Journey
to Hell
(Lucy)
On my fifth day of arrival in Hungary, at some point of the evening, I was walking along with my cousin fatty Matt. He was twelve years old, almost four years younger than me and still our heights were the same, which I hated. I never wanted him come along but my mom kept sending him with me every time I headed out, saying that it wasn’t safe for me. At least fatty was happy about it, since he could go see his favorite candy man.
So I was in a dairy shop, checking out types of butter and cheese, and by checking out I mean tasting but not buying them you know, when a flock of people crowded outside the shop in the park. Since Matt was in there too I went to check on him and saw that he was okay. About the crowd I had two guesses. First that it might be an accident but then I thought how can an accident happen in a park? So it was my second guess, a fight. Oh my God I loved fights, boys punching and hitting each other made quite a show back in school. But wait, it really was a fight, only this time it was two girl instead and one of them was tearing the other apart.
What the hell was wrong with Europe? Was it the traditions of here or that the northern hemisphere was totally the opposite of southern in every terms? Two girls, punching each other, really? Can you believe that? But wait there is more than just a girl fight. Back in our place even a regular men fight doesn’t get longer than a couple of minutes. Some people enjoy at first yes, but they also tend to end the fight. These people were totally different, not only they were not enjoying this girl fight, they were not interfering it either while the older girl was hitting the younger like a junkie hits a street dog.
About the girls, they seemed pretty adult to me and also like they had mastered the martial arts or some karate black belt. The older had dark brown hair while the younger one’s was lighter, probably highlighted. But it wasn’t important at that time. The important thing was that her face was covered in red and I was going to stop it. As I tried to step in Matt held my hand and nodded his head as sign of no. I was angry so I didn’t care to ask what he meant, which I regretted later. Because as I entered to stop that bitch from killing an innocent girl, that mighty she-hulk held me from my chin and had me in the air for some seconds like a bug and as I was struggling to breathe, she threw me away like the cup of tea my mom used to throw at me when I said curse words. While I was travelling backwards in the speed of light, I hit back of my head hard to something, probably a tree or light stem and everything went black.
I opened my eyes in the hospital, my head, it was hurting a lot and was covered in something. Later as my consciousness rose, I discovered that the thing covering my head is called bandages and I was in a bigger trouble than just a headache. I hadn’t forgotten anything though, my memory was solid and was starting to remember things happened at the part. Now I was remembering her saying something before she target-practiced with me. Wait, no! How can this be possible? She called me Lucy, no! Lucy the shorty.
“Lucy the shorty to the rescue, wanna go all super girl? Let me help you. One, two, three”. She said the exact same words while her hand was tight around my neck and right before ‘dang!
I probably couldn’t catch it because breathing was more important than listening to that bitch at that time. But I had never met her before, not even some of my classmates knew that nickname back in Melbourne, then how can she? Who could’ve told her? I was mind blown, struggling with all the inquiries I had been doing to myself.
Each and every question I asked myself was leading me to dead end, when suddenly the door opened. It was the beaten girl, her face was purpler than a cabbage. She was the one probably who hospitalized me here, but wait there was someone else too, a boy.
“Miss Lansdale, how have you been holding up?” said the boy.
I hadn’t been called that for a while and this reminded me of the principal’s office when I was facing a detention for breaking the door of our class, by throwing a chair at it.
“Thank you, Lucy, for being there for me back in the park” said the girl with a smile on her face.
“Wait, how do you two know my name?” I asked with maximum curiosity.
Her reply was pretty convincing actually. She said that they went through my purse and found my passport, which probably had fallen down during my backward flying practice. Then I asked them that what they were doing in Budapest, because they didn’t seem originally from here. I could see that through their looks and accents.
“I am Avia, I mean Octavia, and this is my brother Daniel. We are here on some private matter and yes as you said, we are not Hungarian” she said.
“You can call us Dan and Avia if you want to, that’s what our friends do. By the way, how did you ended up here in Hungary? You also don’t seem to be Slavic” Octavia said, trying to hide her poker face.
“Before we begin talking about me, let’s talk about this” I pointed to my head with a serious tone of voice. Because I felt that they were trying to avoid it all the time by asking not-so-important things.
The smile on Octavia’s face faded away. The siblings looked at each other for a couple of seconds, wondering about whether to tell the truth or not and that was when Daniel began talking.
“The girl who did this to you, and to my sister, her name is Arielle, and she is our friend”
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125,005 Literary Works • 672,809 Reviews
Hey, sull191! Adrian here for my last review of 2015!
First of all, I'd probably recommend sourcing the image of Chloe Grace Moretz and give the artist some credit, since it was easily traceable through a reverse Google image search. While having faceclaims for characters are great, giving the artist recognition gives them more traffic and a larger platform than they would have had previously.
Since Fatty is being used as a proper noun, it should be capitalized as such. On another note, this doesn't make your main character very likable. Matt is only twelve years old and she's given him a nickname that she uses in a degrading matter. Typically, if you give your character unlikable traits, there would be something else in the narrative that would convince the reader to go on. Or perhaps even something about the main character to make them look sympathetic. There hasn't really been anything strong enough to connect the reader to any of the character. Sure, she's dying. So what?
That train of thought doesn't make much sense. Accidents happen all the time. Depending on the type of park, a plethora of accidents could happen. Maybe Lucy could note that no one was calling any type of help or authority, so maybe she could have drawn the conclusion that it couldn't have been an accident since there wasn't the right reaction from the crowd.
Again, I'm confused. Girls fight all the time and sometimes the fight can get physical. Girls aren't innocent creatures that can do no wrong, they can act nasty and have fights and be rude. Perhaps it's just a misconception that Lucy has, but it comes across as odd.
Although, her going in to stop the fight was rather noble and did increase the levels of likability. It gave her a level of humanity, which was needed in order for her to seem real as a character. If her reactions were explored more, with more immediate emotion attached, then the realness would be increased by a multitude.
The phrasing there is awkward and unclear. It makes it sound like the girl who had been attacked put Lucy in the hospital, which doesn't make much sense. Perhaps you mean that the girl also had to go to the hospital because of her injuries? I notice that there is a lot of awkward and rather difficult phrasing throughout this which detracts from the quality and the overall story.
On a similar note, there is a lack of punctuation at the end of most of the dialogue after Lucy ends up in the hospital.
To be perfectly honest, I feel like this chapter probably would have been a better start to the novel as opposed to chapter one. It gets us straight into the action and the actual, intriguing mystery. If the first paragraph was cut and the second paragraph was reworked a bit, it might actually work out as an interesting beginning to the novel.
I do hope that you keep on writing and that you do end up posting chapter three at some point!
~Adrian
(Wow did you make that portrait yourself, thats pretty cool!)
Overall, this chapter was really great. Your main character and the others you introduce are incredibly intriguing, and Lucy is very intriguing with this sort of Holden Caulfield, tomboy dynamic that she has going. She's very easy to root for despite not being the friendliest person. If you're getting discouraged about the lack of reviews, I'd advise you to be patient and keep going. I uploaded a story on Wattpad 7 months ago, and not only does it not have any feedback on it, has just ONE single view. The cool thing about Young Writers Society compared to other writing sites, is that while it may take a while, you're guaranteed to get at least one review on something you write. So as long as you're still interested in writing it, keep going ^^
The one thing I noticed above all else is the commas. The "breathing" so-to-speak is a bit off, and I had to read through this twice just to kind of understand what happening. You have commas where you don't need them, and many places where you need a comma but have none. Maybe you're doing it on purpose to demonstrate the unwieldiness, blunt nature of Lucy who is the sort to talk a lot without thinking first, but if that's not your goal, I'd suggest you look up comma rules online including when to use a semicolon or comma.
Piece-by-piece:
Ouch, Lucy isn't very nice, causing her cousin fat
Lucy lives on the cutting edge.
I enjoy seeing that despite her jerk-ish comments towards her cousin, she still cares about him. It's a way of subtly showing the reader that she's not the nicest person, but she's by no means a villain, and I appreciate knowing that.
Tomboy, hah. This girl just gets more and more interesting.
You need an it after "some people enjoy".
Oh, so she likes fights, but not when it's two girls fighting, or because it's one-sided? I'd prefer you clarify her thought train here.
Okay, so it appears her frustration isn't that it's two girls fighting; it's that one girl is getting beaten up quite badly. I see now. Lucy got destroyed, which sort of kills her "I'm so tough" thing she was trying to portray.
The whole transition from Lucy dealing with the fight to the hospital seems a little bit rushed; I don't get the sense in not having this dialogue take place when it actually happens, otherwise, it looks as if she's remembering something that we didn't see happen.
I am curious about just exactly why Arielle and Octavia were fighting, and just how their friendship develops, though.
Not a fan of doing this; you're introducing a new character, so don't give them two names or worry about completely developing their personalities just yet. Her first line shouldn't give two different names, it just ends up being rather confusing to follow along with.
Need a period at the end of this sentence