Before the phone rang

A horror flash fiction story

The phone rang. Katherine was in the kitchen. She was busy.
“Jeff, will you get it?” she cried.
The only answer she got was silence. The phone kept ringing.
“Damn! Jeff!” she tried to call him again, but her husband seemed to have disappeared.
That fat klutz. He's never there when you need him.
Katherine briskly walked into the living room and picked up the receiver.
“Hello,” she said. “Yes, it's me.”
Listening to the voice on the other end, Katherine frowned and slowly sank onto the sofa. For a moment she couldn't utter a word.
“When... did it happen?” she said finally.
Jeff emerged from the bathroom. He instantly noticed that his wife looked shaken.
“What's happened?” he asked.
“My mother,” Katherine muttered as she lowered the receiver without even looking at him. “She had an accident.”
Jeff looked at his wife, concerned.
“Honey, you don't look well. Hang on a sec.”
He rushed to the kitchen and returned a few seconds later with a glass of water. He handed it to his wife. She mechanically grabbed the glass with a completely blank look, put it to her lips and took a sip.
Suddenly, Katherine grimaced and snapped out of her stupor. The water had a bitterish taste. The woman turned pale.
“Is this the glass of water I had prepared for you?” she asked.
“Yes, it is,” her husband nodded. “But don't worry. You needed it more than me at the moment.”
The glass slipped out of Katherine's suddenly weakened fingers and shattered on the floor. It was the glass of water with poison she had prepared for her hated husband before the phone rang...

Author's Note

Keep in mind that English is my third language. Any suggestions and corrections are welcome, though.

Reviews

[pinhead07]

There're those few errors that have been pointed out, but besides that, I enjoyed reading this story. It needs a little building up at the start, you could've delayed her answering the call and talked a a little about her relationship with her husband, you could've let the audience into both their heads, her and her husband's, as he was in the bathroom, shown them what they think of each other, and why, then she picks up the call and rest, I don't really think there's much wrong with it, if you would have shown her mixing the poison in, it would have been a dead giveaway, no suspense.

[Laura Ataeva]

Thank you so much for your review! It's been really helpful!

[pinhead07]

My pleasure :)))

[Cyd]

The writing per say isn’t bad. The sentence, “The water had a bitterish taste.” I would just have gone bitter and, “Is this the glass of water I had prepared for you?” and that doesn’t sound very natural to me. You don’t really need to prepare a glass of water so it sounds odd.

I did feel that the end came a little sudden and without dramatic reveal. Perhaps if we had seen the woman preparing something, working hard at this “water” being just right for her husband and then, bang! Oh she was trying to kill him. Here it just comes out of the blue, we know nothing about her or their relationship. It’s all very sudden. When I’m reading, I don’t have the time to get scared or worried. I just get a little puzzled to what is going on at the end and then I say to myself, “Huh.”

There’s no build up here.

Some talk about stories needing a setup and a payoff, “Think about a joke. It has two parts: a setup and a punch line.” (I borrowed that line from this blog post that talks about setups and payoffs. http://www.stevenpressfield.com/2012/10/setups-and-payoffs/)

I think this is what your story is suffering from.

This being said. I remember reading a collection of Russian stories with a darker tone, I cannot remember what it was called I’m afraid but a lot of the stories in that book also had blunt and sudden endings. Could this be a cultural thing? Maybe this is more common in Russian stories? I won’t pretend that I have read much Russian things at all but I do remember the short stories with the sudden ending so I had to ask.

[Laura Ataeva]

Thank you so much for your detailed review, Cyd! I found it really helpful. I can see what you are talking about and probably you are right about the whole thing. Thank you! No, in reality it has nothing to do with Russian stories or Russian culture. I came up with this story when I was brainstorming possible ideas for two-sentences horror stories. It was kind of a personal challenge for me. I wanted to try something new. But in the end I failed to put it in just two sentences and, probably, didn't develop it well at all. I'll keep trying. ;)