Critiquing my own short story

So I was perusing the endless pits of YouTube and I stumbled upon several authortube-like videos revolving around the idea of critiquing your past work (in a light-hearted, joke-y way, mind you) and I quite liked the idea.

Then I thought, “wait a minute, I have a channel AND past work!” The result of that epiphany is pretty much self-explanatory. All that was left was to find a way to share the short story I critique on the video.

Hence this here post.

There is really no need for more explanation. I wrote this a number of years ago and though I still consider my writing skills to be gestating, I've come a long way. It took a lot of consideration (and even more trepidation) to share this, but I actually had lots of fun going back and looking at something I submitted for a contest and thought was good.

In any case, I go into a fair more detail in the video, which I recommend if you want to have a good laugh.

Grab a cuppa, sit back and cringe along of this unedited, raw short story that is for matters and purposes, terrible.

CW: There is some gore in the story, abstain if you don’t like graphic scenes (mainly involving blood!)

The Most Normal Town in England

‘I see. So, you should leave, right?’ she said out of the blue, prompting Maria to raise her eyes from the cup of tea and fix them in the perfectly normal-looking face across the minute table.

‘What do you mean I should leave? Leave the bistro?’ she queried, returning the cup to the small plate. She waited for Hannah’s response with both hands about the hot recipient.

‘No, silly! Leave Borlow!’ she answered nonchalantly. Maria searched for telltale signs on her countenance, anything that would explain that sudden grim incision in an otherwise banal conversation.

‘Now, why would I want to leave Borlow? I love it here! What are you talking about?’

‘Oh, well, it’s just that we were talking about how your landlord is smothering you and making it impossible to live in peace, and those parents at school insulting you because…’

‘Hannah, my landlord reminded me I was not permitted to have any pets inside the flat after I asked him a third time, and I knew it beforehand, so it is completely reasonable. And yeah, those parents were a little bit racist, but nothing I can’t handle. If I were to leave Borlow every time I had a mild inconvenience, I would have left a long time ago!’ Maria cut in, somewhat bothered by the exaggeration and veiled implication that she was that weak.

Hannah reclined and sighed profoundly in exasperation, shutting her eyes and rubbing her brow with both hands. Again, Maria was taken aback by that disproportionate reaction. She reached with her right hand to Hannah’s side of the table and said: ‘Han, is there something wrong? You are acting very weird.’ There was no answer.

‘You don’t really want me to leave, do you?’ Maria chuckled lightly, a shrill attempt at lifting the mood, yet Hannah didn’t straighten up. Didn’t laugh back and remained stumped in the chair, her hands covering her face.

‘Do you?’ she asked again, this time with utmost earnestness. The person she considered her best friend exhaled again and shook her head.

‘No… I mean, yes. Yes, I do actually, but not for the reasons you’d think. It’s just… ugh!!’ she exhorted, frustrated. Maria was utterly confused.

‘Hannah, what the hell are you talking about?’

‘Listen. We’ve been friends for, what, like, 3 years now?’

‘I would say so, yes.’

‘And we’ve had our fair share of deep conversations. You’ve helped me, and I’ve helped you. We’ve been there for each other through thick and thin, and I consider I can really count on you.’ She was stroking and twisting her hands, pausing just a bit longer than usual after each word, as if they took a toll too heavy whilst being said. Whatever thing was causing such erratic behaviour was seriously affecting her, and Maria began worrying considerably.

‘And you can rely on me, Hannah, you know that. Where are you going with all this? You are starting to **scare me…’

‘Look’ she grew sullen, hunching over her own empty cup and facing Maria with carefully measured gestures. ‘I’ve thought about it over a thousand times, looked at it from every possible angle and there’s no other way. I’ve protected you for as long as it has been humanly possible, but we are at the tipping point. I know you hate uncertainty, and I promise I hate myself for telling you this way, but you’ll just have to trust me. Get out of here, the sooner the better. Today, in fact, would be the best. Pack your stuff and fuck off from the utter shithole that is Borlow!’ That was it. She was done with it. She stood up and shuffled around to grab her bag.

‘I’ve heard enough. I don’t know if this is part of some hideous practical joke, but I do not like it.’ Her phone screen came alit when a message from Josh popped through. She caught a glimpse of the time and picked the device up from the table.

‘I have to go.’

Hannah tailed her toward the exit, tried to persuade her to stay and talk, to swear she would be gone by the end of the day. She ignored her. She shut the crystal door in her face and didn’t deign to give a second look. She would call her after school hoping that spontaneous bout of neurosis would be gone by then.

Borlow-upon-Avon stood eerily still at that point of the day, though truth be told, one could say that Borlow-upon-Avon always stood still. A forgotten minuscule town lost in the unexpectedly ignored vastness of the English country. One that you would only find by randomly pointing at a map and being surprised at the mere existence of the smudge your finger ended up on top of.

The sharp, skin-cutting cold winds of that winter morning greeted Maria brusquely and prompted a full-body twitch. It was a chill what she felt, and that would have been that, except that it wasn’t a normal chill. It was a monumental tremor birthing at the very soles of her feet and crawling up painfully, spreading across her torso at dizzyingly slow speed. As if dragging along on purpose to make her suffer. It was strangely somatic too, and despite the cold, her palms began sweating, her neck reddened and radiated such heat that she could swear sent clouds of steam about her head. Yet the thing that preoccupied her the most was the flaming premonition that loomed afterwards. An unshakable feeling that told her, perhaps, she should leave after all. Perhaps Hannah was right. She should leave!

‘¡Ay, Maria! Por favor…’ she muttered. She adjusted her coat tighter and plunged ahead.

Strolling the irregular cobblestoned surface, she looked at the main affairs in the square as she always did when passing by. Weatherall Square, named after a prominent family whose only remnant of past glory was the decadent Victorian monstrosity of a manor crowning one of the hills that surrounded the main conglomerate of houses.

The rest of the village encroached around Weatherall Square, disorderly spreading from the church: the local police station, a narrow house only antechamber to a curious underground library, the plain town hall attempting to stand out amidst the amalgam of buildings and the bistro itself. There were also quaint country houses, as typical as they can get, and the people that populated them were as typical as country people can get. She didn’t know the exact population of Borlow, but it couldn’t be more than 600, and with those numbers the intensity of gossip and rumour-mongering was unparalleled.

She would always remember the stories her grandparents used to grumble, reminiscing their original village in the sterile steppes of central Spain. They were tales of calm August nights, of the sun clinging on the horizon and painting deep red orange the otherwise yellow pastures. Of warmth, and wine, and cheese. Of family and nurturing music of a guitar. They were also tales of rampant, unwelcoming bigotry, xenophobia, judicious manners, prejudices and encysted traditions that anchor the ways of life of such a town.

She let her thoughts run freely on her way until she arrived at the monotone frontispiece of the school building. A humble institution at best, established in one of the biggest properties at the edge of the town with breathtaking sights at the sea of rolling green hills, the river running its meandrous path through them and the ruins of Thornhall Castle in the distance, defiantly standing against the dawning sun. She couldn’t avoid lingering in the entrance, gazing at the view, favoured by an incredibly bright December morning. The houses, that enrapturing landscape… The quintessential picture of rural England.

She arrived just in time to see the kids marching in a disciplined manner toward their respective classrooms and headed for the door on her right when the queue’s tail finally wiggled in. She waited some minutes for the shuffling and chattering to end, sat on the teacher’s desk by the blackboard and clapped three times for attention.

‘Alright, alright! Settle down! We are about to begin’ she announced, and as the children reluctantly found their seats she pulled her notes out of the bag. Her phone rattled inside, and she remembered Josh’s message, allowing herself to take a look at it to answer.

Josh: Have a great day M! xxx

Her lips curved naturally in a genuine smile. Josh always had those lovely small things. A hug here and there, a kiss, good wishes for the day. They weren’t big, lavish shows of romance and that was precisely what she loved about him. That selfless quotidian affection. She unblocked the phone just to send him a heart emoji and put it back in her bag.

Her index finger trailed the tabulated data in the notebook until she found that day’s date.

‘Right. David?’

‘Here!’ exclaimed the alluded in the front row.

‘Laura?’

‘Here!’

‘Jared and Howard?’

‘We’re here, Ms Peña!’ said the last vivaciously. She had grown fond of those twins, always reading books in their grandad’s library.

‘Michael?’

‘Here.’

‘Lucy?’

A silence ensued, broken by the lowest hushed voice.

‘Which one?’ Maria raised her eyes and saw Lucy Armadale’s cheeks reddening faintly. She checked the name in the paper and shook her head.

‘Not you love. Weatherall. Lucy Weatherall.’ The only response was furtive looks shot across the classroom amidst a conspicuous silence. She furrowed her eyebrows for the umpteenth time in the morning.

‘Where’s Lucy?’ she queried, authority present in her voice, demanding almost. Some shoulders shrugged, some heads nodded vaguely, but no one dared answer. Her eyebrows furrowed even more.

‘Does anybody know where Lucy Weatherall is?’ This time it was demanding*,* an ultimatum. Her eyes lingered on the nervous countenances and they landed on David the second his lips parted and closed indecisively. She kept staring until he broke.

‘She… huh. She told us before class that she… she wasn’t going to come today.’

‘Is she ill?’ Maria followed.

‘Errr… not really, no. She… she told us not to tell you because you would be angry.’

‘Snitch!’ interjected Michael, fury in his little mischievous eyes.

‘Michael! Don’t be disrespectful. Go on David, what is it that would make me angry?’ David doubted, then decided to speak averting his eyes.

‘She said she wasn’t going to come because you are an immigrant and doesn’t want to see your face.’

Not this again. She tried to keep a straight face despite the sneers and poorly concealed laughs.

‘Is that what she said?’ Lucy was the only daughter of Julia Weatherall, the last living head of the once-mighty Weatherall family. A massive 40-something-year-old woman with the foulest attitude towards the rest of humanity. In the most likely scenario Lucy had eavesdropped one of her mother’s rant and repeated what the serpent had said.

‘Yes’ carried on David ‘that and that you should leave before…’

‘Dave!’ interrupted Howard from the back, suddenly arching on the table with his skinny arms tense under the uniform. Maria’s eyes darted to him in the back of the classroom and set about to enquire further when Michael intervened.

‘Me dad says the same. Says the only reason why I come to school is because he doesn’t wanna see my bloody arse at home. Says you an immigrant, a filthy, lazy immigrant who…’

‘Alright, ENOUGH!’ she shouted, stomping her right hand on the desk. That little devil had eventually pushed her buttons, and his petulant expression just about emptied her patience reserves.

‘To the headmistress office immediately!’ she ordered, one finger stiffly pointing to the door. Michael held her stare defiantly for a short while, though it felt like an eternity to her, and then complied with poignant swagger.

‘Little prick…’ slipped through her teeth. She eyed the classroom further and from the looks of it, the students understood the ephemeral discussion was over. Her hollow gaze lingered somewhere at the back wall of the room as she was lost in her mind. The reassuring warmth that Josh’s message had brought to her was gone, and Hannah’s words resonated with strength. You should leave. Leave Borlow. Leave Borlow today. You are a filthy immigrant and that’s why you should leave Borlow. They entangled with that little prat’s, a disturbing mess of hostile remarks, a rhapsody of everything she was advised at home before running off. She felt a cold fury growing inside of her. A vein of wrath she did not want to tap into. Her eyes started burning but she blinked repeatedly. She couldn’t afford crying now for such a thing. Nor did she feel apt to lecture them on how dangerous a poison bigotry is. The only thing she felt up to in that moment was pushing through the material for the day, forgetting Lucy Weatherall, Michael, the chill in front of the bistro, and the conversation with Hannah. All of it. The day was just beginning, but Maria was sure she had had enough of it.

And so she did.

She didn’t bother to snack with the rest of the teachers and no sooner the bell rang the end of the lessons than she took off.

She retraced her steps with the sundown to her back without looking at the splendorous spectacle and fumbled in her bag for the phone.

Maria: Josh, you are not gonna believe the shitty day I just had. It’s like the world turned on me. Miss u.

Beneath the name at the top of the screen a word in italics popped up. Online. She tightened the grip on the phone. She was surprised how much she craved being in his arms. How bad she wanted the secure familiarity of their flat. She waited a couple of seconds for the response but the Online disappeared. Her thumbs flew over the keypad again.

Maria: I’ll tell you over dinner, OK?

The Online materialised again, and once more went away without answer. He would surely be busy. She exited his chat and scrolled down, her thumb hovering over the last few names, and stopped when she found it. Mama. The finger moved, dubitatively, in a sort of circle around it.

She locked the phone and continued right ahead.

Past Weatherall Square and into the south part of Borlow the residencies began blurring towards the edges of her vision, as she only focused on the paved pathway in front of her. The weight that had been ponderously bringing her down was being relieved by the minute as the distance with the flat decreased. Almost there, I’m almost there. The last couple hundred meters she had practically started running in her desperation, running away from the day’s horrible events. When she finally arrived at her door the oppressing sensation had waned off considerably, the memory of it all slowly fading away. She slid the key in the keyhole, turned it and entered, deciding to enjoy the remainder of the evening.

Yet…

Maria didn’t see a figure hidden in the shadows of one of the nearby alleys. A little girl dressed too formally, coat and white dress. A cute little bag hanging in her arm with heavy embroidery in the shape of a family coat-of-arms. A W. And she was peeping from the safety of obscurity. Neither was Maria able to look further in the same alleyway to see the consumed Reverend Smith standing erect in a door frame, looking to the sides and scurrying away, nor Chief Constable Margaret Grant shutting the door of her house after him.

Maria knew something was off the very instant she laid eyes on the living room. Upon brief analysis she distinguished the hand-me-down sofa displaced half a meter backwards, closer to the door than it normally was. She approached it and found her big suitcase behind it with most of her clothes inside. Once again, the gripping tentacles of paranoia took control of her senses and paralysed her on the spot, until the distant voice of reason mediated. It has to be a surprise. He must have prepared a trip somewhere and I caught him red-handed. Yes. That’s it.

She heard some shuffling in the adjacent room and whirled. Giving his back to her was Josh, handling something in the kitchen counter. Her lips parted to call him, but her voice froze in her throat when the dusking sunrays reflected on something atop the chest of drawers. She walked to it with trepidation. It was a crystal bottle, a sort of flask three-quarters-full containing a transparent liquid. She took it in her hands and read the label. Trichloromethane/chlor…

‘Chloroform?’ she said the last part aloud, confused. Why would Josh want a bottle of chloroform?

In the brief lapse of time she was holding the recipient in her hands a looming figure had positioned in her rear. It was advancing slowly, unnoticed, with a soaked cloth in its hand, until it reached her.

Maria only felt the sodden cloth pressed onto her nose and mouth and everything around her immediately faded into darkness.

She came to her senses in a bewildering haze, disoriented and nauseated. Blinking repeatedly in unfruitful attempts to focus the unfamiliar scene unfolding before her, unable to move and struggling to breathe. First, nothing but shadows here and there latching to walls. They were scattered and distanced, and her soft moans echoed greatly, so the place was ample. Yet, the shades were very faint, hinting at a natural light source. She also just began realising it was cold. Teeth-clattering, numbing, freezing cold. She required few more blinks to fully understand it.

She was strapped to a chair in the middle of the ruinous main hall of Castle Thornhall.

The initial shock did not dwindle with a further assessment of the dilapidated surroundings. From the asymmetrical rays of moonlight that slipped through the cracks of the stony walls she saw the bulged surface underfoot, plagued with big eroded boulders amidst which flecks of green weeds waltzed to the soft draft that entered through the enormous door-shaped hole in the remnants of the front wall ahead.

The chair to which she was restrained laid atop an elevated platform perhaps half a meter high, and several dozen meters squared. And she wasn’t alone there.

Three long tables had been arranged in the shape of a U about her so that she was equidistant to the 5 people sat down in them. Every single fiber of her body tensed at their sight. Mrs Weatherall, with her double chin and bloated pretentious smirk, white-haired Reverend Smith with his stern face and sharp features, the senile librarian, Thomas Sheridan, Chief Constable Grant with her pristine uniform and dead ahead of her stared with hands entwined, Emma Donovan, the school’s headmistress. She shut her eyes and scoffed. The notorious elite. The Conclave. Borlow’s own Magnificent Five.

She let her head hang back as she exhaled and looked up to where the ceiling had been centuries ago. A figure walked behind her, eclipsed the starry vista and circumvented shuddering María until positioning opposite to her, blocking Mrs Donovan from her view.

‘Ms Peña, I do believe you know who I am.’ The voice sounded different from usual. Pure and unadulterated in the nocturnal air, without the characteristic twang of the filter of radio or the telly with which it was normally associated. As if one could escape the ubiquitous presence of George Locke, the young, handsome and power-hunger town mayor. He displayed his regular immaculate appearance. Black suit and leather shoes, white shirt and black tie.

‘Yes, Mr Mayor. I do know who you are. I know who all of you are, and I really hope this has a reasonable expl…’ she came to a jarring halt when she saw someone entering the elevated terrain, confirming the tendrils of fear that lingered in her brain.

Josh.

Nothing could have rattled her more intensely. Nothing, except that Hannah was standing behind him.

‘Hi, Maria’

‘Josh… Hannah. What… what is happening? Please…’ she pleaded to them desperately, her voice cracking. Mayor Locke smiled blandly, stepped in front of her and squatted, reducing her field of view to the four corners of his shiny moonlit face.

‘Hush now. What they can tell you right now is irrelevant. It will be all over soon, you can trust me on that. Just try to calm down and listen.’ He whirled with surprising agility and stood again, pacing the surface immediately in front of her with his hands resting on the small of his back and his eyes fixed on the ground.

‘Rest assured, this has not been the first time we have been presented with a conundrum of this magnitude, Ms Peña’ he started, stopping right at the very center of the U, facing her directly.

‘And therefore, the resolution is not an unknown one. Unfortunately, it has been inconveniently deterred by certain negligence…’ he paused, turning his head to the seated audience about him, expecting a response which came by turning heads and stinking stares from otherwise immobile spectators. He smirked one of those disgustingly blank smiles and continued.

‘By my part, I shall admit. There is no denying that. I do sustain that a competent leader must be able to acknowledge mistakes and that is why I took it upon my earnest efforts to correct the situation, which brings us here.’

‘What… what is all this? Why are you doing this to me?’ Maria’s voice was a silent grunt, and though she asked it with tilted trembling head and closed eyes, the question was really directed to Josh and Hannah. To the people she thought were her pillars, her last refuge of hope and support in Borlow’s hostility. But, how would they know to answer them? Mayor Locke continued his monologue.

‘You know us as members of the great town of Borlow-upon-Avon’s society. Regular people that stroll through the streets, go to their jobs and participate in community life. On the surface there is nothing else beyond that, but the truth is that we serve a much greater purpose. This our little… congress, our enclave of eminences, is not the first instance of such a council in the existence of our glorious town.’

‘Locke, I don’t see the point of the travel down memory lane’ interjected Chief Constable Grant with firm gestures and firmer voice. ‘Let’s crack on, shall we?’

‘No, we shall not’ Locke rebutted, spinning on his talons to confront her. ‘I believe she deserves to know.’

‘I agree, Chief Constable. Let him speak’ added Reverend Smith. The rest seemed to concur.

‘Thank you. As I was saying, nothing of this is new. You see’ he built on, arms up ‘Lord John Thornhill, before he received his lordship was a templar knight that was gifted a piece of land in reward for his heroism during the Crusades. A piece of land where he built this castle, close to a minuscule village that would later come to be the Borlow we all know. And Lord Thornhill’ he continued, as he walked to one of the tables, took a chair and sat right in front of Maria ‘was concerned with the world. Even then, during the Middle Ages, he thought the world had spun off of its axis.’ He stood and approached the leftmost table, taking an iPad.

‘This here’ he waived it, showing a picture ‘is an excerpt from John Thornhill’s memoirs. “Alas, ’tis the rampant heresy, lack of integrity, boldness of the dunce souls that bestride mankind that lead to my heretofore divine duty of purging the world of them.” Sadly, Lord Thornhill died of gout soon thereafter without being able to do much purging. He did leave this though. His thoughts, to the people under his pristine command. They have carried out his divine duty over the centuries…’ Locke paused, hesitant, and left the iPad next to a big wooden crate.

‘Look. This is an eventuality I was hoping to avoid before I was made aware of my duties as Mayor. As descendant of Lord John Thornhill himself. Believe me when I say I find no solace in it. But, yes, it needs to be done.’

He was opening the crate and reaching inside as he spoke. He grabbed something inside and took it out ceremoniously. She gasped before it.

Locke was wielding a sword. A metre-and-a-half blade of steel with reflections and a bejeweled hilt. A gorgeous piece of art with the templar cross made out of encrusted rubies.

‘Thornhill’s own sword. Executioner. You can feel the weight it has had in Borlow’s history. All the wrong it has righted.’ He walked closer to her, growing sullen. Maria’s throat constricted.

‘All the lives it has taken.’

It hit her then. The very real, palpable possibility of dying right then and there. Her natural survival instincts took over her limbs, now shuddering in an attempt to break free. She found herself babbling, begging for her life.

‘I’m… I’m so sorry… I… didn’t mean… I didn’t mean anything! I’ll leave, I swear! I swear you’ll never see me again!’ She eyed Locke feverishly, and then every one of the attendants of that macabre event. She spent more time with Hannah, who was on the verge of tears and Josh, his own eyes fixed on her hollow of emotion.

‘I’m afraid, Ms Peña, it is too late for that.’ And without further advise, no warning or pompous political assertion, he swung Executioner in a wide arc that split the night air, making a swooshing sound. It also happened to split Maria’s neck open.

She garbled up an incoherent mutter of surprise as blood gushed out, eyes wide open, bulging out of their socket, at the mayor, at Mrs Donovan, at Reverend Smith. At Josh and Hannah. She saw a lot of things in that moment. She saw disgust and sadness, mere façades at the forefront of the hatred deeply seeded in those people. How they contemplated with contempt, and detachment, and relief even. She gasped desperately for air and only thick, dense blood dripped down his trachea, clogging her lungs. She saw Borlow at its purest, rawest. And a miserable thought slipped in her oxygen-deprived, pain-addled mind. Looks like I am leaving after all.

‘As painful as it is, we indeed need to fulfill our duty. To conceal, bend, mold, alter in any way. Conspire, even, and purge our home of the venomous nature of change, of you Ms Peña, in favour of the prevalence of absolute normality. It is vital to oversee our unmovable foundations in a world that has lost its true north. It is a God’s given for Borlow-upon-Avon to remain, for all eternity, as the most normal town in England.’