Screams in the Night
Part 1
Laughing faces swam into view; mocking, taunting. “Where’s your God now, little girl?” one of them cackled, raising a glass bottle above his head. The others laughed as if watching the little ten year old girl cower in fright was the most amusing thing they had ever seen. Then…
Lynette awoke with a start. She sat bolt upright in bed, her long brown hair a tangled mess. Her eyes darted around the room, looking for any sense of abnormality that might have sneaked in while she was sleeping. Once satisfied that there was no danger there that night, she ran to the bathroom, the taste of bile rising unpleasantly in her throat.
Once she had coughed up last night’s dinner (and possibly lunch), she lay her head against the cool porcelain, crying. She was so sick of having these nightmares every night. She wanted to tell someone about what was going on, but it would be no use. Her mother would just dismiss everything she said as “bullshit”, or a “outright lie”. She would most likely throw Lynette back into that crazy people hospital.
Lynette wanted more than anything to have one of those nice mother-daughter relationships. One where her mom might actually listen to what was going on with her. But she knew that would never happen. Lynette knew that her mom cared about her and loved her, that much Lynette knew full well. But her mom just thought of her has a “compulsive liar”. She even went as far as to say that she had a mental illness that hindered her from telling the truth!
Lynette hated that about herself. Sure, she had bipolar disorder; sure, she had serious depression. But that didn’t mean that she was any less of a person than the next guy. And she wasn’t a compulsive liar.
She thought that her mother only told herself that Lynette was a compulsive liar to soothe herself. Why other? Lynette hadn’t given her parents a reason to think she was, so why should she be? It was absolutely crazy. Maybe her mom just wanted to tell herself that so she didn’t have to confront an even bigger issue--the real problems with Lynette. She would rather think her daughter was crazy than having a bad life. Or at least, that was what Lynette thought.
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.
125,029 Literary Works • 672,776 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,
Okay well this is quite a powerful start here. It seems we've got some sort of nightmare scenario going here judging from just the sort of basic situation that we're seeing here although it isn't a hundred percent clear on that note if this is in fact a full on nightmare or not, but we do have some pretty solid clues there towards the end of that second paragraph. Either way this is a powerful opening bit here and it gets your attention quite quickly.
Well that sounds like quite the conundrum there. Wow, well this is really building up fast here. Starting out with that extremely creepy situation there, it seems we're branching out quite quickly into the territory of how this has haunted this person for some time and top of all of that it appears they also seem to be unable to talk with that with anyone that would believe them. This is certainly getting more intriguing by the minute.
Hmm that is quite the theory there to end on, and it does in fact sound startlingly plausible there, if it were true, which honestly I have quite a strong feeling it is, things are quite possibly even worse than that middle bit was hinting. Well, at any rate, this has come together to form a pretty strong first part here, its certainly done enough to make you want to read on and 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
I like this, it expresses a lot of emotion without making the story boring or unpleasent to read. I couldn't find any real gramatical errors. All I can say is that I look forward to reading the next installment. oh, I agree with nariel though. You should show us how Lynette is depressed and maybe even reveal a little more about her past and her mother. Good job
-Joel-
Hello,
This was a little short, but I can manage a nice review.
First, I think you should put a space between your paragraphs like this:
Laughing faces swam into view; mocking, taunting. “Where’s your God now, little girl?” one of them cackled, raising a glass bottle above his head. The others laughed as if watching the little ten year old girl cower in fright was the most amusing thing they had ever seen. Then…
Lynette awoke with a start. She sat bolt upright in bed, her long brown hair a tangled mess. Her eyes darted around the room, looking for any sense of abnormality that might have sneaked in while she was sleeping. Once satisfied that there was no danger there that night, she ran to the bathroom, the taste of bile rising unpleasantly in her throat.
Once she had coughed up last night’s dinner (and possibly lunch), she lay her head against the cool porcelain, crying. She was so sick of having these nightmares every night. She wanted to tell someone about what was going on, but it would be no use. Her mother would just dismiss everything she said as “bullshit”, or a “outright lie”. She would most likely throw Lynette back into that crazy people hospital.
That way, it doesn't look like a big blob of text. Next, you're kind of telling us a lot in this piece. It's like your cramming all the information in together and that makes this boring to read.
Instead of telling us that Lynette is depressed why don't you show us? Instead of saying: Lynette is depressed, you could go: Lynette couldn't stop the tears from coming. It had been like this for at least two years...Or something like that.
Does that make sense?
Other than that, this was very interesting and a good start.
Nariel