July 15th, 2017 at 10:07am
I'm here judging the drabble section of my pre-writes contest!
I like that this seems to be more of a reflection on a moment than anything. Looking back, anyone can see the flaws in their actions but to have someone sit down and admit what they did wrong and the fact that they ignored the majority only to meet an untimely end is a really interesting concept. I have no idea if this would have worked had it been anything other than reflection, but it works really well the way it is. The idea of looking back and the emotions that come with that are really interesting to see down on paper.
I do have to agree with k i w i though, it can seem quite disjointed in places and it can get rather confusing, especially towards the beginning. I feel like it could have done with a little bit more expansion on what actually happened to give the reader a full picture of the actions and consequences of the narrator's foolishness. Nonetheless, this was a lovely piece!
Like exploding boy. said already, I like that this was a reflection rather than focusing on the scene as it happened. The narrator, right from the start, admits to their mistakes and there’s this ominousness about it that implies that because of them, something horrible happened. Especially with the last line. I like the idea of someone being so afraid of someone (or something) that they can’t even haunt them in the afterlife, so that was definitely powerful. It reflected back to the sentence about the other person being able to walk along like ‘it’ never happened—whatever ‘it’ may be.
I do agree with the others in the fact that there’s not much cohesiveness to the entire thing, though. I love ambiguous stories as much as the next person because I like interpreting things on my own, but this felt a little too vague. I didn’t really have any solid grasp on anything so I ended up more confused than anything. I think you could have maintained this abstract concept whilst also giving a little more to the readers to work with because I felt like I was kind of in the dark and missing something huge.
Other than that, I thought this was a really nice drabble.