I would love to get some feedback after the first few drafts of my short story. I'm attempting to get back into this as I've not written since high school and miss it quite a bit. I would love some criticism on this piece and appreciate your time. Thanks.
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She walked into her room bear-hugging the latest load of laundry, still warm from the dryer. The blinds were still open and from her second-floor apartment she could see the lone street lamp below illuminating the light rain as it fell. The clothes made a soft creak in the bed as she tossed them intentionally yet carefully down, then walked to the window. She took a moment to enjoy the view of the street corner as it soaked in the evening’s storm before she pulled the string which closed the blinds.
As she turned to retrieve the stack of clothes, mentally preparing herself for another night of white wine, laundry and Netflix, she glanced in the closet to ensure there was enough space to hang this particularly formidable load of laundry.
Surely she’d noticed that small knob on the back wall of the closet before. Surely she’d noticed it and just forgotten. She moved in nearly a year ago, excited to be near the heart of the city, and yet she had somehow missed this detail. The wood floors creaked as she moved to inspect the knob.
The storm that had been startling her with thunder an hour before had apparently settled and was only raining steady yet oddly quiet. This unsettled her.
Leaning down, the crack in the wood which outlined a door became visible. Surely this wasn’t anything more than a cupboard oddly placed in a small closet. She reached out to grab the knob, hesitating before pulling.
The crack expanded and the size of the door which opened at her insistence was startling. It was maybe four feet high, wide enough for a person to walk through and completely black inside. It wasn’t a shelf. There was depth. A musty smell fell out of the doorway.
How could she have missed this? Perhaps her clothes had always been in the way. Perhaps she’d never gone two weeks without doing laundry before, leaving only portions of the closet empty at a time. For a moment she regretted her vacation, but the memory of beaches and margaritas slipped through and briefly she let her thoughts wander.
Somehow the pure dark of the void made itself known again and pulled her back from her daydream and she shook as chills enveloped her. She laughed a nervous laugh, attempting to cope, and then stood to find a light.
She reached for the emergency flashlight that was always on the top shelf of the closet, looked at the bulb as she pressed the button and smiled as it burned to life and lit her face, casting shadows on her face that would have frightened her had she seen them.
Hesitation. There was a moment where the thought of shutting the door and forgetting about it without looking crossed her mind, but she realized there was little chance of her ever sleeping again in this room if she let her imagination fill her thoughts with what-ifs.
She pointed the beam into the black.
Shadows hid and played about, teasing the beam of light visible through dust which was shaken loose as she opened the door. There were stairs, maybe six of them and a room.
Summoning all of her inner strength, she knelt down and took the first step. The top stair creaked under new stress. She breathed in the stale air as she proceeded down the steps, one by one, moving very slowly while she shined the flashlight at her feet. As she reached the bottom, she took a shallow breath and looked up, pointing the light into the room.
Light played on the brown wall and reflected ever so little, bathing the room in barely-visible warmth as her eyes adjusted. After a few quick sweeps of the light, her anxiety had faded mildly. The room seemed to barely be large enough to contain the few things present, none of which were as terrifying as she had feared.
A small desk rested in the center of the room, garnished with a candlestick, wax overflowing and no candle left, and a small book covered in dust. A fountain pen lay beside the book. A single photo in a small frame sat upright in the corner. She lifted the photo and inspected it closely. Easily turn-of-the-century, the brown tones through cracked glass revealed a couple. They were happy, smiling at each other. As she stared at the photo, the feeling it invoked was overwhelming. She’d not felt this in years and it startled her enough that she put the photo down quickly, shaking off the sudden rush of emotion.
She reached for the book, opened the cover and as the dust fell from the binding, she read the first entry.
He had me flustered. I agreed to let him buy me a soda, so we sat near the entrance for hours, talking. He was so sweet. Nothing like papa. I’m scared to talk to him again because I know papa won’t like it but I have to see John again. Maybe we can keep it a secret.Quote:
I am in love. We met at the fair. His name is John. He was sitting with his friends as I walked by and he stood and said “ma’am, can you settle a bet?”. I obliged and asked what I could do, trying not to be obvious as I smiled. He asked me what the last seven letters of the alphabet were, so I told him they were obviously T, U, V, W, X, Y, and Z. He said “that’s what the boys keep telling me, but I keep telling them that U and I should be together.”
There was no name on the journal. No dates either. The entries even seemed to have sections where the text was written at different times, some sentences being smaller than others, some seemed more patiently-written while others were difficult to read due to the haste with which they were scrawled. She turned a few pages and read again.
She thought back to her own childhood for a moment. In the years that separated her and this mystery girl, some things refuse to change. Her own father had been physically abusive when she was young and now that she’d moved to the city, the few times a year they spoke he seemed content to pretend it never happened.Quote:
John wants to come around but I keep telling him I can’t talk to papa. I’m afraid to tell him how angry he can get. John is so sweet and caring but I can’t let him know the truth about my bruises. I keep letting on that I'm jut clumsy. Anyway, he’d want to talk to papa and I'm scared of what he would do to John.
Mother won’t talk to us anymore, she seems so distant and stares out the window for hours before papa takes her into their room and locks the door, she comes out with tears but never cries.
As she flipped pages forward in the book, the text stopped. Half the book had been left empty. She flipped back two pages and found an entry.
There was no more writing in the book.Quote:
I can’t take it, I love John so much. He knows about papa now. Most of town seems to know. I think I’m going to leave. I’m going to tell papa tonight about John and tell him I’m leaving to be with him. John says we can get married and move to the city and start a family, oh how I want that. How I want to watch the glittery street lights at night as we sit by a fire.
Pray for me, I'm still scared of papa but John gives me strength.
She stared at the final entry in disbelief as tears crept through her eyes and began to fall down her cheeks as she began to weep more severely than she had since she was a child.
