Previous Challenge Entry (Level 1 – Beginner)
Topic: Accent (02/21/13)
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TITLE: Always says | Previous Challenge Entry
By Fran Thring
02/25/13 -
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A slight small girl, tangled thin brown hair, Emily walked sloth like round her house. Looking for school things. Steps dragging, she dug out shoes from under dirty clothes at the back of her cupboard, put them under her suitcase. Scuffed and torn, they needed some care. Didn’t matter, nobody would see they weren’t polished.
She didn’t want to go to sleep. Sleep meant waking up. And school. She didn’t want dinner either, she felt sick. Felt like she had swallowed fear. There it was, alive and real, playing a dark game in the pit of her stomach. Usually, she would ignore it, be strong like Mum said. Play pretend. Yet, Sunday night, the dread would become so big. It would take over the whole evening. She couldn’t think of anything else.
A few tears struggled to the surface. Emily quickly brushed them away. Why did she have to go? She hated this school. Hated those girls. Hated that big dormitory. It wasn’t fair.
“Emily, have you got your laundry bag?” Her Mum called out. Emily didn’t respond. She always felt a bit bad when she was horrible to Mum. She shouldn’t be. She knew Mom didn’t really mean to do this to her, but she was so angry at it all and it made her become beastly and unreasonable.
“Don’t worry, love. I have it here. Clean and fresh.” Mum would almost never get angry back when Emily was horrible. Kind of wished she would. Why didn’t she? When someone is horrible to you, you should be horrible back? Often, she could hear Mum and Dad discussing things in the next room, talking about her, even though the door was closed, and she would get really really angry.
Sometimes all this would make her so angry, she wouldn’t talk to them. It was easy. She could just feed the angry monster in her tummy. Think really hard about how horrible they were and then she would become so angry she didn’t need to talk to anyone at all. She could ignore the kids at school, ignore the teachers, ignore everyone.
It even made the fear monster go quiet. If she was really angry, then that fear in her tummy, she didn’t care about that.
“Emily darling, you have to go to bed now. It’s an early morning tomorrow,” her Mum came into the room carrying the last of her things to pack. Emily looked at her Mum, looked at the pile of things. That feeling of dread so big in her tummy. It was hard not to cry.
Mum sat on the edge of her bed, tucked the covers round her. Emily avoided eye contact. She knew it was hurtful, but still did it. Mum looked tired. Emily could see she was trying very hard to smile. She held up Emily’s old pink panther attempting to be cheerful, “look who has come to wish you goodnight? He has come to say Goodnight mademoiselle Emily!” She used a funny French accent. The accent made Emily angry, she wasn’t a baby any more. Mum used to do that when she was super little. Stupid kid games really.
They would laugh and laugh together. They would pretend that they were in Paris. Pink panther was a French detective. She hadn’t felt so heavy full of anger back then. It was all before she had to leave for this horrible school, and everything changed at home.
Mum leant over, kissed her head. “I am packing Pink Panther. Don’t listen to those other kids. It’s gonna get better, I promise. I love you, ok? Be strong. Sleep tight.”
The light went out and Emily watched Pink Panther lie crocked on her suitcase in a dim glow from the passage. A strange expression on his face. Was Mum always strong? Sometimes she would look like she wanted to cry or something but she would smile for Emily. Be strong, that’s what she always said. Be strong. Easy for her. Probably she didn’t have an anger monster. And grown ups don’t get scared much, do they?
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Have you "thrown a brick"?
Nicely done. thank you!
God bless ~
You really developed her character and especially her thinking and feelings.
Wonderful job of bringing the reader into the scenes.
I'd love to know more about her anger, but know you probably were limited by your word count. Of course you also could have left it unknown so that the reader could relate more. We all have fear and anger but not about the same things. This way the reader can insert her fear. A bit of brilliance actually.
I noticed a couple of tiny things like okay should be spelled out or both letters in capital OK. Words like sloth-like need a hyphen, but oh what a brilliant description that line is! It fits so perfectly with the mood that you set.
You did a grand job of introducing the conflict right away. My heart hurt for this young girl. Also my oldest is Emily and she had that sense of sadness about her during her teen years so the story had a special impact for me. I think your line: It even made the fear monster go quiet. is a bit of genius. Not everyone understands fear is often disguised as anger since that is an easier emotion to deal with.
You amaze me how you said so much in only 750 words. You have a wonderful gift of storytelling. This is one of my all-time favorites. It shows real life in such a stark yet believable way. I save my Wows for stories that really touch me and this is a three wow story in my book.
Great read!