First off, I must thank you, whoever you are, for taking the time to read this.
This is a short story I wrote several months ago, which, despite its vague descriptions, has deeply disturbed several people.
I am hoping only for a few good critiques, so please, by all means, tell me how I can improve.


Cold, that was the first thing I felt. An explosion of crimson lit her almost angelic image, on fire before my eyes. Drops of hot blood hit my pale face and she started to cackle.

What was her name? Clair, that's right, she sat next to me at lunch today. Everything she said made so much sense,all of the ideas about the government and the food industry, everything! Or maybe I just wanted it to make sense. Either way, when Sean Hopkins said those things about her, I couldn't just stand idly by and do nothing.

My eye still hurts.

After the "fight" she said I was acting stupid and she didn't need protecting from a stupid jock and his idiotic followers. She hugged me though and thanked me for at least trying to help. By that time, my eye was already swollen shut.

We sat on the front steps of the school for almost half an hour. If I had been smart, that would have been the end of it. I kissed her.

At some point, we decided to go to my house, simply because Neither of my parents would be home for a few more hours. The entire way back seemed to be a blur. There were street names, and laughing, and kissing, but by some miracle, we reached my house. I fumbled with the key but eventually the door was unlocked.

After stumbling through the door and narrowly avoiding my older sister, Kim, we worked our way into my bedroom. As she pulled off my shirt and pushed me onto the bed, I felt cold metal slide across my back. When I opened my eyes, I saw her walking towards me with a slender knife in one hand.

I have no idea where the knife came from but I do know that it felt terrible to have it against my throat. I dared not swallow for fear that the movement might cause the blade to break through my skin. She just smiled and pulled the blade across my throat. The skin of my neck tore like pale whit paper and a crimson spray painted patterns across my light brown room.

Even in the panic, I started to feel tired. The colors of the room began to fade, everything was blurring and blending together with everything else. I realized that if I closed my eyes I would die, but I suppose I knew that I was going to die anyway. As I slipped away into unconsciousness, I couldn't help but wonder what my parents would think when they found me, half naked, lying on my bed, with a boner, covered in my own blood.

They would have to call the school tomorrow and explain what happened. At least the students will have something to talk about, and maybe they'll even get a few days off. everyone at the school will be asking each other questions about me that no one knows how to answer. I'll fade away and become just another rumor. Someone will use my story to scare kids away from sex, or drugs, or alcohol. Soon enough they'll all forget that i was even a real person, and I'll become just another urban legend, or I'll just be forgotten. Either way, it wont matter to me anymore.

_________________
...

interesting flash fiction you've posed for us, but it's pretty simple really: you've got a neat blurb of violence here, but it doesn't really convey much of anything but the event itself, and not even that, really.

You try to heighten the event several times with these descriptions, but the structure remains so trite and unintrusive and exposition-based that we lose a lot of the impact. The single best line is about the narrator's eye hurting. As a single paragraph, it stands to reason that he would do something like that. He's an AWFUL CLEAR THINKER for someone who is dying, I suppose, and that makes it difficult to really appreciate the gravity of his death. Almost as if a disinterested third party had wanted to make a story about a kid dying but forgot to change the tenses (oh wait that's what happened)

it's not disturbing in the slightest, anyone who said that has absolutely no tolerance for violence, and anyone who has no tolerance for violence doesn't need to scrutinize your writing.

Though you seem to be doing it for the raw shock value of the piece. It probably gave you a pretty good boner when you wrote it, huh. Seemed edgy. It's a kid dying after all, right? Strong enough imagery on its own, and there are no real flaws in how you presented sentence by sentence, just the eventual reveal that none of the parts sound good together.

It's not a short story, don't get it wrong. It's flash fiction. That's fine. The descriptions are not vague, they're precise about what happened. Your THEME is vague. You don't have any real point to the story. Sounds pretty EXISTENTIAL to me, if I were to pin down any one MAJOR FLAW.

Theme is important in writing. This flash piece doesn't have much of one. Which is okay if this is a scene in any given film that can build on it, but for a stand-alone, not so much.


Have I written enough words to rival yours?

_________________
Bleedcomics Staff Writer/Editor, , and Keeper of the Jar Brain of Secret President. RIP Ku Ku Ku \(-^.^-)/ U Wuz A REAL N***A!!!!!!!
"We're quite aware of this. BR is no happy rainbow face man. He is simply our neighborhood best fucking poster." ~ Warbear
Puff Most Epic.

I'm pretty confused myself. Was she angry about being kissed? Why would she be so angry about that? Was it her first kissed that she reserving for someone very special??

I think you're going for Higurashi Naku Koroni (spelled it right?) thing here, but I fail to appreciate what's really going on. Details is needed, dude.

_________________