MadisonJade
02-09-2015, 08:30 PM
Hi! I'm just looking for some honest feedback on this short story. Thanks for your time!
Sunday
Dust was filling the air, rushing up around us and burning our lungs as we inhaled. The particles covered us, clung to our skin and knotted our hair, dirtied our pretty yellow Sunday sundresses, covered our furniture in a thick film. Mama coughed violently as she huddled protectively over me and Annie, her body a delicate shield from whatever was out there. We were sitting together, hunched in the corner and trying to make ourselves as small as possible. It was eerily quiet as everything began to settle. I held my breath as I opened my eyes, trying to peek under mama’s arm and see what was happening.
“Is it over,” I asked no one in particular, my small voice sounding muffled in my ears. But before anyone could answer, my eardrums were slammed with a reverberating blast, and then another, so loud that it overpowered our screams. I pushed my palms hard into my ears, but the sound easily penetrated through. The ground shook beneath us as the blast slammed us into the wall, and mama collapsed on top of us. The large antique mirror hanging on the plaster wall above our heads loosened and crashed to the ground, barely missing us, and tiny particles of glass scattered across the cherry-wood floor, mixing with the shards from the broken window. A new rush of dust erupted into the air.
The world seemed to calm once again, but it felt like more than an hour before we dared to move, the ringing sound from inside my ears still painfully suppressing all sounds. Mama stood, and then gently pulled me and my sister up by our arms. I looked at our tiny kitchen. The room that had always been kept meticulously clean was now midst a battlefield. An inch thick of dirt and dust covered the floor and the furniture, the particles still clouding the air; five wooden chairs were carelessly lying in various positions around the room, wood splintering where arms or legs were broken off, and our fancy dishes now lay broken behind the filthy, cracked glass paneling of the china cabinet.
With one hand I held my sister’s, and with the other I gripped a handful of mama’s cotton dress in my tiny fist. The three of us carefully made our way to the window, leaving footprints in the dust on the floor and cautious not to step on the broken glass with our bare feet. Outside, I could see that the houses down my street were broken and falling, just like ours, and street lights and traffic signs were torn from the cracking ground. In the distance I heard the click of shoes on the ground in coordinated succession, getting louder and louder as they approached our home.
And when they pushed the cold steel gun to Mama’s head, she looked to us and whispered “close your eyes.”
Sunday
Dust was filling the air, rushing up around us and burning our lungs as we inhaled. The particles covered us, clung to our skin and knotted our hair, dirtied our pretty yellow Sunday sundresses, covered our furniture in a thick film. Mama coughed violently as she huddled protectively over me and Annie, her body a delicate shield from whatever was out there. We were sitting together, hunched in the corner and trying to make ourselves as small as possible. It was eerily quiet as everything began to settle. I held my breath as I opened my eyes, trying to peek under mama’s arm and see what was happening.
“Is it over,” I asked no one in particular, my small voice sounding muffled in my ears. But before anyone could answer, my eardrums were slammed with a reverberating blast, and then another, so loud that it overpowered our screams. I pushed my palms hard into my ears, but the sound easily penetrated through. The ground shook beneath us as the blast slammed us into the wall, and mama collapsed on top of us. The large antique mirror hanging on the plaster wall above our heads loosened and crashed to the ground, barely missing us, and tiny particles of glass scattered across the cherry-wood floor, mixing with the shards from the broken window. A new rush of dust erupted into the air.
The world seemed to calm once again, but it felt like more than an hour before we dared to move, the ringing sound from inside my ears still painfully suppressing all sounds. Mama stood, and then gently pulled me and my sister up by our arms. I looked at our tiny kitchen. The room that had always been kept meticulously clean was now midst a battlefield. An inch thick of dirt and dust covered the floor and the furniture, the particles still clouding the air; five wooden chairs were carelessly lying in various positions around the room, wood splintering where arms or legs were broken off, and our fancy dishes now lay broken behind the filthy, cracked glass paneling of the china cabinet.
With one hand I held my sister’s, and with the other I gripped a handful of mama’s cotton dress in my tiny fist. The three of us carefully made our way to the window, leaving footprints in the dust on the floor and cautious not to step on the broken glass with our bare feet. Outside, I could see that the houses down my street were broken and falling, just like ours, and street lights and traffic signs were torn from the cracking ground. In the distance I heard the click of shoes on the ground in coordinated succession, getting louder and louder as they approached our home.
And when they pushed the cold steel gun to Mama’s head, she looked to us and whispered “close your eyes.”