Anybody have time to read and offer thoughts? They total, together, probably 1500 words. Be happy to crit something in exchange.

They've both been read before, but probably not here, and not in their current versions, and not for a long time.

Genre: lit
Tone: grim

BELL STREET

Key watched the girl for a long time before he knew her name. It was Mara, she told him. Twice a week he walked to Roosevelt, usually with his hands in his pockets, to see her. Where he came from, there weren’t any black girls. There was shale, and shrub, and there were valleys between plateaus, and there were coal-miners and eye-doctors and there were creeks and Pioneer Parks.

BACKWARDS COUNTING

On Punk Farm, they make your sister swallow cigarettes.

They try to shave your head while you're asleep, but you wake up; and there's a moment before you remember who they are, and who you are, when all you can comprehend is the presence of dark figures and the sound of some kind of electric buzzing in the room where you were just dreaming -- and you think What's happening?