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Freya
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#1
Old 05-14-2008, 12:09 AM

Long story short: In my Creative Writings class, we were emailed anonymous secrets from others in the class. We had to write a short story based on the secret and mine was something along the lines of 'I hardly ever leave my house, five times a week at most. People think I'm normal, even though I'm a modern day hermit.' I took a bit of creative license, and voila! Already turned it in, but I'd like feedback and to hear other's opinion on the story itself. :)

Voices
I like it here. Like a small child playing fortress underneath a table, pretending that the tablecloth is an impenetrable stonewall, I feel safe. Here, I am in charge, in control. Outside is dangerous. Outside, I am weak, out of my shell and they are all around me.

I still go out occasionally, though. On Mondays, I go to buy groceries for the week. Wednesdays are when I go out to volunteer at a senior folks' retirement home, reading War and Peace or just gibberish, giving them something to hear other than the voices in the walls, hiding in the wires. Sundays, I go to have lunch with my brother, just to prove that I'm still alive, that I'm 'okay'. They're still worried that I might regress. But I know better now. I know now to pretend and smile and agree with everything. I make small talk with my brother, ask him how the kids are, and he'll answer that they're fine, fine. Next he'll ask if I'd found a nice girl yet, that I should go out more; I'll just laugh and say that it's too soon for me, that I still need more time to adjust. I don't show on my face that I know he's a spy, that he reports to them. I pretend that we're still brothers, that I haven't realized that he's betrayed me, that I don't know.

I could've been an actor, perhaps won some kind of award. But that would be playing right into their hands.

They caught me once, when I hadn't contacted them for half a year and I'd remained in my apartment for eight months. The phone would ring constantly, a shrieking banshee calling for my death, until I unplugged it. My answering machine was full to the brim, spilling over with concerned and pleading voices begging me to pick up the phone, each voice clamoring to be heard over the other. I unplugged that too, silencing the voices mid-cry.

And then I unplugged the computer, the refrigerator, the air-conditioning, the TV... I unplugged it all, lest they try to come at me through them, their shrill cries traveling down the wires, telling me to stop stop stop. I drew the curtains shut, then I taped cardboard over the windows, so they couldn't see through my curtains. Aluminum tinfoil, I realized, blocked them. Wrapping anything with it muffled the voices, interfered with them, causing them to bounce off the foil and back to them, to the voices. It hid me from them.

They were crafty, however. They turned my own family against me, used them to open my door and let them in. They had my family drag me out, out of my safe haven. My family said it was for my own good, but I screamed and I fought and I bit. But they wouldn't let me go back.

They had my family take me to a doctor, who was one of them. But I knew what to do. I'd calmed down by then, thought about what to do. And I knew the best thing to do was to play along. To pretend. The doctor told me that I was sick, and I told him Yes, yes, I had been sick, terribly sick. He would talk about how they found me, hidden in the darkness, surrounded by my furniture completely wrapped in tin foil, with the smell of rotting food everywhere. He asked me if I wanted to get better and I told him Yes, yes, please make me better. He gave me pills and told me to come back every week to talk. I told him, Yes, yes, I will. Thank you, doctor.

I flushed the pills down the toilet. During the talks, I would talk about them and the voices traveling through electricity, in the wires, the walls, and the doctor would pretend that he didn't know anything about it, that he wasn't their agent. But I could pretend too. I could pretend that I couldn't hear the voices anymore, that I never did in the first place. That they didn't exist. That it was just me, being overly paranoid. That I couldn't hear the voices whispering to the doctor, telling him what to say, what they should do with me.

A few months later, the doctor pronounced me cured and I found another apartment to live in.

I am much more crafty this time. So as to not rouse their suspicions, I play along with them. I go out. I answer the phone, ignoring the voices. I have found ways to hide the tin foil in plain sight and not rouse any suspicions. There are ways to protect myself from them, I learned. And every week I go out to help the less fortunate, the ones who are trapped by the voices and can't hide from them.
My home is my fortress. It is my shell against them. They cannot get me if I am in there.

Pearl
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#2
Old 05-14-2008, 08:20 AM

I think it's really good. =3 I like it.

I can't really think of any crits.

sychobunny
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#3
Old 05-16-2008, 05:14 PM

Hmm I wasn’t expecting paranoid schizophrenia, but more interesting than angoraphobia
Quote:
And then I unplugged the computer, the refrigerator, the air-conditioning, the TV... I unplugged it all, lest they try to come at me through them, their shrill cries traveling down the wires, telling me to stop stop stop.
The three stops need punctuation between them either comas or hyphens.
Quote:
But I knew what to do. I'd calmed down by then, thought about what to do. And I knew the best thing to do was to play along.
He knows what to do, he needs to think of it and then he knows what to do. Cut out the first knowing what to do, its too inconsistent in a non schizophrenic way.

I love the last line. Nothing has changed but the reader now understands the view. Very nice.

 


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