mollie

This is a short story I had to write for some English coursework a while back that had to be based around the beggining of enduring love (a group of characters meeting through some big event that takes place over 5 minutes or so). I'm not great at descriptions so that is why all of the descriptive paragraphs below are horribly sickening and the descriptive words are worse. Oh, and sorry about the title, its the only thing I could think of that suited it in the slightest.


I could see people shouting at me. And I tried really hard to see what they were pleading me to do, how to help. But I just couldn’t.
It was a beautiful, scorching hot summer’s day. The sky was a vibrant blue and the grass a vivid, glossy green. The landscape before me almost looked as if it had been painted on, as if nothing so breath taking could be so real.
Then I gazed at the sight before me. A woman with slightly greyed hair crouched on the road next to a young boy of about five. The woman was screaming and weeping. A teenage girl with dark brown hair was hugging her, while two men attempted to calm them down. My eyes drifted to the young boy lying on the smouldering tarmac. His clothes were crinkled and were streaked with grime and blood. I couldn’t see his face but I imagined it being creased with pain.
I noticed the girl had iPod ear phones round her neck and I wondered what she had been listening to only a few minutes ago. What did it sound like? Shakespeare once said, “If music be the food of love, play on” and that always made me imagine music being crucial in a person’s life, although, I have never found out why. What does music sound like? I once asked some one that and they told me it was indescribable, that it was like trying to describe to a blind person what colour is.
One of the men came up to me and handed me a phone. He gave me an order though I wasn’t sure what he had just requested me to do. I deducted that he had asked me to call an ambulance. I typed nine-nine-nine into the mobile phone and held it firmly against my ear. I couldn’t hear any ringing.
The woman was trying not to pick up the boy and cradle him in her arms. I really wanted her to; I really wanted that to be the cure. I just wanted the woman to embrace the young boy and take away all the pain. Then the boy wouldn’t be in pain and I wouldn’t have to care that the phone wasn’t ringing.
The man who had handed me the phone glanced towards me. He had piercing blue eyes and black hair with ashen sideburns. He had a bit of stubble and a nose that was crooked to the left. He started to walk towards me with a look of concern on his face and asked me something. When I did not respond he pointed to the phone that was pressed against my ear and asked me something else.
I tried really hard to keep the tears in my eyes when the man started shouting at me. He pointed at the boy and then at the mobile phone. I responded by pointing to my ear although that just seemed to infuriate him even more. He just kept on roaring at me. The woman and the girl were wailing over the child. The other man was trying to calm the roaring man down. But I couldn’t hear any of it. It was all just silent screaming to me.



The sound around me was deafening. My car screeched to a halt and I rushed out. There was a man who had his hand over his mouth and tears in his eyes as he looked at the lifeless body lying in the middle of the road. He had hair that was so blonde it was almost white, his eyes were a dark, sparkling grey and he had enormous ears that stuck out. There was also a woman and a girl staring at the child. The woman was howling and begging people to help her “poor baby”, while the girl just held on to the woman as tight as she could. The woman had dark silver hair that was cut into a bob and her eyes were a dull brown. She had a chubby face and I think it is fair to say that her physique was not in top shape. The girl had long, straight dark brown hair and had dull brown eyes, just like the woman. She was as pale as a sheet and her eyes were coated in black.
I walked over to the woman and told her to relax, help was on the way, but it was very important that she did not move, or touch the child and to leave it to professionals.
“Should we give him air?” The woman sobbed.
“Excuse me?” I asked, puzzled.
“Give him breath and all?” The girl responded.
“I think she means mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.” The distraught man said softly.
“No, he doesn’t need mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, he’s breathing just fine, I reckon” I spoke to the woman and smiled. She just continued crying.
I noticed a young woman staring at us. She had small dark blue eyes and curled brunette hair and a little button nose. I walked up to her and handed her my phone.
“Call an ambulance.” I told her.
I rushed back to the hysterical woman and made her take deep, soothing breathes. She got in two breaths before she started crying again. I turned around and saw the young woman gawping at me, the phone pressed very tightly against her ear. So tight, in fact, that I wondered why she hadn’t just put the phone in her ear.
The young woman was not talking into the phone and did not seem to be listening to it either. Perhaps I hadn’t got any signal here? Or maybe my mobile has run out of battery? I told the woman to keep breathing and I walked over to the young woman.
“Is there no signal?” I inquired.
The young woman stared vacantly at me.
I pointed to my phone and said, “Is the phone not working?”
The young woman looked bewildered. I start to get really angry. A child was dying, and all she had to do was call an ambulance. I could feel my face start to burn up. I glared at the girl, waiting for an answer. She just looked straight back at me, and started shrinking.
“Look! Just tell me if my phone is working or not, ok? That kid over there, he’s dying! And all you are doing is standing around, gawping at everybody! At least call a damn ambulance!” I bellowed.
The young woman pointed to her ear, and that really ticked me off. I assumed the young woman was trying to tell me I was being to loud, and to hush my tone. Maybe I was giving her a headache. The idea that she could be so ignorant made me so livid that I really started shouting at her. The woman and girl started to become hysterical, the man started shouting at me to stop and the young woman looked as if she was about to burst into tears. And the child didn’t move.




I was singing along to “What a Wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong and every word I sang, I meant. People were shaking hands and all the children I saw I knew would know much more than I would. And I truly was thinking to myself, what a wonderful world I live in.
The next thing I know, I’m pressing down hard onto my brake. But I was too late, and my car jolted. I know what had happened. I’d seen the little kid run into the road. But I was too late.
His mother was shrieking and a teenage girl who I guessed was his sister, was crying and stumbling into the road. I did not want to get out of the car. I really couldn’t bear to see some four year old lying dead on the road because of me. I knew I had to get out. I had to help.
So I slowly opened my door and looked to the front of my car. A very young boy was lying on his front. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing or not, so I went over to check his pulse.
“Don’t touch him!” The mother screamed. I took a step back.
“I’m just going to check his pulse, I need to check his pulse.” I said as calmly as I could.
“Leave him alone!” The girl shouted at me, before sobbing.
The girl’s mother grabbed her, and embraced her. It was almost like they were afraid I would hurt them.
“Murderer!” I heard the mother mutter under her breath.
That got to me. It really got to me. I tried really hard not to start crying. What if the boy was dead? Then I had killed him. I had killed an innocent child. I started mumbling “oh my god” and prayed some one else would come by to help the boy because the mother and daughter were scared of me and they were too hysterical to do anything. I didn’t even have a phone on me to call an ambulance.
I observed a small woman passing by. I shouted at her to help, but she merely turned around and gasped. I heard the screeching of tyres and turned to see a man with a crooked nose get out. He scurried over to the mother and daughter and tried to calm them.
“Should we give him air?” The mother enquired.
“Excuse me?” The crooked nosed man quizzed.
“Give him breath and all?” The daughter replied.
“I think she means mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.” I stated, quietly. The mother shot daggers at me and grimaced.
“No, he doesn’t need mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, he’s breathing just fine, I reckon” The crooked nosed man smiled sweetly.
The crooked nosed man noticed the small woman and told her to all an ambulance. He then came back and told the mother and daughter that the boy would be fine and the ambulance would “fix him up real nice”.
I bowed my head and let a single tear slide down my cheek. I was positive that boy would be dead when the ambulance got here.

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Knocking

It should be "dying." But besides that, it was awesome. It was wonderful how you showed all the viewpoints. It would also make an awesome beginning for a book. Keep writing!

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Would you care to read these?
Whistler's Children (revised the first part and added a second)
Structured Art
I hope you have a wonderful day.

mollie

oh yeah thanks. Wish I'd realised that before I handed it in to my teacher... oh well nevermind.

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Jolly McJollyson

I don't know if your font is tiny enough. If I use my best microscope I can almost read it, and I assume you've chose this molecular font size in order to prevent people's reading it. Please use a smaller font to make sure we can make neither hide nor hair of it next time; this head-of-a-pin sized lettering is just barely legible.

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I'm not a writer.

Critique my writing.

Or my lyrics.

WH13195

I like this concept, and it flows well overall. It still needs a good deal of revising, though.
Bland/cliche wording/sentences and unnecessary sentences need to be elimated/replaced. Also, simplify the action and
dialogue some.
There are 3 things I would do right off:
1. Immediately identify the deaf person as a girl. It makes a difference emotionally - would you rather see
the manly guy bellowing at another guy, or a helpless little deaf girl?
2. Either resolve the confusion around the boy's condition or, to increase the reader's concern, leave a healthy
amount of doubt. It's confusing because first it says he's dying or seriously hurt, but then one character says "he's
breathing okay."
3. Put the deaf girl's perspective last. It will create interest and tension -- "why is she acting so strangely at
such a critical time?" This is the most interesting part of the story. We are already so familiar with frantic, wailing
mothers and bellowing, take-charge men, but we don't know what it's like to be deaf, really. The story should focus
on this perspective.

I would really like to reread this after you've polished it!

mollie

thank you, I really like the idea of putting the girl last. Like you said it makes it more interesting.

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