“What do you know?” A deep voice interrogates, his words sounding strangled. His shallow breaths rattle against his chest, sounding like a cough that hadn’t been taken care of.
“About what?” She questions, slowly backing up further and further from the man. She’s tiny compared to him- two, maybe three, feet shorter. For all she is, he could squish her like a bug.
“Do not,” He chuckles, “Do not pretend you don’t know.” The tone in his voice harshens into a stern threat. Her eyes begin to tear up, her nose and ears turning red. She firmly shuts her mouth, and looks away. She hugs herself tighter, and backs even further into the corner. An eery frown stretches across his sweat drenched face, and his eyebrows deeply furrow.
“Fine. If that’s the game you want to play, then so be it. My new friend seems to rather enjoy these kinds of games.” The man finally backs up, but only to have someone else take his place.
“Hello, Lena.” Lena’s eyes widen once she looks up, a single tear finally escaping down her cheek.
“Jennings.” She tries to swallow the newly formed lump in her throat, but to no avail. The click of a door causes her to jump, noticing that the man had left her and her friend behind.
“What did he do to you?” She inquires, standing back up again. Something seems off to her; she knows something isn’t quite right, but she just can’t seem to figure out what it is. He bellows out a great big laugh, tilting his head back with amusement.
“Silly girl, he did nothing that pertains to you.” He leans in closer and grabs her by her elbow. “But, if you must know, then let’s just say that he made me better. I am smarter, I can hear better, and…” His grip tightens on her arm. “I am stronger.”
“Stop, let go! You’re hurting me, Jennings!” She cries out, struggling to get out of his grip. She shoves and punches his chest, only putting enough force to separate the two. Tears begin to stream down her face more vigorously. Before her vision blurs completely, she notices a slight change in his demeanor, his eyes even softening up a little. Jennings is in there, he’s just trying to fight his way through.
“I didn’t, I didn’t mean to hurt you.” His eyebrows raise in concern, and he quickly lets go of her arm; almost like it was out of fear. He suddenly whips his head around to look behind him, his eyes wide with terror.
“Lena, where are we? What are we doing here?” He whimpers. Her mouth opens as if to say something, but quickly closes it. She doesn’t know what to say, for she isn’t so sure either.
“We’re in a space orbiting Mars. Earth isn’t safe anymore, it’s doomed.” He blurts out, answering his own question. However, the deep rattling of shallow breathing returns, the Jennings’ she knew losing control once again. He’s losing his mind, she thinks; ironically, it could be taken both ways. A sudden thought dawns on her. Maybe, she can use this as an advantage.
“How is Earth doomed?”
“Low on…resources.” His eyes look wondrously around the room. Curious, she continues.
“What kind of resources?”
“Fuel. Coal… steam… gas.” His nose slightly scrunches up, a look of faint anger and disgust on his face. His body begins to tremble, his breathing picking up pace.
“They can’t… they just can’t.” Tears prick at the edge of his eyes.
“Jennings, what’s wrong? What are you seeing?” She places both hands on his shaking shoulders, and soothingly rubs her thumbs in circles.
“They can’t get out… trapped, they’re trapped!” He shouts in realization, tightly balling up his fists. A tear escapes, but he quickly wipes it away.
“You’re fine, it’s alright. You can lose sight of it now.” She encourages, trying to snap him out of it. He must be seeing something from someone else’s eyes, she realizes. Somebody from Earth maybe, but how?
“Get away from him.” The man demands as he walks back into the room, but this time with back up. He gives them a look, and signals them towards Jennings. One of them, Lena notices, has a rather large syringe in his hand, and a white lab coat on the shoulder of his side.
She looks back at Jennings, and this time he actually returns her gaze. The Jennings she knows is finally back.
“Lena, what happened? What’s going on?” He eyes the scientists with alert, confusion evident within every word that is said. Her words escape her, only giving him a shake of her head in response.
“Move back, now!” The man shouts again, dragging her away from him. She kicks and screams in protest, helplessly watching as the other two struggle to hold him down.
“Marx, we may need your help with the injection.” One of the scientists calls. The man, Marx, waves him off with a roll of his eyes. He pushes her down by the shoulders, forcing her to sit closely against the wall.
“Now you be good, and do not move.” He lectures with the wag of a finger. She pulls her knees up to her chest and tries to hold off, watching as they forcefully pin him down once again.
“It’s your fault!” He shouts at her, “I hate you, Lena!”
After the insertion of the needle, he slowly begins to drift off to sleep with each profanity he shouts; only to have to go through the same thing the next day.
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137,620 Literary Works • 672,052 Reviews
Hey!
So, this is an interesting and confusing piece. It isn't bad but I feel as if it can be fixed up a bit.
First:
It doesn't seem like a short story. Short stories don't always need to be incredibly clear in terms of setting, time and other various stuff that is necessary in novels, but they do need to be clear enough to follow. I could follow this, but only just. Your purpose may have been to confuse the reader, which is fine, but you can't confuse them so much that they are unsure on who is speaking and who the characters are. This seems more like a scence or chapter from a novel, like EscaSkye said.
You need to fleshen out the story, yes, it's a short story, but you can expand it. Don't think that just because it's short you don't need to include element such as chacterisation. They are important in connecting with the story, and can be expressed in various ways. You don't need to spend a paragraph on the setting, instead you can drop clues throughout the story, same with characterisation. You can just talk about where exactly Lena is, whether it's dark, cold, warm, light, what is smells like. Little details like that add a lot to a short story and help to construct setting, without being explicit.
Second:
Carrying on from my first point, readers are thrust into the story. There is no set up to start with, and no information and background is given throughout the story. Whilst it isn't exactly wrong to do that, you have created this world with no context behind it. In order for myself and others to really get behind the story and the characters we need to know where they come from, or at least some information as to who they are. It dosn't need to be overly detailed, but I didn't connect with any of these characters because I knew nothing about them. Mentioning what they look like, or how they talk, is good. You did say that Lena is small, which helps with picturing her in my mind.
Thirdly:
This is the least important point, but I feel as if I should mention it. You have occasionally phrased things slightly awkwardly.
"Her eyes begin to tear up, her nose and ears turning red." phrases like this sound a tad awkward, we know that tears come from the eyes, so unless you were going to write about the colour of her eyes or something eg "her brown eyes begin to tear up" you can just write "she begisn to tear up". It is more a personal preference, but you have done similar sort of things throughout.
Other have pointed this out so I will leave it at that.
I realise that this may seem rather harsh, but I do feel as if it has lots of potential. The story is interesting, you just need to better develop it. Unfortunately I can't give you much advice on how to best do this. Just, think more about your characters and the world you are trying to create and see if you can add bits to the story to fleshen it out and make it more interesting. This is all just my personal opinions, so you don't have to listen to them, but I hope they might give you some ideas and whatnot
Keep up the good work and continue to write. Also, if you have any questions about this review let me know
Nargles xx
I understand exactly where you're coming from on all of these! I appreciate your help, I will keep these in mind when I go to edit it for my class. Thank you so much, you seriously helped me out!
No worries, super glad to be of assistance!
Hi there! Donizback here
Welcome to YWS. I am sure you are having a great time here. And well, you look really smart and talented to me
I am sure it's been quite a long time no one reviewed your work, right? Well, feel lucky because I am here for one. I am out of poems to review so I shall be reviewing this story of yours.
The title - Plain beauty! It was just perfect. I was like "No me - then who?" haha
Well, you don't care what I said/did so I shall move on!
The story itself - Man! You did it so well. Good job. I love reading stuff like this and it's been quite a long time since I read one. Pretty amazing stuff here from you. I see some really slight grammatical errors which I don't really would want to correct - it's just not what I do. haha
Anyway, it was a really good story and I loved how you ended. Just really cute! Thanks for sharing it on here.
Keep writing and let me know if you need anything.
Hiyah, Donizback! I am having an amazing time here so far, and thank you for the compliment.
Haha, I'm glad it works.
Thank you so much, I'm glad you enjoyed it! It's alright haha I understand.
Thank you for reading it, and everything!
Hey, WrittenEdge. Happy Review Day!
I'll have to agree with what the others think: that this piece is pretty polished. There are stuff I caught from time to time, but overall, there's not much that needs to be corrected. That said, I like how you set up the piece to make me confused, as I believe that it is your intention, but this story feels more like a scene of a novel for me than an actual short story. I feel like we were just thrust into something without being given enough information to fully get what's happening. I'm confused, sure, but at the same time, I find it difficult to wholly appreciate it when I don't really have that much background to work with.
Those aside, here are those that I want to correct. I'll be nit-picky here, but I hope that you wouldn't mind.
The "H" in should be written in lower case, since there's still some additional dialogue after the first one. Also, this issue actually happens a few more times, around two or three more instances if I remember correctly, but I won't list everything down here. One quick read should probably be suffice for you to see the other lines.
I do believe that you don't need the apostrophe, since I don't think you're pointing out about something Jennings possesses nor is it a shortcut for "Jennings is".
Well, that's pretty much it. This review wasn't long, but I hope it helps you all the same. Good luck and keep writing!
Thank you, I'm glad you caught on to the fact that the confusion was intentional! I absolutely don't mind nit-picks, it really does help me out.
Oh yeah, that makes sense! I had always been quite confused about capitalization when it comes to continuous dialogues, thank you for clearing that up for me!
Yeah, the apostrophe isn't supposed to be there....I'll fix that.
It really did help me, thank you!
Thriver here.
I am happy to say, I see no errors! Good work!
It's a superb story, though I got a little bit confused while reading.
I'll be happy to read your work!
Oh, and welcome. I hope I read much of your work. Nice start!
Thank you, and I'm glad you liked it!
Hiya! Silver Here~
Bit confused, but that is probably what you want. I caught no errors, unless I missed them. Overall, great plot, I'd love to hear more!
(I know this review was pathetic, just didn't have anything else to say~)
That's more than alright, thank you for reading it!
Here to review.
In here, I think it might sound better if you put "blurs" before "completely", because although it isn't exactly wrong, it does not sound very right.This story is very good, although I am left confused after reading it. This was probably what you wanted, although I am not sure if I understood what you wanted me to understand. Does the ending mean that they are doing tests on him, and Lena is helping with it? Or when you say he has to go through the same thing the next day, is it with a different person? There are a few things I do not really understand.
There are also a few things you could improve.
First of all:
Secondly:
The apostrophe in the name is wrongly placed.
In this passage:
Reading it closely again you will surely notice the repetition that you've made, which was most probably unintentional.
In here:
A letter too much, I think? I do suppose you meant "is finally back".
Then:
“Now you be good, and do not move.”
Usually, you don't use bold in a dialogue. If you're trying to emphasize on the speaker's words, use italics.
Also, near the end, it is confusing as to which man you're talking about, since sometimes "he" is the man, Marx, and sometimes "he" is Jennings. It isn't always very clear who is talking, and that slows the reader down.
Last but not least:
In this passage, first you mention that he is in there, somewhere, hopefully. You don't seem to sound very sure. And yet, right at the next sentence, he suddenly is there like the Jennings that Lena knew. If you say that he might still be there, but it's not sure that your character might bring him back, I think it would take a little more effort for Lena to bring him back like he was before and notice where he is, etc.
That is all I have to say. I like this story though, and if I understand it correctly, then everything makes sense only in the end, which is a very good way to end stories, in my opinion.
Keep writing,
Odd
Thank you so much for reviewing this! I really had trouble with this one, because Sci-Fi really isn't my forte. I guess you could tell that I was pretty confused while writing this one, because I made even some of the tiniest mistakes. I'll definitely be fixing this, thank you again!
You're very welcome, I just hope this helped.