Prologue It’s a normal day for me. My parents are downstairs having another one of their famous fights, this time over the amount of time that my father was out of the house and not home. I don’t care. Why should tonight be different than any other night? So what if he not home? He doesn’t show he cares about me even when he is here. All he cares about are his old cars he’s bought, restored, polished, and kept throughout his life.
As for school, it’s the best time I have at any time of day. I look forward to every day of school because of the friends I have. I’m able to just sit back, be myself, and laugh at all the good and bad things in life when around them. Hell, I even wish school’s on weekends just to spend time with them due to my dad not letting me go any friend’s house due to the risk of a car getting a stain on it from bugs hitting the windshield or something. He also doesn’t want to risk leaving the house unattended because of burglary. If anything happens to his cars, even a speck of paint out of place, he flips out and takes a week and a half repainting and re-restoring the car to perfect condition. The world is great outside the house, but horrible within. That’s why some days I just wish I can leave the real world and enter my dream world.
Many ask me what I mean by my dream world, and I think the answer is simple. I have been having a similar set of dreams for the last year and a half. The dreams are of a world where my friends are different and my family cares. Although my friends in the dream are few, the family I have is better and happier. The dreams started simply. I fell asleep one night into a dream where I woke up from a coma I was in for six years of my life. I had been stuck in a hospital bed with an IV nutrient tube hooked into my arm. The doctors were contemplating the idea I was in a permanent vegetative state and pulling the plug just as I woke up. My family was there and greeted me with open arms, happy to see me awake for the first time in six years. I was happy too, and it all felt so real. Shortly after waking up and doctors taking some tests, they returned with results. The doctors said I was awake, but would probably pass out for a couple hours at a time for the next year and a half, at reduced intervals. They also explained that they didn’t pull the plug sooner because my brain had been consistently giving signs of my waking up since I wound up in a coma. I then knew, or thought, this dream I was having was really a dream and not reality.
I awoke several dream hours, as the actually time I was asleep from “waking” in the dream was uncertain, later in my normal bed. These nights of weird dreams have continued for a year and a half, nearly forming a separate life within. The dream even has daily actions and consequences like reality. I’ve even begun to believe it is real life, as the dreams have been getting longer and the time I’ve been able to stay awake has decreased proportionally. Today marks exactly one and a half years, so I will truly know the importance of the dreams. Today I find out which reality is reality and which reality is a dream. I play my favorite music on the computer in my room and lay back to relax and sleep. I slide off my glasses and place them on the small nightstand next to me and go to sleep… or wake up, whichever, one more time. Just before I fall asleep, the events from the previous year and a half unfold in my mind, beginning with the first dream of the hospital.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
Are you sure you want to delete this comment? This cannot be undone.
Mark this comment as a review? Points will be awarded to the poster.
Your comment was posted, but it wasn’t long enough to count as a review. Reviews need about four complete sentences (at least 250 characters). Try writing another review that explains your thoughts in more detail — the author will appreciate it, and you’ll earn points for it.
125,018 Literary Works • 672,861 Reviews
Hey there sourdude!
I like your idea of two separate worlds the character lives in, one in which his finds his life horrible but another in which he prefers to live in. It's a unique concept and also toys around with the characters thoughts and emotions. Which world of his he likes better, and which he thinks and hopes is the actual world he's from.
However that feeling of desperation wasn't felt. He wanted to leave the world he hated, in which his father was obsessed over his cars and cared about nothing else. You do tell us that he doesn't like it, but I don't exactly get that really desperate sense to leave that life. It seemed he was really tired of all of it. You said that your character didn't care about whether his parents fought or not. To me that doesn't seem very desperate, it's almost as if he couldn't care if he was dreaming or not.
I do agree with cj on this. More description please! It helps the reader see things differently, it helps with showing the characters emotions and how everything looks like. With more description you would definitely be able to convey the character's feelings of resentment over one side of his life and the need to find out which life was the true one.
Lastly, the cliffhanger didn't have much of an impact to it. Probably because the way it was phrased was awkward.
"and go to sleep, or wake up, whichever, one more time. "
Seems here that your character doesn't really care about waking up or going back to sleep. The word "whichever" gives that feel.
Let me rephrase that sentence. "and go to sleep, or wake up. I really hope that when I open my eyes again, the world I'm in will be a better one."
See the difference in that? It shows the feelings of the character that he/she really wants to have a better life and escape from the current one. It's how you choose your words and how you phrase them that helps to make the story either really monotonous or realistic.
Hope my review helped!
Thank you. I will make sure to impliment those changes as soon as possible. I appreciate the help.
This an interesting piece of writing. I feel as though it have a real plot. Some pieces don't and that's fine, and I noticed this was marked as a chapter of a book. I think this is well written (yet could use some deeper descriptions), and definitely and intriguing subject. However, it reads short, and after reading it, and please don't take this in a bad way, I felt half of every emotion that came out of this. I don't know, maybe it's because I don't know the character very well, or that I'm just catching a glimpse of what's going on. My best advice would be describe, describe, describe! What physical reactions did your character have when he heard his parents fighting? My opinion is that when the reader has a physical description of a feeling it makes it so much more relatable. I loved how there was uncertainty at the end about which life was real and which was the dream, I feel it makes the story more interesting, but I'm having a difficult time trying to even comprehend how you would go on from this in future chapters. All in all, interesting work, well written, could use some description, but definitely piqued my interest, and if you can pull this off into a novel, I'll be one of the first buyers.
Hope this helps!
Thank you for your help. I will implement some changes very soon. I plan to make the novel a glimpse back in time towards the year up to the date he is thinking from. Kind of have it as a prologue that takes place inmediasre, or in the middle of the story. The idea is to have him convey that small time space then go back to a flashback of how it all happened.