This would normally go in Historical Fiction, but I made absolutely no attempt to make it historically accurate, and do not want to be accosted for such. The war slogans used are real, though, and taken from posters at the Nebraska State Historical Society. For those interested, I'll put picture links at the bottom of the page.
___
LOOSE LIPS SINK SHIPS
Grace shifted a little. She had been sitting on a vinyl couch in the waiting room of the Military Affairs office for more than seven hours, nervously watching the big hand of the clock at the front of the room swing in spirals. Her cuticles were ragged and bloody and she felt vaguely sick.
Her skirt was stuck to her thighs. She sat up and peeled it away, the pleats leaving little angry red lines in the skin newly exposed.
The man in the khaki-colored uniform standing at her left shoulder was beginning to fidget, fiddling with the peeling leather on his pistol holster. He flinched when someone turned on a radio behind the vacant counter at the front of the room.
A man with a cartoonish accent began to speak through the static. It is goot to hear Americans are putting 10% of der pay into Bunds!
Canned laughter. Herman, can you tell our Führer that it's 'bonds', not 'Bunds'?
A man with no accent began to speak, his voice deep and powerful. For Victory! For America! Buy war bonds today!
The Star Spangled Banner began to play. It was muted when the chime above the door began to ring, and heavy bootsteps began to sound.
Grace turned around. The man in the khaki uniform tapped her shoulder.
A boy in a crisp navy blue uniform with gold epaulettes sat down on the couch next to Grace. He took off his wool cap and began to twirl it around his finger.
"What are you in here for?" He asked, leaning back and casually pulling a cigarette from his pocket.
Grace's mouth began to tremble. "I…I gave away the position of…" she lowered her voice. "A food and weaponry storage facility."
His thumb lowered toward the lighter, but stopped. "You what?"
Tears began to well up in her eyes and her nose began to run. The man in the khaki uniform handed her a handkerchief. "It was an accident! We…we were playing Spin the Globe, and my finger landed on a…and she said….she said the Germans where watching, and that people…people might die…"
"Those Germans are sneaky bastards," he said.
She blew her nose. "Do you think they heard?"
"I'm sure they did." She let out a long, shuddery sigh and rubbed her eyes with her sleeves. The boy flicked the lighter and waited until the tip of his cigarette glowed orange before lifting it to his lips. "You can never be sure where the enemy is."
Grace gulped. The big hand on the clock passed four and they sat, silent, ears straining to hear the radio. She cleared her throat before asking, "What…what are you in here for?"
He blew smoke through his lips. "My neighbor exhibits Jap Tendencies."
"Jap Tendencies?" Her eyes widened. "You don't think…"
"Oh, I do. The man takes his shoes off before he enters the house, and he mutters to himself- in their language, I'm sure. And I'm pretty certain he has a spy headquarters in that little shed in his backyard. Always going back and forth…shifty, if you ask me."
She cocked her head to one side. "How do you know those are Jap Tendencies?"
He snuffed the cigarette out on the bottom of his shoe and tossed it limply aside. It landed on the linoleum and skidded beneath a table. "I read the papers. I know what Japs are like."
Grace looked at her shoes. "I wish I knew how to spot them. I wish I knew so that…so that people would stop dying."
"Except for Japs."
She blew her nose once more. "I heard they eat babies- do the papers say that's true?"
He nodded. "Live ones."
"How awful!" She paused. "Surely- surely we can't just let them alone? They're awful…maybe they'll die by themselves."
"You talk like a communist," he said. Grace wasn't sure what that was. "They're a threat. We leave them alone, and they'll come back- you heard what happened in Hawaii?"
She bit her lip and nodded. "But surely they-"
"They're sneaky bastards, too, the whole lot of them. There's no 'surely' with the Japanese, and you ought to know that."
A woman with an American flag pinned to the collar of her uniform stepped up behind the desk. The radio was playing a symphony of some sort, with violins and brass. "Grace Abler? The Chairman will see you now."
The sick feeling returned to her stomach and she waited as the man in the khaki uniform pushed metal braces round her wrists. The boy looked at her sympathetically. "Better hope the Germans don't do anything about that facility." She kept her eyes on the ground. "Better be careful next time."
The man in the khaki uniform led her around the front desk to a little corridor with rooms to either side. The one at the very end had a plaque nailed to it- Office of the Chairman. Voices muffled by locked doors resonated through the hall, and Grace's legs tightened, ready to run.
Her shoulder was prodded. Grace hesitated.
She took one last look back at the boy through the little window slit on the door. He had a paper unfolded, and pressed up so that his face was obscured by a very large printed advertisement. This man wanted alive! said block text, below an American flag. But careless talk can kill him!
Her shoes squeaked against the floor, dreading every step towards whatever awaited her. The slogan at the bottom of the page ran through her mind like a newsreel. When the enemy is all ears- don't be all mouth!
The man in the khaki uniform rapped on the door and waited. There was a click as the doorknob turned and the door swung open.
Grace gulped.
___
[spoiler]
Bonus points to whomever can correctly guess what this is a thinly veiled rant about! [/spoiler]
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
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125,018 Literary Works • 672,856 Reviews
I'd change it to "newly exposed skin" so it reads better.
Extreme nitpick here, but maybe you should change it so there isn't "peel/ed/ing" so close together?
I'm thinking you were aiming for repetition here, but the "began to" doesn't sound quite right, especially the last one.
Small letter.
I think this one should be a capital.
New paragraph after the dialogue? It looks like the girl has said it this way.
This is me personally, but I'd consider changing this to "they sat silently, ears straining to hear the radio," so it flows better.
I don't know what this should be, but I don't think it should be a dash. A new sentence? A colon? A semi colon?
--
Anyway, all that aside, it was very good! It kept me reading and it was very well written. My only thing is that it felt a touch too unfinished. Like it could be carried on, or like it was part of a chapter. But maybe it doesn't matter. I mean, it's got enough in it to stand up by itself, but it could still be expanded upon.
Still, if you don't, you don't. Maalesh. It won't really matter.
Thank you very much. ^_^ [Especially you, Tillychan, for your forgiveness.]
*glee* I'm going to get to editing straight away. I owe you all...
Lovely stuff here!
Was communism a bad thing back then? I seem to remember that America was trying to be "friends" with Russia, so it was still okay. A better word might be "pacifist."
So many pronouns at the beginning! Lots of "she [verb]..." and "Her [noun]..." And hence, the beginning seemed a little choppy like [action][action][action].
This block reminds me of the Salvador Dali (I think that's him, anyway ^_^) painting of the melting clocks. Reading it made me feel dizzy and vaguely like the room around me was turning to muted colors. Effective, yes, but not quite with the tone of the rest of the piece.
It was a bit confusing [though maybe I'm just tired] even though there're only two officers, to distinguish them by the color of their uniforms. My eyes completely skipped over blue-boy in the beginning, and so by the end, I was like Wait, I thought she was talking to the man in khaki!
I like little descriptions like this, him twirling his cap. Something I could see him doing very naturally, instead of there just for the purposes of introduction.
I laughed a lot here. Probably wasn't meant to, but I did. Just for clarification: she pointed to a place on the globe during a game and then thought that there were Germans watching so of course they knew the significance of that place? Eh, maybe a tad unclear. Accurate for the time, but a bit unclear. Like Flemzo said, seems nicely pre-McCarthy ^_^
The dialogue is my favorite part.
I'll have to admit, I laughed a little. It had the essence of going back to the McCarthy era, where everyone was a Communist based on hearsay evidence. I'm guessing the rant is something about jumping to conclusions, or maybe the shoddy way the Current Administration goes about doing things, but either way, it caught me off-guard, and I laughed.
That being said, a few things to say about the piece:
This makes it seem like something's wrong with the clock, like the minute hand was switched with the second hand. Also, if she were nervous about something and watching the clock, time wouldn't be moving that fast, especially if she knew she was in trouble. Maybe it would be better worded as "nervously watching the minute hand slowly make its rounds," or something like that.
I really liked this part, except I would probably mention that it's a cartoonish German accent, just to put it in historical perspective. To me, a "cartoonish accent" is a mix of two different accents, but since this is set in the WWII era, noting that it's a German accent can make it that much more realistic. Other than that, that's exactly what I would imagine an old-time radio show to sound like.
I was kind of tripped up here, because I'm not exactly sure why the man standing behind her would tap her on the shoulder after she turned around. A little explanation here would be good.
Germans were watching.
I would say "minute" hand, because (a) the minute hand is the big hand, and (b) minute hand sounds more professional than "big hand", and with something in this style with this setting, the more professional you can be, the better.
I have to say, this seriously made me laugh. It's so rediculous, but if you think about it, people around the world have believed things more ridiculous than this. I think this part definitely shows the desperate nature of the times.
What a creepy ending. I'm left wondering what happens to her, but still, I don't want the story to continue. This is a superb ending -- any more, and it might become boring and stupid.
One last note about the guy in the blue uniform: his cigarette seemed like it didn't last very long. If I remember right, cigarettes were rationed in WWII, so if he was a soldier, he would want to drag out that cigarette as much as he possibly could, to the point where he would burn his fingers because he ran out of cigarette (cigarettes back then weren't filtered, so it was straight tobacco all the way down). Unless he took a huge drag, it seemed like the cigarette was just filler. Either don't make him smoke, or keep him smoking all the way through the rest of the piece.
Other than that, this was well done. I enjoyed it.
I think "swing" isn't a good verb... "big hands" of clocks don't tend to swing.
To be grammatically correct this is "little, angry, red lines" but that seems to make your sentence freak out (I looked at it in my head, so to speak) so... I don't know what to tell you.
This is perfectly perfect. America went wild after pearl harbor; I assume you know we had our own camps, too?
Samichan... You know I love you, but I haven't a clue how to simply lie at your feet and sob of jealousy with this one.. Your characters were like walls; props, rather. They aren't distinct. Your beginning struck me as slightly boring, and just a passage of time before you introduced the next character. I haven't a clue what happened to the girl and why, I hardly understand much of it. I liked the soldier, but I still don't see him vividly, or lively. Alive. The girl was flat as ever, but you're bad with girls so I forgive you?
It seems very first draft ish. Maybe I'm just dense à la moment, and so I can't tell what it is about. I don't understand what is happening. Maybe I don't know enough, or, of course, maybe you're being incredebly too vague with your plot?
With Pretty little rags and bones you had an amazing using of description for the rooms, and I remember how jealous I was for all of that. This, on the other hand, seems incredebly bare and lacking your usually amazing qualities...
I don't know? Take it as you will, and fix it [or don't] as you will. I can't really advise you to go in any specific direction because I'm not sure where you were trying to take it.
As a bit of a different comment: it takes a lot longer than that to smoke a cigarette. Unless he likes the idea of wasting a cigarette. Although most smokers are horrified at the loss of a cigarette.
Er, viel Glück?
Cool story. I love reading about the Second World War, anything about it. This story was really great. The characters were well developed and interesting, and the plot was, well, I didn't really see much of a real plot there. If you wrote more, yes,, you'd have a great plot. But no in this short piece.
"Surely- surely we can't just leave them alone?
That was the only mistake I could find.
Good job!
bonus points? *laughs* has it got something to do with gossip that you're sick and tired of?
Neways - this is really well written and i couldn't find one mistake (but then again it's 11:15PM, and I'm starting to drool on the keyboard, waking up and finding pressure marks shaped in little squares on my forehead. . . .)
I normally don't like history pieces (some say history is the most interesting story - sorry, but it just doesn't interest me *waits to be attacked*.) this story, however, is great and a pleasure to read.
Good descriptions, setting and characters.
I feel that the end should be: "The man in the khaki uniform rapped on the door and waited. There was a click as the doorknob turned and the door swung open." and leave it at that - the "Grace gulped." was a bit of an anticlimax, and I felt like it was a tag along sentence.
Wow - I see that you're an extremely experienced writer here, ergo the absolute flawnessless of this.
Congratulations on such a good read.
Cheers!
jai