My eyes open to endless sky. I stand up and peer at a road. A few decrepit trees and grass line the side of the road. But I don’t see anyone.
Where am I?
I begin to walk, scattering dust and pebbles.
The road leads to a small town near the desert. People bustle through the streets. I wave at a man huddled in an alley. He doesn’t wave back. Children race through the swarm of people. One nearly bumps into me, but rushes off without acknowledging me.
I should ask someone about this town.
I tap a nearby woman on the shoulder.
“Excuse me, do you-” I start to say.
The woman walks past me, her figure retreating into the distance. I try asking other people, but I receive the same reaction.
Am I really that unnoticeable?
The road ends at a shack at the edge of town. Its door is slightly open. I hesitate, a wave of panic and strangely familiarity crashing onto me. I gingerly slip inside.
Have I been here before?
I stumble over debris and notice a crumpled photo. There’s a child sitting on a tire swing, smiling at me. Tears trickle down my cheeks.
Why am I crying?
I can’t stop bawling, my hands trembling as they grip the photo.
A door creaks open. I freeze, the photograph fluttering out of my hand.
There’s a person holding a mirror and walking towards me. I lean over their shoulder as they pick up the photo. I have a sudden urge to peek at the mirror.
The person abruptly turns and faces me, dropping the mirror. The glass shatters. They
stare at me momentarily and then leave, carrying the photograph.
I suddenly recognize them. It doesn’t matter how. I just need answers.
I want to be heard.
I run outside. The person is kneeling down in front of something.
“Hey!” I shout. The person doesn’t hear me. I raise my voice, calling their name. They don’t respond.
“Are you listening to me?” I scream, my tone growing desperate.
I stand in front of them and stare. They’re staring back, but not at me. They’re grasping something, sobbing softly. I turn around.
I’m looking at a gravestone. There’s cobwebs covering up a name that I had forgotten until I read it.
It’s kind of funny that I forgot my own name, isn’t it?
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
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125,022 Literary Works • 672,757 Reviews
The ending was a bit obvious, but I have no problem with that. The only thing that I do have a problem with though is that very last line, "It's kind of funny that I forgot my own name isn't it?", I feel that the line has a different tone then the rest. Until that point the story seemed almost foreboding or ominous, but that last line seemed a bit humorous, which seemed a bit out of place.
I liked the concept. In one of my classes we had to write a poem based on some old Vietnam war pictures and I ended up writing a poem with a similar "person doesn't know they're dead yet" concept.
My favorite part is the bit where a person has a mirror and drops it. I got the impression that whoever had the mirror saw the protagonist, freaked out, and dropped their mirror out of fear (I would probably have the same reaction).
This is a very thought provoking story that leaves me with a lot of unanswered questions. Is he the only dead person around? Why is he visible in mirrors? Can he leave that town? How recently did he die? How/why is he still around? Personally I kind of want to know more...
I think I would rate this 4 out of 5 stars. Good luck in the future.
Hi, Cinderquill! Pan dropping in for a quick review. Because this is so short, I'm just going to work through this piece as I read it and give you my thoughts. I'll
strike outanything I think you can delete and show small grammar changes (where relevant) in blue. Let's get to it!Just a bit of a grammar nitpick, but the bit in bold doesn't quite work because you can't have 'a few grass'. Maybe rephrase it to something like this:
Grass lines the road, as well as a few decrepit trees.
Or something even simpler, like this:
Grass and decrepit trees line the road.
Toy with the expression as you like, but just make sure you keep it grammatical. Aside from that, this is a good opening. Clear and straight to the point. It immediately makes me wonder where the narrator is and what has happened to them.
Could you maybe give a bit more indication as to how much time it takes the narrator to reach the desert town? At the moment, it seems quite instantaneous, but I feel like it was probably quite a long journey.
Also, use the senses. While you're pretty solid on visual description, I'd like you to talk more about smells and sounds and feelings. If they're in the desert, the narrator must be pretty scorching, but I wouldn't know it from the description. Talk about what they can smell in the town, the good and the bad, and what the bustle actually sounds like. You'll root me more in the scene.
Intriguing. Is she a ghost? Or is she just being ignored by the village for some unknown reason?
Just fix that line break - only a formatting error.
As with earlier in the piece, I think this moment needs more description to it. I'd like to know more about what the person looks like. We don't even know if they're male or female, old or young. The pacing feels a bit too fast; there's not enough time to take each plot development in, so we can't really savour the story. This is probably a consequence of the word count restriction, but it's an issue to think about should you want to come back to this piece and develop it into something more sustained.
This ending is quite on the nose. It could be a lot subtler. Given that I actually guessed about halfway through the piece that the narrator was a ghost, you don't need to confirm the reader's suspicions in such a blunt way - merely mentioning the gravestone would probably be enough. As much as you can, try and let the reader piece things together for themselves - don't hand them the meaning on a plate.
So, my overall thoughts? This is a decent enough piece, but it could do with being a tad longer, just so you can capture the breadth of description needed to bring the setting to life and also let the story take on a slightly slower pace. The twist didn't wow me that much, if I'm being honest, because it's one that you see fairly often - hence why I guessed it so quickly. I think you'd need to take a more unusual perspective on the idea of being a ghost if you wanted to have a bigger impact. They're such a common focus of stories that you've really got to dig deep if you want to be original.
Still, this has the bones of a good piece. It's okay to use common tropes if you breathe new life into them. If you focused more on the narrator and the family she came from and dedicated more time into building up her character so that we sympathised with her, the twist would probably be more poignant. The piece just needs something about it that stands out as a little different, whether it be the characters, the plot, or even the writing. Then you'll be in business.
That's all for this review. Sorry if I was too harsh! If there's anything I said that you want me to expand on, feel free to reply to the review or PM me.
Keep writing!
~Pan
Thanks for sharing this story which perpetuates the idea that we are all immortal spirits called souls trapped in material bodies, and that when that body dies we continue living. Something like taking off a shell. Or similar to how a butterfly emerges from a cocoon. This has been done before so doing it again without ruining the surprise ending via revealing too much too soon becomes the crucial factor of whether the ending will work or not.
As a reader I did wonder initially where the protagonist was and where she was headed. But as soon as she was not detected by others, immediately I came to the conclusion that the story was referring to a supposedly dead person.
Maybe there are subtler ways to indicate that she is immaterial? Ways that the reader can’t immediately reach an obvious conclusion. Perhaps more subtle things such as her doing things that usually would immediately draw attention but have the people continue as if nothing happened? The trick is to avoid having the protagonist make direct contact but just have small things start nagging at the reader’s sense of logic and have the reader calling it ridiculous. Maybe even attributing it to writer ineptness or silliness. Anything but that the reader should guess the real reason. Then the revelation at the end would pack a wallop.
Have her be of a minority either racial or ethnic. and have her confuse the people's behavior with racism.
The point is to mislead the reader away from the conclusion so that it comes as a shock and not something easily suspected and expected.