Taz

The sea was calm as Silva looked over the edge of the precipice of the cliff that her old white weatherboard holiday house stood upon. The house hadn’t been visited for years so it was in desperate need of a paint job. It had been worn down to mere splinters. Silvia strolled cautiously back to the house. She hadn’t been there for nineteen years. She placed the key into the lock and turned it. As she pushed the rickety door open, creak, creak it sounded. Silvia brushed the cobwebs that were strung from each side of the narrow hall way. The house smelt musty and the shelves where covered in a thick layer of dust. At the end of the hall was an open door. Silvia approached and steeped gingerly into the room which was pale pink with a wallpapered border of ponies. On the far wall hung a picture of two young girls, one with dark brown hair about five or six and another girl with blonde hair and crystal blue eyes, only a few years younger. The older one had an arm around the blonde haired girl. Silvia shivered before taking the picture down out of view. ‘If it wasn’t for me she’d still be alive’ she thought.

The sand was moist underneath her feat and the waves lapped at them. As she walked along the beach she remembered something terrifying; the face of a scared, blonde haired girl, her crystal blue eyes wide as she struggled to keep her head above the surface of the glistening blue sea. On the sand another girl stood with a blank panic stricken look on her face. As she approached the water the younger girl disappeared. She was gone, drowned, dead. Silvia looked out at the sea. “I wish I could bring you back, I really do,” she said to the sea before turning and taking the track back to the house.

Silvia awoke to the squawking of the sea gulls and the sound of the waves crashing against the cliff below. The floorboards creaked as she headed down the hall and out into the morning sun. From the waters edge she looked at where her sister had died. Nearby seals slid off some rocks and into glistening blue water. Silvia slipped off her thongs and dove into the cool depths of the water. In front of her little fish darted out of her way. She swam further out until she got to the approximate spot where her sister had taken her last breath. Since the tragedy Silvia was hunted with guilt as it was her fault that they were on the beach. Her father was at work and their mother was in the kitchen on the other side of the house. The two girls had been playing in their room when Silvia suggested they go to the beach. Despite being told not yet by their mother. The images of that day played out in her mind as though they where on a Ferris wheel. Going round and round never stopping. She waited. She was well in need of a breath know but she wasn’t going to take it. It was the reason for her return. She wanted to be with her sister and her parents who had both been killed in a car accident a week before her return. She had nothing left to hold onto. Before it was her parents as she couldn’t put them through losing two children otherwise she would have done it sooner. She longed to be with her sister in heaven. And now she thought ‘I can be in heaven with my whole family just like it used to be.’ Silvia’s lungs filled with water and in not long she was dead free of the guilt and the heartache. Whether she went to heaven or hell will never be known. As no one knows whether your fit for heaven if u suicide.

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With passion and enthusiasm we shall succeed!

Chris Miller

Your writing is improving Taz. At first I wondered if you were even the author, or if you had maybe "borrowed" something.

But as I read on, I started to spot your trademark errors. They are much fewer than I remember. Structurally and thematically you are improving as well.

I hope you don't mind my pointing out some of the mistakes:

stepped

water's (posessive)

hunted=plagued
as=because

where=were
Very good imagery here though!

Don't use "as" when you mean "because".
This sentence needs to be split into two and made clearer.

your=you're
u=you (you're not e-chatting here, you're wiritng)
I might drop this sentence. It's kind of preachy. It's also out of POV (but don't worry about POV too much yet). It makes for kind of a splat feel at the end.

I might have given out the information that her parents had died sooner. It seemed unfair and a little contrived to drop it on me at the very end. Establish a stronger time line.

This is a marked improvement in your writing Taz. I'm impressed.

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