Novels!

Just wanted to say this is great ^_^
There's not much advice I can give, because I'm just a kid, but this is really awesome..
I might post one or two of my many hundreds of story openings here if ever I can muster upthe guts

 

Cool! I love these kind of threads with stories to read

I like what you've written. I'd love to know what happens next! The only things I would do differently would be adding a couple of commas here and there and may be change a couple of words but that's more finicky. May be you're more after advice on the writing as a whole?

 

Hey, that's a good extract! One thing I would say in terms of critique, is to keep it as realistic as possible. Gene has only just met Edward - would Edward really be saying things like "You have to learn to open up"? Would he really have noticed that Gene was always alone? If that was the case then wouldn't he have previously not noticed Gene at all? Or seen him around but didn't know anything about him? Also, it would probably be Gene, not Edward, who made the connection that they had the same classes together - I can imagine that Edward would be like, "Really? I don't remember you" if Gene spent so much time avoiding civilization.

That said, you write well and you've done a good job with the descriptions. I am going to say one more thing: Show, not tell. That's what I've been told is one of the most important things about writing. For instance:

"All through his life people always made fun of him."

Fair enough. I can believe that as it's written. But you know what I would believe more? If you showed the reader that this was the case. Take the sentence, turn it into a scene, and really, really milk it. You said that this is an extract from a larger work, so I can imagine you've probably done this elsewhere in the story.

Hopefully my little bit of critique has helped. I wouldn't call myself amazing at critiquing but this is probably good practice for me too!

 

Well, in that case, would there be a way of foreseeing Edward's attraction to Gene? Like, maybe when Gene goes to class he's walking by and notices some guy staring at him, but shrugs it off and makes his way to his seat or something. Little things like that, so that it doesn't look too random that Edward knows who he is. Just a suggestion.

EDIT: Or if it is completely random, maybe Gene's opinion on this, e.g. he thinks 'How the hell does this guy know all this stuff about me when we've never even said hello or anything?'

 

Because I am never one to refuse a dare..
It's super long, for an extract, and not perfect. Needs a LOAD of editing. The writing is pretty inconsistent, like towards the end especially it doesn't really flow like I would want it to. So read at your own risk
I'm thirteen. Don't judge. But advice would be helpful.

Happy reading guyssssssss...

Prologue

As I watched the glowing colours blur against the blackness of night, rain pattering dismally agaist the window whilst we whizzed past the rush of city lights, I leaned against the car-door and shut my wearied eyes. Dizzied by the constant motion of a lengthy and tiresome journey, sleep evaded me and a deep, unexplained sickness lurched in my stomach. My mother has often told me that our family has a good sixth sense in our genes, and this nervous realisation washed over me like a wave of insanity. Suddenly, I began to feel very hot and impatient. I tapped out an unsteady rhythm on my lap and hummed quietly, if a little uncomfortably, to myself before looking up. Swallowing in an attempt to obscure the dryness in my throat, I spoke, my voice quavering.

"How long left 'til we get to the airport?" I ventured, masking my anxiety.

I was relieved to discover that it wasn't too long; five minutes or so, tops, the taxi-driver had assured me. Five minutes. I can do five minutes.

It's funny how time seems to pass so slowly when you are counting down seconds.

I have never much enjoyed car journeys, especially not those long, dreary, night-time ones, when I am all alone. But the feeling in my gut was stronger than paranoia. It was a sort of premonition, an insight. It compelled my senses, bound the atmosphere into an absolute rigidity of still, perpetual uneasiness.

Bored, I drew a face with my finger into the condensation on the window. It was meant to be happy, but, to my eyes, it just looked so worried, its wobbly mouth feigning a smile as the droplets of the eyes trickled down the glass and it looked as though it was crying. I did not want to look at it. So, I rolled the window down and gladly received a burst of cool, rainy air against my now burning skin. Once more, I closed my eyes but could not find peace. Restlessness was driving me insane.

It can't be long now, I told myself. I kidded myself that I could just about see what looked like an airport peeking out on the horizon, and in fact I almost believed it. I then told myself I would look back at my fear and laugh, and I nearly believed that too. So very nearly.

People often tend to say that they always remember the littlest details, the most irrelevant details, just before a prominent moment in their life. This is untrue. In the awful, awful split-second just before the other car sped past, so haphazardly out of control, all there was, was the crash, and all that ever would be, was the distinct memory of the fatal collision. Nothing else.

Just a blare of horns, a jolt of a car, white-hot, screeching tires and flashes of petrified, confused sound as my whole body swerved with the vehicle. In that very moment, as my stomach jerked violently to the right, I heard glass shatter and could taste my own blood, but saw nothing but the dark and felt nothing but my deep regret. Shouts seemed so distant; these panicked voices, urgent, but inaudible to my mind so far away. A moment's roar of blinding, flashing light, and then, senses obliterated, I plunged into a semi-concious blackness.

Oddly, I felt no pain whatsoever. Only deep, deep longing, but for what, I could not remember. It was like trying to clutch onto past dreams just out of your reach, slipping away, further and further. And a sense of unfulfilment loomed, yet my conciousness was still drifting away from my body, too far to feel anything anymore.

Then I gave in. Darkness encroached as I embraced my ultimate inevitability.
And then, finally, there was nothing.

I wished.

***

Chapter 1- Welcome to Eternity

I wake, so to speak anyway, on what seems to be a hospital bed. A quiet, steady bleeping noise appears to be monitoring my heart rate, or something like that, but I cannot see where it is coming from. I examine the room around me. Everything here is meticulously polished and sterilised; gleaming surfaces, pure whites, so white they have a blue tinge, and glossy silvers. The furniture is unbelievably geometric, almost futuristic. The light is glinting in my eyes as I conclude that I must be in a hospital, a very, very clean hospital. I don't like it though, it's just too... clean. It reminds me of the kind of thing you might see in a Sci-Fi movie, with the lead character being probed by gaunt, greenish aliens with scalpels and syringes and wires and overly large, egg-shaped heads. It's usually a good sign to wake in a hospital after an accident. It means you are alive and you are to be looked after. But there's something about the place that's making me uneasy, and I can't quite tell what it is...

My thoughts are interrupted by a middle-aged woman standing over me, probably a nurse. She is dressed in a bright and equally clean white smock. Her face looks pleased to see me, but I don't like the look of her very much. There's something about her too, something sinister in her eyes.

"Where am I?" I ask. It's a stupid question but it seems as if it is merely the standard thing to say when you wake up from a coma. It sounded appropriate.

The woman's face twists into an eager smile, as if she is glad to hear that question. I don't like her smile either, I decide. It reminds me of the Cheshire Cat.

"Why, poppet!" She exclaims, bright-eyed. "You are in the Middleworld!"

I give her a puzzled look. I think she expected it.

She grins at me broadly, and pursues happily. "My dear, don't look so shocked. You are dead, you see. But not quite dead."

Oh. Dammit. Alarm bells go off in my head, but I don't let her know. If she knows that I'm weak or scared, she has the upperhand, and I do not trust her with that.

"Just how dead am I, exactly?" I say smoothly.

She doesn't look at me. She turns away, refusing to meet my gaze.

"Sufficiently dead," She says with satisfaction, after a short pause. "That is to say, dead enough."

"...Dead enough for what?"

This makes her angry. Her eyes flash with a kind of psychoticism, just momentarily, then she composes herself and stares me in the face.

"You're an inquisitive little dear, aren't you? Well, poppet, I'll tell you what happens to overly-inquisitive little dears. They go to the Underworld. Curiosity killed the cat, they say."

She says it with the kind of venom that leads me to believe that, in fact, it was not curiosity that killed the cat, but her. Then, she regains her smile and continues.

"You don't want to go to the Underworld, do you, love?"

I shake my head, presuming that by 'Underworld' she means Hell.

"Good. Then we have an understanding," She drawls. "You see, the Middleworld is where everyone goes when they... die. If you think you can get straight into the Upperworld, you have another thing coming! You must work your way up. There are levels. Six of them, to be precise. Once you have proved yourself, then, and only then, can you get into the Upperworld. Understood?"

I nod.

"You are currently on Level Zero. Do something well and you will proceed to the next stage. Do something wrong, however, and you will drop a rank. If you are to drop below Level Zero, you will be sent straight to the Underworld. Harsh, perhaps. But necessary, believe you me. We have no room for error in the Middleworld. Midway between the Underworld and the Upperworld. Middleworld. Clever, I know."

"So," I begin carefully, treading on broken glass. No room for error. "It's a little bit like Purgatory? As in, the Underworld is like Hell, the Upperworld is like Heaven. Right?"

She laughs. It is a fake and unpleasant sounding laugh, but a laugh all the same.

"Yes, you could say that. You could say that indeed."

The second time was almost as if she was talking to herself. I get the terrible feeling that she is insane.

"Who are you?" I say abruptly, then curse myself in my head for not thinking about my question. Luckily, she seems unfazed.

"Me, my dear? Why, I am the Matron!"

I sigh. This is shaping out to be a long eternity.

"I mean to say, what's your name? What should I call you?"

Apparently, this question was utterly hilarious, judging by her patronising chuckles.

"Silly dear! We have no need for names in the Middleworld. Names are irrelevant, superfluous junk. You'll soon get used to it!"

"But what will everybody call me?"

"Technically, poppet," She sniffs. "There are no 'bodies' here in the Halfworld. Your body, is, in fact, decomposing in the Antiworld, your old world, as we speak!" She laughs again to herself, quietly but with the disposition of a maniac. "And besides, communicating with other members of the Middleworld is a serious offence. It means, straight to the Underworld. You talk to me only, and to the other Matrons. You'll be able to spot them- they all look exactly like me. We are clones, you see."

Something very wrong is going on. I have so many questions, but then, an eternity to ask them.

"I have some questions."

"That is what I'm here for, pet."

I inhale nervously. I must be succint. I must also look as if I am not trying to be succint. I can't let her know that I'm being sneaky. I will find out the truth.

"Firstly, um, how am I here when my body is ... not?"

"Easy. You are not you. You are not your body, you are your soul. We have merely projected a figure for your soul to take. Loose souls are a problem, you see. Never know where they've got to, and, of course, they can't see or hear anything, so neither do they!"

"Right. And, erm, you Matrons, tell me about you guys. Like, how many are here, how long have you been here, why are you here, just that kind of stuff." I added innocently.

"Well, dear, there are an infinite amount of us. Otherwise, we wouldn't be able to talk to everyone passing through the Middleworld, like yourself. And, we've been here for eternity. To help you! It's quite simple really."

These aren't really answers but they'll do for now.

"So who's in charge of this stuff? God, right?"

I was an atheist in the 'Antiworld'. I'm kicking myself now. However, this does not register with the Matron. She shoots me a quizzical glance, then absorbs the statement, almost letting my words seep in. Her eyes light up and flicker falsely like neon signs.

"Oh, you must mean Matron Zero," She murmurs wistfully. "Yes, He is the our most kind and benevolent Master. He has given us these beautiful Worlds. We must always praise Him, for He does no wrong..."

She is muttering as if possessed, so I prepare another question to divert the topic.

"Do you know what the Underworld and Upperworld are actually like?"

"Glad you asked, my pretty!" Her reply has clearly been inspired by The Wicked Witch of the West. "Whilst the Upperworld is a safe haven of beauty and all that is so very pure and noble, the Underworld is a dark, sinful and most of all, bottomless depth of despair and sorrow, where the fire from witches' cauldrons lick at your feet, the venom of a thousand serpents poisons your blood, cursed forevermore by the screams and howls of banshees, and eternal punishments, harbouring increasingly traumatising fates, and the horror of-"

This is quite sufficient.

"Ok, yeah, yeah, got it," I snapped quickly. "What do I need to DO, exactly, to pass onto the next level, then?"

"Dear child, do not attempt to walk before you can crawl! We will come on to that in due time. We have plenty of time here. I will tell you this now, it is not so much what you do. It is... Well, I shall explain when the time is right." A dark look glazes over her expression, a brief eclipse of the Sun. "I must warn you this, though. No single being has ever made it past the sixth level."

I gawp, stunned. Damn. Nevertheless, my determination is infallible. So, I smile, and speak.

"Brilliant. This will be fun."

She looks at me as if I'm mad. I am. I carry on.

"I have one more question."

"Make it quick, though, I must show you around."

"I am dead, yes? Well, sort-of dead. And this is where dead people go, so..."

I close my eyes, clear my mind and focus. I need an answer. No fluff. The truth and nothing else. I lift my lids, stare her in her bleak, lacklustre eyes and do not remove my gaze.

"Where is my mother?"

As it turns out, curiosity can do a lot worse than just kill the cat.

***

Chapter Two- Punishment

Before I know it, I am being dragged out of my bed and into the darkness of what appears to be a closet. I hear the door slam shut, and the slide of the key inside a lock. From outside, I can hear the distinctly sugary-sweet voice of the Matron.

"I will let you out, poppet, when you treat me with respect. That is, if you're a good girl, and learn some manners."

Indignantly, I jut my chin out, and stick my tongue out at nothing. I wish she could see me.
"Don't patronise me," I then mutter in a firm tone.

"Very well then," she cooes. "I'll be back in an hour."

An hour? She's got to be joking, right?

Blackness.
The quiet ticking of a clock.
Why do they need clocks in here?
Spreading my arms out as far as they can go, I realise my confinement. It can't be any more than an arms width wide.
Wow. This really is a closet.

Then it dawns on me- this is my worst nightmare.
The isolation, the darkness, the claustraphobia- the incessant ring of several clocks chiming in perfect unison, yes, several, more and more with each damn tick...
So I can physically feel the time go past. Great. An hour of pure, unfaltering, greatness.

I know what this is for. They want me to go insane, don't they? They want to scare the curiosity out of me. What did I say that was so wrong?
I don't trust this place. I don't trust anything about it. How do they know what my nightmares are made of?

They are TRYING to make me go crazy.

I feel disconcerted, paranoid, nervous, confused... I just want this all to be over, it's like, like, torture, mental torture, sharing my thoughts, the epitome of my own being now invaded. Have I no privacy, no sanctuary in which to hide? I feel naked, insecure. I can't escape or move or feel, all I can do is think, and it's driving me insane. This is what they want, THIS is my punishment, this torture, pure torture, thronging through my head, my empty oblivion, walls caving in on me, but NO- those aren't walls, that's just my own self, and I feel it throbbing, the pressure, the pain of the nothingness, eternal darkness, a vicious cycle, round and round and round and round... I feel dizzy, sick, where am I?

In a closet. I am in a closet.
Sanity hits me once again as I control my thoughts, still shaking uncontrollably.

Now let's see... is there a light switch anywhere in here?

Tracing my fingertips along the smooth wall, I meet a plasticy bump. Too easy. Flicking it on, a lightbulb glows dimly just above my head. Not enough, but it's better than nothing. I glance around the space. It appears to be a storage room... filled with clocks. But the clocks have nothing written on their faces at all. They are just lined up, height order, on shelves stretching up to the ceiling. Each is different, and well polished too, so I wonder what they could be used for. These thoughts occupy my me for a few moments, until I glimpse a mirror which I could have sworn was not there before. Manouvering myself round cautiously, I take a long, hard look at my reflection. My fingers stutter down my face. I feel so... real. Creamy skin, comically freckled, wildly curly brown hair that shines a dark kind of golden, and striking green eyes flecked with hazel, and fire. The same plump, pouted lips that I remember, and the familiarly cynical and fearless expression under my lashes. unusually lively... for a dead person. My mouth twitches into an ironic smirk, revealing pointed canines and gapped front teeth. I never really had the patience for braces, and my teeth paired with my eyes has earnt me the nickname 'Tiger'. My real name is Amy Reeds, but it has been a while since I was last called that.

My gaze lowers, and I am aware that, thankfully, I am still dressed in my favourite Rolling Stones hoodie, acid wash skinny jeans and converse. If there's one outfit I'd choose to spend eternity in, well- this isn't a bad choice for me. Ruffling my hair, I exhale a little, and sink to the floor, exasperated, clutching my knees to my chest, and wait.

***

Chapter 3- Looking the Part

Time passes frustratingly, and I realise that the light will die out any minute. Taking this as a last chance to absorb my surroundings, I look around once more. but when I lift my head from the immaculate tiled floor which I had been staring at I appear to have had a change of surroundings. First of all, the light switch has disappeared, along with the barely visible crack of the door. Instead, I am facing the shelves of clocks. I turn around to discover the light switch and door now behind me. The mirror is gone. "These mind tricks are getting really annoying," I murmur aloud. But I don't think any more of it; I haven't got the strength.

Humming to distract myself, I hear the key turn in the lock, and the door click open. Sure enough, the Matron stands before me, all smiles and general nonchalance. I find myself despising her more than ever, but say nothing.

Furrowing her brow, she frowns slightly.
"I see you found the light..."

I merely nod heavily.

"Well, you certainly have much more ...strength of character, than most of the souls here," she continues, with a wary expression. "Most would be too panicked to think of finding the switch..."

I nod again. What am I meant to say?

She smirks at my passive response, as if she's fixed me or something. I don't care- whatever it takes to get out of here.
Helping me up, she leads me out of the room. But it's not the room I woke up in. It has the same overly-glossy appearance, but it consists only of a plain marble floor, a small, metallic, chest of drawers, and a hospital-esque bed. No windows, nothing. Unsurprisingly, the entrance to the closet has vanished.

I turn to examine the room, whilst the Matron brightly explains that this will be my dormitory. When I turn around again, in disbelief, there is an ensuite in the place of the closet.

The Matron hands me a neatly folded set of clothes, and sends me into the bathroom to take a shower and get dressed.

Letting the lukewarm water flow down my skin, all I can think of is my mother. Where the Hell, sorry, Underworld, is she??
After drying myself off and dressing, I look down at myself in the black vest shirt and khaki trousers, paired with heavy army boots and a clunky belt. It's some sort of uniform, and does not comfort me even remotely. It suits me, in a weird way- I look a lot more grown up. But the trousers hang uncomfortably, with a ridiculous amount of pockets. I roam into my room, and check the drawers for inspiration. Scissors, perfect. Having snipped of a considerable length of camouflage trouser, and folding up the edges, I now have short shorts. Hey, this might not be too bad, I smile at myself.

Stepping into the corridor in which the Matron is waiting, I shrug, and flash her a lopsided grin. She looks at me with disdain.

"The purpose of dressing you in this uniform is so that everyone looks the same," she begins. She pauses to think momentarily, before she shakes her head, and simply states: "That's unimportant anyway. The shorts can stay. I'm impressed you even..." she trails of quietly. "It's unimportant, as I said. Just... Just follow me, dear..."

Obediently, (and slightly shocked that I managed to get away with my shorts) I paced briskly behind her, into another empty room, furnished only by a seat absently sitting in the middle of the room. On it, something metal gleams, and I avert my gaze anxiously.

"Another thing we request here in the Middleworld, is that all... participants... must have the same haircut." She picks up the item on the chair, a razor, which glints menacingly against the smooth white glow of the room.

I gulp, at a loss for words, and sit in the seat. Closing my eyes tightly shut, I picture an awful skinhead, my thick curly locks limply at my feet, as the shaver whirs and buzzes. She passes me a mirror afterwards, and, timidly, I open one eye. Not a skinhead, but still cropped boy-short. Uncertain, I only frown. It doesn't look bad, it just looks different. I look older, more mature. I look like... my mother. I've never really seen the resemblance until now.

Looking up at the Matron's face, I tentatively ask what is coming next.

"Well... Now you look the part," she explains, licking her dry lips unnervingly, "I think it's time for initiation."

***

 

^I love this! It's a very interesting idea you've got there! So...Critique time

One thing I noticed: You said that the form people took when they came to the middle world was a projection of a figure for the soul to take. Then later, he gets a hair cut. Surely it would be easier if the projection was to already look identical to that of the rest of the people in the middle world, so the hair cut would be unnecessary?

Also: You used certain words like 'almost', 'seems like', 'appears to be'...They're a little bit wishy-washy. For instance: "I appear to have had a change of surroundings." - Have the surroundings changed, or haven't they? If they have, there is no need to say "appear to have", you could just say "The surroundings have changed."

I will leave it there. Well done!

 

Thanks for that, yeah, I hadn't thought of that so thank you very much

 

You're welcome!

You're welcome! Maybe I should post something of mine on here too. So that I'm not just invading the thread and critiquing everyone else, haha.

EDIT: Okay, here we go! I have found a little excerpt to post here. It was based on a prompt that I found on the internet - something to do with writing about Valentine's Day without using certain words associated with it. Here it is:

It was a little better than last year. Dinner was a somewhat typical suggestion, but hey, at least this guy made an effort. Even if the table cloth was that sickly pink colour, with a cheesy red candle in the middle, and there were couples wrapped up in each other everywhere. Thankfully our table was in the corner so I could sit facing the wall, away from the couples.

“Good evening, Grace,” he said with a pleasant smile. He was dressed in a business suit with a blue, silk tie and polished, black shoes. I myself had opted to dress down a little, in a simple green dress with a flower pattern, and green pumps. I wasn’t wearing much make-up – only enough to enhance and not to cover, never to cover, no, I was a real woman with flaws – I didn’t need to hide them.

Thing is, I felt badly for not being impressed. He was trying, he really was. He’d taken me out to dinner to one of the most romantic places in town, ordered wine, and greeted me in such a gentlemanly manner. Problem was, I wasn’t at all romantic. I didn’t do cheesy dinners and wine and smart-casual dress. Hell, the smartest thing I ever went to was sixth form ball at school and even that was a nightmare. It was all sitting around eating three-course meals and listening to boring end-of-year speeches. Thank Goodness for the disco part afterwards.

Unfortunately he didn’t know me all that well. We’d only met a few weeks ago so I decided to let him off the hook and play nice. A bottle of white wine sat in an ice bucket beside the table, a little poured into each glass. Sitting down, I took a sip of the wine. It was actually quite good, I decided. It was sweet and dry, not quite as sickly as the rest of this place. God forbid if the wine, too, had been sickly.

“Good evening, Richard,” I greeted pleasantly as he passed me a menu. I held back a snort as I read what was in it. They were all really fancy meals cooked in weird sauces with herbs and whatever other delicacies they came with. Really, I would have been equally as satisfied with a ham and honey mustard sandwich and an apple juice. Nevertheless, I managed to find one of the more simple-looking meals and decided to order that. Might as well try something good if he was paying.

In only a few moments I had taken off my cardigan. I didn’t know what was up with their heating but it was absolutely sweltering. Maybe it was all the couples, I thought. All that sexual tension. With that thought, I held back a smirk.

A waiter came to take our order. He was dressed really fancy, like one of those Italian hotel waiters, with a white blouse and black trousers, and a black bow tie. I vaguely recalled a trip to Italy I’d made with my sister Kylie a few years back. We’d gone to this restaurant and there had been a waiter wearing a similar outfit who had tripped over some guy’s chair and ended up soaking his bald head in scalding hot soup. It had been really funny – for us, that is, not the bald guy. Poor bloke probably had to wear a hat for a week or two.

It was hard not to laugh as I read out my order which, despite being somewhat simpler than the rest of the options, still took two lines on the menu. These places couldn’t just serve your bog standard “Fish and chips” could they? Richard ordered something considerably longer and more complicated and I assumed that he knew what on earth he was ordering a lot better than I did.

They were playing ballads in the background. I cringed at the wailing voices as they belted out notes that were far too big for them. Well, except Celine that is, who actually managed to hit the belter-notes. Now, there was one good singer who actually deserved her ratings. As another awful ballad started playing, I tried desperately to tune it out. Apart from Celine, ballads were really not my thing. They were impossible to dance to and the lyrics made me cringe.

What I preferred was the loud beat of club-style music and R&B. Beyoncé and all that. Stuff that drowned out the rest of the world, stuff that I could lose myself in. Ballads, they just made me depressed. I shuffled in my seat uncomfortably.

“Excuse me,” I said, rising from my seat. A trip to the loo was surely the most perfect excuse to get a minute away from all this drivel. But even the bathrooms had sickly, pink walls and gold-framed mirrors and sinks. I caught sight of myself in a mirror and snorted. I looked far too feminine for what I usually wore. Even though the dress was simple, I had made a special effort for the fact that people barely ever saw me in them. I was a jeans-and-T-shirt kind of girl. From my short, blonde hair to my practically flat chest and rugged figure, there was nothing feminine about me.

“Whatever,” I muttered, rolling my eyes at myself. “Dude, you are one ugly chick,” I told my reflection. I didn’t care though. I laughed in the face of people who thought that appearance was important.

“But it is important,” I could hear the voice of my sister telling me this ages back. “I mean, you wouldn’t go into a job interview looking all scruffy, would you?”

“Obviously not,” I replied in an ‘are you stupid?’ tone. “I mean it’s not so much that, just that you get these women who turn themselves orange with fake tan and wear fake eyelashes and far too much make-up and get their hair permed like, weekly…”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “No one perms their hair weekly. That would do way too much damage to your hair.”

She clearly knew more about hair than I did. I was perfectly content to stick to shampoo and conditioner, thank you very much. I didn’t need to do anything else with it. Perming it was certainly not on the agenda, no way, that would make me look like one of those annoying baby dolls with curly blonde hair and those really scary eyes that leered up at you trying and failing to be cute.

Kylie, on the other hand, frequently changed her hair. I swear she got through more hair dye than Cheryl Freaking Cole and had been through all seven colours of the rainbow. She, like me, was a natural blonde but you would never have been able to guess from the current black-with-red-streaks hair that she’d cut into a bob. I think she even dyed her eyebrows.

I decided (to my reluctance) that too much time had ticked away. I had been in the bathroom, according to my digital watch, for seven minutes. Washing my hands (and face in an attempt to cool myself down) I unenthusiastically dragged myself out of the bathroom and went back to my seat in the restaurant. I noted Richard was on his phone, texting someone.

“Sorry,” he said, snapping his phone shut. “Just my boss nagging me.” He dropped the phone into his pocket.

Fortunately it was now a Celine ballad that was playing. That woman was from my childhood. My mum used to play her in the car all the time and I rediscovered her when I was fifteen (actually on the same holiday in Italy, where I’d heard her song playing in a shop and had been like, “Hey, I remember her!”). Absentmindedly I started humming along under my breath, before I remembered my restaurant etiquette and stopped.

“You’re a good singer,” Richard commented. “What range to you sing?”

I was surprised he even knew about vocal range, but hey – goes to show.

“Alto,” I replied. It should have been obvious really. My deep voice no way allowed for any kind of soprano singing. “I can also sing female tenor if needed.”

“Really?” he said. I wondered if he even understood what that meant or if he was only pretending to act impressed. I nodded. Yes, really. I wouldn’t have said it if I was lying would I?

Thank Goodness the food didn’t take too long to arrive because between the small talk there were these awkward silences that seemed to be growing longer every time. I reflected on why I’d agreed to go out with him in the first place. Truth be told it was because he had been so sweet about it. Like, seriously sweet as in this freaking restaurant with its pink walls kind of sweet. I mean, I would have been a real cow to say no after he’d asked me so nicely. However I already knew it would never go past this one outing, not now that I knew we had nothing in common.

 

Heatqueen, I would definitely like to read a sample of your work.

And I realise now why I did the whole haircut thing.. It.s important well, should be, if I go down one of the routes I was thinking, that's why I left it there.

It.s been a while since I wrote this, so i'd forgotten

---------- Post added 13th May 2012 at 05:12 PM ----------

Heeey thanks I will be posting some more eventually

---------- Post added 13th May 2012 at 05:28 PM ----------

Oh, I hadn't noticed HeatQueen's extract jp
It's really great.. Any ideas where you plan on y taking it? I'd love to see some more xx

 

Post to say that I edited my above post to include a piece of writing (in case you guys had missed it)

 

Thanks! Tbh I'm probably not going to continue it. It's just a little stand-alone inspired by a prompt so I'll probably leave it as it is. Feel free to use your imagination as to how it ends though!

 

Fair point, but I view this more as an exercise than an actual story. I've got another thing going on right now that I've been gradually developing for a couple of years, and that is the story I want to focus on at the moment. I will keep this little excerpt, and if I see fit for it to develop in the future, then I will, but for the time being it's just going to sit on my laptop as it is.

 

If you guys really enjoy writing, you should join this website:
Figment: Write yourself in.
Its for writing and reading! I absolutely love it!