smartypantschlo
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Critique for @wolfiebear-
It was late at night, just after midnight when I looked at my phone. There was an email notification, saying Sent at 0:00. What kind of idiot sends an email at midnight? I was curious so I looked at the email.
Re: The Ides of March
[email protected]
to [email protected]
Today is your last day alive. Enjoy it.
And remember, beware the Ides of March.
Reply | Forward
I scrolled farther down, looking for the “please give us all your personal information and you won’t get killed!” but there wasn’t anything, just those fifteen words. I put it out of my head and tried to sleep, assuming it was spam or something. I had a Geometry test tomorrow and had to sleep so I wouldn’t be nodding off in the middle of calculating sines or something.
My alarm went off the next morning, and I slammed the snooze button so violently the screen broke and glass went everywhere. I felt a sharp pain in my chin, and I brought up my hand to feel the place. There was glass embedded in my face, mere inches from my neck. I pulled my hand back and there was blood on it. I had almost died, I realized. That glass would’ve slit my throat.
I went into the bathroom and pulled out the glass. Thankfully it wasn’t too deep. After I washed the wound I continued to get ready for school, shaken. I grabbed my backpack and a muffin on the way out of my house. As I stepped into the street I took a bite of my muffin. The sweet banana taste flooded my mouth but it turned sour as I heard the screech right before the impact.
A car was careening down the street, and I was in the middle of it. It tried to break and seemingly magically stopped right before it would’ve mowed me down. I just stood there, staring down the driver. It was a very old woman, someone I felt shouldn’t be going double the speed limit down a residential street. I ran to the curb and tried to gather my thoughts. This was the second time in literally an hour that I nearly died. This was not normal.
The clock.
The car.
Suddenly I remembered the email. Was there a connection? There couldn’t be. Could there?
A few hours later I was eating my lunch when some idiot threw a Cheez-It at his friend. The other guy threw back a peanut. I was standing behind the first guy and as I opened my mouth in a gasp the peanut flew past me, missing me by a hair. I’m very allergic to peanuts, so it could’ve killed me if I swallowed it. Another brush with death. This was partly getting on my nerves and partly scaring the * out of me.
The clock.
The car.
The peanuts.
I somehow made it through the next two periods, and after a near miss with my pencil in Geometry I had finished the day without getting fatally injured. I was so on edge on the way home from school that it took me twice as long as usual. It was getting dark as I got home, and I turned on my street, nearly running into someone walking their dog. It was a massive thing, more like a wolf, and it started growling and gnashing its teeth at me. The owner looked between me and the dog and then tried to wrench it away, but in a sudden burst of power the dog slipped free of the owner and tackled me onto the grass of my lawn. It was on top of me, crushing my chest and snapping its massive jaws at my throat. Slobber got all over my face and if I wasn’t so terrified I would be absolutely disgusted.
Between me and the owner of the dog we managed to shove it off of me, but it still had some bruises and lots of tears in my clothing. The man looked shocked by his dog's behavior, so I imagined it wasn’t a normal occurrence. He apologized profusely and I tried to brush it off, but once the man and his dog had left my block I ran into my house and barricaded myself into my room. No one was home, my parents wouldn't be back until dinner, and I thought my sister had some sort of sports practice for the next few hours, but I wasn’t taking any more chances. I changed out of the clothes that were crusted over with dog spit and after my shower–where I barely avoided cracking my head open on the wall–I sat on my bed.
I had always considered myself a pretty chill person. I didn't have any particular incapacitating fears and I was pretty steady in crises. I was going to go to university and become a biomedical engineer. I was going to start a family, in some little suburb. I was going to provide for them, I was going to make some sort of impact in my field. I was going to have a steady but fulfilling life. I was excited for my future. And now I was going to die.
In the morning I hadn't thought much about it. The clock was a freak accident, and the car could've happened to anyone. Throughout the day I had become increasingly concerned, but the dog changed everything. It became…personal. There was definitely something wrong, and it was definitely about me. My throat tightened at the prospect of not making it through today. I moved cautiously to my bed and sat on it, my phone in my hands. I closed my eyes and thought through the day.
The clock.
The car.
The peanuts.
The pencil.
The dog.
The shower.
I went through them each, trying to think logically and not succumb to my fear. They were all accidents, which had to mean something. The dog seemed to be the exception, as the only one that reacted to me specifically. All the others could've happened to anyone. I was wondering what that meant when there was a violent crash.
Something was careening through my now broken window and I could only see it for a split second before it filled up my vision and made contact with my forehead. It was a golf ball, hurtling towards me at an immense speed. I was frozen, and the less than a second as it traveled across my room felt like an eternity. I watched my phone tumble out of my hand as if in slow motion. The force of impact made me fall over onto my bed. There was a massive pain in my skull and then I must have gone unconscious because there was nothing for a long time.
a key in a lock
the squeak of a door
a shout of my name
crying
911
what's your emergency
When I woke up I was in a hospital. It seemed stereotypical, a steril white cot surrounded by blinking machines and a steady beep of my heart rate. My vision was blurry at first, but I blinked a few times and everything cleared a bit. There was an IV in my arm and a dull pulsing in my head, but it wasn't too bad. I glanced at the heart rate monitor. It looked steady to me, but then again I had zero medical training. A nurse must have been notified that I woke up because a woman bustled in wearing scrubs and a bright look on her face.
“Hi! I'm your nurse, Trina. You had severe head trauma instigated by a golf ball and you have a major concussion, but we expect you to make a full recovery.”
My mouth was dry, so I only nodded.
“Do you need any water?”
I nodded again. I wanted her to leave so I could analyze this occurrence as well. She turned and started walking out, closing the door but not before I could hear my family hounding her on when they could see me. I didn't really feel like talking to them right now, but I presumed I could thank my sister for my current state of aliveness.
The clock.
The car.
The peanuts.
The pencil.
The dog.
The shower.
The ball.
It was almost 10pm, not even 24 hours since the beginning of this horrific day. I was thinking about the day and I suddenly remembered the email that had set the ball rolling. I needed to see it, right now. I knew I wouldn't be allowed my phone, but there was a computer across the room I could use if I got rid of Trina for long enough. I called her in with a blue button next to my bed, and asked her for some food from the cafeteria that was conveniently located on the other side of the hospital from the emergency room.
“Of course dear, anything in particular?”
I shook my head. “I'm fine with whatever, thanks.”
She left and I glanced at the clock in the far wall. After fifteen minutes had passed I moved to the computer and turned it on.
It felt like there were a thousand tiny nails boring into my skull and my eyes. The pain clouded over my vision and I looked away from the machine. The soft light filled the room, and I squeezed my eyes shut against it. I tried to turn around but I tripped on something. I fell, in the dark, and hit the ground hard. I nearly impaled my stomach on a spike embedded in one of the many machines surrounding me, but it only grazed me.
I lay on the ground, motionless. There was a commotion outside and I could hear someone trying to get in and someone else stopping them. Strangely enough, it sounded as if Trina was trying to get in to help me but…my parents were stopping her? I tried to figure out what was happening but my head was still buzzing from the aftershock of the computer incident. I just waited, and then the door opened and the room flooded with florescent light. There was a figure so backlit I couldn't figure out who it was, but it certainly was not Trina. I wondered if it was an angel, come to take me away.
The figure stepped forward and pulled out a gun.
THE SISTER
He was a liability. That's what they told me. They said he would lead to us being caught, that he needed to be “disposed of.” They let me leave clues, and said if he picked up on them he could live.
He didn't.
I put the bullets in the gun. I flicked off the safety. I opened the door and stood over him, tortured all day from my attempts at ending him stealthily.
The clock.
The car.
The peanuts.
The pencil.
The dog.
The shower.
The ball.
The computer.
The gun.
I pulled the trigger.
I was celebrated.
I was the mastermind.
+425 words of critique
It was late at night, just after midnight when I looked at my phone. There was an email notification, saying Sent at 0:00. What kind of idiot sends an email at midnight? I was curious so I looked at the email.
I feel like Sent at 0:00 needs to be in italics or quotations. It might be correct grammatically, I'm not sure, but I feel it could benefit from a tiny bit of formatting, especially if you match the formatting with the email.
Re: The Ides of March
[email protected]
to [email protected]
Today is your last day alive. Enjoy it.
And remember, beware the Ides of March.
Reply | Forward
I scrolled farther down, looking for the “please give us all your personal information and you won’t get killed!” but there wasn’t anything, just those fifteen words. I put it out of my head and tried to sleep, assuming it was spam or something. I had a Geometry test tomorrow and had to sleep so I wouldn’t be nodding off in the middle of calculating sines or something.
Maybe capitalize the p in please, again, not sure if that is grammatically correct or not. I'm a bit new at this critiquing thing. Maybe add a line like I drifted off to sleep, the email all but forgotten.
My alarm went off the next morning, and I slammed the snooze button so violently the screen broke and glass went everywhere. I felt a sharp pain in my chin, and I brought up my hand to feel the place. There was glass embedded in my face, mere inches from my neck. I pulled my hand back and there was blood on it. I had almost died, I realized. That glass would’ve slit my throat.
I went into the bathroom and pulled out the glass. Thankfully it wasn’t too deep. After I washed the wound I continued to get ready for school, shaken. I grabbed my backpack and a muffin on the way out of my house. As I stepped into the street I took a bite of my muffin. The sweet banana taste flooded my mouth but it turned sour as I heard the screech right before the impact.
Maybe add banana in front of the muffin when you first introduce the muffin, that way when later you say, “The sweet banana taste” the banana doesn't seem to come out of nowhere.
A car was careening down the street, and I was in the middle of it. It tried to break and seemingly magically stopped right before it would’ve mowed me down. I just stood there, staring down the driver. It was a very old woman, someone I felt shouldn’t be going double the speed limit down a residential street. I ran to the curb and tried to gather my thoughts. This was the second time in literally an hour that I nearly died. This was not normal.
The clock.
The car.
Suddenly I remembered the email. Was there a connection? There couldn’t be. Could there?
A few hours later I was eating my lunch when some idiot threw a Cheez-It at his friend. The other guy threw back a peanut. I was standing behind the first guy and as I opened my mouth in a gasp the peanut flew past me, missing me by a hair. I’m very allergic to peanuts, so it could’ve killed me if I swallowed it. Another brush with death. This was partly getting on my nerves and partly scaring the * out of me.
Scratch forum did censor a word here, I don't know if you noticed, but just letting you know, in case you wanted to fix it.
The clock.
The car.
The peanuts.
I somehow made it through the next two periods, and after a near miss with my pencil in Geometry I had finished the day without getting fatally injured. I was so on edge on the way home from school that it took me twice as long as usual. It was getting dark as I got home, and I turned on my street, nearly running into someone walking their dog. It was a massive thing, more like a wolf, and it started growling and gnashing its teeth at me. The owner looked between me and the dog and then tried to wrench it away, but in a sudden burst of power the dog slipped free of the owner and tackled me onto the grass of my lawn. It was on top of me, crushing my chest and snapping its massive jaws at my throat. Slobber got all over my face and if I wasn’t so terrified I would be absolutely disgusted.
You could use a comma after Geometry and power.
Between me and the owner of the dog we managed to shove it off of me, but it still had some bruises and lots of tears in my clothing. The man looked shocked by his dog's behavior, so I imagined it wasn’t a normal occurrence. He apologized profusely and I tried to brush it off, but once the man and his dog had left my block I ran into my house and barricaded myself into my room. No one was home, my parents wouldn't be back until dinner, and I thought my sister had some sort of sports practice for the next few hours, but I wasn’t taking any more chances. I changed out of the clothes that were crusted over with dog spit and after my shower–where I barely avoided cracking my head open on the wall–I sat on my bed.
Another comma after the first dog.
I had always considered myself a pretty chill person. I didn't have any particular incapacitating fears and I was pretty steady in crises. I was going to go to university and become a biomedical engineer. I was going to start a family, in some little suburb. I was going to provide for them, I was going to make some sort of impact in my field. I was going to have a steady but fulfilling life. I was excited for my future. And now I was going to die.
You use pretty twice in the first two sentences. Maybe changing the second one to generally or some other word that would still fit the context, but avoid reppatiion.
In the morning I hadn't thought much about it. The clock was a freak accident, and the car could've happened to anyone. Throughout the day I had become increasingly concerned, but the dog changed everything. It became…personal. There was definitely something wrong, and it was definitely about me. My throat tightened at the prospect of not making it through today. I moved cautiously to my bed and sat on it, my phone in my hands. I closed my eyes and thought through the day.
The clock.
The car.
The peanuts.
The pencil.
The dog.
The shower.
I went through them each, trying to think logically and not succumb to my fear. They were all accidents, which had to mean something. The dog seemed to be the exception, as the only one that reacted to me specifically. All the others could've happened to anyone. I was wondering what that meant when there was a violent crash.
Maybe add a bit more emphasize to the last sentence, but wording it like I was wondering what that meant when suddenly, there was a violent crash
Something was careening through my now broken window and I could only see it for a split second before it filled up my vision and made contact with my forehead. It was a golf ball, hurtling towards me at an immense speed. I was frozen, and the less than a second as it traveled across my room felt like an eternity. I watched my phone tumble out of my hand as if in slow motion. The force of impact made me fall over onto my bed. There was a massive pain in my skull and then I must have gone unconscious because there was nothing for a long time.
a key in a lock
the squeak of a door
a shout of my name
crying
911
what's your emergency
When I woke up I was in a hospital. It seemed stereotypical, a steril white cot surrounded by blinking machines and a steady beep of my heart rate. My vision was blurry at first, but I blinked a few times and everything cleared a bit. There was an IV in my arm and a dull pulsing in my head, but it wasn't too bad. I glanced at the heart rate monitor. It looked steady to me, but then again I had zero medical training. A nurse must have been notified that I woke up because a woman bustled in wearing scrubs and a bright look on her face.
Sterile is spelled with an e at the end.
“Hi! I'm your nurse, Trina. You had severe head trauma instigated by a golf ball and you have a major concussion, but we expect you to make a full recovery.”
My mouth was dry, so I only nodded.
“Do you need any water?”
I nodded again. I wanted her to leave so I could analyze this occurrence as well. She turned and started walking out, closing the door but not before I could hear my family hounding her on when they could see me. I didn't really feel like talking to them right now, but I presumed I could thank my sister for my current state of aliveness.
The clock.
The car.
The peanuts.
The pencil.
The dog.
The shower.
The ball.
It was almost 10pm, not even 24 hours since the beginning of this horrific day. I was thinking about the day and I suddenly remembered the email that had set the ball rolling. I needed to see it, right now. I knew I wouldn't be allowed my phone, but there was a computer across the room I could use if I got rid of Trina for long enough. I called her in with a blue button next to my bed, and asked her for some food from the cafeteria that was conveniently located on the other side of the hospital from the emergency room.
10 pm needs a space in between it and you can remove the comma after bed.
“Of course dear, anything in particular?”
I shook my head. “I'm fine with whatever, thanks.”
She left and I glanced at the clock in the far wall. After fifteen minutes had passed I moved to the computer and turned it on.
It felt like there were a thousand tiny nails boring into my skull and my eyes. The pain clouded over my vision and I looked away from the machine. The soft light filled the room, and I squeezed my eyes shut against it. I tried to turn around but I tripped on something. I fell, in the dark, and hit the ground hard. I nearly impaled my stomach on a spike embedded in one of the many machines surrounding me, but it only grazed me.
I love the figurative language in the first sentence!
I lay on the ground, motionless. There was a commotion outside and I could hear someone trying to get in and someone else stopping them. Strangely enough, it sounded as if Trina was trying to get in to help me but…my parents were stopping her? I tried to figure out what was happening but my head was still buzzing from the aftershock of the computer incident. I just waited, and then the door opened and the room flooded with florescent light. There was a figure so backlit I couldn't figure out who it was, but it certainly was not Trina. I wondered if it was an angel, come to take me away.
Fluorescent is spelled wrong, and the final sentence could benefit if you changed come to coming.
The figure stepped forward and pulled out a gun.
THE SISTER
This transition is a little confusing, I don't know how to fix it, but my first time reading through I had to backtrack and read this part again to understand fully it had switched from the brother to the sister.
He was a liability. That's what they told me. They said he would lead to us being caught, that he needed to be “disposed of.” They let me leave clues, and said if he picked up on them he could live.
He didn't.
I put the bullets in the gun. I flicked off the safety. I opened the door and stood over him, tortured all day from my attempts at ending him stealthily.
The clock.
The car.
The peanuts.
The pencil.
The dog.
The shower.
The ball.
The computer.
The gun.
I pulled the trigger.
I was celebrated.
I was the mastermind.
Overall, I really liked this story! It was really well written, and it defiantly brought suspense until the very end. The only thing I'm a little confused about is how the sister orgastrated it all. Did she have magic powers to make the dog attack, to make the peanut fly almost into his mouth. Maybe you meant to leave this up to speculation, but that bit seems a bit unrealisitic if you're trying to keep the whole story more realistic. If you were going for the magical mafia vibe, then you nailed it, spot on! Again, I am new at this critique thing, so I hope I did it justice and I appoliguze if I sound too mean or if I did anything wrong
+425 words of critique