The Letter
Footsteps landed fast and hard along the linoleum flooring that ran between the back porch and the dining room through the other side of the country kitchen as they did every day at this time. The thud of the school bag missing its target and landing on the floor without a pause indicated the normalcy of this day. The silence left behind as the thump thump thump halted creased the air.
A young voice, normally vibrant and energetic, was now tentative and small, “Momma?”
She continued to stare at nothing through the plate glass that loomed over the side yard.
“Momma, what’s wrong?” his voice trembled.
Slowly the boy inched towards her, still she did not move. A tear stained, crumpled letter lay on the floor at her feet. The brown envelope with typed letters was still in her hand, the rest of
the mail sat neatly stacked and untouched on the table.
His small hand reached down to pick up the letter. As the air shifted under the paper he noticed something else resting on the floor. There lay a small white feather.
The boys eyes bounced between the words on the page and this one symbol that he knew was important but he was not sure how or why.
How many words in the story? I am a bit busy, but if it's not too long - I'd be happy to read it.
The current word count is sitting at approx. 1750 words. I guess I forgot to mention in my intro that punctuation is my weak link. I have a few more that are quite obvious, I am studying to try to rectify these. The reminder is constantly welcome though.
I can either email the word .doc, or provide a link to a posting board that is password protected. I set this up so that I could access it from work through the proxy server.
My email addy is ladywriter@mac.com
Your input is much appreciated.
Corinna
Ohanson@fit.edu
First of all, good story! Was an enjoyable read. The plot read almost like a novel, and I'm sure that if you went in and found a few subplots to twist and spice up, it would expand nicely.
The main thing that pulled me out of your work was the lack in punctuation. This is the same problem that I explained before. Just huge hulking sentences that gave me no time to take a mental break, or to even know when I was supposed to pause during a sentence. This caused me to get a little confused at parts, and I had to go back and re-read it, adding my own mental pauses.
Do you happen to know if they send letters like that? Or if that's how the mailroom really does operate?
I'm not entirely sure if you wanted it to be vague or not, but I don't think I'm entirely certain what happened with the father.
He went awol, I got that part. But then he wrote a letter to his son? So, did he infact just leave the family? If so - why the letter to the son? And how did the letter get in that corner? Did the father drop it in the mailbox on his way out of town? Or did it get mailed to the postoffice and then misplaced? If it did, wouldn't it have a telltale stamp on the envelope already that would cause the mailsorter to NOT put it back in the sorting pile?
I realize these are nitpicky things, but I was just curious.
Why did the son become an alcoholic? Was there a disposition towards alcohol already in the family? There were quite a few things that happened in this story, but so little 'why'. I find that the 'why' is what is most interesting.
I found it odd how you switched from past tense narrative to present tense. That very well might have been intentional, to show the passage of time, but I still found that it stuck out. Maybe because I don't often see tense changes, especially in short fiction.
There were only a few POV things that I picked out, but that's not so much my cup o' tea. I'm sure Survivor has that covered just fine.
Again, good story - but is in need of a make-over. Would love to read the next/final draft to see how far you've come!
Corinna