Warning: This work has been rated 16+.
‘’Dear Mrs Moore.
Your withstanding bill now stands at £34,560.
We are sorry to inform you that if the minimum payment of £3000 is not paid by 15/11/2000 then we will have to take appropriate measurements and may result in a court order against your name.
We hope you the very best.
Signed
John Hughes
J and L enterprises“
She stroked her stomach softly and wiped a tear that ran down from her face. Her husband, who sat at the other end of the table, continued to smoke his cigarette, not taking his eyes from what seemed to an intense article in today’s newspaper. Must be really interesting to capture his attention his wife thought, hiding her bitter anger.
Mrs Moore, from the outside seemed like a humble, trusting wife- the perfect wife to be exact! But in her heart she knew a perfect wife would be capable of love.
Love- Ha! She thought, the only love she has is the love for her unborn child, but even still, she can’t help but hate it, just for being his, just for having his genes. Love, who needs it she questions while staring at the letter that looked up at her from the kitchen table. She doesn’t need love, she can get by on her own.
Run away- yes! Runaway and leave the bastard to pay his own bills. She laughed to herself while giving her husband a piercing look. It what he gets isn’t it, she giggled. She was to fascinated with her own daydream that she didn’t even notice him down his coffee and leave the house.
What am I doing? Such a selfish pathetic women! She told herself. She quickly shook her head of these terrible awful thoughts and began looking around her home- her beautiful, lovely home. A home paid for by her husband- well paid by the loan company.
The house was bright and colourful, full of life. The kitchen was an average size, decorated with still life art and a sign that said ‘’Our Kitchen rules”. Her husband never bothered to follow them though, even if it’s just for decoration, it is nice to follow them. Perfect Home, perfect life?
Not quite.
Every day the same story. After a night of alcohol and drugs her husband would be home around 4am in the morning. If not horny then he’d be angry, sometimes both. All the times however, it would be taken out on her. After that, she would lay awake until she was too tired to even think about what happened. Then the morning comes, nothing had happened, breakfast was made and he is off to work. She was left alone to deal with phone calls about their (his!) debt. What a day, but hey, it’s nice to have a lovely home, so it’s worth it right?
Maybe tomorrow will be different? Maybe one day will be different.
“Dear Mrs Moore,
We are pleased to inform you that your application for E.S.R.A has been approved. We would like to follow up on your application with an interview that will take place 8/11/2000 at 10am on the top floor of our building.
Please contact us A.S.A.P with any questions or problems you may have.
We look forward to speaking with you.
Edgar Holmes.
ERA.”
She crumbled the letter in her hand. She didn’t want her husband to see.
‘’Another bill” she smirked.
Shit- too obvious, way too obvious. We never speak in mornings why would I tell him about another bill. Stupid, stupid women she criticised herself.
Her husband didn’t seem too suspicious. He looked up from the paper and gave a slight little mutter.
“How’s the baby” he questioned
Whys he asking? What’s does he want? Her mind raced faster than she could ever imagine.
‘’good’’ she snapped.
‘’Okay’’ – He’s not the one for conversation. ‘’How long are you now?’’ – Is he even bothered?
‘’11 months’’ she smiled, trying to hide her nervous voice with a small response.
He downed his coffee and head out the door- Finally, I can relax she thought. Her husband stopped at the kitchen door and flicked his finger back and forth to try and jog his memory
‘’Did you say it was a girl?’’
‘’Yes’’ she said again, smiling.
He nodded and headed out.
She sat at the kitchen table for a couple of minutes before running over to the landline telephone. Her fingers aggressively pushed the buttons as she dialled the number. The phone beeped as she twirled her fingers around the cord.
‘’E AND S Research association, how may I assist you today’’ a kind voice sad down the phone.
Mrs Moore put on her calmest and sophisticated voice. ‘’Hello, I’m calling about a letter I received today- I think I may have got the letter a tad bit late and unfortunately I’ve missed the appointment your company has set up for me- Is there anything I can do?’’
‘’Yes of course! I can set up another appointment for you right away. Can you tell me your name and when your appointment was set for’’
‘’My name is Mrs Moore, Alice Moore. The appointment was for today at 10am”
She looked up at the clock that hung on the wall- 11am, 1 hour late.
‘’Ah! Mrs Moore, Edgar has been looking forward to meeting with you! I could re-arrange the appointment for later today? Say, about 2pm?’’ Her voice was so gleeful- what a nice company.
‘’yes, that’s perfect! Thank you” She was so happy she had to stop herself from cheering.
‘’No Problem- we will see you soon Mrs Moore’’
Yes! Things ae looking up she bounced up and down. Her nerves, excitement and fear all made her sweat extensively. Shower! I need to look respectful!
She plastered makeup on her face and put on her nicest clothes. Not a bad job she complimented herself as she looked in the mirror.
11:45, better get going. Here goes nothing.
‘’Dear Mrs Moore,
We are so thankful for your participation with our latest project at E.S.R.A.
Your check of £500 will be with you in 5-7 working days along with an extra £600 from Mr Holmes himself as a thank you.
Also we received the signed contract you sent to us. Everything has gone smoothly, thus everything will be ready for when your baby will be born
We look forward to seeing you and hopefully your child within the next month. We hope everything is well and you remain in good health and spirits.
Thank you and best wishes
Linda Belington
E.S.R.A”
‘’I’m leaving you’’ She burst out from the kitchen table, while reading the letter.
Her husband’s face wrinkled. Was it anger or confusion? Whatever she didn’t care, he can beat her up and kick her to the ground, she was going to go either way.
‘’Haha, so you do have a sense of humour’’ he laughed
‘’I’m leaving you’’ she repeated in a harsher voice.
‘’don’t be stu-“
“I’m leaving YOU’’ now she was excited, she never had the chance to shout before, best get a hold of myself before I get to rowdy she thought.
‘’My bags are packed, I’m leaving’’ she said in a much calmer voice this time
‘’You’re not going anywhere you whore’’ He said as he rose from the chair slamming his hands on the table, causing them to redden.
A car beeped from outside, their heads both turned towards the window.
‘’If I was you, I would hold you temper, because my lift is outside. It’s been tracked by the police , you probably haven’t noticed but the government need me, and if you hurt me, you’ll be in prison in no time’’ It felt good for her to do that, he could even tell by the clever smirk she had on her face as she picked her bag and started to walk off.
‘’oh and by the way… You’re a no good rotten shit stain of a man and… I hate you” That felt even better.
‘’Dear Miss Alice Wood,
Your daughter, Alice is doing well and it settling into her new home. She is showing remarkable progress and her latest test results show that she is by far our best participant. We hope you like the picture of her that we attached.
A check of £2,500 will be sent to you within the next 3-5 working days.
If there are any problems please calls our customer service number and one of our phone operators will be sure to help you.
Best wishes,
E.S.R.A “
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125,004 Literary Works • 672,792 Reviews
Hello and happy review day! (And welcome to YWS!)
You posted this as a novel chapter, but I think the way it is now it works really well as a stand-alone short story. I loved the pacing, the way you showed the relationship crumbling was very creative, and I loved the MC's voice. If you're thinking about making it a novel, you'll have to expand this a lot (and I'm more than willing to talk about how you could go about that if that's the route you're thinking of taking).
One other thing I think would help is putting the letters in italics or something to separate it and make it look like something different to the reader. On this site, to make something in italics do [ i]words[ /i] only without the spaces
I would also consider putting some line breaks between some of the different scenes to make it clear there are different days happening here. That's sort of difficult to do on this site so most people just do a line of *** or something to separate it out.
Some specific things: (and I only skimmed the other review, so I apologize in advance if I repeat something).
I'll try to only say grammar things once, and then you can apply it to other places in the story. Here, you need a comma after "Mrs"
Comma after "2000". I think you meant "measures" over "measurements". And I think "which" would sound better than "and".
I've never heard this phrase before. Did you mean, "we wish you the very best"?
I'm assuming "She" is Mrs. Moore, but I would specify that.
Great insight into her personality and the dynamic of this couple! Since this is in third person, I would put thoughts in italics to separate them out a little more.
Love her thought processes and your writing style! This is great
Little typo here - "it's what he gets..."
"4am in the morning" is redundant. You can say "4am" OR "four in the morning".
I get the vibe that she's almost sarcastic about her life. Like she hates her husband and their standard day, but at least she has a nice place to live! (If that's what you're going for I really like it). I really like this MC and I feel for her in this situation.
Now are these different days? That's the vibe I get anyway, but I'm not sure. If it's different days I would definitely separate these two lines with a ***. If it's the same day, I would give more transition here like "she picked up another letter from the pile and read" (or something prettier than that :p)
With dialogue, you should put some sort of punctuation inside the ""'s. So here it would be "Another bill," she smirked.
And always capitalize inside the ""'s the same way you would outside. So here it would be "Good," she snapped.
Same here as what I mentioned earlier - I'm assuming these are different days? If so, *** between them and if not, more of a transition.
Same as with "Mrs" you need a period after "Mr".
Comma after "also" because it's a preposition.
Instead of a comma here, I would do a period at the end of the dialogue because the dialogue is a full sentence and what comes after is a full sentence. So, "I'm leaving YOU." Now she was excited,
And then same here with the dividing or the transitioning.
I really liked the progression of this story and I loooooove your style. I didn't have any big issues with the overall plot, hence why I focused on grammar things. Overall, really nice job! I'm looking forward to seeing more from you around the site!
Let me know if you have any questions or if anything I said was confusing!
Hey there!
But I liked how you showed hope for Mrs. Moore through the letters. I mean, the first one sets the tone of the story, but the others soon show that yes, she has hope. She can get away from this. And damn, I'm really glad she did.
Nice story you've got here. I know that you wrote in your description that there were probably some mistakes, so I tried to look past those a little in order to focus on what you were trying to portray in this story. I really liked the subtle hints you gave to the crumbling relationship between Mrs. Moore and her husband. His drinking, dealings with drugs, debt...it's enough the drive any other woman insane.
But I still have a few things to point out about this. First up would be your sequence of events. I mean, there were some sections that I got a little confused. You said at one point that she was too caught up in her daydreams to even realise her husband left the house, but then later on she starts talking to him again. Then, after that, you say that he downed his coffee and left the house, but then later on she comes back into the kitchen and tells him that she's leaving him. I thought he left two times already! Haha.
Also, you say that she's in the eleventh month of her pregnancy? Isn't it supposed to be nine months? I'd advise to give this a thorough read again to make sure everything adds up.
My next point are the way you wrote out the character's thoughts. Reading something like "she thought" over and over again is a little jarring. Most authors put their character's thoughts in italics and continue with normal narration. I like this better since it flows easier with the rest of the story, and eliminates "she thought" from pulling me out of the flow.
Lastly, don't forget your punctuations at the end of your dialogue, and I'd do a little research on dialogue a little if I were you (i.e. dialogue tags, the right punctuation to put at the end of dialogue, etc.). There are ways to write dialogue that would enhance the readability of the piece, and I feel like if you do a little reading on those ways, this story would be much better and an easier read.
I hope I made some sense here. If you've got any questions or if you need me to clarify anything, don't be afraid to hit me up. Sometimes thinks make sense in my head than they do on the screen.
Have a good day/night, and good luck writing!
Thanks for having a look for me, i noticed the 11 months mistake just when you did and it made me feel a bit stupid, but its easily changed! Also the letters represent a new day but i suppose i should make that a bit clearer.
i will look at punctuation, grammar, spelling mistakes and what not once i feel like im confident with the way the story is going. I will definitely take on what you've said and im glad you've mentioned that reading ''she thought'' was a bit jarring as i was a concerned that it may be. I'm really glad you've mentioned a way to improve on that.
again thank you for having a look for me!