A Great Day

This is a work of Fiction.

     I sat, smiling, enjoying my day as a whole, knowing that it would be a great one. The blue clouds were broken with only slight fluffs of white interrupting, as they carelessly journeyed across the sky. The sun was bright, unblocked, and just warm enough to keep it at comfortable weather for shorts. I crossed my leg, put my right arm over the top of the park bench that I was sitting on, and took a sip of my nice cool, perfectly mixed iced coffee, leaving it in my mouth to savor the taste before swallowing it.

      Watching the people of the park, taking a break from hectic lives to simply enjoy nature, spend time with families, or go jogging, headphones separating them from the distractions of the outside world, was always a favorite activity of mine, when I had the free time to do so. Two squirrels chased each other around and up a tree, playfully, unafraid of the nearby park goers. Even they were happy on this day, as it seemed, were all the creatures of the Earth, and rightfully so.

      Leaning my head back, I enjoyed my self chosen solitude on this day, using it to simply empty my mind of the daily issues, and simply cease thought for a second or two. Opening my eyes after a few moments, I took another sip of my coffee, finding it to be nearly empty as I began to hear that scraping noise from the bottom of my cup, as well as a few more drops of coffee, interrupted by bouts of air, cooled of by the remains of ice at the bottom. The first, and only unpleasant development of the day.

      I took it as a sign, that this part of enjoying the day was over, though I was far from melancholy at this development, as the next part would allow me to appreciate it just as much, if not more. I once again smiled. Then, I said my silent goodbyes to the wonderfully therapeutic park, and all of the joys and patrons therein. I threw my leftover coffee cup into the trash-barrel, from my seat on the bench and it went in. I whooped on the inside.

       I stood, picking up my locked metal briefcase, .50 caliber sniper rifle, disassembled and neatly packed inside, protected from the elements by a lair of grey foam. A great day, indeed.

Author's Note

First draft, and of course any and all opinions welcome.

Reviews

[Andrew Payn]

This is very good, I like your style of writing, it provides the reader with images, yet allows for the reader to make a judgement on his/her motives.

One problem for me is, I find the ending comes suddenly, it is just all of a sudden there, and then gone!

But chances are that's your writing style, so do please continue to write, it is usually quite nice!

Thanks
Andrew~

[NoblePariah]

Thank you, glad you liked it. As for the ending, that was intentional, to make the reader do a double take of sorts.

[A.R. Elvira]

Great story, well done!
You are very descriptive, which is wonderful to read. Just make sure you don't over do it, over describing can make things confusing and you can loose your reader to boredom. You want to get to the point of story itself as fast as you can, not describing the things around the story, if that makes sense. Although I can see here you want to shock the reader by describing a normal day and then throwing in something that doesn't quite fit which is obviously the rifle (great technique, by the way).

A part of the story where I started to loose a little bit of interest is when you went into talking about the coffee being finished. You could say all you said about the coffee running out in one or two lines and it would still be effective. It was just a little much. Try not to repeat what a good day the character is having as well, its clear just through your description that that is the case, no need to tell us.

Great grab line at the end, you really get the attention of your readers. Is this a prologue to something more? The ambiguity is good! I'm keen to see if this story continues, so please do. (:

[NoblePariah]

Thank you! After reading it over, I definitely see what you mean. There are definitely some spots that I'm going to change/ reword/ or take out, to make the beginning engaging in it's own right rather than just the twist at the end. As for it being a prologue, to be honest I hadn't actually gotten that far, I just sort of wrote this on a whim, without too much thought.

[A.R. Elvira]

My pleasure. Writing on whims is good - it feels really liberating and is great practice, keep it up. (:

[Butters]

I think you'll go far. You're very good.

[NoblePariah]

That's gratifying to hear, thank you!

[Acropolix]

Certainly a grand twist in this one, got me read the ending over and over. Enjoyed it!

[NoblePariah]

Thank you, glad you liked it!

[Marie]

Really good for a first draft. The ending is abrupt, but I can see that was deliberate. It made a great twist.

[NoblePariah]

Thank you. I'm glad you liked the twist, it was originally going to be just an upbeat piece, but I decided to add it last minute.