What was I about to do? I clutched a bottle of vodka in my gloved hand, feeling the chilly wind bite my nose.
Was I about to kill myself? Was I really thinking?
I lived in an eternal fear of my father. The bruises on my arms, the broken wrist and rib, that was all his fault. I swigged the vodka, feeling it slide down my throat. It burned. I put the bottle beside me, letting a tear roll down my cheek.
Worthless. I was worthless.
Nobody wanted me, so why should I live?
I ran a hand through my lank, dirty, brown hair, and tilted my head back. What would I do? Just sit until I died of a frozen heart? I hoped that would be possible.
“Emma?” I looked up, slowly looked around. A few feet away, I could see Austin Chalmers. His glasses sat on his nose, making his green eyes seem bigger, more innocent. He walked over to the bench, his worn Chuck Taylors sinking into the snow. He sat next to me, eyeing the bottle of vodka.
“Hey.” I said, trying to keep my voice non-mournful. I noticed he was holding some cardboard, just a large square.
“What's that?” I asked, before he could ask me how I was doing, or what I was doing today. Austin looked down at it.
“Nothing,” he mumbled, “I need it for a project. What are you doing today?”
“Living a crappy life.” I said, “what about you?” He narrowed his eyes for a minute, staring at me.
“Do you want to talk?” he asked awkwardly. I shrugged. Austin Chalmers was the weird boy at school, preferring the company of his robots to other people.
“Not really.” I said, “I don’t wanna burden you.” Austin nodded slowly, looking around. He checked the time on his wristwatch and I looked to the ground.
“I have to go.” He said, standing up, “maybe I’ll talk to you later.” Then he left, leaving me alone in the cold.
Alone. I was an alone magnet. I sipped from the plastic bottle again. Soon, I’d have to go home and start the cycle all over again. I looked to my left, where Austin had been sitting. The brown square of cardboard sat there. I picked it up, quickly skimming it.
In his thin writing, with a badly drawn sunshine on top, the piece of cardboard read-You are absolutely gorgeous to me and you know that. In the right corner there were was a heart and a couple of x’s.
I smiled to myself. I hadn’t known that, but it had made my day that much brighter.
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125,027 Literary Works • 672,769 Reviews
Hey, Wicked! Here to review your submission for the Postsecert contest.
I'm sure you know Yurriko and I will be the judges so I'm actually dropping by to review and read all the submissions.
=)
This was a little on the short side for me. It lacked description and I didn't get much emotion from this. However, your piece definietly has some potential if you lengthened it. For example let's take this part:
We know that he is an abusive father, however you didn't explain the story or the reason behind this anger. Why is he like that and why doesn't she do anything about it? Where is she? At school? How did she get the vodka bottle?
Remember, setting, explanation/reason and background information. Build some sort of foundation to work from and then dig deeper and progress with the overall plot of the story.
What makes her think this? Has she never received love? Never had a boyfriend or even friends?
If she's suicidal then I think you should have again, given us some more information concerning this matter.
We need some character information for Austin. Who is he to her? Are they just friends or just causal acquaintances? Remember not to just dump a character into the story, we don't know who he is and what relationship they share and in order for the reader to connect with them, we need to understand their ties.
I really don't understand what's so gorgeous about a girl who drinks alone...unless he knows something about her real personality and the hurt she's been through. If that were the case, I would have liked to see some more deeper emotions regarding how Austin likes this MC.
Well, in the end, it was a sweet story. I liked reading it but I think you can make this a lot better with some more description, length and explanation. You did connect the postcard to the story well, but I noticed a tiny little mistake, lol.
I'm pretty sure the postsecret thing said, "You are absolutely gorgeous to me and you 'need to' know that.
Unless, you did that on purpose. xD
Good job, nonetheless.
Thank you for participating!
-Shear
Hey there! This story was extremely cute. I don't know, but I think that the part about her dad was somewhat irrelevant at that moment. Maybe add in something that he did that day to make it seem more relevant to the story. It's up to you though.
Keep it up!
~Luxy
Very nice story mostly because it was concise and straight to the point, several writers tend to make sentences too wordy and confusing. Your story was short and engaging, so well done. I liked how she had no idea how Austen felt about her, realistic as people often view different situations from an entirely opposite perspective. I don't think you needed to go into more detail: extra back story will have bogged down an otherwise short and sweet polished story. But she wouldn't be drinking vodka from a plastic bottle seeing as it is only sold in glass bottles - keep up the writing, you clearly have talent.
First off, thank you for writing such a cute little piece! It was simple and yet very beautiful. I do agree though that it could be incredible if you were to elaborate a little more. Each of the paragraphs is very short and a little more length and description could help readers capture what Emma was feeling.
Jasmine
Hey!
That is one fantastic story!
Constructive criticism:
I realize that this is a short story, but if you could add a little bit more detail about her home situation (for example, does she have a mother? If so, why isn't her mother stopping the abuse?) that would be great.
A few spelling/grammer errors:
It's Chuck Taylors...because Chuck Taylor doesn't own the shoes..they're just named after him.
before he could ask me
What's
looked to
Other than those little nitpicky details, I love your story so much! The reader feels the despiration and hopelessness that the character struggles with, and even if the reader hasn't been abused by a family member/friend, we can relate to what the character's going through. And everyone knows a "Austin Chalmers"-type.
It's a really cute, if not romantic, story. I love the ending, how you leave the reader with the feeling that everything's going to be okay, at least for that moment.
Totally awesome job!