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Just Do It
It was 10:15 pm, not even an hour into Tim’s shift, and already he prayed for the sweet release of death.
It was hellishly busy for a Thursday night. There had been a severe blizzard over most of the midwest, which always played merry hob with the service towers, and had delayed several dozen flights as well. As usual, a cavalcade of mouth-breathers flooded the chat client with every plane that finally made it off the ground, demanding free wifi service for the inconvenience of not being allowed to risk plummeting to their deaths from thirty-five thousand feet. Huddled in his cube, fingers flying from one chat to the next, Tim repeated the same conversation over and over again, each interaction the long-form, polite, corporate-friendly version of “we are not the airline, bugger off”.
The phone rang. Damn it all to hell, Tim thought as he pinched the bridge of his nose. Ordinarily he would never need to take phone calls, but they were short-handed this week after yet another crop of promising rookie reinforcements washed out: three of them had failed their drug tests, two had been let go for swearing at customers, and the last poor girl had fled the building in tears after a first-class passenger, when he was told he did, in fact, still need to pay for wifi, had wished her future daughters to be "raped to death by a million frat bros".
Not everyone was cut out for trench warfare.
Tim sighed as he tapped the side of his headset. “Thank you for calling SkyFi Inflight Wifi, this is-”
He was cut off as a wookie with a southern accent roared in his ear. Tim flinched as he hastily turned down the volume. “I’m sorry, sir, could you please repeat that?”
“CLEAN THE SHI-*crackle*-TA YER EARS, BOY, AH SAID YER SERVICE FU-*snapcracklepop*”
Huzzah. Tim wondered whether to ask for clarification due to the bad connection, or just admonish the yokel for swearing. He chose the option more likely to end the conversation. “Sir, if you are unable to maintain a civil tone, I’m afraid I’m going to have to-”
“FUCK YOU, YOU PIECE OF-”
Called it, Tim thought as he tapped the side of his headset again. A couple of years ago, Tim would have taken a small amount of satisfaction from abruptly hanging up on a customer, especially mid-epithet. Now, he was just too tired to care. He rubbed a hand over his face, noting absently that he’d forgotten to shave that evening. At least the call wouldn’t impact his chat resolution time too much-
The phone rang again. “God dammit,” Tim grumbled as he hauled himself to his feet. He scoured the nearly empty field of cubes around him to find his few remaining coworkers were also trapped in one-sided phone conversations with the howling void. Tim managed to stifle the sigh this time as he sat to take the call. “Thank you for calling SkyFi Inflight Wifi, this is Tim, how may I assist you?”
“Hello, Tim,” a middle-aged woman’s voice replied, almost timid in timbre. “I was hoping you could help me.”
Tim sat up a bit straighter, eyebrows raised. A humble request? That's a new one. “Of course, ma’am. What can I do for you?”
“Well, unfortunately, my husband passed away a few months ago. Apparently he had a Universal pass with your service? It’s been charging us seventy dollars a month without anyone using it.”
Tim’s heart fell into his stomach, where acid began to eat away at it - he already knew how this conversation would play out. “I see. What was your husband’s name?”
She gave the necessary details. A quick glance at the man’s account confirmed no usage in over four months - not that it would matter. “Well, ma’am, I can definitely cancel your husband’s subscription effective immediately and get that most recent charge refunded to your account.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. Tim took a deep breath to brace himself.
Finally the woman spoke. “What about the other charges?”
Tim slowly let the breath out through his nose as he shook his head slowly, then remembered he was on the phone. “I’m afraid I can only refund the most recent charge on the account, ma’am. I can send a request to our billing department to get the other three credited as well, but,” another deep breath, “I cannot guarantee that they will comply with the request.”
Silence. Tim shut his eyes and steeled himself for the thunderstorm of bile and vitriol that was about to be released upon him. As the silence stretched on, the acid in his stomach began to boil as it ate away at his heart with renewed vigor.
He was about to ask if the woman was still there when her quiet voice came through, as though from a great distance.
“Please.”
Tim’s eyes flew open along with his jaw, but no sound came out.
“Please,” the woman repeated, her voice tinged with tears, “the charges have been overdrafting our checking account, and the bank won’t reverse the overdraft fees until your charges are removed. Between the medical bills and the funeral, we can’t afford the…” She choked on her words.
Tim’s heart shattered, forming a gaping void in his gut that left him feeling more than a little ill. He found his voice at last and struggled out, “Ma’am, I understand your situation; I can send the billing department an email-”
“Do you?”
Tim froze. “Do I what?”
There was a sob, and Tim realized his error too late. “You don’t even care, do you? Nobody cares. Ever since Jeff died, all I’ve learned is just how little the world gives a damn about anyone else.” The tears in the woman’s voice had turned bitter, but she still hadn’t raised her voice.
This is so much worse than yelling. “Ma’am, I’m sorry for your loss, I truly am. I’m doing everything I can…” He trailed off as the woman began to cry in earnest. His words, however truthful, rang hollow in his ears. The billing department would reject the request out of hand, as they always did, and that would be that - there was no further appeals process. His hands were tied, but that was of little comfort to the grieving woman, and to himself.
He listened to her cry as he searched for the words to say that would fix everything. There were no words, he realized, that wouldn’t also be a lie. Is false hope better than none at all?
He made his decision, but he would need to calm her down first. “Ma’am, please-”
His entreaty proved to be the final straw as she cut him off with a wail. The disconnect click hit him harder than a slap in the face ever could.
Tim sat there, numb, as the three chats he had been ignoring continued to ping at him, as the other customers that clamored for his attention became increasingly frustrated by his apparent absence. When frustration flared to anger and the swearing began, Tim closed the chat client and stared at the barren cube wall in silence.
Moments stretched to minutes before Tim finally muttered, “Dammit.” He grabbed his keys and his pack of American Spirits, then stood. “I’m going on break,” he said to his coworker Bill as he passed by his cube.
Bill looked up as he put his headset on mute. He held an earpiece away from his head as wailing and gnashing of teeth tinnily vomited out of the speaker. “Dude, we’re awash in a sea of bullshit, we need your ass in that cube.”
“I wasn’t asking permission,” Tim tersely replied as he passed, never breaking stride.
The moon shone brightly overhead. The air was cold, crisp, and clean, and pale light reflected off the distant blizzard that had so thoroughly fouled everyone else’s evening as it hovered on the horizon. Tim found it both beautiful and uncomfortable; he felt it illuminate his soul, and he didn’t like what he saw.
He sat on top of one of the picnic tables that served as an outdoor smoking area and lit a cigarette with a match. He savored the taste of perique as he took a deep drag and tried to focus on the part of himself that felt nothing. The smoke mixed with his foggy breath, billowing outward into a plume that hung in the still night air. He watched the hazy miasma ebb and flow as it slowly dissipated, idly tracing the line of a particular whorl back into the center of the cloud. When the last wisps faded, he took another drag, and another, and watched as something beautiful faded away and was lost.
Somehow it didn't make him feel any better.
“Hey.” A high, scratchy voice from behind him shook him out of his melancholy reverie, and he turned to see Kayla, her golden hair reflecting platinum in the moonlight as it tumbled past her shoulders.
“Hey,” he replied as she approached. He turned back to the moon and his clouds.
“Bill sent me to get you.” She tapped her own pack of cigarettes - Parliament menthols, he knew - and drew one into her mouth.
“I figured.”
She fumbled in her purse for her lighter. “You wanna talk about it?”
“Not really.”
“Uh-huh.” A pause as she dug through her purse in earnest. She smiled around her cig as she finally found what she was looking for. “So, you do wanna talk about it.” The cigarette bobbed in time to every syllable.
Tim blew smoke out his nose, halfway between a sigh and a snort. “None of us is here because we want to be.”
Kayla paused between flicks, hands in front of her mouth, as she glanced over at him. “Whatchoo talkin’ ‘bout, Willis?” Again, the cigarette bobbed.
“I dunno, I just feel like I could have done better than this. Actually accomplished something, instead of having to settle for being paid barely above minimum wage to be the flesh conduit through which corporate-mandated scripting flows.”
Kayla stared at him for a pair of heartbeats, then resumed her efforts to light her cigarette with a frown. “And here I was thinking I didn’t want to kill myself today.”
“Sorry.” He took a final drag, then crushed the butt into the table and flicked it towards a nearby trash can. It missed by several feet. He coughed, then drew another cigarette from his pack. “I was just thinking about how this place… it does something to you, y’know? To your soul.”
“Mmm,” came a noncommittal grunt as Kayla continued flicking her lighter. “C’mon, you piece of-”
There was a snap-hiss and a flare of orange light as Tim struck a match and held it a few inches from her hands. “Mmm,” she exclaimed, an octave higher this time, and she puffed away at the tiny flame. She inhaled deeply as the cigarette caught, then shot him a grin. “Well, ain’t you classy as all hell.” She breathed out her own jet of smoke, her exhalation far less defined as it flew apart, scattered by its own force.
“Heh,” Tim replied as he brought the match towards his own mouth, then sighed in dismay as the flame winked out. He went to strike another, but found his matchbook empty. “Awesome,” he muttered.
“Here,” Kayla said as she moved to stand before him. Before he could flinch away, she leaned her face close and pressed the tip of her cigarette against his. Tim blushed at the sudden intimacy of the gesture. She drew deeply, as did he, and the cherry glowed a brilliant scarlet as it spread to light its mate.
She took a step back as they exhaled, silver fumes catching the moonlight as they swirled about them. For a moment she seemed limned in silver herself, and he was struck breathless.
She smiled at him. “Y’alright?”
He snapped out of it. “Yeah… yeah. Thanks.”
“No prob, Bob.” She took another drag, then hugged herself with a shiver. “Brrr.”
“Oh, here,” Tim mumbled as he scootched over a bit on the table. Kayla’s smile widened as she hopped up to sit next to him. She was a small slip of a woman, barely five feet tall - even sitting down, Tim was a full head taller than her.
They sat for a while, enjoying their cigarettes in silence, and watched their clouds intermingle. After a bit, Kayla nudged him. “So what’s your deal, man?”
“Oh, right.” He related the story of the widow and the charges, and finished it with the last drag of his cigarette. He extinguished the butt on the table and flicked it away again, this time missing by inches.
Kayla had nodded occasionally as he spoke, and finished her own cigarette as she said, “Yeah, I feel you. S’not your fault, though.”
“That’s not the point. I just hate this place, is all. Makes me feel lower than dirt.”
“It’s not the company’s fault, either. I mean, if her family’s having such tough times, how did she not notice the charges for this long?”
Tim scowled at her. “See, that’s what I’m talking about.”
She raised an eyebrow. “What?”
“I just told you we basically stole three hundred dollars from a poor, grieving widow, and your first response was to blame her.”
Kayla’s eyes widened. “I…” Her gaze fell to the ground. “Jesus Christ.”
“Yeah.” The thought of going back inside left a sour taste in Tim’s mouth, so he fumbled for another cigarette - until he remembered they didn’t have a light anymore. He sighed.
Kayla gave a small shake of her head. “Man, fuck this place.”
They sat in silence for a moment longer, before Tim finally said, “Bill’s probably wondering where we are.”
“Let him,” Kayla said, then gasped. “Dude!”
Tim looked at her. “What?” He wasn’t sure he liked the gleam in her eye.
“What if we just left?”
“Pfft.” He laughed. “You crazy, lady.”
“No, I’m serious! What’s keeping us here?”
Tim’s eyebrows knitted together. “Abject poverty?”
“Nah, dude!” She swatted his arm as she hopped down in front of him. “For real, how long could you last if you just walked out, right here, right now?”
He did some quick calculations in his head. “Uh, about a month. Maybe longer, if I ate a lot of ramen-”
“Same! That’s plenty of time to find a new job! Hell, we could get paid twice what we are now at any company that was actually worth a damn!”
Tim was having a hard time keeping up with her train of thought. “I mean, I guess? But-”
“Then let’s do it!” A wide grin split her face. “Oh my god, Tim, let’s blow this joint!”
Time seemed to stand still. Tim looked over the last few years of his life - a steady forty hours a week bought a lot of goodwill, compared to his previous jobs. But can I honestly say that I have a future here? Do I actually want to work graveyard tech support for the unwashed hordes, and screw over countless clients in the process?
Have I ever been happy with this lot in life?
Tim locked eyes with Kayla, and in the warmth of her enthusiasm, the last vestiges of pragmatism melted away. A slow smile crept across his face as he nodded. “Okay. Let’s bail.”
She hopped up and down with a cheer, then threw her arms around him in a tight hug. He returned her embrace, and they stood grinning awkwardly at each other. At length, Tim took a step back and said, “We should probably leave before anyone else comes looking for us.”
Kayla seemed to deflate a bit at this. “Yeah, I guess so.”
He scuffed a shoe against the cement, then took a deep breath. “Well, Kayla, I guess this is-”
Kayla darted forward and pulled Tim down into a passionate kiss. He could taste the menthol on her lips, on her tongue, and once again, time stood still. Half an eternity later, Kayla let him go.
Tim said the first thing that came into his head. “Buh?”
Kayla stared at him. “I’ve been wanting to do that for a while now. If this is the end, I didn’t want to miss my last shot.”
Tim blinked at her. “Uh… I don’t…” Tim stumbled over his words as Kayla’s eyes widened. He tried again. “I don’t want this to be the end.”
A wide grin split Kayla’s face once more. “Neither do I.”
Tim looked around, then up at the moon, as though it could tell him what the next thing to say should be. “Um… You wanna grab something to eat?”
They collapsed to the mattress once again, panting, sweaty, exhausted, exultant. A pair of paper sacks contained long-forgotten fast food, abandoned on the table near the front door of Kayla's studio apartment.
They lay there for a moment, basking in the afterglow. Tim struggled for coherent thought, let alone coherent words. “Hah… hah guh… I just gotta catch… hah…” He shifted his arms for maximum distance from the rest of him, for maximum exposure to the stifling air of Kayla’s apartment. He coughed. “We… we should probably quit smoking.”
Kayla was similarly trying to catch her breath. “Hah… yeah, ha… Not as young… as I used to be…”
After their breathing steadied somewhat, Kayla sat up and fished a cigarette from the pack on her end table. “Before we do though, you ever smoked after sex?”
Tim just shook his head no.
“Aw man. Then this is the perfect note to go out on - I promise you, it’ll never be this good again.” She stood to open the window above her bed, and Tim froze, lost in the sight of her.
He snapped back to reality as the chill, cleansing breeze from the window struck him. He reached over to his own pack, and drew his final American Spirit into his mouth. Kayla handed him her spare lighter, and they sat together below the window, blowing their smoke up and out into the night.
Kayla tipped her ash into a saucer on the window sill. “So what’d you wanna be, growing up?”
Tim laughed. “What, now that we’re unemployed, we just need to follow our dreams?”
“For sure, dude! Why the hell not?”
Tim waved his cigarette hand, a trail of smoke wafting in its wake. “Because it’s not that simple!”
Kayla gave him a smack. “It is! It is that simple! We hated our jobs, so we quit! We wanted to bang, so we banged! We want to quit smoking, so we’re gonna quit smoking!” She picked up her Parliaments and crushed the pack in her hand, then tossed it against the wall. She turned back to look at him, a fire in her eyes and a manic grin on her face. “We want to change our lives, so let’s change our lives!”
Tim chuckled, helpless in the face of her zeal, and shook his head. “I guess… when I was younger, I thought it would be neat to be a bartender.”
“Ha! That’s it? Dude, this is a college town! Do you have any idea how many bars there are downtown?”
Tim smirked at her. “Alright then, what about you? What dreams did you let fall by the wayside?”
Kayla sobered a bit. “I…” She paused. “I wanted to be on the radio.”
Tim sat patiently, waiting for her to continue. When she didn’t, Tim gestured with his cigarette and said, “So, be on the radio.”
She laughed. “Right, cuz that’s as easy as picking up a bartending gig.”
He tipped his own ashes into the saucer. “Well, yeah, actually.”
Kayla frowned at him. “It’s really not. I don’t have any sort of degree, let alone one in broadcasting or whatever they’d need.”
Tim shook his head. “You don’t need one. I had a cousin who spent the summer after high school working for his local radio station - he just waltzed in the front door, said he wanted to work there. When they said they didn’t have any positions open, he said he’d be willing to work for free. They hired him on the spot.” Tim took one last drag, then put out his butt on the saucer. “By the end of the summer, he was cutting promos, writing ad copy, editing songs to be radio friendly, the works. Probably would have let him on the air, had he stuck around longer.”
Kayla stared at him. “So it’s just that simple, huh?”
Tim grinned as he nodded. “Yeah. You might need to snag a second job for a while, but yeah.”
Kayla nodded in kind, then got up on her knees to look up at the moon. She took a long drag, then mashed the remains of her final cigarette into the saucer.
He stared at her as she gazed out her window, at the interplay of light and shadow as both caressed her body; tracing her delicate curves, casting her muscles into sharp contrast, texturing the gooseprickles that stippled her flesh in the chill breeze from the window.
She caught him staring, and smiled. “What?”
Tim shook his head, his brain simmering in a soup of nicotine and endorphins. “It’s just… It’s like I’m seeing you for the first time.”
“Ha, yeah, I can see that.” She shrugged. “People see what they expect to see.”
“I didn’t expect to see you.”
She laughed as she gestured at herself. “Well then, out with it, what do you think?”
He grinned the dopiest grin a doped-up dope ever grinned. “I think I’m ready for round three.”
She laughed again as she tackled him off the side of the bed, and they fell to the floor in a heap, a giggling tangle of limbs and bedsheets.
“Hey, hey, it’s DJ K-to-the-A-Y, and lemme tell you, listeners, I’ve got my hands on something that will make you extra K-Y jelly. Believe me, honies, this spicy-sexy-sweet album is piping into my ears and my veins as we speak and I’m having trouble holding myself together! Mm-mmm!
“But momma doesn’t want your jealousy, she only wants your love! And because I love you all so dearly, you’re gonna be the first to hear this luscious loveliness: Aleph Null’s new album, ‘March of the Slor’! That’s right, our heroes of metal are fresh from the studio and preparing to take our humble city by storm once again. So don’t change that dial, my lovely ducklings. Here it is, the first of their many new hits, ‘Bloody Samurai’!”
Tim smiled at the radio as he applied another small dollop of wax to his mustache - it was wild, untrammeled, and needed to be reined in with goo in order to be even vaguely work-appropriate. He didn’t mind the effort, though; the process served to remind him just how far he’d come. He ran his thumb along his wedding band as he listened to Kayla’s voice, a welcome change of pace from the Victrola fodder piping through the speakers out front.
The door to the bathroom burst open as Tim’s boss, Jacob, skidded to a stop, a pair of brass goggles bracing the base of his rather impressive fauxhawk. “Yo, there’s an ocean of customers out there, mah man, and the tide is comin’ in. I need you at the bar, double-quick-time.”
“I’m on it, cap’n,” Tim replied as he finished tweaking his ‘stache, then adjusted his top hat to sit at a slightly more jaunty angle. He snapped his fingers at his reflection with a wink.
Satisfied and self-assured, he blew a kiss to the radio before striding out the door.
It was hellishly busy for a Thursday night. There had been a severe blizzard over most of the midwest, which always played merry hob with the service towers, and had delayed several dozen flights as well. As usual, a cavalcade of mouth-breathers flooded the chat client with every plane that finally made it off the ground, demanding free wifi service for the inconvenience of not being allowed to risk plummeting to their deaths from thirty-five thousand feet. Huddled in his cube, fingers flying from one chat to the next, Tim repeated the same conversation over and over again, each interaction the long-form, polite, corporate-friendly version of “we are not the airline, bugger off”.
The phone rang. Damn it all to hell, Tim thought as he pinched the bridge of his nose. Ordinarily he would never need to take phone calls, but they were short-handed this week after yet another crop of promising rookie reinforcements washed out: three of them had failed their drug tests, two had been let go for swearing at customers, and the last poor girl had fled the building in tears after a first-class passenger, when he was told he did, in fact, still need to pay for wifi, had wished her future daughters to be "raped to death by a million frat bros".
Not everyone was cut out for trench warfare.
Tim sighed as he tapped the side of his headset. “Thank you for calling SkyFi Inflight Wifi, this is-”
He was cut off as a wookie with a southern accent roared in his ear. Tim flinched as he hastily turned down the volume. “I’m sorry, sir, could you please repeat that?”
“CLEAN THE SHI-*crackle*-TA YER EARS, BOY, AH SAID YER SERVICE FU-*snapcracklepop*”
Huzzah. Tim wondered whether to ask for clarification due to the bad connection, or just admonish the yokel for swearing. He chose the option more likely to end the conversation. “Sir, if you are unable to maintain a civil tone, I’m afraid I’m going to have to-”
“FUCK YOU, YOU PIECE OF-”
Called it, Tim thought as he tapped the side of his headset again. A couple of years ago, Tim would have taken a small amount of satisfaction from abruptly hanging up on a customer, especially mid-epithet. Now, he was just too tired to care. He rubbed a hand over his face, noting absently that he’d forgotten to shave that evening. At least the call wouldn’t impact his chat resolution time too much-
The phone rang again. “God dammit,” Tim grumbled as he hauled himself to his feet. He scoured the nearly empty field of cubes around him to find his few remaining coworkers were also trapped in one-sided phone conversations with the howling void. Tim managed to stifle the sigh this time as he sat to take the call. “Thank you for calling SkyFi Inflight Wifi, this is Tim, how may I assist you?”
“Hello, Tim,” a middle-aged woman’s voice replied, almost timid in timbre. “I was hoping you could help me.”
Tim sat up a bit straighter, eyebrows raised. A humble request? That's a new one. “Of course, ma’am. What can I do for you?”
“Well, unfortunately, my husband passed away a few months ago. Apparently he had a Universal pass with your service? It’s been charging us seventy dollars a month without anyone using it.”
Tim’s heart fell into his stomach, where acid began to eat away at it - he already knew how this conversation would play out. “I see. What was your husband’s name?”
She gave the necessary details. A quick glance at the man’s account confirmed no usage in over four months - not that it would matter. “Well, ma’am, I can definitely cancel your husband’s subscription effective immediately and get that most recent charge refunded to your account.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. Tim took a deep breath to brace himself.
Finally the woman spoke. “What about the other charges?”
Tim slowly let the breath out through his nose as he shook his head slowly, then remembered he was on the phone. “I’m afraid I can only refund the most recent charge on the account, ma’am. I can send a request to our billing department to get the other three credited as well, but,” another deep breath, “I cannot guarantee that they will comply with the request.”
Silence. Tim shut his eyes and steeled himself for the thunderstorm of bile and vitriol that was about to be released upon him. As the silence stretched on, the acid in his stomach began to boil as it ate away at his heart with renewed vigor.
He was about to ask if the woman was still there when her quiet voice came through, as though from a great distance.
“Please.”
Tim’s eyes flew open along with his jaw, but no sound came out.
“Please,” the woman repeated, her voice tinged with tears, “the charges have been overdrafting our checking account, and the bank won’t reverse the overdraft fees until your charges are removed. Between the medical bills and the funeral, we can’t afford the…” She choked on her words.
Tim’s heart shattered, forming a gaping void in his gut that left him feeling more than a little ill. He found his voice at last and struggled out, “Ma’am, I understand your situation; I can send the billing department an email-”
“Do you?”
Tim froze. “Do I what?”
There was a sob, and Tim realized his error too late. “You don’t even care, do you? Nobody cares. Ever since Jeff died, all I’ve learned is just how little the world gives a damn about anyone else.” The tears in the woman’s voice had turned bitter, but she still hadn’t raised her voice.
This is so much worse than yelling. “Ma’am, I’m sorry for your loss, I truly am. I’m doing everything I can…” He trailed off as the woman began to cry in earnest. His words, however truthful, rang hollow in his ears. The billing department would reject the request out of hand, as they always did, and that would be that - there was no further appeals process. His hands were tied, but that was of little comfort to the grieving woman, and to himself.
He listened to her cry as he searched for the words to say that would fix everything. There were no words, he realized, that wouldn’t also be a lie. Is false hope better than none at all?
He made his decision, but he would need to calm her down first. “Ma’am, please-”
His entreaty proved to be the final straw as she cut him off with a wail. The disconnect click hit him harder than a slap in the face ever could.
Tim sat there, numb, as the three chats he had been ignoring continued to ping at him, as the other customers that clamored for his attention became increasingly frustrated by his apparent absence. When frustration flared to anger and the swearing began, Tim closed the chat client and stared at the barren cube wall in silence.
Moments stretched to minutes before Tim finally muttered, “Dammit.” He grabbed his keys and his pack of American Spirits, then stood. “I’m going on break,” he said to his coworker Bill as he passed by his cube.
Bill looked up as he put his headset on mute. He held an earpiece away from his head as wailing and gnashing of teeth tinnily vomited out of the speaker. “Dude, we’re awash in a sea of bullshit, we need your ass in that cube.”
“I wasn’t asking permission,” Tim tersely replied as he passed, never breaking stride.
The moon shone brightly overhead. The air was cold, crisp, and clean, and pale light reflected off the distant blizzard that had so thoroughly fouled everyone else’s evening as it hovered on the horizon. Tim found it both beautiful and uncomfortable; he felt it illuminate his soul, and he didn’t like what he saw.
He sat on top of one of the picnic tables that served as an outdoor smoking area and lit a cigarette with a match. He savored the taste of perique as he took a deep drag and tried to focus on the part of himself that felt nothing. The smoke mixed with his foggy breath, billowing outward into a plume that hung in the still night air. He watched the hazy miasma ebb and flow as it slowly dissipated, idly tracing the line of a particular whorl back into the center of the cloud. When the last wisps faded, he took another drag, and another, and watched as something beautiful faded away and was lost.
Somehow it didn't make him feel any better.
“Hey.” A high, scratchy voice from behind him shook him out of his melancholy reverie, and he turned to see Kayla, her golden hair reflecting platinum in the moonlight as it tumbled past her shoulders.
“Hey,” he replied as she approached. He turned back to the moon and his clouds.
“Bill sent me to get you.” She tapped her own pack of cigarettes - Parliament menthols, he knew - and drew one into her mouth.
“I figured.”
She fumbled in her purse for her lighter. “You wanna talk about it?”
“Not really.”
“Uh-huh.” A pause as she dug through her purse in earnest. She smiled around her cig as she finally found what she was looking for. “So, you do wanna talk about it.” The cigarette bobbed in time to every syllable.
Tim blew smoke out his nose, halfway between a sigh and a snort. “None of us is here because we want to be.”
Kayla paused between flicks, hands in front of her mouth, as she glanced over at him. “Whatchoo talkin’ ‘bout, Willis?” Again, the cigarette bobbed.
“I dunno, I just feel like I could have done better than this. Actually accomplished something, instead of having to settle for being paid barely above minimum wage to be the flesh conduit through which corporate-mandated scripting flows.”
Kayla stared at him for a pair of heartbeats, then resumed her efforts to light her cigarette with a frown. “And here I was thinking I didn’t want to kill myself today.”
“Sorry.” He took a final drag, then crushed the butt into the table and flicked it towards a nearby trash can. It missed by several feet. He coughed, then drew another cigarette from his pack. “I was just thinking about how this place… it does something to you, y’know? To your soul.”
“Mmm,” came a noncommittal grunt as Kayla continued flicking her lighter. “C’mon, you piece of-”
There was a snap-hiss and a flare of orange light as Tim struck a match and held it a few inches from her hands. “Mmm,” she exclaimed, an octave higher this time, and she puffed away at the tiny flame. She inhaled deeply as the cigarette caught, then shot him a grin. “Well, ain’t you classy as all hell.” She breathed out her own jet of smoke, her exhalation far less defined as it flew apart, scattered by its own force.
“Heh,” Tim replied as he brought the match towards his own mouth, then sighed in dismay as the flame winked out. He went to strike another, but found his matchbook empty. “Awesome,” he muttered.
“Here,” Kayla said as she moved to stand before him. Before he could flinch away, she leaned her face close and pressed the tip of her cigarette against his. Tim blushed at the sudden intimacy of the gesture. She drew deeply, as did he, and the cherry glowed a brilliant scarlet as it spread to light its mate.
She took a step back as they exhaled, silver fumes catching the moonlight as they swirled about them. For a moment she seemed limned in silver herself, and he was struck breathless.
She smiled at him. “Y’alright?”
He snapped out of it. “Yeah… yeah. Thanks.”
“No prob, Bob.” She took another drag, then hugged herself with a shiver. “Brrr.”
“Oh, here,” Tim mumbled as he scootched over a bit on the table. Kayla’s smile widened as she hopped up to sit next to him. She was a small slip of a woman, barely five feet tall - even sitting down, Tim was a full head taller than her.
They sat for a while, enjoying their cigarettes in silence, and watched their clouds intermingle. After a bit, Kayla nudged him. “So what’s your deal, man?”
“Oh, right.” He related the story of the widow and the charges, and finished it with the last drag of his cigarette. He extinguished the butt on the table and flicked it away again, this time missing by inches.
Kayla had nodded occasionally as he spoke, and finished her own cigarette as she said, “Yeah, I feel you. S’not your fault, though.”
“That’s not the point. I just hate this place, is all. Makes me feel lower than dirt.”
“It’s not the company’s fault, either. I mean, if her family’s having such tough times, how did she not notice the charges for this long?”
Tim scowled at her. “See, that’s what I’m talking about.”
She raised an eyebrow. “What?”
“I just told you we basically stole three hundred dollars from a poor, grieving widow, and your first response was to blame her.”
Kayla’s eyes widened. “I…” Her gaze fell to the ground. “Jesus Christ.”
“Yeah.” The thought of going back inside left a sour taste in Tim’s mouth, so he fumbled for another cigarette - until he remembered they didn’t have a light anymore. He sighed.
Kayla gave a small shake of her head. “Man, fuck this place.”
They sat in silence for a moment longer, before Tim finally said, “Bill’s probably wondering where we are.”
“Let him,” Kayla said, then gasped. “Dude!”
Tim looked at her. “What?” He wasn’t sure he liked the gleam in her eye.
“What if we just left?”
“Pfft.” He laughed. “You crazy, lady.”
“No, I’m serious! What’s keeping us here?”
Tim’s eyebrows knitted together. “Abject poverty?”
“Nah, dude!” She swatted his arm as she hopped down in front of him. “For real, how long could you last if you just walked out, right here, right now?”
He did some quick calculations in his head. “Uh, about a month. Maybe longer, if I ate a lot of ramen-”
“Same! That’s plenty of time to find a new job! Hell, we could get paid twice what we are now at any company that was actually worth a damn!”
Tim was having a hard time keeping up with her train of thought. “I mean, I guess? But-”
“Then let’s do it!” A wide grin split her face. “Oh my god, Tim, let’s blow this joint!”
Time seemed to stand still. Tim looked over the last few years of his life - a steady forty hours a week bought a lot of goodwill, compared to his previous jobs. But can I honestly say that I have a future here? Do I actually want to work graveyard tech support for the unwashed hordes, and screw over countless clients in the process?
Have I ever been happy with this lot in life?
Tim locked eyes with Kayla, and in the warmth of her enthusiasm, the last vestiges of pragmatism melted away. A slow smile crept across his face as he nodded. “Okay. Let’s bail.”
She hopped up and down with a cheer, then threw her arms around him in a tight hug. He returned her embrace, and they stood grinning awkwardly at each other. At length, Tim took a step back and said, “We should probably leave before anyone else comes looking for us.”
Kayla seemed to deflate a bit at this. “Yeah, I guess so.”
He scuffed a shoe against the cement, then took a deep breath. “Well, Kayla, I guess this is-”
Kayla darted forward and pulled Tim down into a passionate kiss. He could taste the menthol on her lips, on her tongue, and once again, time stood still. Half an eternity later, Kayla let him go.
Tim said the first thing that came into his head. “Buh?”
Kayla stared at him. “I’ve been wanting to do that for a while now. If this is the end, I didn’t want to miss my last shot.”
Tim blinked at her. “Uh… I don’t…” Tim stumbled over his words as Kayla’s eyes widened. He tried again. “I don’t want this to be the end.”
A wide grin split Kayla’s face once more. “Neither do I.”
Tim looked around, then up at the moon, as though it could tell him what the next thing to say should be. “Um… You wanna grab something to eat?”
They collapsed to the mattress once again, panting, sweaty, exhausted, exultant. A pair of paper sacks contained long-forgotten fast food, abandoned on the table near the front door of Kayla's studio apartment.
They lay there for a moment, basking in the afterglow. Tim struggled for coherent thought, let alone coherent words. “Hah… hah guh… I just gotta catch… hah…” He shifted his arms for maximum distance from the rest of him, for maximum exposure to the stifling air of Kayla’s apartment. He coughed. “We… we should probably quit smoking.”
Kayla was similarly trying to catch her breath. “Hah… yeah, ha… Not as young… as I used to be…”
After their breathing steadied somewhat, Kayla sat up and fished a cigarette from the pack on her end table. “Before we do though, you ever smoked after sex?”
Tim just shook his head no.
“Aw man. Then this is the perfect note to go out on - I promise you, it’ll never be this good again.” She stood to open the window above her bed, and Tim froze, lost in the sight of her.
He snapped back to reality as the chill, cleansing breeze from the window struck him. He reached over to his own pack, and drew his final American Spirit into his mouth. Kayla handed him her spare lighter, and they sat together below the window, blowing their smoke up and out into the night.
Kayla tipped her ash into a saucer on the window sill. “So what’d you wanna be, growing up?”
Tim laughed. “What, now that we’re unemployed, we just need to follow our dreams?”
“For sure, dude! Why the hell not?”
Tim waved his cigarette hand, a trail of smoke wafting in its wake. “Because it’s not that simple!”
Kayla gave him a smack. “It is! It is that simple! We hated our jobs, so we quit! We wanted to bang, so we banged! We want to quit smoking, so we’re gonna quit smoking!” She picked up her Parliaments and crushed the pack in her hand, then tossed it against the wall. She turned back to look at him, a fire in her eyes and a manic grin on her face. “We want to change our lives, so let’s change our lives!”
Tim chuckled, helpless in the face of her zeal, and shook his head. “I guess… when I was younger, I thought it would be neat to be a bartender.”
“Ha! That’s it? Dude, this is a college town! Do you have any idea how many bars there are downtown?”
Tim smirked at her. “Alright then, what about you? What dreams did you let fall by the wayside?”
Kayla sobered a bit. “I…” She paused. “I wanted to be on the radio.”
Tim sat patiently, waiting for her to continue. When she didn’t, Tim gestured with his cigarette and said, “So, be on the radio.”
She laughed. “Right, cuz that’s as easy as picking up a bartending gig.”
He tipped his own ashes into the saucer. “Well, yeah, actually.”
Kayla frowned at him. “It’s really not. I don’t have any sort of degree, let alone one in broadcasting or whatever they’d need.”
Tim shook his head. “You don’t need one. I had a cousin who spent the summer after high school working for his local radio station - he just waltzed in the front door, said he wanted to work there. When they said they didn’t have any positions open, he said he’d be willing to work for free. They hired him on the spot.” Tim took one last drag, then put out his butt on the saucer. “By the end of the summer, he was cutting promos, writing ad copy, editing songs to be radio friendly, the works. Probably would have let him on the air, had he stuck around longer.”
Kayla stared at him. “So it’s just that simple, huh?”
Tim grinned as he nodded. “Yeah. You might need to snag a second job for a while, but yeah.”
Kayla nodded in kind, then got up on her knees to look up at the moon. She took a long drag, then mashed the remains of her final cigarette into the saucer.
He stared at her as she gazed out her window, at the interplay of light and shadow as both caressed her body; tracing her delicate curves, casting her muscles into sharp contrast, texturing the gooseprickles that stippled her flesh in the chill breeze from the window.
She caught him staring, and smiled. “What?”
Tim shook his head, his brain simmering in a soup of nicotine and endorphins. “It’s just… It’s like I’m seeing you for the first time.”
“Ha, yeah, I can see that.” She shrugged. “People see what they expect to see.”
“I didn’t expect to see you.”
She laughed as she gestured at herself. “Well then, out with it, what do you think?”
He grinned the dopiest grin a doped-up dope ever grinned. “I think I’m ready for round three.”
She laughed again as she tackled him off the side of the bed, and they fell to the floor in a heap, a giggling tangle of limbs and bedsheets.
“Hey, hey, it’s DJ K-to-the-A-Y, and lemme tell you, listeners, I’ve got my hands on something that will make you extra K-Y jelly. Believe me, honies, this spicy-sexy-sweet album is piping into my ears and my veins as we speak and I’m having trouble holding myself together! Mm-mmm!
“But momma doesn’t want your jealousy, she only wants your love! And because I love you all so dearly, you’re gonna be the first to hear this luscious loveliness: Aleph Null’s new album, ‘March of the Slor’! That’s right, our heroes of metal are fresh from the studio and preparing to take our humble city by storm once again. So don’t change that dial, my lovely ducklings. Here it is, the first of their many new hits, ‘Bloody Samurai’!”
Tim smiled at the radio as he applied another small dollop of wax to his mustache - it was wild, untrammeled, and needed to be reined in with goo in order to be even vaguely work-appropriate. He didn’t mind the effort, though; the process served to remind him just how far he’d come. He ran his thumb along his wedding band as he listened to Kayla’s voice, a welcome change of pace from the Victrola fodder piping through the speakers out front.
The door to the bathroom burst open as Tim’s boss, Jacob, skidded to a stop, a pair of brass goggles bracing the base of his rather impressive fauxhawk. “Yo, there’s an ocean of customers out there, mah man, and the tide is comin’ in. I need you at the bar, double-quick-time.”
“I’m on it, cap’n,” Tim replied as he finished tweaking his ‘stache, then adjusted his top hat to sit at a slightly more jaunty angle. He snapped his fingers at his reflection with a wink.
Satisfied and self-assured, he blew a kiss to the radio before striding out the door.
You know, this story really made my day a little better.
Thank you, Author, and if you're Lucky Dreams… I guess we have about the same sort of thoughts on stories, because this is exactly what I want to be able to read and write.
Anyways, yeah. I really liked this one. You went in with a good hook, and you carried through in a satisfying manner. Your characters are distinct, and your descriptions bring everything into focus nicely. The bit with the woman on the phone was especially well written.
If I had one problem with this story, it's that it feels just a little pat… and I'm not really sure that I know how to make it better. It just seemed to… sum up pretty quickly and easily? I guess the 'climax' of the story falls on them deciding to walk away. And that's… well, that's a pretty good decision, and you sold the problems with it fairly well. It’s not easy to give up secure misery for the chance of a better life, but that gamble can pay off well.
And for these characters, it did. it all fell together very neatly… a bit too neatly. Follow your heart! BAM! Everything's perfect! And, well… that's a pleasant story, and I enjoyed it, but it's also a little on the optimistic side. I feel that a touch more adversity, or even a touch of something that didn't quite go perfectly - maybe one of them couldn't just give up smoking? - would have lent the second half the story a touch more authenticity?
I dunno. I liked this a lot, and enjoyed it even more. It's not quite perfect, though, because in reality, a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step - and not all of them are as self-dependent as the willingness to put your foot on the road. 'Follow your heart' might be nice advice, but 'follow your heart even with it's not easy' - being able to impart that to someone is much, much more difficult.
Thank you, Author, and if you're Lucky Dreams… I guess we have about the same sort of thoughts on stories, because this is exactly what I want to be able to read and write.
Anyways, yeah. I really liked this one. You went in with a good hook, and you carried through in a satisfying manner. Your characters are distinct, and your descriptions bring everything into focus nicely. The bit with the woman on the phone was especially well written.
If I had one problem with this story, it's that it feels just a little pat… and I'm not really sure that I know how to make it better. It just seemed to… sum up pretty quickly and easily? I guess the 'climax' of the story falls on them deciding to walk away. And that's… well, that's a pretty good decision, and you sold the problems with it fairly well. It’s not easy to give up secure misery for the chance of a better life, but that gamble can pay off well.
And for these characters, it did. it all fell together very neatly… a bit too neatly. Follow your heart! BAM! Everything's perfect! And, well… that's a pleasant story, and I enjoyed it, but it's also a little on the optimistic side. I feel that a touch more adversity, or even a touch of something that didn't quite go perfectly - maybe one of them couldn't just give up smoking? - would have lent the second half the story a touch more authenticity?
I dunno. I liked this a lot, and enjoyed it even more. It's not quite perfect, though, because in reality, a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step - and not all of them are as self-dependent as the willingness to put your foot on the road. 'Follow your heart' might be nice advice, but 'follow your heart even with it's not easy' - being able to impart that to someone is much, much more difficult.
Gonna agree with >>Not_A_Hat:
In pretty much every respect. I always like a story where nice characters come out happily in the end, but I always love a story where those nice characters have to push their way through nearly overwhelming oddities to get to that happy ending. Right now, you've got a terrific beginning and a terrific ending, but the middle is kind of skipped. Take another 3,000 or 4,000 words to introduce some complications and add some more tension. Show us Tim and Kayla dealing with their problems, learning about each other, and making the world a better place around themselves as they do so. Let us follow them as they earn that happy ending, and it'll be all the sweeter to read about.
A lovely story!
Mike
In pretty much every respect. I always like a story where nice characters come out happily in the end, but I always love a story where those nice characters have to push their way through nearly overwhelming oddities to get to that happy ending. Right now, you've got a terrific beginning and a terrific ending, but the middle is kind of skipped. Take another 3,000 or 4,000 words to introduce some complications and add some more tension. Show us Tim and Kayla dealing with their problems, learning about each other, and making the world a better place around themselves as they do so. Let us follow them as they earn that happy ending, and it'll be all the sweeter to read about.
A lovely story!
Mike
Just do It
Well, the first line has my attention! That’s a good start.
I managed to read through the entire thing without feeling the need to write something down. So at the very least nothing stuck out as problematic.
But when I reach the end, I’m left with… well, I’m not sure what. A character had a problem, a character made a choice, and then everything worked out for the best. I’m happy for Tim and Kayla, I guess, but I’m not sure I learned anything. They didn’t struggle at any point, it seems, except to the extent that they struggled to break out of their old, tired lives.
In both stories and real life, following your dreams is difficult. In stories it is difficult because, if it isn’t, it’s not a very meaningful story; in real life it’s hard to follow your dreams because, unfortunately, being an astronaut is tough, and if your dream is something simple like bartending or DJing, you have to compete with everyone else who’s willing to do a shit job for dollars on the hour.
In other words, there’s a struggle involved. But in this story, true to it’s title, there is no struggle. Here's my summary of how the climactic conversation in this story went:
Tim: I want to follow my dream of being a bartender, but it's hard.
Kayla: No, it's actually easy! But my dream of being a DJ is hard.
Tim: No, it's actually easy!
Both: Yay!
They had had a problem they were ready to face head on, and... well, then the problem went away. They just did it, as the title said, and voila, happily ever after. And for that reason it feels lacking to me. I guess, unlike Mr. A Hat and BB, I'm not as impressed with the happy ending or the smiles – I can get those any day in the children's section of the bookstore.
(Edit: I realized how terrible that last line sounds. From the books.)
Well, the first line has my attention! That’s a good start.
I managed to read through the entire thing without feeling the need to write something down. So at the very least nothing stuck out as problematic.
But when I reach the end, I’m left with… well, I’m not sure what. A character had a problem, a character made a choice, and then everything worked out for the best. I’m happy for Tim and Kayla, I guess, but I’m not sure I learned anything. They didn’t struggle at any point, it seems, except to the extent that they struggled to break out of their old, tired lives.
In both stories and real life, following your dreams is difficult. In stories it is difficult because, if it isn’t, it’s not a very meaningful story; in real life it’s hard to follow your dreams because, unfortunately, being an astronaut is tough, and if your dream is something simple like bartending or DJing, you have to compete with everyone else who’s willing to do a shit job for dollars on the hour.
In other words, there’s a struggle involved. But in this story, true to it’s title, there is no struggle. Here's my summary of how the climactic conversation in this story went:
Tim: I want to follow my dream of being a bartender, but it's hard.
Kayla: No, it's actually easy! But my dream of being a DJ is hard.
Tim: No, it's actually easy!
Both: Yay!
They had had a problem they were ready to face head on, and... well, then the problem went away. They just did it, as the title said, and voila, happily ever after. And for that reason it feels lacking to me. I guess, unlike Mr. A Hat and BB, I'm not as impressed with the happy ending or the smiles – I can get those any day in the children's section of the bookstore.
(Edit: I realized how terrible that last line sounds. From the books.)
>>Cold in Gardez
Or from the daily Hollywood blockbuster.
I'm not as impressed with the happy ending or the smiles – I can get those any day in the children's section of the bookstore
Or from the daily Hollywood blockbuster.
Well... I honestly can't say that I enjoyed this story. I don't think it's a bad story at all: it's well-written in the sense that it's competent and was able to get its ideas across. However, the style of it was far too glib and often too melodramatic for me to be able to take it seriously. That, combined with the abrupt transition to a simple, fairytale ending closed the door on it for me.
If I were to offer any advice, it would be what others have already told you: flesh out the story more, give the reader something real to latch onto. As it is – and I'm being absolutely literal here, no offense intended at all – this story read to me like a normal bad day, followed by the realization that your dreams were immediately obtainable by walking through that door to another world you just found in your closet. I can't really feel any of the happiness for the characters that you were probably striving for because it felt unearned, so in the end they really didn't mean anything to me.
If I were to offer any advice, it would be what others have already told you: flesh out the story more, give the reader something real to latch onto. As it is – and I'm being absolutely literal here, no offense intended at all – this story read to me like a normal bad day, followed by the realization that your dreams were immediately obtainable by walking through that door to another world you just found in your closet. I can't really feel any of the happiness for the characters that you were probably striving for because it felt unearned, so in the end they really didn't mean anything to me.
Just Do It
In this feel-good tale sharing the title of a Nike advertising slogan, Tim the stereotypical millennial learns to stand up to the corporate world and deal with the guilt of having to listen to a poverty-stricken widow by abandoning his job in the middle of his shift and fucking his co-worker.
You may have noticed I didn't like this.
It feels almost as though everything in this story is engineered to rub me up the wrong way: It's shallow, melodramatic, cloyingly sentimental, and filled with a continuous, grating snark, both in the narration and the voices of both characters.
Perhaps I shouldn't penalise it on those grounds. Some people like schmaltz, after all.
But there are two things I can't forgive. First, for a character piece, it has close to no characterisation. Tim and Kayla are essentially identical boxes of watered-down aspiration and sarcasm. Second, for a message piece, its message is not only unrealistic but self-indulgent.
Judging on those criteria, it won't go to the bottom of my slate even though it was the story I liked the least. But neither will it get a good ranking.
In this feel-good tale sharing the title of a Nike advertising slogan, Tim the stereotypical millennial learns to stand up to the corporate world and deal with the guilt of having to listen to a poverty-stricken widow by abandoning his job in the middle of his shift and fucking his co-worker.
You may have noticed I didn't like this.
It feels almost as though everything in this story is engineered to rub me up the wrong way: It's shallow, melodramatic, cloyingly sentimental, and filled with a continuous, grating snark, both in the narration and the voices of both characters.
Perhaps I shouldn't penalise it on those grounds. Some people like schmaltz, after all.
But there are two things I can't forgive. First, for a character piece, it has close to no characterisation. Tim and Kayla are essentially identical boxes of watered-down aspiration and sarcasm. Second, for a message piece, its message is not only unrealistic but self-indulgent.
Judging on those criteria, it won't go to the bottom of my slate even though it was the story I liked the least. But neither will it get a good ranking.
I'm using horizon's HORSE rating system, which you can learn more about here.
6 – Just Do It
Cliched opening line—but frankly, I laughed. I think that's a good start.
Okay, I'm going to let myself be nitpicky in the next couple paragraphs, then I'm moving on. First up, does anyone say "merry hob"? It sounds very weird to me. It's better than "merry hell" here, since you're already overusing hell in this stretch—but maybe that's a sign you should be avoiding constructions that ought to use the word, not just the word itself.
Another small thing tossing me out early:
Okay, I... uhh... this is sort of a weird experience. Author, you've managed to completely throw me out of the story with Tim's reaction to basic human civility. I think you did some nice work setting up how awful his job could be, but the fact that he's shocked to the point of stupefication when someone doesn't yell at him... Well, for one it makes me feel bad for Seligman's dogs. For another, I just plain don't believe it. Maybe the world is a considerably shittier place than I give it credit for, but given that I am the polite person on the phone in situations like this, and none of the customer service people I've talked to have ever seemed overwhelmed by my being a civil human being, this just feels completely unbelievable to me. I like that you're trying to make Tim an active character by giving him strong reactions, but you have to give him real, human reactions or he'll just become some sort of crazy alien caricature.
I'm enjoying the scene between Tim and Kayla much more. There's a really good balance of description in here for my taste, most of it really working with the tone of the story—cold and isolaton is pretty much perfect here. The dialogue occasionally dips into cliches and pop-culture phrases that momentarily throw me out of the story; I'd rather that didn't happen, but I find it at least sort of forgivable given the quality of the scene as a whole.
Let me revise that. I like the Tim and Kayla scene until they quit their jobs and go romantic. There's some obvious chemistry between then—enough that it bothers me when Tim is completely oblivious to it. And then they're talking about quitting their jobs as a pair, but they don't even seem to be close friends and Tim plans and expects to never see her again? There's a real disconnect between the intimacy displayed and the intimacy Tim seems to assume they have.
Aleph Null is a great band name. I'll bet you can really count on them to produce the hits.
Final thoughts: I like the execution on most of this, barring a few spots I'd want to see ironed out. My biggest problem is that Tim has a couple bouts of being some kind of crazy animatronic robot instead of a real live boy. Also, I don't know that I ever really buy the soul-crushingness of the original job. I do in the abstract because fuck customer service jobs—but that's a thing I'm bringing to the story as a reader, not a thing I feel like you've really established well. There's too much emotional manipulation running around in that first section: screaming, swearing customers; a penniless widow who tries to be very polite. It's manipulative far more than it's convincing. All that said, though, I still enjoyed by far the greater part of this story.
HORSE: ▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉
TIER: Almost There
6 – Just Do It
Cliched opening line—but frankly, I laughed. I think that's a good start.
Okay, I'm going to let myself be nitpicky in the next couple paragraphs, then I'm moving on. First up, does anyone say "merry hob"? It sounds very weird to me. It's better than "merry hell" here, since you're already overusing hell in this stretch—but maybe that's a sign you should be avoiding constructions that ought to use the word, not just the word itself.
Another small thing tossing me out early:
As usual, a cavalcade of mouth-breathers flooded the chat client with every plane that finally made it off the ground, demanding free wifi service for the inconvenience of not being allowed to risk plummeting to their deaths from thirty-five thousand feet.I'm actually a bit of a fan of "mouth-breathers" here, because I think it's working to elaborate characterization you're already establishing in the story's first line. The circuitousness of this sentence and that really awful construction in the back half of it, though, just make this sentence a nightmare. "For the inconvenience of not being allowed to risk"? I'm going to carefully keep my hands in my lap right now, so that I can avoid punching things. I will, however, calmly point out that you've got two more prepositional phrases directly following those two, in addition to the three you've crammed into the sentence before this point. Calmly. I will point it out calmly.
Okay, I... uhh... this is sort of a weird experience. Author, you've managed to completely throw me out of the story with Tim's reaction to basic human civility. I think you did some nice work setting up how awful his job could be, but the fact that he's shocked to the point of stupefication when someone doesn't yell at him... Well, for one it makes me feel bad for Seligman's dogs. For another, I just plain don't believe it. Maybe the world is a considerably shittier place than I give it credit for, but given that I am the polite person on the phone in situations like this, and none of the customer service people I've talked to have ever seemed overwhelmed by my being a civil human being, this just feels completely unbelievable to me. I like that you're trying to make Tim an active character by giving him strong reactions, but you have to give him real, human reactions or he'll just become some sort of crazy alien caricature.
I'm enjoying the scene between Tim and Kayla much more. There's a really good balance of description in here for my taste, most of it really working with the tone of the story—cold and isolaton is pretty much perfect here. The dialogue occasionally dips into cliches and pop-culture phrases that momentarily throw me out of the story; I'd rather that didn't happen, but I find it at least sort of forgivable given the quality of the scene as a whole.
Let me revise that. I like the Tim and Kayla scene until they quit their jobs and go romantic. There's some obvious chemistry between then—enough that it bothers me when Tim is completely oblivious to it. And then they're talking about quitting their jobs as a pair, but they don't even seem to be close friends and Tim plans and expects to never see her again? There's a real disconnect between the intimacy displayed and the intimacy Tim seems to assume they have.
Aleph Null is a great band name. I'll bet you can really count on them to produce the hits.
Final thoughts: I like the execution on most of this, barring a few spots I'd want to see ironed out. My biggest problem is that Tim has a couple bouts of being some kind of crazy animatronic robot instead of a real live boy. Also, I don't know that I ever really buy the soul-crushingness of the original job. I do in the abstract because fuck customer service jobs—but that's a thing I'm bringing to the story as a reader, not a thing I feel like you've really established well. There's too much emotional manipulation running around in that first section: screaming, swearing customers; a penniless widow who tries to be very polite. It's manipulative far more than it's convincing. All that said, though, I still enjoyed by far the greater part of this story.
HORSE: ▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉
TIER: Almost There
On second thought, after listening to smart people—like... well... >>Not_A_Hat, >>Baal Bunny, >>Cold in Gardez, >>Southpaw, and >>Scramblers and Shadows—it seems I've kind of overlooked the fact that the only serious conflict in this story is very manufactured and artificial.
It's still going to place decently on my ballot, I think, just based on me enjoying most of the writing. But I can't help thinking these guys have a pretty important point. (And feeling like I need to be a better reader, that I had such an easy time missing it when I read the story myself. I really need to get back into my writing game...)
It's still going to place decently on my ballot, I think, just based on me enjoying most of the writing. But I can't help thinking these guys have a pretty important point. (And feeling like I need to be a better reader, that I had such an easy time missing it when I read the story myself. I really need to get back into my writing game...)
Shia Labeouf. Nike. I can dig it! While many would place these memes on this one story, I for one loved what it was all about. A simple concept of turning your life around while remaining realistic. Coupled with the inner struggle of life and morals. The world is a cruel cruel place. And we always see the bad. I for one actually loved seeing something, as rare as it is, come together in true harmony. Now enough with the intro, let’s get on to the review without spoiling it here, yes?
NEGATIVES
-Plotline
Hee hee, PLOT! Ahem! Excuse me. While I may laugh at this little joke all too often, this story reminds us that we ourselves have to aim for our own happiness. Realistically we can only do so much in our own lives. Therefore it’s reasonable to state that a prosperous life means “sacrifice”. This is portrayed in the first scene where Tim has to face certain struggles in his job. From being the frontline man for a company that is only seeking to grow it’s income. While it is natural for a business only wishing to succeed in it’s own avenue, we find ourselves taking the perspective of a man who is tired of the latter and wants something simpler. Now why is this a negative? Because it could have been explored more. What we read is a small example of what Tim has been experiencing for years on end. What we don’t see, is what made him stay in the first place. That Kayla never seems to be there until the right moment. When it’s pointed out that she’s been there long since he’s been working for this airline wifi company. This aspect could have been explored more to where it would hit readers harder upon their own reading. Instead of coming to a halt between Tim and Kayla’s relationship. Develop more of a backdrop for Tim and Kayla. Show that it was a growing need to leave this job. Truthfully though it did look highly irresponsible to up and go, granted we must give the author his due in what he intended it to look like.
-Transitioning
This story was lacking much of it. We do not see much of Kayla’s thoughts, nor does Tim’s motives come out clearly. Everything is set in mystery as the author tries to dabble in both these characters at the same time. This is tricky to do and can actually turn off some readers. By not focusing on one thing at a time, the story does this sort of ping pong ball resonance that leaves the audience trying to keep their eyes glues to the real focus of the story. It was either on Tim’s side or Kayla’s side. I know I had to rethink every time Kayla reacted or Tim reacted to something. A bit of transitioning from Tim’s view in the first scene to Kayla’s in the bedroom scene would have done wonders to bring your story to life. Not only would it mix things up(LOL BEDROOM JOKE!) it would provide a nice light onto your characters making them more relatable. Other than that you did good on switching up scenes and showing the progression of the story. Though you could have made it even more exciting (OMG! I’m a dirty one!).
-Word Usage
Dear lord. What is half of the things you’re using in here? The phrases go out of control, as I swear the author here is using what sounds and reads like English slang found in Britain. Then there’s the strange use of wording for a couple of things that I had noticed. Such as the wording of “dope” used several times in a sentence. Or how a saucer was used as an ashtray, Is that what British call ashtrays nowadays? What’s a merry hob? Keep in mind your audience author and we will forever be grateful. I sense that you placed effort into changing your sentences quite a bit to make them interesting. Thus the use of phrases and the like of different terminologies used in an effort to keep your reader captivated. I appreciate it, but it sometimes get confusing. It’s alright to use the same wordings twice or a third time. After that we’ll want to see something different for an effect change. What makes reading not only fun in imagining things it’s learning new words and how to use them. Hopefully that’s not just for me right?! Right?! I read to learn thingies too! Either way it’s part of the entertainment, but you shouldn’t have to kill over trying to get a plethora of different words. It’ll come in time.
POSITIVES
-Villain
This took me some time to think. As this is a story where you need to sit down after the ending and think about your own morals and choices in life. To a philosophical sense. The way our minds struggle internally within itself is almost a shame. Though highly unnoticed. This story highlights this point of our mental views. Showing that the real villain in this story was not the job, but was Tim and Kayla themselves. They chose to keep their job all for monetary insurance and social stability. They at first chose this adult way of life and made the sacrifice to their dreams and wishes. Pushing aside their own desires and making their own hurtful environment. Than suddenly choosing happiness over everything else. That when you have enough money, a nice house, and a good job, that if you’re still unhappy. Its because only you choose to do so. The writer even hints at it giving Kayla and Tim very unhealthy habits such as smoking and skipping out on work to show that they want to be happy, but hold themselves back giving them these excuses to continue on with life. In the end it took each other to make them happy. Which there’s nothing wrong at all with it. In fact that’s what is mostly encouraged through your lifetime partner. Notice how I didn’t say wife or husband. It’s because it doesn’t take marriage or some type of graduation to go out and just be happy. It took Tim becoming Kayla’s Prince and Kayla becoming Tim’s Princess to bring out the best out of each other. This type of support is so hard to come by, but it does happen. Let’s not take it out of context that they’re living a dream. Hell no! If I was living my dream I’d be rich beyond my wildest dreams with a ton of bestselling books under my belt. No! Kayla and Tim had realistic manageable goals. And they achieved them through time.
-Relativity
Maybe this is on me, but I have got to say this is highly relatable. I have seen a lot of people go through what Kayla and Tim experience at another level. Two people who only want what’s best for others and have no devious or malicious intent in their lives. Go down on their luck due to circumstances with their job. They found their previous position in such bad terms that they quit and are much happier now in their lives once they left. From what I’m getting from Tim and Kayla is that a job will always suck, but shouldn’t be so depressing that it forces you to smoke. Isolate yourself talking to angry people all the time for pointless things, only to speak the same excuses. So depressed that you endlessly drone out on every passing day. Which is hinted at Tim and Kayla mentioning how long they’ve worked the job but never really saw each other. Jobs suck, but life shouldn’t. Even the romance where everything is lovey dovey and you can just cuddle up with your man, or wo-man, and forget about the day. To me everyone deserves this. Hell, this group writes and reviews stories for the same reason. To get away from life and continue on living. They found it in one another. Which makes this sweet and reminds me of my own relationships. Of my first kiss, my first time, and even just simple gazes of blurry partners up close. Far sighted is weird like that! Through goals, experiences, problems, and relationships. This story hides more lessons in it's words than most.
Overall I had a real connection with this story. It sums up my career to a tee. And reminded me why I’m much happier. The author did an amazing job on the smoking semantics (I smoke too so I could really see and imagine the smoke wisp away into the breeze.) and the more sensual pieces. As innocent as they were, it made me think about those first times. Strange but sweet. Even the job. I hated my life a couple years ago and now I’m so much better without it. Getting paid more doing what I intended to do in the first place in peace and now have time for a hobby. Btw hint hint at my previous job as a government lackey under the USMC. Now that job is bad. I digress. Besides all that smucka telly stuff! This story did well to carry me through it. It hints at the thought of becoming something more just for the personal benefit of waking up with a smile in the mirror. It teaches others not to fear the obstacles in the way, but to find a way to just go out and be what you wanna be. This story reminded me so much of CMC. Trying to get to goal that they just couldn’t seem to get at until they realized it together.
NEGATIVES
-Plotline
Hee hee, PLOT! Ahem! Excuse me. While I may laugh at this little joke all too often, this story reminds us that we ourselves have to aim for our own happiness. Realistically we can only do so much in our own lives. Therefore it’s reasonable to state that a prosperous life means “sacrifice”. This is portrayed in the first scene where Tim has to face certain struggles in his job. From being the frontline man for a company that is only seeking to grow it’s income. While it is natural for a business only wishing to succeed in it’s own avenue, we find ourselves taking the perspective of a man who is tired of the latter and wants something simpler. Now why is this a negative? Because it could have been explored more. What we read is a small example of what Tim has been experiencing for years on end. What we don’t see, is what made him stay in the first place. That Kayla never seems to be there until the right moment. When it’s pointed out that she’s been there long since he’s been working for this airline wifi company. This aspect could have been explored more to where it would hit readers harder upon their own reading. Instead of coming to a halt between Tim and Kayla’s relationship. Develop more of a backdrop for Tim and Kayla. Show that it was a growing need to leave this job. Truthfully though it did look highly irresponsible to up and go, granted we must give the author his due in what he intended it to look like.
-Transitioning
This story was lacking much of it. We do not see much of Kayla’s thoughts, nor does Tim’s motives come out clearly. Everything is set in mystery as the author tries to dabble in both these characters at the same time. This is tricky to do and can actually turn off some readers. By not focusing on one thing at a time, the story does this sort of ping pong ball resonance that leaves the audience trying to keep their eyes glues to the real focus of the story. It was either on Tim’s side or Kayla’s side. I know I had to rethink every time Kayla reacted or Tim reacted to something. A bit of transitioning from Tim’s view in the first scene to Kayla’s in the bedroom scene would have done wonders to bring your story to life. Not only would it mix things up(LOL BEDROOM JOKE!) it would provide a nice light onto your characters making them more relatable. Other than that you did good on switching up scenes and showing the progression of the story. Though you could have made it even more exciting (OMG! I’m a dirty one!).
-Word Usage
Dear lord. What is half of the things you’re using in here? The phrases go out of control, as I swear the author here is using what sounds and reads like English slang found in Britain. Then there’s the strange use of wording for a couple of things that I had noticed. Such as the wording of “dope” used several times in a sentence. Or how a saucer was used as an ashtray, Is that what British call ashtrays nowadays? What’s a merry hob? Keep in mind your audience author and we will forever be grateful. I sense that you placed effort into changing your sentences quite a bit to make them interesting. Thus the use of phrases and the like of different terminologies used in an effort to keep your reader captivated. I appreciate it, but it sometimes get confusing. It’s alright to use the same wordings twice or a third time. After that we’ll want to see something different for an effect change. What makes reading not only fun in imagining things it’s learning new words and how to use them. Hopefully that’s not just for me right?! Right?! I read to learn thingies too! Either way it’s part of the entertainment, but you shouldn’t have to kill over trying to get a plethora of different words. It’ll come in time.
POSITIVES
-Villain
This took me some time to think. As this is a story where you need to sit down after the ending and think about your own morals and choices in life. To a philosophical sense. The way our minds struggle internally within itself is almost a shame. Though highly unnoticed. This story highlights this point of our mental views. Showing that the real villain in this story was not the job, but was Tim and Kayla themselves. They chose to keep their job all for monetary insurance and social stability. They at first chose this adult way of life and made the sacrifice to their dreams and wishes. Pushing aside their own desires and making their own hurtful environment. Than suddenly choosing happiness over everything else. That when you have enough money, a nice house, and a good job, that if you’re still unhappy. Its because only you choose to do so. The writer even hints at it giving Kayla and Tim very unhealthy habits such as smoking and skipping out on work to show that they want to be happy, but hold themselves back giving them these excuses to continue on with life. In the end it took each other to make them happy. Which there’s nothing wrong at all with it. In fact that’s what is mostly encouraged through your lifetime partner. Notice how I didn’t say wife or husband. It’s because it doesn’t take marriage or some type of graduation to go out and just be happy. It took Tim becoming Kayla’s Prince and Kayla becoming Tim’s Princess to bring out the best out of each other. This type of support is so hard to come by, but it does happen. Let’s not take it out of context that they’re living a dream. Hell no! If I was living my dream I’d be rich beyond my wildest dreams with a ton of bestselling books under my belt. No! Kayla and Tim had realistic manageable goals. And they achieved them through time.
-Relativity
Maybe this is on me, but I have got to say this is highly relatable. I have seen a lot of people go through what Kayla and Tim experience at another level. Two people who only want what’s best for others and have no devious or malicious intent in their lives. Go down on their luck due to circumstances with their job. They found their previous position in such bad terms that they quit and are much happier now in their lives once they left. From what I’m getting from Tim and Kayla is that a job will always suck, but shouldn’t be so depressing that it forces you to smoke. Isolate yourself talking to angry people all the time for pointless things, only to speak the same excuses. So depressed that you endlessly drone out on every passing day. Which is hinted at Tim and Kayla mentioning how long they’ve worked the job but never really saw each other. Jobs suck, but life shouldn’t. Even the romance where everything is lovey dovey and you can just cuddle up with your man, or wo-man, and forget about the day. To me everyone deserves this. Hell, this group writes and reviews stories for the same reason. To get away from life and continue on living. They found it in one another. Which makes this sweet and reminds me of my own relationships. Of my first kiss, my first time, and even just simple gazes of blurry partners up close. Far sighted is weird like that! Through goals, experiences, problems, and relationships. This story hides more lessons in it's words than most.
Overall I had a real connection with this story. It sums up my career to a tee. And reminded me why I’m much happier. The author did an amazing job on the smoking semantics (I smoke too so I could really see and imagine the smoke wisp away into the breeze.) and the more sensual pieces. As innocent as they were, it made me think about those first times. Strange but sweet. Even the job. I hated my life a couple years ago and now I’m so much better without it. Getting paid more doing what I intended to do in the first place in peace and now have time for a hobby. Btw hint hint at my previous job as a government lackey under the USMC. Now that job is bad. I digress. Besides all that smucka telly stuff! This story did well to carry me through it. It hints at the thought of becoming something more just for the personal benefit of waking up with a smile in the mirror. It teaches others not to fear the obstacles in the way, but to find a way to just go out and be what you wanna be. This story reminded me so much of CMC. Trying to get to goal that they just couldn’t seem to get at until they realized it together.
I loved, loved, loved the writing in this one! It was clean and crisp; it did a great job of conveying character and setting; Tim and Kayla’s dialogue was incredibly fun to read, and their chemistry was fantastic.
As for the actual story itself, I’m not sure I can say I enjoyed it so much. Which is a shame, because I really, really wanted to.
I mean, there’s no conflict. They decide to do something, and then it works out perfectly with no trouble at all. It makes the whole piece feel weightless, since without that sense of struggle and sacrifice, Tim and Kayla achieving their dreams doesn’t mean anything. It’s like… what have they learnt? That getting your dream job is as easy as just walking into a building and simply asking for it. There’s no possibility of failure, and everything will be wonderful forever and ever. The end.
Sorry, I don’t mean to sound so cynical, plus I appreciate the effect that I think you were going for – follow your passions, don’t let self-doubt get in the way. Those are great messages to have in a story! Yet you need something to ground them, or you run the risk of having readers react exactly the way that they’ve reacted by here. By accusing your work of being shallow and schmaltzy. And for the record, I like schmaltz – heck, my entire fanfiction career is practically built off it! But there’s a limit to how much you can get away with before it turns people off.
Your characters need to struggle for their goals. They need to face setbacks. The struggles don’t need to be big. The hardships don’t need to be huge. But they do need to be there.
I also had some issues with the depiction of Tim’s customer service role, though I hesitate to go too much into it since I’m having trouble deciding if my problems stem from the actual story itself, or from having worked behind a refund desk for the past four years. What I will say is that whilst this piece is one thousand percent successful in getting across the worst extremes of what it’s like to deal with the general public, at the same time, for me personally, it didn’t ring true that all his phone queries were bad to the point where ‘a humble request’ gives him pause for thought.
Now, obviously, I can only speak for myself in this regard (although Bradel’s comments makes me feel confident that my experiences aren’t unique). But I find that whilst awful customers are an unfortunate daily reality, most people are just… fine. Just fine. And whilst I also concede that possibly there are customer service roles which are as terrible as you’re making out here, that possibility alone doesn’t stop this story from feeling like it tries too hard to wring our sympathy for Tim. It makes the story feel too manipulative for its own good, and again, it can be a turn-off for some readers.
(Also I actually thought that Kayla made a good point about the widow but-I’m-just-a-horrible-awful-person-who’s-totes-going-to-hell-arrrggg -_-).
FINAL THOUGHTS: Problematic, but again, LOVED the actual writing itself. Despite my issues, this author is clearly very talented, and I would totally read more stuff by them.
As for the actual story itself, I’m not sure I can say I enjoyed it so much. Which is a shame, because I really, really wanted to.
I mean, there’s no conflict. They decide to do something, and then it works out perfectly with no trouble at all. It makes the whole piece feel weightless, since without that sense of struggle and sacrifice, Tim and Kayla achieving their dreams doesn’t mean anything. It’s like… what have they learnt? That getting your dream job is as easy as just walking into a building and simply asking for it. There’s no possibility of failure, and everything will be wonderful forever and ever. The end.
Sorry, I don’t mean to sound so cynical, plus I appreciate the effect that I think you were going for – follow your passions, don’t let self-doubt get in the way. Those are great messages to have in a story! Yet you need something to ground them, or you run the risk of having readers react exactly the way that they’ve reacted by here. By accusing your work of being shallow and schmaltzy. And for the record, I like schmaltz – heck, my entire fanfiction career is practically built off it! But there’s a limit to how much you can get away with before it turns people off.
Your characters need to struggle for their goals. They need to face setbacks. The struggles don’t need to be big. The hardships don’t need to be huge. But they do need to be there.
I also had some issues with the depiction of Tim’s customer service role, though I hesitate to go too much into it since I’m having trouble deciding if my problems stem from the actual story itself, or from having worked behind a refund desk for the past four years. What I will say is that whilst this piece is one thousand percent successful in getting across the worst extremes of what it’s like to deal with the general public, at the same time, for me personally, it didn’t ring true that all his phone queries were bad to the point where ‘a humble request’ gives him pause for thought.
Now, obviously, I can only speak for myself in this regard (although Bradel’s comments makes me feel confident that my experiences aren’t unique). But I find that whilst awful customers are an unfortunate daily reality, most people are just… fine. Just fine. And whilst I also concede that possibly there are customer service roles which are as terrible as you’re making out here, that possibility alone doesn’t stop this story from feeling like it tries too hard to wring our sympathy for Tim. It makes the story feel too manipulative for its own good, and again, it can be a turn-off for some readers.
(Also I actually thought that Kayla made a good point about the widow but-I’m-just-a-horrible-awful-person-who’s-totes-going-to-hell-arrrggg -_-).
FINAL THOUGHTS: Problematic, but again, LOVED the actual writing itself. Despite my issues, this author is clearly very talented, and I would totally read more stuff by them.
Kayla stared at him for a pair of heartbeats
This is a lovely line. Stealing it. #SorryNotSorry
“I just told you we basically stole three hundred dollars from a poor, grieving widow, and your first response was to blame her.”
Kayla’s eyes widened. “I…” Her gaze fell to the ground. “Jesus Christ.”
This realization feels hella fast to me. I can't imagine anyone having that sort of dramatic 'what monster have I become' revelation so quickly after it being pointed out—especially not a character as strong willed as Kayla. She's not just gonna let Tim accuse her of being a corporate drone without defending herself.
What's the point of them just leaving? Why don't they quit? It'd certainly look a lot better on a resume than just up and leaving, and if they're really looking to get hired within a month in this job market...
Of course, they're also kinda cold and crazy and stupid. So maybe it works. :P
Tim shook his head. “You don’t need one. I had a cousin who spent the summer after high school working for his local radio station - he just waltzed in the front door, said he wanted to work there. When they said they didn’t have any positions open, he said he’d be willing to work for free. They hired him on the spot.” Tim took one last drag, then put out his butt on the saucer. “By the end of the summer, he was cutting promos, writing ad copy, editing songs to be radio friendly, the works. Probably would have let him on the air, had he stuck around longer.”
As someone who works with radio: this ain't how radio works D:
The romance feels superfluous, like it's there just to be there. I don't see how them getting together adds anything to their relationship. It doesn't change their interactions, doesn't raise any stakes...
I definitely agree with everyone saying that this wraps itself up too nicely, too quickly.
Well-written, but trite, the story’s resolution trips it up badly. I actually thought that the overall idea behind this – the shape – was promising as he realizes just how fucked up his life is and decides to throw caution to the winds and try to win.
But they pretty much just win at the end, as pretty much everyone points out, and it undercuts anything it was building up to.
But they pretty much just win at the end, as pretty much everyone points out, and it undercuts anything it was building up to.
Just Do It - Retrospective
This round was a lesson in hubris.
I thought that I would have enough time to write two stories this time around; I had two decent ideas, and what felt like enough time to write them, even after sacrificing my Friday to work and D&D. The beginning and ending sections of Just Do It were the first things I wrote, and I was pretty pleased with where the story began and (perhaps erroneously) ended. Then, I had a series of ideas for the second story, so I switched to writing that one instead.
Cut to five hours left on the submission clock, and 3500 words into the second story I realized it was pretty terrible. I abandoned ship and wrote the middle section of Just Do It, then spent the remaining hour trying to polish everything to a mirror shine. I (clearly) didn't take the larger context of the story into consideration when I did so; I focused on stitching the endcaps I had together in the most efficient way possible, just to have something worth submitting. I was still making last-second edits during the five-minute grace window when submissions were closed.
That said, I really appreciate everybody who took a look at the story - the message is pretty universal that everything got wrapped up far too neatly and far too quickly. I have several ideas for how to go about improving the story through adding additional conflict, dialing down the rhetoric w/ regards to Tim's job a notch or two for relatability, and also tweaking the actions of Tim and Kayla so they're not quite so reprehensible as human beings (having suffered through walkouts in prior jobs myself, I'm kinda surprised I let that be how things played out - heat of the moment, I guess).
I'm glad that most of you liked the writing, at least. It seems like my writing skills are slowly improving, even if I'm making worse storytelling decisions. If nothing else, I brightened >>Not_A_Hat 's day, and that's something. ^_^
Oh, >>Dubs_Rewatcher - that story about the cousin who got a summer job at the radio station? That's actually what happened to me, the summer after I graduated high school, without exaggeration. Granted, for the first month they had me in the basement alphabetizing files and organizing promotional material, but once I'd proved I wasn't going to flake out, they actually started showing me the ropes of the business - the ins and outs of Cool Edit Pro, how to write ad copy, etc. At the end of the summer they tried to hire me on as a minimum wage part-timer, but I had already committed myself to attending college by that point. But you're right, it does come off as unrealistic - and looking back, most of what I did was unpaid grunt work that nobody else was really keen on doing. /shrug
I'm looking forward to the round when I can finally pull it all together.
Best of luck to all the finalists - I have to say, we have a really good crop of entries this time around. I've been really impressed!
This round was a lesson in hubris.
I thought that I would have enough time to write two stories this time around; I had two decent ideas, and what felt like enough time to write them, even after sacrificing my Friday to work and D&D. The beginning and ending sections of Just Do It were the first things I wrote, and I was pretty pleased with where the story began and (perhaps erroneously) ended. Then, I had a series of ideas for the second story, so I switched to writing that one instead.
Cut to five hours left on the submission clock, and 3500 words into the second story I realized it was pretty terrible. I abandoned ship and wrote the middle section of Just Do It, then spent the remaining hour trying to polish everything to a mirror shine. I (clearly) didn't take the larger context of the story into consideration when I did so; I focused on stitching the endcaps I had together in the most efficient way possible, just to have something worth submitting. I was still making last-second edits during the five-minute grace window when submissions were closed.
That said, I really appreciate everybody who took a look at the story - the message is pretty universal that everything got wrapped up far too neatly and far too quickly. I have several ideas for how to go about improving the story through adding additional conflict, dialing down the rhetoric w/ regards to Tim's job a notch or two for relatability, and also tweaking the actions of Tim and Kayla so they're not quite so reprehensible as human beings (having suffered through walkouts in prior jobs myself, I'm kinda surprised I let that be how things played out - heat of the moment, I guess).
I'm glad that most of you liked the writing, at least. It seems like my writing skills are slowly improving, even if I'm making worse storytelling decisions. If nothing else, I brightened >>Not_A_Hat 's day, and that's something. ^_^
Oh, >>Dubs_Rewatcher - that story about the cousin who got a summer job at the radio station? That's actually what happened to me, the summer after I graduated high school, without exaggeration. Granted, for the first month they had me in the basement alphabetizing files and organizing promotional material, but once I'd proved I wasn't going to flake out, they actually started showing me the ropes of the business - the ins and outs of Cool Edit Pro, how to write ad copy, etc. At the end of the summer they tried to hire me on as a minimum wage part-timer, but I had already committed myself to attending college by that point. But you're right, it does come off as unrealistic - and looking back, most of what I did was unpaid grunt work that nobody else was really keen on doing. /shrug
I'm looking forward to the round when I can finally pull it all together.
Best of luck to all the finalists - I have to say, we have a really good crop of entries this time around. I've been really impressed!