Chapter 1, partial

I guess I never even finished chapter 1 for this story.

“Life is pretty unsafe, we all know that.”

Those were some of the last words my dad ever said to me.

He was killed in a mining accident last year.

I miss him.

 

My name is Tamara Tamblyn. I’m five years old. I go to school at Presbyterian Elementary School. It is boring and I don’t like my teacher, mrs. Sourspittle.  She’s no fun. We always have to sit still and are not allowed talk at all. I think if it were up to her, we wouldn’t even play in school anymore. Sometimes I wonder what happened to her to make her this moody. When I asked my mom one day, she’d smiled one of her rare smiles and brushed my hair with her hand.

‘Some people are just like that, hon,’ she’d said, ‘they just want to have order and believe in discipline before all else. And believe you me, it’s vitally important to have discipline. A disciplined mind is aware of everything around it and reacts best to the increasing demands of everyday life.’ Then she’d sighed softly, the smile fading from her lips as her eyes glazed over and her mind had seemed to go some place a million miles away.

‘It wasn’t always like this, you know?’ she’d said after close to a minute of silence, ‘We used to have much easier lives. The sun would shine down on us as we took our children to school and then went to work. We used to look up and see the sky. I miss the sky.’

I realized my mom was back in the days before the Accident, when people were free to go where they pleased and didn’t need to live in semi-transparent domes for shelter from the storms outside. For me, life in the dome was all I knew and I was quite content, for the most part, but during talks like these, I could see on my mom’s face that we’d lost something and I wondered what it was. I knew for one thing life had been much safer back then. Nearly everyone I knew had lost someone outside the dome. Some people got swept away by a sudden hurricane, some surprised by flash floods and some, like my dad, perished in stupid accidents that happened in the outside world, where it seemed nature was hard at work trying to destroy everything.

Everyone knew going outside the dome meant risking your life. That’s why every able bodied resident of sixteen years old went through an extensive field training for outside work before they were permitted to join the work details that left the dome every day. Some people were loggers, others were miners, while others again were scrappers. We needed every single thing the ravaged world could provide us and of course we couldn’t find everything we needed inside the dome, which spanned barely over two kilometers in diameter. It was big enough for us to live and work in, even grow some crops, but I must admit it wasn’t huge. I’m just five years old, and I’ve already seen most of what’s inside the dome. The only places I haven’t been yet are the police station and the walled training compound, which takes up a large part of the northern sector of the dome. My mom said she’d take me to the police station one day when I was older. I guess she didn’t feel it to be proper for a girl my age to be in the presence of the worst people inside the dome. I suppose that makes sense.

The training compound... now that was another matter altogether. It was an endless source of speculation amongst all the minors in the dome. We regularly heard explosions and sirens coming from behind the walls, as well as shouting by instructors and the sounds of heavy machinery. From time to time, some kids would try to sneak up to the walls, which were over two and a half meters high, and try to find a spot where they could peep over the top. They were invariably caught by the guards patrolling the outside of the compound and their parents were always notified, which usually resulted in severe punishment and grounding. None of the adults were very eager to talk about it. They just told us to keep away from it because it was dangerous and that we weren’t allowed to go there until we were sixteen. At first I thought that was very unfair, because sixteen still seems like such a long time away, but these days I’m not so sure I even want to know what’s going on in there anymore. All the kids who just turned sixteen are always so excited to finally be allowed inside the training compound, their eyes big with wonder and anticipation. Then we don’t see them for a couple of months and when they are finally done with their training, they seem like different people, much more serious and not smiling as much as when they went in. I don’t know what happens in there, but whatever it is, it’s not funny.

Brian, a boy who lived down the street from us, turned sixteen about half a year ago. He’d always been a bit of a bully, pestering other kids and calling them names, stealing their lunches, that kind of thing... I’d always been a bit afraid of him, because even though he preferred to go for bigger game, a little squirt like me could get onto his radar if I looked at him the wrong way.

But then he went through the training. I saw him again a month ago or so and I have to say, in his case, the training did him some good. I shied away from him a bit when he walked by me in the street, afraid he’d call me a name or make fun of me. Normally, kids going out of his way was something Brian wouldn’t have bat an eye about, prior to the training. Now, however, he stopped, looked down at me and the expression on his face actually became close to apologetic.

‘Hey, kid,’ he said quietly, ‘your name is Tamara, right?’

I nodded dumbly, but still kept my distance. You never knew with Brian what he’d try to pull next.  There’d been times before when I’d trusted him and every time I did, he’d pulled a nasty prank on me, like push me into the bushes or pour his drink all over my shoes.

‘You don’t have to be afraid of me anymore, little one,’ he said as he kneeled down beside me to be at eye level with me. I still didn’t trust him one bit, so I still kept away.

He sighed and stood back up again.

‘I guess I have been a bit of a dick to you, haven’t I?’

I didn’t know what to say or do. I didn’t dare agree with him, but disagreeing with him had often also made him upset, so I just kinda stood there and nervously scraped the nose of my shoe on the ground, staring at the pavement. After a moment, Brian reached into his coat pocket and produced a Bounty chocolate bar. He quietly handed it to me and before I knew what had happened, he’d gently rubbed my head with the palm of his hand.

‘Take this,’ he said with a faint smile, ‘and be a kid. Life’s too short not to laugh when you can.’
For a second I’d considered if maybe Brian had hit his head during the training programme. What was going on?! Here was a boy who, a couple of months ago, would’ve just as soon spat on me as talk to me, and was now giving me rare candy from the outside world.

Brian must have caught my bewilderment, because he chuckled softly, before adding: ‘Trust me, kid, your childhood is over before you know it. Enjoy it while it lasts.’

With that, he’d walked away and I hadn’t seen him since.  Granted, boys are weird sometimes, but he was weirder than most.

 

 

 

Author's Note

Let me know if you'd like to read more.

Reviews

[Nusquam Esse]

My recommendation on this, is don't try to tell the full setting in the first chapter. Avoid telling too much, especially with inconsistent tense; and just try to pace yourself. It can be a challenging thing to learn, because when we have an idea we tend to rush putting it to paper. The setting seems good, not anything distinctly unique, but it is at least not cliche tripe and it has a lot of potential; I would be interested in more of the story--but again, don't try to describe the setting in the first half of a chapter, SHOW it over the course of many. As long as a writer has to form their own opinions of the world and what is happening, they will be much more likely to become personally attached.

I really do like the way that you end this though, it could use a bit of polishing, but it does at least standout like a gem. Good Job! Oh, and if you want more attention to your writing, I advise reading and reviewing other users on the site; the forum is dead, almost no one even reads it (or at least not the people who do the most reviewing). You are at a disadvantage, writing stories rather than poems; because WC, like most writing sites, is dominated with poets. But keep at it, and see if you can't see a few projects through to the end?

[Dystopian Reality]

Thank you for the feedback
Truth be told, I'm a poet as well, with over 250 poems to my name, but since everyone and their dog seems to fancy themselves a poet lately, I'm not particularly keen on putting many on here. I probably will though. ;)

oh and just FYI, this is not nearly the whole outline of the story yet. There's a lot more to be added, many different points of view and story elements, which will drastically change the general perception and context of the whole story. I have vivid, involving plotlines laid out for most stories I ever begin writing, but I have had the inclination to not show my work to many people before it was done... which, as a result, meant that not many people ever got to read my work in general. I hope that will change.

The other stories are longer ( ranging from a few chapters to almost an entire book), so if you have some time, please review those as well and tell me what you think.
Once my thumb is healed, I'll try to write more on this story... right now, typing hurts quite a bit, so commenting here and now is rather unpleasant. ;)

[fleamailman]

("...I'd like to read more..." went the goblin who didn't critic though)