In need of human review
I am 49,479 words into a book im writing. I ran it through our robo-pals and apparently its --awesome-- to which my titties set themselves on fire and ran out the room. I smell horsepukie. If I post this segment here, I hope i only get reviewed as if it were in a manuscript in front of a publisher. Keeping in mind this is just a snippet from a large novel already. Anybody listening promise to give honest, brutal honest? OK... Here goes... ONLY TRUTH! Is it good? Its my first ever attempt at writing.
I suppose another one of my first really memorable events began with a shower. It was a long walk in shower, 1970’s sunbeam yellow tile on all four walls, all the way up, down and across the floor and ceiling. My mom would have us 2 girls shower with her to speed the process up. We had just seen Freddy Kruger and my sister feared his imminent return through the portal under her feet, otherwise known as the shower drain. She was 7 or 8, and Freddy is horrifying to a kid that age. It didn’t seem like a big deal. But my mom just got increasingly angry that she didn’t want to stand DIRECTLY over the drain. She could still wash her. She wasn’t fighting that part, just the proximity of herself to Freddy the intruder. My mom wasn’t having it. I remember her saying, “IF YOU’RE GOING TO BE SCARED OF SOMETHING SO STUPID, I’LL GIVE YOU SOMETHING REAL TO BE SCARED OF!” And with those words, the shower began to fill with steam. I can still see it rolling around, in between the walls, consuming the space entirely. I could see nothing. Only hearing the screaming ringing through my head so loudly, bouncing off the walls of ugly tile, reverberating inside of my skull. Then out of the seemingly endless cloud of steam, AN ARM. A LEG. A HAND. My Lord, she’s trying to fight. She’s trying to escape the burning water she’s being held under. Momma finally let her go, turned off the water, and said, “Now go to your room and think about that!”
Oh, she did. She thought hard for about a minute. I can still see her standing there with her bright, red lobsterish skin. She said to me, “Get dressed. We are leaving.” I didn’t know what she meant, or where the heck we were going, but 4 or 5 year old me didn’t really ask a lot of questions. It wasn’t ever in my best interest to do so. So I just did as she said, I got dressed. She put my favorite teddy bear, a guy by the name of BearBaby in an old metal suitcase the size of a briefcase and gathered the handful of change that appeared out of nowhere. Now looking back I understand she must have been saving her pennies, nickels and dimes for something. I don’t really know if she was saving for the breakout attempt, or if she was saving for a new My Little Pony and the break out just happened. She opened the window and out we went. I can still see her on the outside of the window, gesturing for me to follow her. I did. Once we were out of the house and walking up our alley which ran parallel to a very busy street, she told me where we were going. She said, “Mimi will save us from this. She doesn’t know. If she knew, she would stop momma and daddy. We are going to Mimi’s!” Mimi was my father’s mother. She was a small, frail, endlessly loving and sweet person who we both adored. When I heard that was our destination, I was ecstatic. Mimi was my favorite person in the whole wide world. I think she still might be to this day. I don’t think I could have felt more loved by her. I knew, without a shadow of doubt, that she adored us both. She lived in a very large 1950’s ranch style home exactly 2.3 miles up the street. A straight shot, only 1 turn. When I worried we would get lost, She reassured me, she would tell me, “SWAFFER, look for SWAFFER” I myself remember thinking through the fact that we were a 4 or 5 year old, and a 7 or 8 year old walking down the street alone carrying a suitcase with a teddy bear arm dangling out the side. We were going to be noticed. I told her we should probably walk behind the line of small, short trees lining the next block of alley way. So we did. We walked for a very very long time. I remember a grey sedan pulling up beside us, the woman and man calling to us to come to the car. She slips through the trees and walks right up to the car. The woman who spoke with an Arabic accent asked, “Where are you two going?’ She replied, “To our MiMi’s house, we are running away!” The woman smiled broadly and replied, “What a coincidence! WE are going to OUR grandmother’s right now! Do you think we could give you a ride to your MiMi’s and maybe after you two can come meet our GhiGa?” She immediately and exuberantly agreed. She looked back to me, still hiding behind the trees, she extended her hand just like before in the window and said, “Come on! Let’s go!” I wouldn’t budge. My soul was screaming. I couldn’t take a single step toward her, toward the car and smiling strangers. Or to run away in the opposite direction, back to the home I had walked away from because of abuse, but now, in this moment, the fear overtook any of the beatings I ever endured. I shook my head no. I shook it harder. The woman began getting angry, quickly,.. “Just get in the car!” she shouted. It made me more resigned. I refused to budge. My sister yelled at me, “COME ON! WE ARE GOING TO HAVE TO WALKKKK!” I screamed back, “NO! I WONT! YOU CANT MAKE ME DO IT!” And with that, the car suddenly sped off, never to be seen again, outside of my nightmares. My sister wailed about how I had messed up such a good thing. As an adult, I see now, I might have saved our lives. We kept walking.