Warning: This work has been rated 18+ for language, violence, and mature content.
Robbie/Rab/Rob/Robert or sometimes we’d use his second name ‘Burnie’ or ‘Burns’. Yes, ah know that he almost shares same name as a famous Scottish poet. In fact, see if we wir steaming (as in ‘we’ ah mean Billy maistly) wid sometimes take the piss oot ay him fir it. like fir example we wid ask him shite like: ‘How wis it like writing auld Lang syne?’ and we’d huv a fucking laugh aboot it ken? This was only at Hogmanay though so its maistly an ‘annual laugh’ more than anything. However, Robbie doesn’t find it funny. He’s a wee sensitive fucker likesay, he’s eywis been like that. However, Ah wish he wouldnae hud been hauf the time. Ah remember wan time Me, Billy and James aw went tae his cause he hud a gaff that night, fuck knows whair his parents wir, Robbie probably knew. ah goes up tae ask um. He wis in the living room playing ‘Sonic The Hedgehog’ on his Sega Mega Drive.
It wis at this moment that Billy walked into the room holding a bottle ay cider
Fucking cunts. They say it every fucking time ah git a burd that’s ‘oot ay ma league’. The Fuck that does that mean anywey? Naw ah’ll tell ye whit it fucking is, it’s a fucking plot device used tae gilt trip folk intae thinking that thir fucking clapped when they clearly fucking urnae. Anywey, ah jist roll ma eyes at thum at look at the telly. But then James came through and broke the silence. – Lads ah went through tae Addiewell yesterday tae get some smack and whit dae ah end up leaving wi? Two Sports bags full ay opium and a packet ay ecstasy. – Aw rite mate well done Robbie sais focused oan the game. – Naw but listen this is pure shit that comes fae Columbia no that perr shite that comes fae Peru. He sais putting the bags and the ecstasy oan the coffee table. Robbie pause the game and took a look at the drugs. – Fucking hell you’ve oot done yir sel here James ye ken whit this caws fir? Robbie sais wi a smile oan his face – Whit? Billy sais – A party Robbie replies still grinning. – Aw yes!! Billy yells as he jumps up in the air. Robbie decided tae ring his mates telling them tae ‘Bring burds! lots ay burds!’. In the Meantime, Robbie got a bag ay speed fae his secret stash in his bedroom. So Robbie, James and Billy aw snorted ay line ay coke. However, ah jist sat thair looking aw biscuit ersed until Robbie said something.
What ah saw oan the clock shook me tae ma core. It said 8:30 pm. Wis ah staring in tae space for three oors? Naw ah couldnae huv been. Thir wis other people in the house. Ah notice thair’s something in ma arm, it wis a needle. – d’you like ma wee present? Robbie sais. Naw, surely no. Ok whit happened wis ah must’ve falling asleep or something and then Robbie being the sick fucker that he is, injected heroin in to my veins wi oot ma consent. –ROBBIE YA SICK FUCKING CUNT YE!! Ah yell, taking the needle oot ma airm. The cunt just done his junky laugh. He then catches the eye of a pretty young girl sitting next to the next the telly. Robbie goes over to her. Ah’m standing thair trying no tae laugh. Cause ah notice that the lassie looks aboot fowerteen years auld. Robbie’s to oot e’s nut tae ken however and still spoke tae ‘er. Meanwhile ah’ve somehow just foond masel in a conversation wi Billy and James, talking aboot ‘Masturbation in the Olympics’.
Ah started tae notice Robbie wis necking that lassie. Fuck sake, nae wonder folk caw him a pedo.
Ah felt ma stomach turn. Ah felt as though ah wis gonnae be sick, this fucking conversation and the fact Robbie wis noo taking that lassie up tae his bedroom tae dae whit ah can only imagine…. Naw…. Ah dinae want tae imagine that. Ah went tae the upstairs bathroom and vomited in the toilet. ah could feel all ay ma guts wir leaving ma system. The vomit wis aw yella with green chunks which ah could only as some sort ay vegetable and tae tap it aw aff the smell wis appalling, it smelt like a piece ay shite which hud been in a toxic waste land. Ah hud tae wash ma mooth at the sink, ah goat the toothpaste and squirted a bit intae ma mooth. And then ah put ma mooth under the tap. It wisnae a too bad ay a solution and it made ma mooth fresh. Ah flushed the toilet and headed back doon the stair, but before ah put foot oan the first step ah noticed something oan the flair ootside Robbie’s room. Ah could hear that lassie moaning inside Robbie’s room. Ah goat close tae it and realised it wis a condom packet. “Huh” ah thought tae ma sel thinking nothing of it, but then ah realised something else. It wis opened but the condom wis inside ay it. ah looked up at Robbie’s door and realised He’s fucked if he Doesnae pull oot. If he impregnates her or yet he gets diagnosed wi an STD then he’s seriously, one hundred percent fucked. That lassie is too young fir shagging. Ah don’t get why they dae that at that age fir fuck sake. The age ay consent is ‘16’ no ‘14’ Robbie ya fucking pedo. Ah then heard Robbie scream: “Ah’m gonnae cum soon!!!!” in a pleasure filled voice. Ah ran back doon the stairs as quickly as ah could and sat back next tae Billy and James, who wir noo talking aboot fitba. Ah wisnae intae fitba but ma auld man wis.
Ah sais nout. Ah jist sat thair staring intae space, hoping Robbie wisnae too out e’s nut tae forget tae pull oot.
Ah think aboot going hame but ah decide tae pull oot ma game boy and start playing ‘Super Mario land’. Nae cunt’s gonnae bother me. An hour goes by and a notice James (who is sitting beside me) is talking to this blonde lassie. She looks like Courtney love, also known as Kurt Cobain’s wife (Lead singer ay Nirvana). She looks at me and sais: - So, who’s this cutiepatootie? – Aw this is Callum, he’s ma wee geeky pal aint ye? James sais rubbing ma hair wi his fist. – Aye, awright James very good Ah sais.
Me and James looked at each other confused
This lassie is very odd. She seems to know Robbie, but she seems very awkward aboot it for some reason. Anywey, here comes the man ay the oor.
His breath reeked ay tobacco and his teeth wir as yellow as a lego figure
Ah dinae ken whits worse. The fact that he’s just called us party poopers or the fact he’s touching me wi the same haun he probably fingered that lassie with!
Ashley stood up
The whole room went silent at what Robbie jist said. The music hud stopped playing and the whole room was laser focused oan Robbie and Ashley. Ashley picked up a glass and shoved in eh’s face, it smashed. And he started bleeding. – Ow! YA DIRTY FUCKING, COCK SUCKING WHORE!! He yelled. Robbie swung at Ashley. She fell and nose started bleeding. Robbie tried to pick her up bit then some chad and started punching fuck oot um. This then the tae whole party turning intae a fight. Perr Ashley wis greeting oan the flair. Tear mixing with the blood fae her nose. Me and James decided tae get tae fuck. – Wait! What aboot Ashley? James sais – Jist forget aboot her. – Really? Eftir she tried stood up fir us? Ah looked Ashley oan the flair still greeting and bleeding. – Fuck it! Ah suppose yir right. Me and James dodged aw the scraps and picked up Ashley and dragged her oot ay thair. – Here, Ashley tilt yer heid back and haud yer nose it’ll stop the bleeding. James sais – Cheers She sais in a muffled voice.
Ah thought fir a moment and then ah see this taxi drap aff some folk and aboot tae drive aff. Ah immediately jumped in front it. the driver honked his horn at me and started shouting at me in this Indian accent. – Look Ah’m really really sorry ah know yir busy but can you take us up to the hospital? Its ma pal she’s broke her nose Ah sais. He looks at Ashley and sais: - Aye alright then. We goat in the taxi and headed tae the hospital. Eftir aboot 10 mins Ashley squeaked the question of: - Are we nearly there yet? – No, yet doll James sais. – Ah’m sleepy she sais tiredly. – Try stay awake fir us the noo, ye can rest when wir at the hospital.
The rest ay the taxi journey went smoothly. We arrived at the hospital and she goat seen immediately seen tae. The nurses wir nice with her and gave her aw the medical attention that she needed. Me and James sat doon at a waiting area. We jist sat thair biscuit ersed until James piped up and sais something tae us. – Here, what dae ye think happened between her and Rob? He sais. – Ah don’t know and ah don’t care ah sais.
Ah gave um a recap on whit happened earlier aboot the condom packet thing the fact they two wir shagging with oot protection.
Sure, we hate Robbie but we still care fir um. All ay us ur like brothers tae one another. Sure ah’ve goat wan but he’s no thair, he’s fucked off doon south tae Manchester tae live wi ma auntie, fuck knows if he’s coming back. He did say tae me he wis getting sick and tired ay Livingston because thir wis fuck aw tae dae. He’s right. Ah don’t know why ah didn’t go doon wi um. See when you are living in Livingston, you feel so grounded and far away from everything. It makes me want tae fucking top masel. This town hud so much potential when it wis getting built but in the end it makes Cumbernauld look like fun place tae go tae.
An hour hud now gone by. Ah’m sitting here bored oot ma nut. So is James. Ah could easily just top masel oan how bored ah u. Oh wait Nevermind here she comes. Ashley hud a bandage on her nose and she wis in a wheelchair fir some reason.
She jist smiled at me
We helped Ashley stand up but she insured us that she was fine. So we goat oot the hospital, and despite the taxi driver yelling at me earlier he wis actually still there when we goat oot.
Once we drapped aff Ashley and her maw wis in tears
We sais thanks tae the taxi driver and decided we’d jist take the bus hame. We clocked X28 tae Bathgate and headed back tae Polbeth.
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125,021 Literary Works • 672,743 Reviews
Hello Damian. Niteowl here to review.
First, I'd like to note a couple larger issues that are keeping me from getting into the work. There's a heavy dialect in both the dialogue and the narration, which makes it difficult to follow what's going on. I would strongly consider rewording at least the narration to more standard English. A few slang terms are fine, but readers find heavy phonetic dialect and accents difficult to read. You want the focus to be on your plot and characters, not on their accents.
Also, the way you're marking dialogue is both inconsistent and incorrect. Some parts have bullet points with no quote marks, and some are unspaced paragraphs with dashes in between. This is making it very hard to follow who's saying what. Again, using standard English grammar means the reader can focus on the story instead of trying to parse out every line. Skip a line for every new speaker and use quotation marks.
Now, on to the story itself. I do think there is some fun banter between the guys, and the bit about Robbie being named Robert Burns is amusing. That said, I think the first paragraph starting as an explanation of the name is kind of weak. It would be better to start on the action of getting ready for the party. I also think the dialogue could be trimmed. If a given line of dialogue doesn't advance the plot or contribute to characterization, it doesn't need to be in the story. In general, books and movies omit a lot of back and forth that happens in the real world because it's not interesting.
As for the content of the story-I agree with alliyah that this was hard to follow. I also agree that this seems like it was written to be shocking, but the most shocking parts are glossed over. It doesn't feel realistic that Robbie would shoot someone up with heroin without their consent and the people around him would basically laugh that off. Admittedly, I don't use drugs, nor do I get invited to a lot of parties, but my understanding is that shooting up heroin is on a whole different level from weed/pills/cocaine. It's not something they're going to casually do at a party.
This feels patronizing. Your characters definitely know who Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain are because this is taking place in the 90s. They wouldn't feel the need to break the fourth wall and explain. It's possible a younger reader wouldn't know who Courtney Love is, but they can Google.
This is weirdly moralizing, but about the wrong thing in this scenario. Having unprotected sex is not great, but it's far less bad than sexually assaulting a minor. "Impregnates" is also a weirdly fancy word for an inebriated teen to use in this slang/dialect heavy story. It almost feels like a health teacher randomly saw this paragraph and insisted the author include this line. Also, I'm not sure how "there is an open condom packet with a condom in it" on the ground immediately translates to "Robbie is not using a condom while committing a heinous crime." He could have used a different condom. The condom could have been left by someone else.
Overall, I feel like Robbie's most morally repulsive actions are glossed over by the rest of the group. I'm not sure what the heck they see in this guy as a friend. If the goal was "shock value", the other characters downplaying it diminishes the effect. Someone ought to find this horrifying and kick Robbie out of the party and their lives, even if they don't want to call the cops on him.
I'm not opposed to heavy themes and mature content in general, but I agree with alliyah that this is not the best place for it. I also feel like if an author is going to tackle these themes, it should be done respectfully and grounded in reality as opposed to an over-the-top attempt to shock the reader.
To end on a positive note, I thought the 90s pop culture references were fun.
Hi Damian, welcome to YWS - hope you are enjoying the site so far! Here to review your story!
Dialect
I think the last time I read story with this strong of a dialect in it, would have been Wuthering Heights. You certainly do commit to making the dialect have those different accented aspects. Not being very familiar with people with genuine Scottish accents I could not tell if this was stereotypical / true to reality / or quite exagerated. The dialect aspects did succeed in creating more of a sense of "time" and "scene" to the piece - but in a few aspects it made it quite hard for me to discern what was being said and stumbling a bit. I wonder if you might consider just incorporating the strong dialect aspects in the dialogue chunks, but not in the narration? I don't know - it's an interesting technique, and part of me appreciated how heavily you leaned into this technique, but on the other hand, it really does make everything a little harder to comprehend quickly; which slows down the action. I also would be pretty cautious writing in a dialect from a region I'm not familiar with - but not knowing your personal background, I don't know if you're Scottish yourself, or have a lot of familiarity with Scottish speaking patterns, but if it's not your own background, I would probably suggest having a Scottish person read this for sensitivity reading to see if you're going over-board or portraying it authentically
Language
It looks like your short story uses the "F-word" 39 times which... might be a record on YWS. The language matches the vulgar and mature subject matter - from the heavy language as a reader you kind of know what you're getting into. For me some of the heavy language / especially the more offensive phrases like "YA DIRTY F*CKING, C*CK SUCKING WH*RE" made me make some assumptions about the characters and consider them fairly unsympathetic and dimwitted. I tend to have those associations with characters that swear a lot - that they seem to tend to be more cruel and less intelligent than those who don't swear as much.
Plot
If I had to summarize the plot as best as I could follow it...
A group of friends is having a party playing video games and drinking.
They take drugs.
One of them vomits.
A girl, who is a minor, comes to the party.
They all tease each other about crude topics.
Robbie and Ashley get into a physical altercation.
One of the members of the friend groups sexually-assaults her without use of protection.
The rest of the group is somewhat concerned that the minor may have gotten an STD from the ordeal, but they're not really overly concerned.
They go to the hospital.
The story kind of lacks a consistent conflict / topic, and feels like it doesn't quite build to anything - the most exciting point I would say / or the most tense part is when Robbie and Ashley get into the fight, but then despite the mature and serious subjects everything seems to fade in the level of drama it is treated with. I wasn't quite sure what the "point" of the story being told was because it didn't really seem to land anywhere; even if the "point" was to shock - the most shocking points were hidden in the middle and then not treated with much shock-value by the other characters; so even as a reader it didn't quite build to a shock.
Characterization
I think giving a little more background to your characters (even the basics like age / cultural background etc.) would go a long way, as well as giving them motivations for acting in certain ways, and emphasizing those "motivators" a bit more.
Thematic Problems
I have to say by the end of the story the way that this piece treated the sexual-assault of a minor really bothered me. The piece doesn't put a value or moral judgement on it, by saying it was "good" or "bad" but the characters act fairly neutrally to it - with no one really boldly saying "that wasn't right" - and the way the rest of the piece is portrayed it kind of felt like that was just in there for male-fantasy / gaze or to add another level of shock without advancing the plot - I personally find that off-putting and problematic. As a author I think that it's great to have freedom to address dicey subjects, but when addressing things like sexual assault of minors, and especially when posting such a piece on a young writer's site I think there is some moral obligation to make sure that portrayal doesn't show that as something that's "okay" / "excusable" / "no-big-deal" / or "fantasy material". If you were intending to portray it as despicable, it did not come across that way. In fact the main characters of the story seem to legitimize and excuse it saying yeah it was bad that he didn't use a condom, but "they still like him." ("Ah mean he’s a prick but ah still like um and that ken") not sure if the reader is meant to be sympathetic with the characters in this case, but to read grown men legitimizing a friend having sex with a 14 year old leaves me with a gross feeling that the speakers must be predators &/or pedophile apologists and convinces me they are horrible human beings.
To be honest too - I am not sure you'll find too much of an audience for pieces with extended discussions of sex, masturbation, assault, drug-use, and drinking on a site geared towards kids as young as 12 years old and you may have better luck posting pieces like this on other more mature-geared writing sites.
Overall - I think you really put a lot of effort into portraying a certain interpretation of a dialect which made this to be an interesting read. I would take a second glance on what the "propelling conflict" of the piece is as well as consider how some of these sensitive themes might be interpreted by your audience from the way you have portrayed them.
Hope this gives you some things to think about! Best of luck in your future writing!
alliyah