Twirling Elephants

"The pink elephant looks pretty right?" Lily giggled as she stares at an empty space. 

"Lily, what are you talking about? Who are you talking to? I ask her nervously, looking around the room. 

"A friend. We were talking about the twirling elephants," she answers me in her chime-like voice.

 

Aside from her hospital bed and some chairs, the room is clearly empty. There were no twirling elephants, and there was no "friend". 

"But Lily, I don't see them. Where is your friend and the twirling elephants?"

"My friend is here, beside me. And the elephants are there! Look how pretty they are. I wish I could keep them as pets," she says pointing back to the corner of the room. 

But I could still see no twirling elephants. 

"What do they look like Lily?" I ask, trying to humor the five-year old kid. 

"Well, they're big and fat and they have some puffy skirt around their waists. They are also of different colors. I like the pink one best, but Kaya says the purple one is prettier," Lily tells me as she mimics the twirling motion of the elephants. 

"Lily, are you sure about that? Because I don't see anything and anyone here, besides the two of us" I tell her.

I make a show of going around the room trying to find the elephants and her friend, "Kaya" but there's nothing. Lily laughs and talks over her right shoulder. 

"Kaya thinks you're funny and she wants to be your friend. But she says that it’s too dangerous because they're watching us" 

I stop pacing the room and look at Lily. Her pale blue eyes looks too big across her tiny face but they are very much alive. She looks back at me and squints, concentrating on something. 

"What?" I ask, feeling worried.

"They are looking at us through that wall" she stares at the wall behind me.

"But there's no one watching us Lily, just like there is no twirling elephants and no Kaya" I tell her this because it's true. We were alone in the claustrophobic hospital room. 

I walk towards her hospital bed and sit beside her to her right. 

"See, there's only the two of us here. There's no twirl--" I started to tell her but then I see it, the twirling elephants with puffy skirts and painted in different colors. The purple one looked so pretty. 

She looks at her shoulders again, directly at me, giggling and says, "I told you they were there, Kaya."

Reviews

[Barbara Tennyson]

Standard prose has more rules than free-form poetry. I don't know how much fiction you have read, but take a look at any _Harry Potter_ or _Twilight_ or Lemony Snicket or _The Second Grade Progressive Reader_ which can be purchased from Amazon ebooks

Some constructions need tweaking to bring them up to standard presentation. Here's one: "There they are!" five-year-old Lily points to a spot in the corner of the room. --In this example, presented as a dialogue tag sentence, there is no form of 'say' or any synonym of 'say'. What we have here is a bit of dialogue --"There they are!"-- and a bit of narrative --five-year-old Lily points to a spot in the corner of the room.--which is an independent sentence and should be capitalized: Five-year-old Lily points to a spot in the corner of the room.

"The pink elephant looks pretty right?", Lily giggled as she stares at an empty space. --this example is over-punctuated. Drop the unnecessary comma. "The pink elephant looks pretty right?" Lily giggled as she stares at an empty space.

This --She looks at her shoulders again, directly at me, giggling and says,

"I told you they were there Kaya." --would be correct if the dialogue was in the same paragraph as the tag and had a comma to set of the direct address: She looks at her shoulders again, directly at me, giggling and says, "I told you they were there(COMMA) Kaya."

The tense shifts randomly between 'past' and 'present'. Either tense is correct, but don't mix them.

[Carissa Marie]

Thank you for the constructive review. I didn't notice that this was made public. I actually wrote this rough draft for my literature class but thank you for the critique. I will make sure to take note of what you have just said when I revise this and I'll review again the tenses (I have a bad habit of mixing them when I write fiction).