He laughed, teetering upside down in his seat with his sharpened head leaning off the arm rest, “Ah, well, they could be like me or you!” He calmed down his laugh to a low chuckle, “Well, mostly you!” I sighed and was quite fed up with his antics.
“Well, Wallace-”
“Mills, just call me Mills.”
“If you know so much about them and flaunt that fact all the time, I don’t understand why you cannot just tell me about them!”
He stumbled over his words, befuddled at the comment, “I can’t just tell an Angel-”
I cut him off before he could finish, “A person, Wallace.”
“I can’t just tell anyone, that would get me killed, you know that by now!” He gave out a nervous chuckle as he sat back up correctly in his chair.
“Yes, but that’s if they know.”
“But-”
“But nothing, Wallace. I do not think you understand how much power you hold over people and Portraits, you conduct the news, and they are susceptible to that. They will want to know one day and when that day comes it will not be pretty. You are completely oblivious to your situation and let all of your influence and fame go to your head. You need to change that, or nothing will end well. Do you understand?”
He looked completely baffled at my response, staring at me like I had three heads until finally speaking up, “Listen, I have my ways of doing things and have stuff that I am told to do. I know my reach, but that’s just my job to do these things. I’m not willing to give this up now; I mean look at me! They need me to tell them these things,”
“Filtered things. Filtered facts that dwindle down to opinions.”
He looked to have enough of me, and his face darkened, even his smile faded just slightly, and he got up from his chair and started walking towards me. Mills got to my desk and put his hands on it and leaned toward me, “Look, I have a status to uphold with these people. I don’t care how much of a chokehold I have on them; they watch, they listen. And when they watch and when they listen, I get more cash than I already have. I can lie or I can tell the truth to them, honestly, I don’t know which is which half the time!
So, we can either stop the conversation here, or I can drop you completely, or worse. So, what’ll it be for you?”
His unsettling smile returned, and I stared at him. I kept my face as calm as I possibly could, and then I responded, “Fine, we can stop it here.”
“Wonderful!” His demeanor changed in an instant to his regular ‘jovial’ self, “Well, I’ll be going now, have an amazing day, Laurel.”
Mills got up and walked right out of my office.
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139,299 Literary Works • 672,525 Reviews
Quick author note (or moreso a fun fact?): The certain Mills Wallace aka the news reporter in this story, is actually the guy in my profile picture! Gather from that what you all will :3
Hello there! I'm Orabella, here with a short review. ^^
Right off, you have an interesting title to hook readers, as well as an interesting description. I was immediately interested in the story, and wanted to see what you'd do with it. Overall, I love the way you portray the characters. From their movements to their words, you created interesting and believable characters in such a short story!
Before we get on to what was amazing about this, let's first talk a little about what could be improved.
I noticed here:
You split the dialogue into two paragraphs. Sometimes, this can be helpful, particularly when dialogue is getting long and there are few other people in the scene (especially if they have unique ways of talking.) Sometimes, this doesn't work because the reader can get confused because they think at first that a different character is talking. I'd suggest keeping the dialogue together here, or finding a way to make it more clear.
If you choose to make it more clear, you should add a quotation mark right before, "So, we can either..." This makes it easier for the reader to understand that someone is talking and it's not just the narrator speaking. (I think also it's grammatically correct.)
To be clear, this isn't very necessary. It doesn't take too much away from the story and it's easy for the reader to go back and see what they missed if they get trapped there, but it may make it more smooth if you go back and fix it. (I used to have a problem where I'd do this all the time. My works from last year are littered with them, so that's why I'm going on such a rant about it. Sorry.)
Now that that is out of the way, let's talk about the things I loved about this piece!
Like I mentioned before, I love the way you have the characters talk and interact with both each other and their surroundings. Especially things like this:
Not only can we see what the narrator is thinking about the situation, we can also see what he's doing very clearly and decide what that means to us. His movements are clear, and they tell us about his character. They aren't static characters in a room talking; they're real people talking to each other with real quirks and real surroundings! (Or at least, that's what you get the reader to believe.)
I find it quite interesting, if I'm interpreting this correctly (please correct me if I'm not!) that an angel and a news reporter would talk to each other, especially because stereotypically, they're polar opposites. It's fun the way you did this, and I love the way you really leaned into what and who they are and how they act - and how people think they act.
Thank you for writing and sharing! I loved the concept, and you executed this wonderfully. I hope you're having an awesome day/night, and don't forget to keep writing! I'd love to read more! (Feel free to tag me if you have anything new (or old) you want to share!)
Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Night(whichever one it is in your part of the world),
Hi! I'm Kate and I'm here to leave a quick review!!
First Impression
Well looks like quite the discussion that we have right here. Not exactly the most optimal of endings to it but addressing a little bit at the heart of a true discussion that is going on during these times.
Anyway let's get right to: Kate's Line by Line Reactions;
Hmm well interest. As far as things that can involve angels can go, this is a fairly normal sounding start, as far as discussions are concerned. I think it sets a nice precedent here to get things started.
Well interesting, looks like we're trying to conceal the idea that the person is an angel or the other person who is the actual angel is trying to suggest that angel's are also just people. Either way quite an interesting start.
Oooh well a message about not letting fame get to one's head is always a good one, angels involved or not and we do appear to be going down that particular line here for the moment.
Ooh okay now we're seeing some real progress going on here, it looks like we're just trying to stop this person from reporting these artificially altered filtered things designed to sound good and have maybe the message of potential an angel go out to the public.
Well looks like that's not going great there. Our reporter? I assume person is not particularly receptive and is a little too drunk on the control they have and it looks like an ultimatum has been issued.
Well looks like the wrong choice was made in the end there, given how short this piece is I'm not surprised, hardly enough there for someone to have a change of heart but well a disappointing little end.
Aaand that's it for this oneee!!!
Overall
Overall quite a strong little piece. A great message there to convey and a couple of quite interesting characters, clearly with much more depth to them than initially meets the eye.
As always remember to: Take what you think was helpful and forget the rest!
Kate