**Just felt like writing sumthing right now, so this is just off the top of my head.**
**It's probably not great, but anyway...tell me what u think**
Darkness. I fell a asleep breathing it, I awake into it. Morning has not come. Instead, I awake to find my eyes focused on the dull tap and thud of rain, and sift and slur of the coffee downstairs. Nothing has changed. Daddy's car is gone from the driveway, the shadow of Mother below the covered porch devulged within the puddles of rain is slipping past my ever changing vision.
The room is warm, small tears of sweat pour down my back and into the sheets, the sheets that havn't been cleaned for over too months. The dog is whining downstairs, his tail thumping on the rug, his breathing long and discontented. He howls, barks, protests, but no one appears at the door.
The year is 1985, and this is the year I was left alone. You didn't warn me about this stuff. No one told me on my eleventh birthday, I would be alone. All alone.
Mother's blue 1975 Honda Civic is inching out of the driveway and up the endless rows of double story houses, sultry gardens and families, pasted together by the thinning ducktape lies.
I open the window. Yell. I say come back. I'm not ready to be alone. Please Mother. Don't do it. Don't leave. The dog has stopped whinning now, and only his low growl can be heard. Someone's shadow slips by from across the road. They glance up. An unreadable expression. They walk by. Once more, I stand alone, my expression moving in and out with the pools of falling rain.
It is Sunday. We are supposed to be in church right now. Instead, I am standing in the shower. Have been for an hour. The hot water presses down on me. Perhaps, I imagine, they will come back soon. We will be a family. Me, mother, father, and Baily, my dog.
When I come out of the shower, the phone is ringing. It continues. On and on. My skin is blotched and red. My hair sticks to the back of my neck. Tears mixed with water falling against the rythems and shapes and inperfections of my naked self.
There are no gifts downstairs. No cake. No one. Only me and Baily, thumping his tail against the floor. His way of crying. His tears. I fill back up his food dishes, listen to the soft licking motions as he laps up his breakfast. Amazing how one little meal can fix all his problems.
I sit for awhile at the table, saying nothing, doing nothing. The rain has cleared, the sun has taken over. 11:56 am. I am eleven years old today and I am completly alone. Alone except for the always faithful Baily.
It is cold in this house, I pull more sweaters over my tshirts and hang onto the soft heartbeats of the ever faithful Baily. His soft tounge rides down the bridge of my nose, painting my frekles with a wet foam.
Is Baily cold? I wish I could do something. I can not. I give him another can of food to ease his worries. My worries.
I eat something cold from the fridge. I am too worried to be hungry. I need a distraction.
By Monday morning, the social workers have come. Tall, dark people with unreadable expresions. They take Baily by the leash and put him the back of a truck. They say their taking him to a special place when I cry for him. They say someday I will see him again. The neighbors are watching me with sad eyes as I am led into the back of a different car.
What did I do wrong? What did I do that made you mad enough to leave me? If I ever see my parents again, this is what I will ask them.
Where did I go wrong?
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Canary word: Present
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125,005 Literary Works • 672,805 Reviews
Hello there. I've noticed there are a few works of yours that all don't have two reviews in a short amount of time. I've decided to attempt at going through all of these short stories over the next few minutes, so I can get a grasp of your voice and continue it for all of the reviews.
Using the first person here is an interesting device. The art of having a child's view brings out more emotions than another view may typically, as most readers can feel sympathetic to a young person, much like thinking of their own younger self. Here, I feel like parts of the narration are a little stilted and hard to read through, which I think comes from the tense as well.
Personally, I don't like most stories written in the present, as it reads sometimes as more of a grocery list than nice, winding sentences about someone's actions. The short lines themselves don't help that notion, seemingly making this a decently jagged and harsh story, as the reader isn't allowed to jump into a flowing narration.
Rather, the main character's thoughts trickle slowly out as the story continues in a reflectively slow churn as well. I do like the connection with the weather, in saying how much the MC is feeling lonely and sad and how they woke up to a dark, raining sky much like themselves. The details of the poor dog are sad as well, and a little piece to think about is that line of the dog only needing food to feel better.
If only that worked for humans as well.
I think that growing on the MC would do you good, in really letting us know who this child was before their parents apparently abandoned them. In addition, I'm confused by the ending, in someone taking the dog and then the child themselves? I wonder what that was supposed to be.
Overall, I think this was a decent story with plenty of emotion, but working out the tenses would make this a smoother read.
Good work, I like it. Very well-written and a fair storyline. You probably could have developed the character a little more, whcih would have been easier with a longer piece and more time put into it, but apart from that it's great. Keep it up.
Awww...poor Bailey...
This is very, very sweet. Very sad...*sniff*
If you don't write more, I fear I may have to pound on you a bit.