My mom and dad give me everything I ask for.
Delicious food, toys, clothes.
Love.
That is, under one condition.
To never open the basement door.
I often find myself drawn to it.
Wondering what would happen if I opened it.
I had tried once.
One single time when I was young.
My parents punished me.
I could never forget the sight of blood flowing down my skin.
I never dared again.
But today, my parents aren’t home.
They went outside, to buy some bottles of my medication.
It’s a strange medicine that makes me feel sick...
but they say it’s just for my own good.
I walked up to the basement door, and broke open the lock.
I peeked outside and smiled.
For the first time in my life,
I had walked out of the basement and felt the sun on my skin.
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Canary word: Present
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125,005 Literary Works • 672,804 Reviews
Hey great work on this horror piece i love how the child is drawn to things like that which is pretty interesting and it was very good but i am kind of curious of what happens next to the kid
This is really well written and has an unusual formatting that I think works really well along with the story. Horror is one of my favorite genres and I really enjoyed reading this. It's short, but still manages to have a plot twist at the end of it that isn't obvious. Another part of the story I like is how it starts out telling how the parents supply the narrator with everything they ask for, but as the story goes on, the reader learns that the parents maybe aren't the best people (Because the narrator speaks of their parents punishing them as well as giving them medicine that makes them sick), despite what the narrator said at the beginning.
Nice work!
Hi, here for a quick review!
Oof. I loved this. I actually reread it twice because the twist definitely caught me off guard. I have a few thoughts, so lets jump into those.
1. You switch between tenses a few times. I think you meant for it all to be in the present tense, but then you have the lines
And these all go into past tense. The past tense in the middle works, because it's going back in time to tell us about the time he tried to escape, but these are all current.
I alao felt that having every line start captilized made what is essentially a short story, a bit more choppy. I do like where the breaks are, kind of building up in the tension in a sort of remembering-what-happened kind of way.
2. I don't get the juxtaposition between the opening lines where the parents are (in the present) still taking care of him, but then also seemingly drugging him? I don't understand what that point would be? If they have given up on him, he's already in a basement. Why wouldn't they just abandon him in there?
3. If this is the first time he's EVER been outside, i don't think he'd smile so much as nearly crumple at the sight of the sun. Even coming out of the theater after a few hours can have you staggering, and this person has never seen it.
4. I do wish there were a but more details. How does he manage to break the locking the dark? If his parents tell him about the medicine, why?
5. I know this probably all sounds a bit picky, but I think you have something really good here. On a first time read you really will catch people off guard, and I do like the pace ajd cadence of the whole thing. It really fits in twist horror genres.
~Messy
Hello, I'm here to leave a super quick review using the YWS S'more Method!
You can also ask anyone with a green or red username and they would be happy to help. Anyways, on to the review!
Welcome to YWS, by the way! I'm Ant, and I'm a Junior Moderator, so feel free to ask me anything if you need help on the site.
Top Graham Cracker - What I Know
To me, this was kind of like a story told in free verse poetry, which I thought was an interesting way to tell the story. Your use of line breaks makes everything seem more spaced out and ominous. It is a short story, remaining suspenseful throughout, with the one main mystery being what is behind the basement door. The reader is on the edge of their seat throughout the whole piece, wondering what could be in the basement.
Slightly Burnt Marshmallow - Room for Improvements
One thing I would say is that I would really like to know more! You have a lot of loose ends, like about the medicine or the punishment that feel really dark, but you only lightly touch on them, and they don't really seem to connect, at least for me. I would personally suggest elaborating more on these mysterious details, and connecting them somehow to the idea of the basement. You can add descriptions of memories using figurative language or describing other senses that the main character feels, and this might also give the story more gradual pacing, and building up even more suspense.
Another thing was the end - I was a little confused since you said "outside" and that the character felt the sun on their skin. I'm guessing that this is supposed to feel strange, as seeing the outside in the basement is definitely not a normal thing, but it somehow feels like it was just mentioned too suddenly and could be given more background to clarify what you mean by this. Did the character see a bright light, did they feel warm?
One last thing - I think you might have switched tenses a few times in the piece, like when you said, "But today, my parents aren’t home", that being present tense, but "I walked up to the basement door" being in past tense, so keeping it as one tense might help it flow better.
And don't forget that these are all just suggestions and you can totally ignore them if it seems weird, this is just my interpretation!
Chocolate Bar - Highlights of the Piece
One thing you did really well was keeping suspense throughout the piece! There was an unsettling and unreal feeling that the reader got from how you wrote it, every detail seemed kind of strange and oddly place, which works well for a horror piece. Especially with the character smiling at the end, that felt really creepy, along with the description of blood establishing a fear of the parents. I also like how you set up the story with a comfort, with the idea of love, then to later twist it with the punishment the character received and the ominous idea of the basement being so important to them, and finally with the character looking in the basement.
Closing Graham Cracker - Closing Thoughts
Sorry this was such a quick review, but I really did enjoy reading and reviewing this, I thought it was a very creepy and suspenseful short story! I hope to see you around the site!
Keep writing!!!!!
- Ant