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-Ellipsis-
12-12-2010, 06:57 PM
Hello there, I'm an aspiring writer. this is one of my first stories. tell me your thoughts please. there is some strong language, but it could not be told any other way.




On the first morning of December in the year of 1988, a broken man by the name of Charles sat beside his shadow at a bus stop in downtown Los Angeles. A cigarette in the left hand and a styrofoam cup of coffee in the right. He sat there waiting for the bus and thinking of what his day had in store. Charles knew that once he had taken the last drag of his cigarette, he would then put it out in the remaining coffee he did not plan to drink. He knew that once on the bus, he would have to wait for approximately fifteen to twenty minutes before the bus reached his destination. He knew that it would take him about another five minutes to walk to his house. He for sure as hell knew that he was going to walk in on his wife and her lover having sex in his bed. What he did not know was whether the revolver he had tucked in his pants was going to be pointing at his wife of seventeen years, her lover of six months, or himself of forty-two years.

Twenty-one minutes later his right foot left the last step of the bus and planted firm on the ground in front of him. He told the bus driver to have a good day and walked with a slight limp down the block. “Him. No her. No **** that, me!” he contemplated and had an extremely profound conversation under his breath. Charles reached the cement path that led to his door; then pulled out the revolver his dad gave to him on his seventeenth birthday and looked at it. This gun has killed dogs, birds, and coyotes back at his ranch when he was younger; but never a person. He walked up to his front door while shaking. His sweaty hand turned the door knob and opened it slowly. He peaked his head in and took a gander. “she's a cold and heartless *****” he thought. “His jacket and boots are thrown on the floor like she wanted to get caught!” he said out loud. He took a right down their hallway and stopped at the last door to the left. He heard three things on the other side of the door. Jazz music playing out of the radio, a man moaning in nirvana, and Charles' wife Elizabeth telling the man how much of a better lover he is than her husband. Charles snapped. His brain disconnected from his body. He could not control what he was going to do next.

Charles kicked the door open and gripped the revolver. He did not want that revolver to leave his hand for any reason. “its always a pleasure to see the milk man come into my house so early in the morning and **** my wife in my ****ing bed!” he yelled at them both. Charles knew exactly what he was doing as he aimed for the cocky little pricks head. A bullet traveled from from his revolver, through her lovers head, to the bed post where it lodged itself a few inches. With out shaking or stuttering, he calmly said to Elizabeth “theres two more bullets, I'll give a ***** like you to live with this or not.” Immediately he shoved the gun down his throat and pulled the trigger. Elizabeths scream was as loud as the gun shot. She grabbed a pencil and paper from her dresser and then crawled to her dead husband. “Forgive us baby girl, we love you. Mommy and daddy.” was all she could think to write. Charles' hands were still warm when she grabbed the revolver. She looked to her lover who was nine years younger; then to her husband who was nine years older and before pulling the trigger she asked herself “whats after this?”

hillwalker
12-12-2010, 07:11 PM
You do a fine job of racking up the tension.....

But it's wasted because the story is completely unbelieveable. The husband's internal (and external) dialogue is what you would see in a cheap tv drama; nothing like the agonies that would go through a man's mind under these circumstances. Similarly, the dramatic climax (or anticlmax since you have already told us what to expect) drains away all the tension from the story - and by the time the wife writes a suicide note and decides to shoot herself (why?) the reader no longer cares what happens to the three characters because they are obviously not real people.

It would have been better if :

1) you had not told the reader where the husband was going - or, more to the point, why
2) you described the turmoil inside his head but did not reveal its cause
3) you made his entry into his home seem more mysterious by describing the articles of clothing in the hallway and the muffled sounds - but did not specify what they were,
and 4) you ended with the husband standing in the doorway of his bedroom, gun in hand, thoughts whirling through his head and still wondering what happens next.....

see the difference?

H

-Ellipsis-
12-12-2010, 08:10 PM
i see what you are saying. i didn't try and make it 100% believable. i tried to make it more of a comic bookish style, although i shouldn't have. i will definitely take what you said into considerations. thanks!

hillwalker
12-13-2010, 09:31 AM
You're welcome.

I can see the comic-book element in the husband's OTT reaction - and of course there's no harm in continuing writing such material if you enjoy doing so (so don't ever say 'I shouldn't have' - you are free to write in whichever way you are most at ease with).

But the opening was so original - the detailed countdown to getting on the bus was extremely effective - that I was expecting the story to continue in the same vein. That it didn't quite live up to my expectations is no criticism, just one reader's opinion of many.

H