It happened so long ago, and yet I can clearly remember it...
I had gotten bored with sitting in bed all night during a weekend, so I had gotten up and went downstairs. I asked my brother if I could go with him on his nightly jog, and his reply was slightly rude, but I was so used to his bitterness that I hardly even had noticed. "Sure you can, but you're so freaking slow I doubt you'll catch up," He had said. I simply had nodded, and went went into the cold night together.
I remember that we broke into a quick sprint after a few moments. I remember my leg hurting, and my waist cramping up. But I wanted to prove my swiftness. Subsiding the pain had been impossible, but I was lucky that my brother was slowing down also.
I remember him suddenly stopping in a dark alleyway, and looking at me with menacing, yet pained eyes. "What is it?" I had demanded. I remember him pulling out that revolver from his pocket...the revolver that haunts my dreams every night since then. 5 and a half years ago... So long ago and yet I am still haunted.
"W-what are you doing," I had stammered. I backed away, not going very far, because somehow he managed to get me cornered. "I'm so sorry..So sorry.. But I have no choice. They're making me. They're all making me!" He yelled frantically. "Who is, Emmett? Who is?" I had demanded.
The neighbors must have had heard us, because sirens had been soon heard. I remembered the fear creeping every inch of my body as he shot. My own brother had shot that revolver at me. I remember the bullet piercing my skin and going through my waist. The last thing I had seen that day was my brother, as the police had swarmed him, cuffed him.
To this day though I have not yet seen or heard from my brother, and I never want to. The fear that he may return to finish what he started. I had told the police what he said about the people making him, but they did not believe me for some reason. Now I am left with these questions that may never be answered.
i
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140,783 Literary Works • 673,688 Reviews
Hello VictoriaIsis, I am The Raven, Knight of the Green Room, and I will be reviewing your work at this moment. My review will be divided up into What Is Good and What Needs Improvement/Suggestions. Now, without further ado, let's get down to business...
What Is Good:
1) Interesting use of form. The solution is simple that it's surprising very few people have done this. You chose to bold everything, and it gives your story a very stark and serious outlook, fitting the context very well. Not to mention it happens at night. While many writers will consider this 'cheating', the way I see it, it's pretty fair, as it's merely one technique (bolding a few words for emphasis) taken to a logical extreme.
What Needs Improvement/Suggestions:
1) I feel that your beginning sentence is a very well-worn trope that isn't managed very well. It's too generic. Why not add a bit of flavour to it? 'It happened so long ago, and yet I can clearly remember it...' simply does not cut it. Your narrator's a 1st person narrator, and it's the girl who gets shot, so why not take the opportunity to introduce her at the beginning a bit? Go for a plunge right into the deep end immediately? Try closing the psychic distance - reveal the worst bits (note that I meant bits because it wouldn't be pragmatic to reveal a huge part of the story just to attract the reader) of her memory to get the reader interested, and you could even exaggerate what she remembers - that's what trauma does anyway.
2) There's a lot of ways you could slim down your story by removing unneeded words, improving the flow and smoothness of the narrative. As it is, it's a bit rough around the edges. The first paragraph say...
I feel that there is far too many 'had's where they're not needed, and too much micromanagement. A few sentences, as I mentioned above, could be slimmed down. Some could be taken out entirely. There's also a repeated word at the end. So...
Check through the rest of your draft for similar mistakes.
3) This story feels like it is aspiring to be so much more. As a flash fiction, a very short one, there's no head and tail to it, just this moment in which your narrator gets shot. I know you could be trying to pull an Edgar Allen Poe on me, what with the belief that there's no need for a conventional narrative structure and everything, but it doesn't work here, as this flash fiction, which I believe is the climax of a larger story, simply isn't strong enough to stand on its own.
4) Related to the above, it's simply because the act of betrayal and the girl getting shot constitutes a very small part of a narrative that could have been grander. The pay-off at the end simply isn't enough. I want to know more about why the brother chose to do this, who is behind the scene pulling the strings, and the relationship between the brother and sister, things like that. It's like we didn't even get so much of a hint of who's behind all this. I didn't even get to find out what happened to her brother - it's even worst, considering that you gave me the cliffhanger feeling without a cliffhanger, and the way the story ended, it doesn't look like there's going to be a sequel.
5) I feel that the act shouldn't be done with a revolver. I'm sure you intend the scene to be dramatic, and the revolver, because of its nature as a lethal killing weapon, simply negates that by being to impersonal. Moreover, it defeats the purpose of the brother - it simply makes no sense that a man who wants to commit a murder would use something so loud. A knife would have done the job.
Unless of course, the brother wants to be merciful, and was too distraught to think straight. However, it's not mentioned in the part before they go jogging - there's no hint laid out for us to figure that out. So that's another way to go.
Well, that's all I got for you. I hope I've helped you in some way. Well, good luck with your new draft! Keep writing, you're doing fine!
Wait, I just realized this wasn't a true story. Whoops.
Oh my goodness? Did that really happen to you? If so, I'm sorry to hear that. Even so, it is a very interesting short story. You really express the confusion that you have felt to the reader. I love how you smoothly give the setting and go to the story. The only mistake I found in this piece was that you typed went twice. Other than that that is a really interesting story. Keep up with the good work!
Thanks @rainbowcabbit, I realized that I put went twice too, and that just goes to show to always edit before publishing.