Published April 28, 2010
[0.00]
I hear a door open but I can’t see it. The puppet strings of this body are cut and I can’t feel these hands.
A towel slips itself around my wrist. I blot the blood and toss the stained towel into the laundry.
As I walk downstairs (hurrying because Mom is coming inside), I plaster a picture-perfect smile onto my face.
“Hi, Sweetie.” She greets me and stares at her hands. The pager that’s enclosed in her fingers is beeping crazily.
“Hi.” I mumble. Have a normal conversation with your mother.
“How was school?” She holds the pager in the air and uses her free hand to cut some vegetables.
“Fine.” I answer.
“Are you hungry yet? I’m making some soup.” She sets the pager on the tabletop and continues to slice the vegetables.
“Okay.” I say. I inhale deeply and head for my room.
A mother who ignores her own flesh-and-blood will not have a very orderly daughter.
I hope she realizes that.
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140,830 Literary Works • 673,694 Reviews
Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Night(whichever one it is in your part of the world),
Hi! I'm here to leave a quick review!!
Anyway let's get right to it,
Well this seems like its headed towards some dangerous territory. I absolutely love the vibe that you're creating here. On one level its a perfectly normal scene of someone heading down and running into their mother in the morning but there's that other layer of mystery and just general sense of impending doom that we've got going on here and it really makes for an awesome opening here.
Okayyy...well the start was a little more geared towards the doom side of things but here it seems we're focusing a little more on why said doom may be happening. At first it sounded like some external influence but now it seems this not so nice side to things is stemming more from the person itself and how the mother sometimes acts. Its an interesting change in direction here.
Well this is a very interesting end point here. It reads almost like it'll be a bit of a threat here with how things are going down and as a reader you do find yourself wondering where exactly this may be heading. At any rate, I think it all comes together to make a pretty effective opening bit here that makes you want to find out more.
Aaaaand that's it for this one.
As always remember to take what you think was helpful and forget the rest.
Stay Safe
Harry
Hey,
I've noticed that most of your storys revolve around a couple of basic themes: eating disorders and cutting. I think that either you should stick with one story because they (and don't take this the wrong way) are all basically the same. I read this really great book called "Bleed" where it was a bunch of short stories that were based in one town. I guess you can do the same thing. You have so many "novels" which are the same things under different names. Fix this problem.
~Jas
A couple of things.
Please, check out that link, it is really helpful
Prologues are sometimes the main character looking back onto what happens during your story.
~Kit
This is way too short. Too short to give an overall impression.
The only thing I can comment on is the puppet-string thing. The puppet string controls the puppet, so wouldn't she feel like a puppet being controlled instead of a puppet set free?
Why is this so short? This could very easily be combined with the next segment. It's not even really a prologue, since that is, by definition, a section that does not happen on the same time line as the story.
Also, if you want reviews, you may want to start reviewing other people. That usually works.
On to the actual segment:
I'll start with what I didn't like:
You don't need parenthetical sentences in fiction. It just looks weird. Same with that cross-out--it's uneccessary.
Also, read this out loud. It's short--shouldn't take that long. Does it flow well? In the places where it doesn't, revise.
Get rid of the last two sentences. They belong later in the story, I think, after we've seen this in action.
What I liked:
The beginning was very poetic and flowed well, and your overall premise gripped me.
With some work, this has tons of promise!
If you need a review, PM me.
See you around!
Lupis