empyrean go ;-; give it back
Wow. The repetition you exercise here is just fantastic. The detail you're able to put into your sentences is unbelievable. That's a quality I'm jealous of as a writer of shorts and novels. I could point out many other places in which you used descriptions that completely got me hooked.
Once I understood what your story was really about, this ending was gold. And like @steampowered said, very relatable.
I'm deeply sorry that I didn't have much constructive criticism. I can't put into words how much this impacted me emotionally as a reader. This was one of those few written works that just hit me in all of the right places.
Yours,
Savvy
Hey, Savvy. Thank you so much for your wonderful review!
You know what, I'll get "empyrean" back. I should preserve what I originally wrote anyway. I like to do that as a future reminder of how I used to write, so that I better myself and create better works.
Sorry about the clouds bit, I couldn't spare the words to further that.
But thank you so much for saying that you liked it, your review couldn't have come at a better time. It was truly helpful and motivating. I hope you have a wonderful day!
I think it's so awesome how you can reflect so honestly on yourself as a writer. You have a wonderful day, too! <3
Hello CandyWizard, steampowered here with a review!
Firstly, this is just a little thing, but I couldn’t help noticing that you’d marked this as science fiction and it doesn’t really seem like science fiction to me, so I was wondering if that was intentional. Maybe “Realistic” or “General Fiction” would be a more appropriate tag? Also, you might want to consider putting an age rating on, due to the contents of this piece.
Anyway, onto the actual review.
While I really enjoyed reading this and I was never left in any doubt about what was happening, I felt like the vocabulary you used in places made it a little unreadable. For example:
If your reader has to Google words to find out what they mean, you might want to consider an alternative word here, rather than “empyrean”. Sometimes having words that the reader doesn’t know can be good, but here I feel it kind of jars. Considering the complexity of the rest of your language, I suggest changing the word to something simpler.
This is just a little nitpick, but I noticed you sometimes have an issue with comma splices. The sentence I quoted doesn’t read so well because you joined two clauses up with a comma, that should probably have been joined up with a semi-colon. You might also like to consider splitting it into two sentences, so you have greater variation in your sentence structures.
or
There are probably other ways you can find to split those two clauses up, but I don’t think a comma is the best way to do it.
Considering this story’s modest length, you did an excellent job of telling the story and conveying some kind of emotion in the reader. From what I could see this story was not only about the devastation that addiction can have on a person’s life but on how it impacts on the people they are close to, and how perhaps this particular family has been driven into poverty (implied through the ruins) and of course how the little girl’s innocence has been lost.
Overall, I really enjoyed this, and the only real advice I can give you is to perhaps simplify some of your language. If, however, you’re going for a literary feel, perhaps you can alter that “Science Fiction” tag to “Literature”.
Hopefully this review was helpful, and best of luck with your writing! Feel free to let me know if you ever need anything else reviewed, and I’d be more than happy to oblige.
steampowered
First of all, I should say thank you!
I marked it as Science Fiction because I thought the ruins, tainted water and whatnot would imply that the world has literally ended (possibly due to some nuclear war or natural disaster). I thought it would bring a stronger message if the guy, who had to fight for survival in an apocalyptic world, went about shooting up even though he had a daughter to take care of.
Those other things you mentioned make a lot more sense than what I've written. I'll go change them right away.
Great review, thank you so much for taking the time to write it!
I in all honest, have to agree with Perf. This story was absolutely amazing. The detail was way beyond compare, and I thank you very much for posting this.
Question though; you wrote this story in perfection, so why did you post it for a review? Was it just for us to read, or did you actually think you needed reviewing?
Another question; what is with the needle? I don't understand what that is for. That could just be me not understanding something, and it going right over my head.
Thanks for reviewing. I just wanted to share it with someone, and I'm glad that you liked it.
To be honest, I always avoid telling people what I meant, so that they can view it from a fresh perspective and see what their eyes are showing them. There is no wrong way of interpreting it, if you ask me. Let yourself see what your eyes are showing you, let yourself feel what your heart is telling you. And then, there will be no limit to what you will be able to imagine.
I see that you are new, so I should probably tell you that your review is a bit too short. When reviewing prose, I generally analyse the five elements of storytelling: plot, character, conflict, theme, and setting. With very short pieces such as this one, it can be difficult to grasp them all at first, so it's fine here. But when you review a bigger work, say, of 2000 words, I would suggest writing something longer. If you want to learn more, there are quite a few articles here on YWS dedicated to reviewing. They're worth checking out.
Again, thanks for reviewing!
WOAH. This was awesome! I honestly have no remarks except, I loved the way you had the detail you did, especially for only the limit of, 250? This was so well written. I don't think I could have done any better.
I don't understand the use of a dash. I don't know why, or where you would use it. If you would not mind, please explain this to me! ^^
The dashes basically substitute words, in this case, "was", or "he wore". I was constricted to writing exactly 250 words, and this way I could tell more with fewer. Also, I think it avoids being repetitive by not using the aforementioned words.