Day Three
A dull pulsing in my head grows more painfully ever second - ultimately the cause of my waking. I pause, letting my eyelids flutter at the light. It's too bright and uneven - I can't open my eyes any wider than a squint. Instead of pushing them too far, I attempt to flex my fingers. One hand complies stiffly but the other remains strangely numb. A horror seeps into me at the idea. Why isn't my hand working? And my shooting hand at that! I desperately want to get a good look at the cause of the problem, but my eyes continue to resist.
I force my stiff hand to rub my head in the spot causing me most trouble. My fingers probe the wound and hesitate. There's a deep gash, and blood is seeping out at a constant rate. My skull feels intact, but the pulsing increases at the touch of my fingers. I doubt I fractured it, but again, there's the cut to account for.
I push my stable hand back and force myself into a sitting position. A scream is stifled through gritted teeth - I'm aware it's my own. The blurriness persists but less so. Shapes can be made out like the pool of my own blood clotting in the sand. Sand. I get a good look at the environment around me. I'm sitting on a shore of some sort, the loud sound of rushing water nearby. I realize quickly how wet I am and wonder why I would swim in such fast-moving waters so very near to a cliff and its sharp rocks.
Another gasp of air is pushed out of me when my memory jumps back into my head. My body, severely injured, is through my own fault. I jumped. I hadn't even known there would. be water below, it all happened so fast. When I missed, I thought I was going to die.
But I'm not. Severely injured, yes. But not dead. With a sickening realization, I gasp. Rory probably is.
In all honesty, I never predicted nor considered how my brother would react if I missed the ledge. He could've slaughtered her quickly to grieve in peace. He could've taken her to be tortured. For all I know, he could've left her alone to starve. But I do know that any way my brother chooses, she's doomed - all thanks to me.
The rims of my eyes sting and I blink away tears. Crying has never done me any good and I doubt it ever will. My brain remedies the situation with a less than pleasant idea, but I embrace it whole-heartedly. I grit my teeth and bend my protesting neck to face my left arm.
It's pale, as light as milk. Any sort of color has been leeched out - the blood gone as if it were never there. Then, I begin to see the form. It's badly mangled. Twisted out of shape. Useless.
I've never broken a bone, at least none of which were mine, but I know what I have to do. I lay my forearm flat on the shore and close my eyes. At the count of three, I stand up and place my feet near it. Then I jump, placing my feet carefully.
CRACK
I can't contain my shriek this time, and I hardly pay attention to it rebounding off the stone walls. Maybe Harold will hear me and come to rescue me. I'll strangle him if he does. Minutes pass by but no sound of footsteps can be heard - only the waves lapping against the shore.
Fine, I think to myself. Holding my limp arm as straight as I can, I push myself to my wobbly feet, fighting gravity to stay upright. The ground sways and my vision blurs, but I swallow a few breaths of air. There's a stick nearby, too short to use as a walking stick, but it'll serve nicely to hold my arm straight. I carefully tug off my jacket and wrap it around the stick and my arm and tie the sleeves together. It isn't much, and I'll have to get something better later, but at least I can keep the bone in a straighter position. Curious, I try gently closing my fingers and succeed in making them twitch. Good. That means the nerves haven't been severed.
I squint upward. The sun is still low in the sky, perhaps even lower than when I felt. I must have been unconscious since yesterday morning. Stupidly, I'm hoping that's one of the reason my joints are so stiff. If I'm too injured to even move, how the hell am I supposed to make my way back up? Too tired to even think straight, I lay back down on the sand. The pounding in my skull gets louder, reminding me of how likely it is that I have a concussion. Vaguely, I recall from somewhere that you shouldn't fall asleep with one of those. But I'm too tired to fight it and I fall into blissful unconsciousness.
End of chapter
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140,852 Literary Works • 673,694 Reviews
Heyyyyy!! Forever back here with a review!!
Alice is alive!! I was right, anyway. I wonder what really happened to her hand. I guessed it that she can suffer some major injuries and that would result in something worse and seems like the story is going in that direction only. I am really afraid about her fate. She is too weak to climb up now... She has to wait until someone rescues her and I hope the rescue to be carried out as soon as possible. What really happened to her hand? It will not be numb forever or will it be... Yet to be discovered. But if she is not rescued soon, she will have tremendous blood loss...
What about her eyes? Is it only for the fact that her brain is a little bit dizzy or something else has happened to her eyes or worse her brain?
This chapter seems a little bit short. Obviously that is not bad but I think it can be expanded a bit by the show don't tell technique. Like show that she is trying to climb up but then falling miserably or maybe she is suffering for her vision. However, good job with the descriptions you gave there. It's not a very common scene where we can see sand just down a cliff or we can... Quite inexperienced in this matter. At least, hopefully, she will get the water required for survival there.
I really like the thing how you are showing the perspectives of different people present at different places.
Keep Writing!
~Forever
Hi Rosewood,
Mailice back with another review!
With this review, I am now up to date with my first reviews. Great to be back with Alice and now know how she has been. I found it a slow chapter, not in a negative sense, but in that good tone that left the reader along with Alice wondering what happened and how she got there.
You built it up well in that you brought the focus from one point to another, showing a bit of Alice's pain. Since she's been portrayed as very daring and serious so far, I thought it was a great point that you took the trouble here to show off and generally describe before negative traits, which is probably not that easy to do.
One thing I felt here though was that the chapter itself was far too short. It didn't feel like a chapter, but more like a short prologue or a short scene change at the end of a chapter. I think especially with something shorter you have to realise that the reader doesn't have all the information that you have as a writer. He doesn't see any further than the paper / PC he has in front of him. So the reader has no choice but to make interpretations here that will probably go in a completely different direction than you actually planned.
I would recommend that you definitely stretch this out. For example, you could perfectly describe a scene here. Since Alice sees very little, I think you can put in here what she sees, and in more detail. Maybe she hit her head and needs to collect herself first, what happened and then this point starts. It's also important that you expand on other, smaller things here. The fact that she can't get up straight away is a good point, but if it works the second time, you're not creating tension there, it's like a plop in a bowl where you wait for the yeast to rise.
With things like this, it's important to put yourself in a position where you only have what you're posting in front of you. Afterwards, you can always add new stuff, and stretch the story.
Isn't she actually lying there and not coming up? Just a little detail I noticed.
Have fun writing!
Mailice
Greetings. I hate to jump into something right in the middle of it, but I'll free you from the Green Room.
"I can't open my eyes any wider than a squint." If you want your writing to be a bit sharper, may I suggest using something like "more expansive" or really anything that isn't as used as the word "wider" is. I don't mean go crazy with words that are twenty letters long, but something a little less common is great.
For clarity's sake, "I carefully tug off my jacket and wrap it around the stick and my arm and tie the sleeves together" might be able to turn into something along the lines of "I carefully tug off my jacket, wrapped it around the stick and my arm, and tied the sleeves together" or anything else that is clearer to read through.
This was quite short. It didn't feel like a whole chapter in ways. It felt like more of a random scene than anything else. Not that short chapters are a bad thing, it's just about seven hundred words can be considered tiny.
I found this engaging, and I will come back for the next chapter.
Cal
Thanks for your helpful feedback! As for its length, I intended that. In the previous chapters, Alice fell off a cliff - presumed to be dead. This was just to check in on her and show you she's still fighting. I know you didn't know that but I just wanted to clear that up!
HELOOO ROOOOOSE! I'll be popping in here for a quick review, hope you're having great day/night wherever you're at! Alright, let's jump right in.
I think you meant "hold my arm straight" right hereGrows
there was really only one thing I noticed and that's this sentence right here:
MOVING ON
GLOWSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
EEEEEEEEEEE YAY ALICE IS ALIVE WOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. OMG I CRINGED SO HARD THE DESCRIPTION YOU USED FOR HER INJURIES OMG I THOUGHT HER ARM FELL OFF COMPLETELY FOR A SECOND AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA BUT IT WAS AMAZING I LOVED IT EEEEE!
<3
~YOUR FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD MAJESTY OF NASTINESS~
Spoiler
Oh my gosh, thanks!! You're so sweet and I'm going to fix that mistake ASAP.