He hasn’t been home in so long, this town paved with broken promises and dreams long dead and gone.
He got a text from Ken, there’s a party at tenth.
Everyone will be there.
Keystones and Busch Lights spilt everywhere, the whole place reeking with sweat, heartbreak, and cheap beer. The bass was shooting, everyone was cracking. His throat was dry, his mind was itching. His eyes wide open, he was looking.
He saw the back of her head from across the room.
“Who’s Helen?” asked the girl.
“I’m sorry, I thought you were someone else.” He glanced at her down and up. “Where’s your boyfriend, girl?”
She looked up at him through her dark, hungry eyes. “Don’t have one this evening.”
He smiled. “That’s amazing.”
He pulled her towards the giant tide of sweating bodies, throbbing to the beat of the music, hearts pumping in this party. His hands rested low on her curving waist as her hips bounced with T.I.’s rhymes. Her hands on her knees, jutting out, digging in, teasing back out, she can have whatever she likes this time. He shut his eyes and drowned in wishful hope.
She leaned her back against his chest. White girls can’t dance to Kanye West. They listened awhile, feeling his heartbroken style.
“Need a ride home?”
She licked her lips. “Where’s your car?”
He needed this. He needed her. Can she help him? Melt him into nothing? Help him live tonight? He hoped so. Yet, he laid there emotionally empty, entangled in her porcelain arms. Who was this bitch snoring piss water at his face? Why was she her and not her? Can she ever be her?
He got up and searched the floor for his clothes. Headlights snuck in through the window blinds. He gently shut the front door behind him. Helen should be in town. He took out his phone. There she was between Harold and Howard. Just press call so he could hear her voice ask hello, so he could ask her what’s up. You back? How are you? It’s been a while. We should catch up. Want to go grab some lunch some time? He’d meet her and make some small chat with laughter and smiles and ask her some questions, then eventually see her more regularly, engage in longer conversations with longing looks and shy suggestions, asking bigger questions.
He closed his phone. He did this before, and she welcomed him to heartbreak. Don’t forget what she’s done, she whispered broken promises of love and a future dead and gone.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
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125,005 Literary Works • 672,804 Reviews
Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Night(whichever one it is in your part of the world),
Hi! I'm Knight Hardy here on a mission to ensure that all works on YWS has at least two reviews. You will probably never see this but....Imma do this anyway.
First Impression: So this one was a bit of a weird one for me. It started out sounding like some kind of depressing post apocalyptic world then becoming a bit of a quick old romance scene before it suddenly turned into a whole lot of hearbreak and that is a weird roller coaster to be riding. So slightly confused as to what exactly is supposed to be conveyed here on first glance. Lemme read it a couple more times to see if I can properly decipher it.
Anyway let's get right to it,
Oooh very interesting place to start thing there. Getting some pretty crazy vibes from it and I think I like it. Its very mysterious and post apocalyptic almost.
That's a pretty neat description that you've got right there. And some interesting choices with the vocabulary especially regarding the mind.
Well that doesn't sound like a realistic start to a conversation at least from what I've seen but then its pretty short and appears to be maybe helping us out a little with the plot so it can be allowed to slide.
Okay that went in a totally different direction from where this actually began...at this point I don't really have any idea how this is connected to the first bit.
Well that sounds like a pretty wishful promise there and I think after this passage thinks make a little more sense but then the overall timeline of how events take place inside of this is very weird in how it seems like it goes from the present to perhaps a memory then the present once again. Its just a little confusing as to what happens when. The idea however is summed up pretty well by the ending that I think does a good job balancing out the beginning so that is nice to see.
Aaaaand that's it for this one.
Overall: Okay at this point I think like I mentioned I can sort of get what the whole thing is about and I'm thinking maybe that scene in the middle was some kind of flashback or maybe something that triggered an old memory. I would suggest you really try and clear that up quite a bit but otherwise this was pretty well written.
As always remember to take what you think was helpful and forget the rest.
Stay Safe
Harry
This is a very oddly written piece.
The tense is wrong, compared to the rest of the piece.
ten? Or is that a street. Also, I suggest you italicize the messages to distinguish from the prose. Like so:
The reason I'm suggesting that and not a more definite, contextual change is because I think the haphazard imagery, description and action is deliberate, as part of a deliberate style. If this is not the case, well, then you need to fix this up so description and action link up; as it is, you jump forward quite a bit.
For instance, from the messages, to the party, from the notation of the back of a girl's head, to speak to her. The 'in-between', the mortar of most stories that keeps it all together, is missing. But again, if intentional, I guess its okay. Of course, that only applies if this meant to be a short, flash piece. If it's going to be an actual story - with real, fleshed out characters and a plot of some kind, then you have some building to do. As it stands, we have impressions - of a party, of a guy who's feeling hurt and lost, but that's it. Not much at all, really, and nothing but the slap-dash style makes this stand out. There's nothing new to this, nothing to make the character something more then a cliche, and that more then anything is what you should work on.
Cheers