but the whole purpose is him killing the kid. If I change that, then my entire story loses the purpose and I dont have a story anymore. It turns into something entirely different
Short Story / Welcome to the Craft Hotel
Robert Thompson entered his room at the Craft Hotel. He took his shoes off, setting them and a black duffel bag next to the door. Robert cringed at the décor, yellow-coated walls with white stripes. He crossed the room and shut the curtains.
He sat down on the bed—dirt color, grimy, and filthy in appearance. Robert stripped the bed naked, tossed the sheets across the room, and sat back down on the mattress.
He picked up the remote and turned on the television set.
“Yeah you wish! You couldn’t survive one day doing what I do,” a man said while cooking breakfast in a tie.
His brunette wife said, “No. I wish you couldn’t survive doing what you do.”
The audience laughed.
Robert didn’t.
He picked up the phone and called his brunette ex-wife, Marla. It rang three times.
“Hello?” a woman’s voice said.
“I just wanted to call and tell you, you’re going to regret taking Jacob away from me.”
Robert hung up the phone.
In the bathroom, Robert watched himself blinking in the mirror. He looked away and scanned the wallpaper. It was early 1900’s advertisement clippings piled together and rolled up on to the wall, appearing like a newspaper. Clever, he thought.
After splashing water on his face, he went back into the bedroom.
Robert unzipped a small compartment on the duffel bag and pulled out a pink photo album, with the words “The Thompsons” in bold letters.
He sat on the bare mattress cross-legged and opened the photo album.
The first page had pictures of Marla holding a baby. The second page had pictures of Robert holding Marla.
He flipped four, five pages forward and looked at pictures of Jacob, age five, running for eggs on Easter. Another picture was of Jacob unwrapping presents.
He coughed and shut the book.
Going back to the duffel bag, he pulled out a videocassette.
It read, “Jacob’s 7th birthday.”
Robert placed the tape into the VCR and sat on the foot of the bed. On the television, the man with the tie sprayed his brunette wife with dish soap before the screen turned black.
The VCR clicked and blurted noise, then made a smooth humming sound.
“And how old are you now?” A man’s voice asked.
“7!” exclaimed a child.
On the television, the camera bounced and wobbled and then focused on Jacob, sitting at the kitchen table in front of a big chocolate cake. The sun gleamed off his bright blonde hair and made his skin glow like headlights.
Marla came over and lit the seven candles on the top of the cake.
“Make sure you wish for something,” Robert said from behind the camera.
Jacob closed his eyes, looked up toward the ceiling fan, and looked back down. “Okay,” he said, blowing out the candles.
“All right!” Robert shouted.
Marla brought plastic plates and a knife over to the table. She cut a large piece for Jacob.
Robert studied Marla’s facial expressions.
He stood up as the video continued to play and walked over to the window. He opened the curtains and peered out into the hotel parking lot, covered in cockroach-sized patrol cars and ant-sized police officers. A helicopter glided past the window.
“Mr. Thompson,” the helicopter spoke in a deep voice. “This is Officer Daniel Jenkins. I’m here to talk to you.”
Robert shut the curtains. He walked across the room and pulled the duffel bag over to him as he sat down on the bed.
“Robert, think this through,” Daniel Jenkins said on the megaphone. “You don’t need to do this. You’ll throw everything away.”
On the TV, Jacob was swimming in a little boat pool out in the backyard.
Robert searched through the duffel bag compartment, taking out a pistol and pulling the hammer back.
A bang on the door jolted him. “Robert, open the door! Don’t do this!” some random Officer pleaded.
“Robert, you’re making a huge mistake. You can get out of this,” the megaphone rang through the room.
“Do you need a towel?” Robert asked Jacob on the TV.
“Robert, don’t do this to yourself!” the officer at the door said.
Robert unzipped the duffel bag fully. Inside, a pale young boy lay naked and bruised, dirty and dusty. It was Jacob, age nine.
He placed the pistol to Jacob’s unconscious head. Swallowing hard, he slowly pulled the trigger as Jacob swam on TV. The blast induced a ringing in Robert’s ears.
A kick bent the door inward.
Robert put the pistol into his mouth, gagged, and repositioned it. He pulled the trigger; skull and brain matter sprayed into the ceiling fan.
“Robert!” Jenkins yelled.
The door slammed open. Three cops stood at the entrance and didn’t move. They cringed at the sight and covered their mouths. One cop went back outside the room to gather himself.
“Fuck,” another one whispered.
“Dad, I’m going to run and jump in, okay? Make sure you get it!”
“Okay, I’ll get it. You be careful. Don’t hurt yourself,” Robert said on the television. Jacob then ran and jumped into the pool.
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AstridM reviewed Version 4 -
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Well, you’ve certainly got the element of surprise in this story. I assumed early on that the man would shoot himself, but I did not anticipate his son being in the bag. Even now, a few minutes after reading it, the unsettling feeling still lingers.
I would like to offer a few suggestions. The dialogue is a little stiff, so you might want to revisit it and trim it down (even replace some with narration). I think this applies particularly to the officers’ words. You can tell your reader that they’re talking to him, pleading with him, even if we don’t know exactly what words they use. Secondly, the one-sentence paragraphs make the story too choppy. There are several places where you can successfully combine them.
My other suggestion is that you think about making a bigger distinction between the video tape and the what’s going on in the motel room. If you could put the tape’s dialogue in italics and make it stronger (so the reader would know what’s happening without any tags or much narrative description) I think it would really enhance the story. It may not be something you want to try, and I understand that. Again, just a suggestion.
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saveusjeebus reviewed Version 4 -
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I like your story, and having the guy sitting in the motel room watching the home video is actually a great setup. However, I have to ding you for breaking one of the main rules of fiction. No Suicide! Major rule breaking there. Suicide implies that the character does not change, which is one of the main tenants of all good fiction. There are numerous other ways to end the story. In fact, you don’t even need to have him pull out the gun. I don’t know if you’re familiar with checkov’s gun; if a gun comes out in a story, it has to go off, otherwise it had no point. I think that having the police officers shouting and pleading at him already establishes well enough that he is suicidal. My advice is to find another way to end the story, something that says something and has meaning.
Korp reviewed Version 3 -
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I must say, I took a liking to your simplistic writing style. Short and to the point, never bogged down. I do think, however, that you start too many sentences with the word “he.” While the short sentences are fine by me, I would mix up the ordering of the words.
The story was tense; great suspense. Well done.
chrisnightbird reviewed Version 3 -
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If you made this a little longer, it could be ready for publication.
The story itself is very stirring, and the lead character is well thought out.
Good job.
John_Binder reviewed Version 3 -
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Your plot line was good. Imaginative. The story was dry though. I think if you cut down on the “He said” you would be okay. Description was good enough. Overall the story was okay. Just lacked eloquence.
DCAllen reviewed Version 3 -
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Disturbing. Is the choppy sentence structure a conscious decision? If so, fine. If not, I think this would work better as a screenplay. Your narration sounds more like stage directions than narration.
The device of the two realities (hotel room and video) is very effective.
Typo:
curtians
jhmckeogh reviewed Version 2 -
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”, so robert shut the curtains” Make this a new sentence, delete the so.
wadded – not waded (waded, as in water, wadded, as in crumbling).
I think you could work on your descriptions a bit more. Corn Yellow Sunlight and Brown Bed are the first two images you give us, and both are a little sophomoric. After that, you concentrate mostly on dialogue and action, and thats where the piece shines. I think you can delete when Robert says “Okay!”, but most of the other stuff came off pretty real sounding. I didn’t see the kid being in the duffell bag, and it was nice having the the home video play as the thing ends. I would put the “police cars, like ants” earlier in the piece. To give a little teaser. If you hide it in some other descriptions of the skyline and the ground, people probably won’t notice the police are there for him.
Good work,
James
speechless_speaker reviewed Version 2 -
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i liked how the black duffel bag was alomst the key to revealing what was happening.it was noted early on seemingly innocently, then revealed the photo album and video tape, then the pistol and then shockingly the character jacob.interesting read, like how it flowed so well through each twist.
squarehopper reviewed Version 2 -
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Nice story. A few thoughts. You can make Robert more isolated if you play around more with your technique and style. Convey his feelings of isolation, desperation, and anger with crisp, sparse, sharp sentences. Your first paragraph is good but can it be better?
I mean… can you start to convey the character faster?
Robert Thompson entered his room at the Craft Hotel. He took his shoes off and set them and a black duffel bag next to the door. The corn yellow walls illuminated from sunlight, so Robert shut the curtains.
Robert Thompson entered the Craft Hotel room. Leaving his favorite shoes behind in the hallway, he laid his baggage down. A stream of sun that lit the corn yellow walls disturbed Robert, he felt his head split from the brightness.
The curtains couldn’t shut fast enough. The darkness that followed cured the headache and enveloped Robert in comfort.
Just a thought… what you think?
Razzer123 reviewed Version 2 -
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Nasty. Nice counterpoint between the action in the room and the video tape playing on the TV. It’s a bit short, however. Dad kidnapping Jacob, his attempts to evade apprehension etc might have built up the tension a lot more. Still it is what it is.
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