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What felt like ages but had only been four years since she last saw him in person still sticks in her mind causing a shiver down her aching spine every time she tapped into that memory. It was just another trip to the local grocery store in the college town she lived in for almost six years. Yet she saw his blank face in the crowd as he walked down the aisle next to the one she was using to make a bee-line to the allergy medication she needed. For just a second that felt like minutes, he stared at her and then kept walking. No care in the world about the pain he had caused her before she came to her senses and dumped him all those years ago.
She noticed in that brief moment he had gotten thinner and his clothes hung on him. His typical basketball jersey and jacket looked three sizes too large. Although he seemed not to care about the fact that he had seen the girl who dumped him four years before, he looked like he had not slept in ages.
See, before she left the guy he was becoming an obvious alcoholic, and she had unfortunately succumbed to drinking alongside him more often than she would care to admit. Underaged, in college and dating an older guy, in the throws of hard courses that required so much of her attention. The booze became a way to slip away from the reality that she was nearly 1300 miles away from where she had lived all her life before and that if she wasn’t studying she often was alone listening to music. Her only other seemingly reliable friend being her roommate that later would come to be her manipulative and controlling ex-lover.
At the point that she saw him for what she thought was the last time at the grocery store, she had cut back on the drinking and was wrapping up her last few years of school. All the while balancing the emotional and psychological drain of her roommate turned fiancee. That at the time she was basically blind to the abuse because it had become so normal for her. For before her then-girlfriend got her claws in her, the man she saw in the grocery store had raped her while they were drunk and he could not guarantee that it only happened once or that he had worn protection. Not to mention his possessiveness and inappropriate timing of physical contact in public. As she walked past him that day she thanked herself for not waiting longer to dump the guy. The day she broke up with him she had laryngitis from being sick but she couldn’t wait any longer. She had let him take advantage of her for too long and she had to take herself out of the situation no matter if she had to whisper or mouth the words, “I am breaking up with you.”
Both after graduation and after things had blown up with her ex-fiancee, she caught wind that her ex-boyfriend that she had seen in the grocery store had died, she didn’t know how he died just that he was gone. It could have been from the pandemic that was ragging the world at that time, a car crash, anything. Nevertheless, she could not shake the feeling that he wasn’t truly gone. Yes, she hoped that one day he would get what he deserved for the pain he had caused her but that didn’t mean she wanted him dead. More than anything she had just hoped that he would not move on to another victim of his sexual abuse. For she had not been strong enough to go to the police back then and she had felt that it was her fault for letting herself get drunk around him.
Honestly, she thought she had put the pain he had caused her behind her before she saw on the television one day the landmark Supreme court hearing of Bret Kavanaugh and sat and listened to Blasey Ford tell her story. She just completely broke down, couldn’t stop the tears from falling. Her then-fiancee told her to suck it up because many have been raped and it had been years since it had happened to her. It didn’t truly matter how much she had buried her pain and tried to suck it up in order to get her degrees, the memories were so raw at that moment she couldn’t keep it together.
Back to her ex-boyfriend’s death, well she felt bad that he was dead she also did not grieve for him because at least she knew that he wouldn’t be out there hurting other women like herself for sure. Although his being dead is not the way she wanted to know there would not be more victims of his assault. She knew though that he had a family and she didn’t think they deserved to lose a son.
Months after she had heard of his death, she was walking down the street of her hometown with her mask on her face and sunglasses to block out the unclouded sun. As she came around the corner of one of her favorite restaurants, she saw him again. Not only sending a shiver down her spine but literally making her jump back at the sight of him. For he was across the street and smiling at her. He then got into a blue car and headed down the street towards downtown. It had only been a moment but she could have sworn it was him. She thought maybe she had just seen someone who looked like him. Yet, he had been wearing clothes that were similar in style to that of what he had worn in the grocery store years prior. The man she saw that smiled at her at that moment was just as thin as he had looked before. His eyes still had dark circles and bags like they did in her old college town. So although he was supposedly dead, here she had possibly seen him in a place she did not expect him to be especially since he was supposed to have died. She headed home and tried to get the image of him smiling at her out of her mind but she could not. The man had smiled at her then went off down the road but had left her once again with the hurtful memories of what he had done to her. Making her relive through the assaults, the fights, the ways he had made her feel, and with the sinking pit in her stomach signaling that she would never truly be free of his hold on her soul.
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Critique circle
Word use, "in the throws of hard course" should be "throes"
"landmark Supreme court hearing of Bret Kavanaugh and sat and listened to Blasey Ford tell her story." This politicizes your story and makes it less salable unless you specifically write it for a niche market. You can instead reference the #metoo movement and "all the politicians and celebrities who fell from grace" to avoid any negative reaction. This is particularly noticeable as those two are the only names in the piece. Not the ex boyfriend, not the current one, not anyone. Just them.
Learn to use commas for clarity. For example, "What felt like ages but had only been four years since she last saw him in person still sticks in her mind causing a shiver down her aching spine every time she tapped into that memory." Needs to be more like this, "What felt like ages, but had only been four years, since she last saw him in person still sticks in her mind, causing a shiver down her aching spine every time she tapped into that memory." If you are still in college (your bio) you should be able to take a creative writing or English composition course without too much trouble. Otherwise use a program like Grammarly to catch subordinate clauses so they can be appropriately handled.
This is a very personal POV tale, you might want to consider working in 1st person for extra impact.
Other than lacking commas, your opening sentence delivers exactly what it should, the promise of a tale about someone the protagonist finds unsettling. The same holds for your close, though it need a spot of editing to tighten it up. But the middle has a lot of problems with telling. The third, fourth, fifth and seventh paragraphs are mostly tell, not show. Tell, "These events happened" Show, "There I was, naked on the hood of his Mustang..."
Making more of a show is often easier if you stick to first person and tell it like it happened to you. "I walk down the aisle of the store and there he is..." or the flashback, "It was my sophomore year at college when we went out drinking on a Thursday night. Around eight, we stopped at a little hole in the wall called, 'Cantina del Luna" and Brad went to the pool table to play while I went to the bar for drinks. I elbowed my way through, more worried about Brad than the big tattooed guys in leather jackets..."
The more details you add to a scene, to a point, the more alive it feels. We don't need to have a description of each of the seven guys in biker outfits, they're scenery, we just need to have enough to get a vivid concept- big, tattoos, leather jackets. In a fantasy or sci-fi setting (or even an obscure historical one) more description is required because readers don't have the experience to fill in the blanks. But modern and you can go Hemingway without anyone complaining. Faulkner is hard to pull off, but he takes minimalism to extremes.
So the structure of your story might look sort of like this when you rewrite-
Keep the first two paragraphs as is (with commas) then flash back to an early scene where the older roommate makes beer available and she wakes up late for a test. Next have a scene of her waking naked, alone, in a strange place, and aware someone (or some group) had sex with her the evening before. One more scene of her leaving the boyfriend because she needs to concentrate on courses and cannot tolerate the bruises his casual forcing of sex. Have her think or say these things, preferably in an accusatory fashion.
Have a scene of her with her current boyfriend as they watch the TV about the metoo movement (if you insist on including it- it is not terribly relevant to this tale which could exist any time since about the eighties when the drinking age went up to 21- no reference to cell phones, none to internet, nothing to place it firmly in the modern era- except that one item and mask on her face, which I almost missed)
Now have a scene where a college friend says, "did you hear that X is dead?"
Close with the scene in the grocery store. but flesh it out a little.
You only used 1100 words, so you have plenty of room to play with and enough time to try and modify your work before edits close. This has potential, with good opening and closing. Just make the middle stronger by having scenes instead of overviews. Don't sweat the comma issue at this time, just get your best work out for people to see.
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Thank you for your critique, it is good feedback. I was debating whether or not to mention the case at the supreme court. However, besides the part of the dead ex, the story is true. I was recalling memories and so I did not pay much attention to structure. Which knowing how I was feeling at the time, I didn't think it would be well structured, since it was emotional and I wrote it quickly. Commas are important and I thought I went over those errors but I will be careful with them in the future. I again appreciate you taking the time to read through the story and making many suggestions. I will keep these all in mind both when looking over the story again and when writing in the future.
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