Published August 18, 2011
Tears streamed down my face. The grains in the asphalt dug into my knees. I gripped my head and rocked back and forth. She lay in front of me, her lifeless eyes staring past me.
With my shaking hand I picked up hers and felt for a pulse. A small gasp escaped from me as I dropped her hand. I gritted my teeth as pain tore through my body and into my core.
I took one last look at my fiancé before I felt the officer’s hand on my shoulder. I turned around and saw the car—my car—and the bloodstain on its bumper. It had been the tool that had taken the life of the only person on this planet that I had ever learned to love.
Since then, I’ve learned one thing: with every breath there is a dying wish.
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138,303 Literary Works • 672,100 Reviews
Like Sarge said there is something missing. I think he just about covered it all. But I will add, this would be much stronger if you saved the revelation of the relationship between the girl and the boy til the last line, the last words. That would be a much sweeter close and it will leave us gasping. Nice I enjoy this work and I look forward to reading more from you!
Okay, thank you for your feedback, it's my first flash fiction.
I will definitely make those changes, i see what you mean, now that i reread it i feel like an idiot about the pulse thing
An interesting premise, but something feels off about it. The words you use don't quite evoke helplessness.
This section was your chance to break our hearts. To give us insight into the main character and perhaps reinforce the theme you were going for. But instead, we just have him checking for a pulse, a gasp, and grit teeth. First of all, picking up your beloved's wrist to check for a pulse after she's been hit by a car, laying lifeless on the road, and the cops have already showed up...seems weird. Someone racked with guilt and despair won't be checking for that tiny pulse in the wrist...holding your breath and looking for that thing that most people can't find on living people. I imagine, instead, cradling the body, shouting, screaming, shaking. The dainty "check for pulse" and "gasp"feels more like "manslaughter of a stranger" to me and seems inappropriate for "manslaughter of the one you love."
However, I did like this line:
Too much exposition without enough guilt. Yes, you used words that say, "the only person I love." But those are the kind of words you see on a Hallmark greeting card. Show us something real. Unique. Tender. Frustrated. Insane. Disturbed. What does killing your love do to the mind?
...Not sure how this connects to the story at all. Whose dying wish? Do you mean "death wish"? Dying wish means something like, "When I die, donate my body to science" or "give all my money to charity." But since we never met the person who died, there's no dying wish of hers...so it must be the main character's, but he's alive...aaand...I'm lost.
Anyway, an interesting premise, but flesh out the theme and throw out some of the plain words and substitute emotional words or words that carry more weight than one may think at first glance.
Yes it was, the effects of death.
Thank you for your feedback :]
This was interesting. Was this for the 150 words contest? Out of curiosity, what was your prompt?
Anyway, this was pretty well written and worth reading, though - obviously - short. I don't really have much to say on improvement.
Get rid of the 'that;' the phrase sounds far better without it, and I don't believe you need it, considering the colon.
No problem
thanks, your review helped! :]
This is a great mini-story, and I know how hard it is to write something well with such as small word limit! (Goodness knows I can't do it!) I only picked up a couple of things:
I'm going to go ahead and assume you meant "Tears streamed down my face" here, because I don't think this sentence is humanly possible
In this sentence, the "escaped from me" bit just doesn't sound right for some reason. It might be the wording, but to me it just makes the sentence a bit jarring. Something like "I gasped softly" might work better, though I do know that changing around sentences can be very difficult with stuff like drabbles and mini-stories where there's a word limit.
All in all, though, I really liked this story. Keep writing!
xx SilverLove