Emily blinked her eyes opened and sat up fast. The walls around her were blue and plain--not lime green and covered with posters. She started to shake as she tipped herself out of bed and pressed her feet into the soft carpet below. Her bedroom floor was hardwood. Nothing was right. Nothing was right...
"What the hell..."
Emily spun around slowly, examining the unfamiliar room carefully. This isn't right, she thought. Emily started to panic. She didn't like this strange place. She never had liked going to places she didn't know well--new friend's houses, hotels, ski cabins--they just didn't feel right to her. and this definitly didn't feel right. Emily looked across the room and saw a mirror over the big brown dresser. She closed her eyes and inched herself along the wall, until she guessed she was right in front of it. She stuck out her hand--
the mirror was there.
She opened her eyes and...
Emily was still Emily.
She had the same long black hair, the same boring brown eyes, and the same skinny limbs that seemed to just hang off her. Her ears were still lopsided and she still had a freckle on her lower lip.
But where was she?
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Emily sat on the short lumpy bed for a while, staring at the door, contemplating whether she should go through it and find out about the world she was now so obviously supposed to survive in, or just stay here until she slowly died.
She thought about her boyfriend, Rick, and how he had told her he loved her, but she didn't say it back.
Now she wishes she had.
She thought about her parents, her friends, and her little sisters.
Her heart ached like she had just eaten fourty-six grande burritos from the Taco Bell.
She stood up and tried to balance on her jello-legs. She turned the golden doorknob and pushed open the large wood door. Emily walked down the long, sleek hallway until she reached a staircase. She stepped down each stair, one at a time, so that the stair-monsters didn't get her, and then turned into another room.
There was art on the wall, and big leather furniture. It was nothing like her home of mismatched couches and fold-out tables. It wasn't a home at all. It felt cold and big, and too empty. There was a dog bed in a far corner. It's funny--Emily had always wanted a dog. Her parents always said that she couldn't even take care of herself, no kidding a dog. Emily laughed at her fathers humor. He had always been the funny one. She stared again at the fancy blobs of so-called "art" on the dark paneled walls and then--
"Emily?"
She turned around.
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125,020 Literary Works • 672,861 Reviews
Okay, it was alright for me.
ahm... do we always need mirrors to describe the main character's appearance?
hehe...
Interesting.Interesting.
I'm not quite sure if I'm doing this right since I just signed up to day, but yeah...
The one thing I really wanted to point out was that you're telling the reader this. What's the point in that? In stories, especially with themes like this, you want the reader to get into the character and put yourself in their place. How was she panicking? Did her breathing become irregular? Did her palms start sweating? Did her muscles tense?
You want to ask yourself how it makes her feel. How can you put the reader in her place? You did that later with
But the fact that she started to panic tells us little except that she was starting to panic. The fun in it for the reader is stringing the hints throughout the piece to put together the characters feelings and experiences, and a lot of the time that's what makes it fun for the writer as well. Spelling it out so simply takes the fun away.
'allo, 'allo! What have we here?
Mm, so I'm intrigued by the idea here, but... I just sort of feel like it's taking off really slowly.
Some of it has to do with the beginning. There are a million stories that begin with the character waking up. It can be in a strange place, it can be that they are late, it can be that they had a dream, whatever. But it's something that's been done to death, to the point where a reader can become sick of it and put off any story that begins that way, just because it begins that way. It's not fair, but it's the way it is. It's not anything you've done personally, it's just due to an over-saturation of the style.
Was this supposed to make me laugh? Because it did. But I don't know if that was what you were going for. I mean, we're dealing with a potentially frightening, serious situation and this was kind of silly. It sort of broke the mood, threw me out of the story. If this were more comedic, sure, maybe, but as is, I didn't really think it worked.
Mmm, "not to mention a dog"? I'm not sure exactly what turn of phrase you are going for there, but it doesn't make much sense as is.
I liked the second half more than the first half. It just held more emotion and conveyed the strangeness and loneliness far more. But I'm definitely intrigued by this. It feels like the beginning to something; have you considered using the nifty Novel feature here on YWS? Is there to be more?
Feel free to drop me a line if you have any questions!
~GryphonFledgling