"Alice. Alice put down the knife" I said trying to calm my wife of seven years. Alice was about 5 foot 7 and had long ginger hair. She had cold gray eyes and faint red lips. She always wore the faintest blue eye shadow. When she had it on it was like you could see right into her, the blue engrossed the gray and made you want to just hold her, and tell her everything was going to be alright. I had always considered her a delicate wall flower, but now it was apparent that she was anything but delicate. She was a rose and I was feeling the thorns.
"You were sleeping with her, you bastard!" She screeched. "She was my best friend for 25 years and you were fucking her behind my back!" She lunged at me with the knife. I moved just in time. Instead of the usual sweet smelling ghost perfume that she usually wears, I smelt sherry and a lot of it. She had plunged the knife into the microwave behind me and had left in the shattered remains of the glass.
"Just tell me this" She said trying to steady herself."Was she better than me? Is that why you were drawn to her. Tell me Zack! is that why you went to her!" She was now bawling her eyes out. Pouring out of her beautiful gray eyes, was now the truth.
"Alice be quiet you will wake the children." I pleaded, I didn't want the children to see us like this. Alice slumped to the floor meeting it with a messy thud. I lent against the black tiled wall of the kitchen, I thought she was seeing reason.She started to let out long gaspy laughs. She flicked her head up, her hair covering the right side of her face. Her eyes were now as sharp as the knife she had been holding and they were cutting me up.
"I killed them" she whispered " I didn't think they were my children. Katie was our surrogate mother. You told me she was having our baby, that you had taken care of it all. I got the eggs taken from me ,Zack, but they didn't work did they? You just fucked her, knocked her up and then told me the babies were mine! Your children are dead Zack!" At this moment my entire world came tumbling down. I felt like I was stood in the center of a war zone and I had taken every bullet they had. She was now in hysterical laughter. She thought she had cracked it all but she was far from the truth, the children were really hers. I didn't want to believe her, so I sprinted up our stairs.
The family portrait now served as irony at this point. I opened their bedroom door. When I opened the door the sight I saw made me physically sick. Liam and Simon, my two boys were now dead. Simon was laid face down into the floor. Bullet holes tore through the back of his pajamas, leaving holes in the blue stripped pattern. Liams' body was draped from the top bunk of their bunk beds. I nervously edged forward and lifted his head. It was brutally beaten in, blood dripped from his face like strawberry sauce. On his neck was a giant gash, she had gone crazy. I knelt on the floor by Simon, I was kneeling in my sons blood. I rolled him over. He had a bullet hole in the center of his face and gashes all over the rest. I picked him up and placed him in his bed and tucked him in, the same with his brother. I flicked off their main light and turned on their flash light. "Sleep tight boys." I whispered through my tears and pain. I closed the door and made my way for the stairs. How could she kill two eight year old boys. They were my dream, my everything and now they were gone forever. Our children gone forever. She didn't deserve to breathe above anything else. I wanted her lungs to slowly fill up with the poison, which I'm sure coursed through her bloodline. I want her to be shot, suffocate, anything for her to feel pain; and I was sure as hell going to give it to her.
I walked into out bedroom. Our wedding photo album was torn up all over the floor. I stepped over it and went to my bed side table. I pulled open the draw to retrieve my revolver. It wasn't there. "Looking for this" Alice yelled behind me. I turned but she had already pulled the trigger. The pain was unbearable, but all I could think about was my boys, how they would have had to feel this. I was crying so hard, my life was over. I fell onto the bed, my blood spilling out and staining the sheets. She fired another shot. I screamed in pain, it was the most agony I had ever been in. She threw the revolver on the floor and left the doorway. I watched her for as long as I could. I became so cold so quickly. It felt like I was drifting into a deep sleep. My morphine was knowing that I was going to be with me boys again soon, and we would never have to suffer this again. I heard glass shatter downstairs. I hoped it would cut her arms causing her to bleed. My thoughts slowly drifted away, leaving me to my darkness, to wake in a different realm altogether.
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139,565 Literary Works • 672,608 Reviews
HWOWH! I love it. Honest. I'll just leave the grammar nitpicking to the others 'cause I guess that's not my thing, yet.
Although my chest seems too tight right now, I need to tell you that I like the story.
Your descriptions were good, and you established the reader-story connection. I felt as if I were there too.
Argh. I hate that woman for killing their children. Although she was in that horrible state, I still couldn't forgive her. HAHA.
Anyway, I like it. I like it. I like it.
Write more, okay? I'd be following you and your works. YAY! \m/
-KAT <3
WOW! Speechless much? The emotion was really vivid ! It felt like i was there. It made me want to cry
when he tucked in his kids and said good-night. D:
Really good.
Keep writing!
Born
xx
The detail was great, the words were real, and the emtion was amazing. The only question that comes to mind is how you can write that without crying? It was really good, and I hope you keep writing.
Hey Retro!!
Well first of all I want to tell you that this was really good, I really liked it. It was quite cruel but really good. I liked how you protrayed some of the emotions and I liked the dialogue, even though it wasn't much. Generally it was good but you had some problems with your description and imagery. Remember you have to show us not tell us, describe what's going on and how you were feeling. That's also something I noticed, there were parts were you could have created more suspense or given us more feeling. I liked it but there were parts were the story was not as I expected it, it was too simple. Try to add more feeling, more suspense to it. It is great that even though it lacks a bit of description, you managed to keep the reader's attention. In my opinion, that's due to the fact that you have a really good idea going on here.
Now some nitpicks.
Two things, please add more emotion, make us feel what the main character was feeling, make us see what he was seeing. Second thing, don't throw at us the description of your wife, it sounds quite info dumpy so instead of throwing it at us, try to show us how she looked like through out the story and how she has changed in that moment.
Ok, so the action sequence is ok, but...add more feeling to it, I cannot believe that you just dodged the knife and felt nothing, I cannot believe it. How were you feeling then?
Ok, too simple, not telling us much, yeah physically sick but what else. Tell us about your visceral feelings, how you felt deep inside when you saw the children dead. Add more feeling, more suspense, it's cruel enough but it lacks description. Also, I think you could have expanded the part about the children and the family portrait, maybe with some memories or how everything suddenly got ruined.
Now for the end, I think it was way too rushed, everything moved too fast towards the end, please try to keep up with a readable pace so we can really understand and feel the things that are going on. As the reviewers above have said, try to watch your wording, change it, use a thesaurus if needed.
So that's all, hope I helped.
XOXO
Pudin
pretty damn good man. It had that gripping terror of being caught after the fact and things just going downhill. You captured every man's fear of cheating, getting caught, and the aftermath. Kudos to you man
Hello, Retro.
The plot of this story is really good and interesting, but I just feel like things moved a bit too fast. You told us a lot of things instead of showing us. Just a bit more description could make this even more amazing than it already is! There is some repetition through the whole story and that could be easily fixed with a Thesaurus. Your grammar wasn't horrible and I actually like reading this. There could be more suspense leading up to him finding the boys, but I still liked the scene in the boy's room anyway. The part where he tucked them in was sweet in a really creepy way. But the saddest part was when she stabbed the microwave, the poor thing never saw it coming.
I've nothing else to say, so, if you edit this, be sure to PM me so I can read it again.
ReisePiecey!
Hey Retro
I feel like this is a really awkward place to describe what she looks like. She's about to kill you!How was the truth pouring out of her eyes? Rephrase.
Instead of saying 'Her eyes were now like daggers' which is an example of telling perhaps you could say something like 'Her eyes pierced through me like daggers? just an example.
Woah...Big paragraph it's a bit intimidating to the reader. You should break it up into smaller paragraphs. And the bit where he finds his kids seems a bit forced, he's a bit emotionless if he loved these kids he should be screaming the house down. And she's going to pay bit seems weird...If he's seen what she has done to the kids shouldn't he call the police or run for his freaking life...I would.
I was a bit disappointed at the ending. It seemed a bit too fast.
Overall it was a good story, you need to work on pacing. Interpreting the MC's emotions to the reader and thats about it.
Anger
Hey. First off, I don't usually review short stories, but here I am again. I thought that this was really good. I thought it was descriptive and had a good idea to it as well. The only thing I really had a problem with was your imagry. You told us everything that happened in the story, not showed us. I'm not sure if this me mainly doing poetry, but I think that it counts here too. Instead of saying she had ginger red hair, you could have said her ginger hair fell over her face I a wild mess. But other than that, I bought it was really good and I really enjoyed it.