Warning: This work has been rated 16+ for language.
Jacob is dead.
Hanna was crying, her tears falling as freely as the raindrops outside the church's window.
An aged couple and their adult children stood in front of his casket, giving a speech I couldn't listen to.
His mother spoke about his life and death--how he died of an overdose and how it was an accident.
That was probably the only part about him she got right. Not because Jacob didn't want to die--no, anyone who's known him long enough knew damn well he did-- but that this time, it truly was an accident.
"It's sad that I know there are two ways this friendship will end, and in both of them, one of us gets left alone." I blurted before I could stop myself as I chucked a flat pebble down the shallow creek we were hanging out on the banks of.
Two skips.
"The hell is that supposed to mean?" Jacob chuckled, digging for a good rock.
"I mean..." I swallowed, blaming the cold wind for the way my mouth dried up. "You know there's only one way for this to end, right? One of us dies or gets better?" I crouched down by the water without looking back at my friend.
The creek seemed devoid of all life, the early spring weather still much too cold for new insects or tadpoles to emerge from hibernation--making it the perfect time to stand in the general area without worrying about being swarmed by gnats.
"Yeah, it'd be a bummer to read your obituary." Jacob sighed half-heartedly as he tossed his pebble down the creek.
Three skips.
"And what if you were the one to write it?" I asked, standing up.
Jacob paused at that. Slowly turning towards me, blinking once, then twice.
Fuck you man, I cursed at him silently why'd you have to leave me alone to deal with this shit?
Jacob, obviously, did not reply in favor of lying still in his expensive little casket.
I didn't want to shake his parents' hands. I didn't want to tell them how sorry I was for their loss--they don't deserve it.
"You're an odd one, you know that?" Jacob finally spoke after an uncomfortably long bout of silence, filled only with the sound of gentle wind and running water.
I rolled my eyes and opened my mouth to retaliate or change the subject.
Yet to my shock, my friend cleared his throat and straightened his posture as if he were giving a speech.
"As of who the fuck cares--uhhh 2026, Cecelia Li was found dead in her room hanging from a noose made of various articles of clothing. She died as she lived-- drunk as hell and in the closet."
"Hey--!" I exclaimed, but was cut off by Jacob's continued roast session disguised as an imaginary obituary.
"We will gather next Sunday to celebrate the death--I mean life--of a mentally ill teenager who had an unhealthy obsession with cannibalism, depressed WWII authors, and lobotomies who-- now that I think of it probably would have become a serial killer anyway, so maybe we dodged a bullet with this one--"
"OK you can shut the fuck up now!" I cut him off, half tempted to throw a rock at his head.
"Alright fiiiinnnnee--" Jacob laughed, "Service takes place at the most inconvenient time for you, lunch not included." he then finished, barely dodging the pebble I retroactively chucked at him.
"Yeah, whatever--my turn." I cleared my throat, tossing my ponytail back over my shoulder, ignoring the way my friend rolled his eyes.
"Jacob Arnav was found dead in his dorm--"
"EEER!" I was cut off by a fake buzzing sound. "So close, but I'd never die where someone would usually find me, plus, I have a roommate, I would never be that inconsiderate and die in the same area he fucks random girls in."
"Ew, I did not need to know that--"
"Actually, best-case scenario no one finds me." Jacob commented, grinning a much too toothy grin.
"Was that your attempt at a smirk? Or were you trying to look like that one shark from Nemo?" I scoffed.
The man ignored me. "I hate funerals anyway, all the ones I went to had people faking tears for appearances while judging others for doing the same."
"Fine..." I sighed, "How about a missing persons poster then?"
His mother was rhythmically shaking the hands of all the guests, repeating the same "thank you for coming" in a monotone voice. When I found myself in front of her, I took the brief moment to scan her face, to try and find any crack in her mask.
Nothing.
"MISSING: Jacob Arnav was last seen stumbling into the woods at 2AM. He's a tall, skinny male with a shitty haircut and racially ambiguous enough to be cast by Hollywood(but definitely not attractive enough)--"
Jacob snickered at that, messing up a toss, the pebble making a sad plop sound as it sank beneath the water's surface.
"He's known for his inability to read, draw, and make good financial decisions, as well as his chronic bitchless-ness, so maybe check the basement of your local hot girl."
"Bold of you to assume a hot serial killer would want me as a target," my friend sighed, feigning sadness as he made another toss.
Four skips.
I ignored him and went on, "If you acquire any information on his whereabouts, please contact your local police station about it. Your help will be greatly appreciated as we sort of try to not really find Jacob."
I caught a glimpse of Jacob's siblings, and one of them nodded at me knowingly.
Gods, they looked so much like him. I thought, they all dressed matching and formal, all with the same thick dark hair and ashy brown skin as him--but that seemed to be the end of their similarities.
None of them had the same dead eyes as the man who told me to kill myself, silently sat next to me as I had a meltdown, and skipped rocks with me down a shallow creek, writing each other's obituaries.
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140,068 Literary Works • 672,978 Reviews
I was a bit hesitant abt the spoiler warning but I decided to take the plunge anyway.
I think you start on a strong sentence.
I like how this conveys a strong sense of character voice:
That said, a visible distinction between flashback and funeral would have been very helpful.
I feel like saying “there’s two ways to end [the friendship]” followed by “there is only one way for this to end” kinda undermines the statement?
I like the description of the stream.
I also like the mention of how many skips the stone makes. It breaks the flow very nicely.
I also like that the flashback clearly shows Jacob did not expect to deal with the Cece’s funeral.
In the closest, huh?
I like how Jacob’s speech exudes personality :3
Ok the lack of distinction between the two story threads is frustrating me now.
I cannot follow the logic of the joke with “check the basement of the local hot girl” is this a reference?
Ohh Four means Death, right? So it is interesting that you end on four skips…
I like this: XD Nice dig!
Shouldn’t it be “they look so much like him” since they are still alive? (But I freely admit, I am more curious than that I know what I’m doing here)
Again you have a sentence that undermines what came before with “that seemed to be the end of their similarities”.
Oha wait, he told her to kill herself? O_O That doesn’t sound healthy!!
Join the fight! Write more reviews!
Hi! Thanks for the review!
This is still a 1st draft and the only things I’ve fixed were the typos but I’ll try to get it to flow freely once I can get to a functional PC, uh at the end there i kinda wanted to communicate how Jacob and his sibling’s similarities were only skin deep without actually going into their separate personalities for lack of time. Do you have any suggestions on that?
Hmmm well maybe you could write that?
Hello, hello!
This is a really strong opening. It’s blunt, immediate, and it tells me exactly what kind of chapter I am walking into without dragging the moment out. I also like that you don’t say how the narrator feels straight away because the rest of the scene gradually shows us how complicated that grief is.
I don’t know who Hanna is yet, so bringing her in this early is distracting. I initially assumed she might be Jacob’s girlfriend or sister, but she doesn’t appear again in the section. You either need to give us more of context for her or hold her introduction until she becomes relevant.
"Outside the church’s window" also sounds awkward. I think "against the church windows" would give a clearer image and make the comparison feel more natural.
"An aged couple" feels strangely distant and formal when the next paragraph tells us that these are Jacob’s parents. Since the narrator knows them, I think she would probably identify them as his family rather than observing them like strangers.
There’s also more than one person standing there, so "giving speeches" may work better unless they are all delivering the same speech together.
I really like what this tells us about Jacob and the narrator’s relationship with his family. There’s a lot packed into the suggestion that his mother didn’t truly know him, while the narrator understood something much darker about him. The sentence itself needs untangling, though. "Not because" doesn’t quite connect to the previous thought, and "anyone who’s known him" clashes slightly with "knew." It could be something like: It wasn’t that Jacob had never wanted to die. Anyone who knew him well enough knew damn well that he did. This time, though, it truly had been an accident.
This is a good introduction to the flashback and immediately explains the particular kind of bond they have. I also like the repeated number of skips after the stones are thrown. It gives the scene a feeling of rhythm and feels like the sort of insignificant detail the narrator would remember after someone died.
I’m slightly confused by the two possible endings, though. One of them dies or one of them gets better, but it isn’t immediately obvious why getting better has to end the friendship. I can guess that the healthier person would leave the other behind or that their friendship is built around being unwell together, but I think you need to make that implication clearer because it’s one of the most interesting ideas in the story.
This is an important sentence, and I think Cecelia moves past it too quickly. I understand that avoiding the seriousness is part of their dynamic, but even a small physical reaction from her would deepen the moment.
There are a few dialogue punctuation issues like this throughout the section. Because "Jacob laughed" is attached to the dialogue, there should be a full stop after it before the next spoken sentence begins. "He" also needs a capital letter after the closing quotation mark. "Retroactively chucked" isn’t quite the right phrase either. Retroactively means changing or applying something to an earlier event, wherein she is simply throwing the pebble in a delayed response to his joke. "Belatedly chucked" would be more accurate, though just saying she threw it at him would probably sound more natural.
I’m not sure what the sibling knows here. Do they recognise Cecelia as Jacob’s close friend? Do they also know that he wanted to die? The nod feels significant, so I think it needs one more detail to tell us what Cecelia believes is being communicated.
This is a really strong ending. I love the contradictions in it. Jacob could tell her to kill herself and also sit quietly beside her during a breakdown, and both actions feel like genuine parts of the same friendship. It leaves us with a much more complicated picture of him than either his mother’s speech or a straightforward sentimental memory would have done.
"Silently sat" should probably be "sat silently," but otherwise I wouldn’t change much. The final image of them writing each other’s obituaries brings the whole section together very nicely.
***
My overall impression is that this is a really strong and emotionally complicated start. The dark humour works because it doesn’t feel like it’s only there to make the characters sound edgy; I enjoy how it shows us how Cecelia and Jacob communicate, how comfortable they are with each other, and how completely unable they are to speak sincerely about the possibility of losing one another. Their jokes become much sadder because we’re reading them from inside the funeral they were imagining.
The switches between the funeral and the creek are effective, though a couple could be made slightly clearer through formatting. For example, the sound of rain at the funeral could become the sound of the creek, or Cecelia could look at Jacob’s still hand before remembering it throwing a stone. The sudden transitions suit grief, but a repeated image would make the structure feel deliberate rather than occasionally confusing. I was under the impression there would be a deeper connection, such as how people find meaning in miscellaneous items during times of grief.
I’d like to understand a little more about Hanna and Jacob’s family, particularly why Cecelia resents his parents so intensely. At the moment, there’s a feel that his mother appears cold simply because she isn’t grieving in the way Cecelia expects her to.
I’m interested to see what happens after the funeral because you’ve set up more than a story about someone mourning a friend, as well. There are questions about how well Jacob’s family knew him, what Cecelia is supposed to do without the person who shared this side of her, and whether their friendship helped keep them alive or simply allowed them to stay unwell together. Definitely keep the obituary scene and the complicated ending since I can envision this as a novel with a deeper storyline.
Thanks for sharing. Cheers!
Lipton
hii! thanks for the review!
I'll get to more pressing issues later but I just wanna clarify Hanna is Jacob's girlfriend and was introduced in chapter 5 of Flowers Printed on the Page, an unfinished 3rd(?) draft I also have posted here. This chapter is meant to happen near the end of the novel and is basically a first draft I posted here for beta reading so yeah there's definitely a lot of issues.
As for Jacob's mother, I think I must have been too vague with the manner of her speech, maybe I have another draft somewhere of it to dig up or a note sheet I forgot to write into this, but I could have sworn I described it. Anyways, Jacob's mother was meant to do most of the talking during the speech and, again, cici's resentment towards her is explained in another chapter because Jacob would often complain about how his mother treats him, pretends to be loving in front of other people and then berates him when they look away. I have a draft I don't have the points to post yet-- where Cecilia finds him staying at Hanna's house and, embarrassed, assumes they're on a date before Jacob explains he was kicked out of the house. Basically, any issue that could be fixed with further context likely has it because this is not a self contained story, hence it being a concept chapter.
As for the grammar and scene transitioning, I'll get to that when I can--the creek transition thing was genius btw, very cinematic
Thx!