Emergency Exit

When escape is the preferred choice...

Playing with Legos has always been my escape. To get through what bothers me, I build. Building a multicolored house for an inanimate family with plastic smiles is how I spent my time as a child, while the sound of breaking dishes and flying curses played in the background.

 

You break it. I build it. The world is such a gloomy place, so why add more negativity to it? People tell me that I live in my own bubble and that I should be careful. They are scared of what would happen to me if my bubble burst. They want me to stay in vigilance and stay grounded. I cannot simply comply to their words.

 

My father is someone to look up to. He comes from a small village, worked his way up the social ladder, got a degree in Finance and provided for his wife and his half a dozen of children. Most of all, he wants the best for his family. Whatever mother needed or wanted, he sacrificed to provide it. He’s the perfect silhouette of a gentleman.

 

My current project is to build a safe place for myself. Somewhere I can call home. Somewhere warm, cozy and steals my breath away. Somewhere where I can rest peacefully. Somewhere where I can build no more.

 

Mother, on the other hand, is the exact opposite. She is needy, greedy and is never satisfied with whatever Father attempts to make her happy with. Every small sacrifice is imperceptible to her.

 

It comes off as no surprise that I am an architect, a famous one whose image is smeared by the endless interviews and magazine covers that are twisted and edited to suit the purpose of the publication: to sell. I always think positively of what’s going to happen behind the closed door of the houses I design. This is why I’m very solicitous when I design. I take every detail into account for the family to live comfortably ecstatic.

 

Comfortably ecstatic is definitely not the way my family lived. Our house was on the beach of the Red Sea. I remember putting on my plimsolls everyday, unlike my neighbors and friends who wear sandals or go barefoot, and run along the beach. I hated the sea. The sound of waves hitting rocks felt like a replay of the constant sound of breaking vases. The low-pitched horns of ships are nothing apart from a reminiscent of my mother’s honed tone when she yells non-stop. But the beach, it was a completely different world for me.

 

My new home is black. I just find it comforting. It’s the selfish color that absorbs the color spectrum and doesn’t reflect any. It’s the color of silence, peace and conclusion.

 

Brick by boring brick is how I love to build. People love to demolish. Isn’t that why wars are all over the world? Isn’t it why random diseases just take over the world the way Bird flu and Swine flu did in the recent years? Isn’t it why the rate of divorce is continually increasing?

 

Mother demolished my family. Mother demolished me when she decided to quit being a mother, when she decided to leave me along with my five siblings to live without an influential maternal presence. The scene of her departure is a memory so vivid that I can act it out any day.

 

Lucky you, you won’t see me act it any time soon. Apart from the fact that Mother bailed on us, I dealt with it as I usually would. I built. This time around, I built myself an individuated little black box engraved with “A.A.E. 1978 - 2007 May His Soul Find A New Home”

Author's Note

I've always written poetry and this is my first attempt at short stories. Can I have proper feedback on what I can do to write better? and what are the strengths here? Be harsh when you criticize :D

Reviews

[quinfinn]

your syntax needs some polishing...i.e. "isn't that why wars are all over the world?" i would make it "isn't that why there are wars worldwide?" but i can find no flaw in your writing style or your use of the language, in fact you are quite decent. and the simple truth is, that you may write however you feel and as long as it is easily readable and keeps the reader interested and entertained....for the most part it is interpretive . every writer has their own style, find yours and shine. you have skills, simply hone them to an art form. i hope this review has been helpful to you.

[r]

Oh dear.

The ending, I mean. Eeeeek.

To be honest I don't know if you want me critiquing this because this isn't the type of writing style I normally would read and what I criticize may just be part of the style.

What I can tell you is that "Somewhere warm, cozy and steals my breath away." isn't exactly what I would call grammatically correct. If you changed it to "somewhere warm and cozy, that steals my breath away" or to "somewhere warm, cozy, that steals my breath away" then it would be. Also "Somewhere where I can build no more."? Seems a bit off. May I suggest "somewhere I no longer have to build" or something similar?

I really loved the lines "You break it. I build it."

And I also loved these three paragraphs, from this "It comes off as no surprise that I am an architect" to this "It’s the color of silence, peace and conclusion.". I think between those two points was my favourite part of the entire piece. I loved the way you described the ocean, for one.

And to be honest, the more I read over this, trying to find things to nitpick, the more I find I enjoy it. I love the rhythm, the story that's being told. It's one of those things that the more you read it, the better it gets. It sort of flows, I guess. It's a quiet story, a story told through a fog with little swirls of colour.

You have a lot of potential. Keep at it and you'll get better and better and better and better.

xoxo

[Veronica Chandler]

I should first explain that I am a "Top Rated Reviewer" because I consume writing as though it was food for my hungry soul. I am not trained in the classical sense, as I have no real formal education to speak of, but what I do have is the love of the written word. On that note, I will say that I enjoyed the premise of this short story tremendously. It is well constructed and I find that especially true, given that English is not your primary language. You seem to have quite a well polished ability to use the language as well as most native speakers I have read.
The line here..."I cannot simply comply to their words." might read better if it were, "I simply cannot comply with their words (or counsel)." One more helpful device would be to form sentences of more varied complexities by the use of the semi colon to separate two complete and related sentences. When you add complexity to the sentence structures you use, it makes for a bit more depth. Consider the following,
"My new home is black. I just find it comforting." Changed to be "My new home is black; "I simply find black more comforting." A varied sentence structure reads more easily therefore the work is not as choppy. Other than those minor issues you have the makings of a compelling and very interesting story. Keep up the writing; I find your work has depth and value for any reader.

[James Hanna-Magill]

Dear Amer

Thank you for saying hello.

I am delighted to review your first short story.

As to you as a person, I rarely read others reviews when I review a piece. Frankly I am disinterested in what others have to say. All I have to give is my own reaction.

But I always read profiles. And I see in you, as with many an eager young writer.

More, I love your quote from Einstein: "Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind."

I have a lot of time for Einstein when responding to life as a philosopher. He never believed in religion or science in isolation, but only as part of an integrated whole.

As regards the whole issue of use of speech, I would be interested to know what you consider your native language. Is it English?

It matters little, I shall take this as it comes.

A tiny bit, but only round the edges, your English falls out of line. But I consider it to be so minute as not worthy of further comment.

Style: I consider this less a story than a form of essay. But does it matter to me? No. You are trying to tell me something, writer to reader and I am listening intently. I find your prose eloquent.

Content and message: There is something outspoken here about your upbringing, your respect for your father and your disrespect for your mother. The human condition intrigues me. In others writing it can be the reverse. it only goes to prove that our experience of life is unique and that life is never a one way street.

Objective: Why are you writing this? With a view to a market? Maybe. Maybe not. Does it matter? In my view no. What I see you doing is writing for its own sake. Pen to paper for its own sake. There is little point in talking about your first publishable short story or novel, when you have just discovered that the world of words exists and you like playing with them.

Well if this is your way of playing with them as a first go, all due respect. A natural piece of writing which starts where it wishes to and ends where it ends.

Ending: Ah now!.

That is where you leave me in suspense as a reader. What is your little black box and what do the words mean?:

"Lucky you, you won’t see me act it any time soon. Apart from the fact that Mother bailed on us, I dealt with it as I usually would. I built. This time around, I built myself an individuated little black box engraved with “A.A.E. 1978 - 2007 May His Soul Find A New Home”"

Were this the start of a longer piece or the introduction to one, you have deliberately left the reader pondering. What does he mean? Is it metaphor? If so about what? Is it a concrete message? If so what?

The apparent reference to death concerns me a little. Are you talking about your life being over? No longer the builder but the destroyer?

What are you saying?

As a disinterested reader, I would find this a good hook into the rest of a piece.

But as a human being you worry me.

Are you OK?

Let me know.

My review such as it is.

Well written as a first story / essay / prose.

With my best wishes

James

[Trigorin]

You obviously know what you're doing with your word choice and diction, and your experience with poetry has paid off - you've used a great deal of very evocative imagery in this piece and I think it works really well with the topic. It depends on where you want to go with this piece, but this is the same caliber of work that is always getting into those 'Best SF and Fantasy of the Year' books, so don't think that this isn't marketable. My one suggestion would be to write more of it. The ending is a little abrupt, I think, and there's a lot of potential for expansion with this concept. Well done.