Her.
“Finally,” I croaked. I urged my feet to move toward her, but they seemed to be frozen in place by the early autumnal frost. I had been waiting for her for 15 years. “Mom!” I shouted hysterically, waving my hands like a mad-woman. She continued to walk away from me with her head bowed against the frigid, salty air from above the sea.
I writhed in place trying to rid myself of my invisible captor as she walked adamantly toward Luna General Hospital. Her heavy coat slid from her shoulders and exposed two infants with thick black hair. Just like mine. She quickly recovered the babies and continued without missing a beat. She laid the children in front of the locked doors and stepped away as the moonlight coated her face, giving it a beautifully ominous light. She took a small box from her pocket and placed it in the baby boy’s blue cover making sure to conceal it from wandering eyes. She removed a silver necklace from around her neck and put it on the little girl where it shimmered; a light in the darkness.
“Stay safe my beloveds.” she whispered, kissing them lightly on the forehead. She scurried into the ominous forest never to be seen by me again. I fell to my knees, gladdened that I could move, but tormented by the fact that she had left me yet again. I sobbed for what felt like hours, but when I quieted I gathered up my dignity, wiped off the dirt from the road and started on my way home. I was only a yard away from where I started when someone spun me around abruptly.
Her gentle features and small figure screamed nurturer. She held her arms open, daring me to trust her. “Mom, you came back for me.” I fell into her embrace, but instead of being warm and comfortable like any mothers' hugs should be it felt cold and hard; a brick wall. I pulled away, my eyebrows scrunching in confusion.
“What’s wrong Asha?” She cackled maniacally. “You were never worthy of my love. I didn’t love you or your brother.” She said gesturing toward the babies on the hospital step. “You were a burden on my life. I’m glad I abandoned you.”
She grabbed my arms and shook me back and forth with otherworldly strength as she continued to laugh. I cried out in pain when my head snapped forward then back again, and my hair lashed my face leaving throbbing welts in its wake. An earth-shattering screech clawed its way out of my mouth when she slammed me on the ground; small rocks embedding themselves in my flesh. I whimpered when she left again, begging for her, not caring that she didn’t love me and never had. I shrieked when I shot up in bed a thin layer of sweat covering my body.
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125,029 Literary Works • 672,776 Reviews
Hi,
This was really good!
This part confused me.
This part makes it sound like she wiped dirt off of the road. You should try rephrasing it.
I would put 'like any mothers' hug should be'.
You need to add a comma. Also I would change it a bit;
'I shrieked as I shot up in bed, a thin layer of sweat covering my body.'
Overall, I think it needs a bit more character depth. I feel nothing towards your characters. Also a little more detail wouldn't hurt.
Other than that I think it's good. Keep working on it!
Feel free to PM me with any questions:)
~Tayla
Pure D Genius
Loved it, you had me at her
But i was a little confused about the Three Days Grace thing you threw me for a loop there
I think you should also use those awesome descriptions the Writing Gods blessed you with tell us a little bit more about the hospital is it dark and gloomy or warm and welcoming
Also at the beginning could you tell us something that leads us up to her waiting on her mother like simply mentioning she's waiting on someone or that she couldn't wait any longer till this certain someone came then Finally
I loved how you made the mother look loving and caring then all of a sudden she turns into this wicked violent women just marvelous
I so agree with Jassie your descriptions are so well MARVELOUS
I mean i could see that women holding those children as if I was having the dream myself
and I gasped when you made her hair into an obstacle giving her whelps A-MAZING
I can't wait to read more
Keep Writing and Stay Marvelous
Very very very powerful. Description was brilliant. I cant really add any more to the review than what the others have written-so i wont!!!!!
Keep it up!!
Hey pinkie angel, here with your review….just really behind. *oops*
15 should be written out, as it looks more formal.
Wouldn’t you be wiping the dirt from off yourself rather than off the road? I know what you meant, but that’s not how it reads.
Characters
This a good start but it could use a little work as far as characters go. Asha falls a little flat to me. She seems to lack a real pain when she dreams about her mother and when her mother treats her the way she does. Emotion is what insures that a reader feels connected. Without feeling connected…the reader will lose interest. And because this is the beginning, you want to grab the reader right away with a strong sense of character connection. Make them ask questions and want to know more. This will make them read further.
Good luck. If you have any questions, PM me or post in my Will Review For Food thread.
~lilymoore
Well, everyone else got here before me, but here is your review as requested. ^^
I thought this was okay. I mean, you have really good parts but I didn't...really get into the story.
1. I didn't feel anything from your main character. You showed lots of emotions in her, but I didn't feel any towards her. I just sat there at the end like 'Is that all?' Add more to your character and really flesh her out. That's what I hate about really short stories, you never get to know the characters enough.
2. Imagery!!! Your descriptions were pretty good, but they weren't that powerful to me. Honestly, I thought you could do so much more with those sentences than you did. When you are describing something use metaphors or something. Give it a little more flare. Use all of the five senes. Sight, smell, touch, taste, hearing. Well try to fit most of them in there.
Overall, this has real potential. I thought the story was decent, but it just didn't capture my interest. I've read tons of stories with someone who was abandoned by their parents, so with something like this, you need to make it really powerful and interesting to keep the reader from automatically getting bored.
**Also, if I repeated things other people said, I'm sorry but I really don't have enough time to look at ALL of those reveiws. ^^
Wow. Your descriptions are absolutely amazing.
I didn't find anything really, except for a few spelling mistakes here and there.
I was wondering about this, since it obviously isn't part of the story. Is it some sort of pre-chapter quote, or something?
Yeah, definitely use some other words than "scream".
Add some commas in too, please.
Other than that, I didn't find anything else. Great job, and keep up the good work!
zOe
Hey pinkangel! I wrote out a whole review for this, and then my computer totally ate it, so you’ll have to bear with me. >_> Let me just give you some general suggestion!
Write out all numbers that can be spelled with only two words (twenty-seven, three, nine-million) because spelling out numbers is just so much cooler than writing the digits. 
In your case, the 15 needs to become fifteen.
Be careful about starting a lot of consecutive sentences with the same word. In your case, ‘She’ when you’re describing the mother’s actions. That entire paragraph is just “She did this, she did that” and you begin to sound like a broken record! Which isn’t good. ^^ So rephrase some things so that you’re not always focusing on the mother’s actions at the beginning of the sentences—focus on the moonlight streaming down her face, sounds from the forest, wails of the two children she’s leaving. Just vary things!
So, other than these little issues, this was a solid start to an interesting idea! ^^ I’d focus on, again, your sentence structure—make sure your narration is smooth and flowing, not jagged or repetitive. PM me if you need anything!
~Evi
Hey Angel ^^ Shina here as requested
Is this a quote? Or a chapter name? IT doesn't seem to be apart of the actual story.
If it's POV, no need for period.
*Autumnal? It should be Autumn, capitalized.
Fifteen should be in word form. In novels, any number below 100 is in word form.
Redundant because you already say you wave your hands like a mad-woman.
Doesn't need to be there.
Comma after in place.
Good imagery, but there's a lot of she did this and she did that, making it tell-y.
I thought it was a hospital or something. Where did this forest come from all of a sudden? Also, ominous is a cheat to describe something. Imagery
-----------------
Overall:
The way you portrayed this was really interesting ^^ I kind of saw the dream coming since it reminded me of Meet the Robinson's, though.
The positives about this are that you have really good imagery and description when it comes to the people, and small things. However, when it comes to setting, you're not really painting the picture for your readers.
Don't just say "ominous" forest or anything like that. Actually take the time to paint it for the readers like you do with the people.
Also, please use commas, dear
Hope to read more
-Shina
Don't ask why, but I teared up a little before I realized it was a dream. I honestly thought it was amazing.
You have nice style and it flowed well except in the parts specified above by the others. You have that genuine, rare ability to make the reader feel the emotions of the character. Although, I do think that the ending sounded a bit rushed, but that's just my opinion. I LOVED it. Keep up the good work, hun. \m/(>.<)\m/
<3 bElL3 <3
Whoa. I thought the story was very good. It kept me hooked from the beginning to the end. I felt that it needed some other words for scream. Like the others said, you could use cried out,yelped,screeched,shrieked, and howled. But otherwise, if it was made into a book, I would read it. Keep up the good work!
Hey Angel
Let's start off with your opener:
This piece is interesting on a number of levels. I do hope that I do justice to it in my review. You have quite a knack for writing, but I'll try to review this as per your request and add what I can.
This is a fairly awkward opener to your story. Personally, I find that strong emotion can be observed through thought and feeling rather than monologue. I think that you've done well enough to capture our attention. We do wonder immediately to whom you are referring. This is peculiarly effective in hooking us from the start. My problem is more with your use of monologue to convey your persona's emotions. See, one of the key benefits of writing from a first person perspective is your ability to get so close to your character that you can desribe feelings and thoughts far more naturally than you can a monologue.
At the end of the day, when you give us the word "finally", you want us to feel that this is something your persona's wanted for a long time. Nevertheless, as soon as you verbalize this "finally" and speak it out, it loses a substantial amount of its credibility as you wouldn't talk to yourself and when recounting the event you certainly wouldn't tell us you said this. Were I in your position I would rewrite the above piece as follows:
After this you could continue to add your feelings, a point that I will come to now.
You narrate what her response is superbly, but we also need to feel what causes that response. You've set yourself a really tough task writing this in the first person. When a person tells their own story, they will invariably give us their thoughts over their responses. After all, their responses are only a product of their thoughts.
At first glance, it appears as though you tell us that we'll never see her again and then immediately afterward do see her again. This seems remarkably contradictory. If you meant that you would never see her as her caring self again, you need to make this clearer and foreshadow it a little better. Otherwise I'd just end the first sentence after "forest" and be done with it.
I notice that a couple of the previous reviewers were uncomfortable with the above sentence. I share this discomfort. The reason I do so is that at this stage you try to build up a peaceful setting; a setting of your persona's comfort. You want to achieve maximum effect when you break this peaceful image. Your use of "screamed" contrasts far too strongly with your sentence's aim. It also contrasts with the term nurturer which denotes comfort. You would build up your image far better if you changed the sentence to something like the following:
I do hope that my review helped.
Have a great one!
Just want to clarify, is the 'pain...' what this piece is inspired by? And 'her' signifies it's from 'her' POV. If not, clarify a little more, and if it is, still clarify a little more.
General pet peeve of mine is when things start with dialogue. Stories need to start off with a Bang! The first sentence should be like 'Dang! I need to read to at least the end of the paragraph!'
I would just say 'autumn'. 'autumnal' seems weird to me.
Another pet peeve of mine is phrases like 'never to be seen by me again'. This is present tense so how does the MC know she will never see her mother again?
'gladdened' sounds weird to me too. Maybe just 'glad'.
Did the mom know she was supposed to be here? Did the mom just ditch her or did she have no idea the daughter was there waiting for her? That might make us feel a little more for the MC
This made me go 'hmmmmmmm'.
Characters:
I didn't feel that strong of a connection to any of the characters. I didn't feel bad for the MC at all. I didn't hate the mom, (even though she is kind of a lunatic b***h)
Plot/Overall:
The plot was interesting. Obviously it was a dream but the only thing I'm still curious about is were the baby boy and girl actually the MC and her brother? The mom seemed to love them enough when she dropped them off. She didn't seem like a cold-hearted snake then. I mean, she cared about them enough to give them each a small gift...
Overall I liked it, I just want to know more!
-Carly
Hey there! Thanks for the PM!
First thing I noticed: Speech tags. It doesn't end with the dialogue. Like...
Should be: "Finally," I croaked.
Nice.
Mmm. If she's shouting hysterically should there be an exclamation mark at the end, rather than a cold full-stop?
I don't know. It doesn't sound right to me. maybe change the above the sea. Or perhaps get rid of it and add it in later.
Speech tag, lower case "s"
"Stay safe my beloveds," she whispered, kissing them lightly on the forehead.
Oh, and a comma after "whispered"
Comma after face.
Love! The "light in the darkness" is just brilliant.
Comma after knees?
The "and" should be "all" ? Oh, and mother's should be mothers' because it belongs to a group.
Ha ha, she pulled away her eyebrows
But, yes, comma after away.
And I totally agree, but, pinkangel, you don't need to replace every "scream" It is actually better if you don't try really hard to replace it, because it confuses the writer and slows the story down! Try and keep it more simple, so we're not trying to picture it, but rather the picture comes to us. I think that makes sense....
It's cool it's all a dream
It was a great read ^^ I dunno, you just... have something. I was, uh, in a nit-picky mood today ^^' sorry. Original start for a vamp book
~EmmaJane~
Wow.
I really like the way it is obvious that she is dreaming although you do not say it until the very end. Everything is so obviously nightmare scenario. It is really good.
I would love to know how this continues. Perhaps I can give you a more constructive review than this is. I am having a hard time finding something that you could improve.
What does she do with the necklace? I don't think you mention that. This way it sort of looks like a lost snippet that is irrelevant to the complete text.
Okay I did not know that the underlined word existed. I had to look it up. I get what you mean but it sounds strange. I would melt those two sentences to something like this:
Her gentle features and small figure screamed: Hug me! Trust me!
Nurturer just sounds really weird.
I hope I could help. Perhaps you could PM me when you write more.
Awesome
I did find a grammatical error here though:
should be
Other than that, I enjoyed that a lot for a short-story! Very powerful emotions, and awesome descriptive work. Oh, and I love your use of metaphors!
Yeah this story was really really good and i honestly couldnt think of anything that i could tell you to make it any better than it already was. Keep it up!
Wow.
That was powerful. I feel like you have so much potential to be a truly great author. Your descriptions were so amazing, I could picture the entire scene in my head. And that is awesome.
I did notice one thing that I think could be tweaked this make this part of your story 20 times better.
I noticed that you used the word 'scream' 5 times. You are SO SO SO SO SO SO SO SO SO SO SO good at describing the scene and what is going on. You can describe her screaming instead of using the word.
Remember the writing rule?: Readers don't want to be told what they're reading.
It's like saying:
"You suck!" Jasmine exclaimed. <--- If there's an exclamation mark there, we all know she's exclaiming lol.
It'd be better to say:
"You suck!" Jasmine said, blah blah blah...
That's just an example similar to this.
You can describe her screaming by saying she cried out in fear, she cried out in pain, she bellowed, she shrieked in fear or sadness.
She yelped, she howled, she screeched.
Those are the synonyms of scream.
I think it would make your story more interesting if you used one of these words as you described it.
Keep the line "Her gentle features and small figure screamed nurturer."
But a line like: "I screamed when my head snapped forward then back again,"
You could change to: "I cried out in pain/fear when my head snapped forward then back again,"
And : "I screamed when she slammed me on the ground"
Could be: "I yelped loudly when she slammed me on the ground"
There are SO many cool ways to describe screams. You could make them so eerie and haunting or just frightening to hear.
Like describing a scream like, "I felt my insides tighten in fear as a loud, painful scream escaped my lips" [or throat or mouth, whatever you want]
You are so good at writing and I'm so excited for you!
I hope you take my advice with that, I believe that it will really help!
-Jassie