A short story I wrote many years ago
Each picture held a precious image dated back in time. Each photo was hung carefully on the wall and it showed how each child in the home had grown up. The wall was a memorial to the time the family had spent in the home. As the girl ran her fingers along the boarders, she reminisced on the time she fell and broke her leg and the time her brother’s dog was hit by a car.
The photos only captured the happy times and most certainly not the sad ones. They didn’t capture the broken glass that constantly shattered over the photos. They didn’t capture the tears that she cried. They never captured the memories of the broken home she once lived in. Now, gray haired and lonely she returns to her broken home to figure out where her life went wrong.
The only things these wall photos were good for was hanging in the living room so visitors only saw the beauty, not the bad. Where there is beauty, there is a beast. And her ugly beast lay behind the photos on the wall in the living room of her home that her mother hung to distract the world.
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125,018 Literary Works • 672,857 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!!
First Impression: Well...this was quite a powerful little story....despite just how small it was...it really did take my surprise by how much was packed into it.
Anyway let's get right to it,
Okay...well that's a sad start to this story...a nice little bit of description there to start, really mixing in that backstory seamlessly into it and the the reminiscing about the old events while running over the borders there....ahh its a lovely setting to start a story off with...you can just feel the nostalgia pour in...but also then the incidents she remember are both pretty sad so that makes for a very interesting starting combination.
Oh well...the photos being off all the happy occasions certainly makes sense...no one really tries to remember all the sad occasions of one's life...although its really sad to see this woman now returning as a much older person only able to think of the sad memories of this old broken house and is now wondering where it all went wrong. Well this doesn't appear to be a happy ending by any means whatsoever.
Well..that's an interesting end to the story...the photos being used to distract the world from a beast within the house...well I suppose the beast is not an actual physical thing but some sort of horrible memory of some kind...well...pretty haunting end to that particular story....seems oddly fitting though that one...
Aaaaand that's it for this one.
Overall: Yeah...a very interesting story indeed, quite a fun one to read as well...and that ending really does leave you wondering...well...that's about all I've gotta say here ...so until next time...
As always remember to take what you think was helpful and forget the rest.
Stay Safe
Harry
Hi!
The concept and idea are very, very nice. The pictures in the first place, whcih show all of the memories and the like, then the second, more hidden, aspect of the pictures that only show the good things and hide the worst.
The last few lines are extraordinarily beautiful, I loved them very much.
nitpicks:
In the first paragraph I think there should be the need of more synonyms, as there are many repetitions:
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I don't think this phrase makes sense:
Do you mean to say that the glass of the picture frame broke?
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Again, repetition. Also, after "lonely" there should be a comma.
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Like BiscuitsBatchAvoy said, you could expand on what went wrong, and I think there could be a lot mare to say about the pictures. Describe a few of them, the happy moments and the like, then show the darker and more twisted part behind the "fake" happiness.
And that's it.
Keep writing, you can do quite a lot!
Hope this helps, have a nice day!
'she reminisced on the time' - as far as I know, 'on' should be 'about'.
I think when you mention 'where her life went wrong' you should mention what did go wrong in her life. Is she lonely, does she have depression? The reader kind of has to take her word that she's had a bad life.
That said, I think your concept is brilliant. It makes the reader think about all the photos they have on their wall and the moments immediately before and after the photo was taken. It is applicable to everyone, which makes it more profound.
Lastly, have you considered this as a poem? As I was reading I was thinking that it would work well in verses. It works great like this but it couldn't hurt to experiment. Just a suggestion
Well done!