The Closed Building

Here's a little something I just wrote up, not a best seller, but I'm proud of it none the less.




The closed building

There’s an old building down the road past the town, a small concrete building with big pieces of wood over all the windows. There’s a padlock on the door with an old yellow sign (I think it used to be white) that reads: “This property condemned”. It used to be Mr. Tim’s old store. I used to spend a lot of time in that store, it was a big part of my childhood, and perhaps, it was what ended my childhood.

I was still living with my dad in the town of Ravenhook at that time. He and mom had split up a while back, though they never did go through with a divorce. On Saturdays, dad would run money to mom and she would always have some food or something else prepared for him so they figured divorce would just bring unnecessary red tape into their already fragile system.

Mom and me didn’t get along very well. We were always fighting about something. It was always something trivial that soon escalated into a big deal, like; I didn’t clean up my room, so I had to go to sleep to hours earlier, and of course we’d arguer all night, way past my regular bed time. We both decided that I’d rather spend the summer with dad, so she sent me off to dad’s place for the summer.

Now you might be wondering where the income was coming from. Well naturally dad had a job, but it wasn’t a high paying one. He and his best friend from high school, Mr. Hawke, had started a partnership business. Now Mr. Hawke was crazy about “Get rich quick schemes”, so said my dad. So supposedly, after high school, he and my dad opened up a pawnshop together in hopes to raise funds for a bigger better business. Ten years latter, they we still working out of the same pawnshop in the same concrete building.

So that summer, I spent a lot of my time in that pawnshop, playing the used videogames. It was almost like a paradise for me. Mr. Hawke would pay me five bucks an hour if I played in front of the customers to show off the merchandise. Some how they managed to keep the business going for all those years, and Mr. Hawke continued to come up with sure-fire ways to get us out of the pawnshop and onto easy street.

I had had such a great summer, I talked my mom into letting me stay with dad for the rest of the year, and the year after that, and so on, to the point where I was living with dad for good. Mom didn’t seem to mind, as long as I was happy she was too. So I lived with dad and I started to get used to his way of life and I enjoyed myself.

Then one-year things went from good to even better. Somehow or another, profits were increasing like crazy. Before long we were remodeling the house and I owned all the latest and greatest things. We’d become rich over night. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew something was going on in the pawnshop that was generating all this money, and I had made it my quest to find out what.

Dad had always told me not to go into the back room of the pawnshop; he said that was for employs only. I longed to know what was behind the door in the back room, so on a busy day, I decided to sneak through the door and see if I could discoverer the secret behind the success. The back room was that of a stock room. At the end of the hall was an office and in the center of the room was a big-gated area where I assumed they kept the merchandise. I started looking around, and before long, I had found a hidden door within the gated area that lead to a small room.

In this small room, there we several boxes. I found one with a loose lid, opened it up and revealed the truth behind the family’s success. Dollars, thousands, no, it had to be millions of dollars. It was amazing; when I saw this for myself I knew we were rich. But something was wrong with these dollars. They were all covered with blue one’s and zero’s. And then it struck me. This was the reason dad didn’t want me going back here. He and Mr. Hawke were counterfeiting money. Dad caught me looking through the crates and was furious at me; I had never seen him that mad before. He made me promise that I didn’t tell anyone at all about what I saw.

As he walked me back to front of the store, something happened that I regret, and I feel that if I had prevented, I might have stopped everything that would follow. Dad didn’t notice the dollar I was looking at was still in my hand. I dropped it as I was walking out of the storeroom. A few months latter, one customer in the shop found it on the ground and examined it without dad or Mr. Hawke noticing the customer turned it into the police and thus started the beginning of the end for us.

Dad and Mr. Hawke were arrested for counterfeiting, I felt so guilty, and I knew that this was my fault. They spent along time in prison before the court for their hearing convened and I went to live with mom again. I remember the day of the trial like it was yesterday; I was so worried that my father would spend the rest of his life behind bars. It was that day that I discovered that below Mr. Hawke’s greedy exterior, he was a saint.

I didn’t attend the trial myself, but according to dad and the newspapers, Mr. Hawke plead guilty on all charges and somehow worked it so that dad had no part in it at all. Dad wouldn’t let Mr. Hawke do this to himself, he promised him they’d stay together, but in the end, Mr. Hawke was able to get dad off. I suppose the two of us carried our own guilt forever more after that.

Ten years latter, a lot has happened since then. A lot of things that make the whole counterfeiting memory seem like nothing, for I myself have gotten into a lot more trouble and the memories of the secret money are now that of nostalgia. I don’t see dad as much as I used to anymore. After college, I only saw him at family gatherings like Christmas or birthdays. Mom still remains the strong woman she always was, and we still get in arguments. I haven’t seen Mr. Hawke since the day I saw him taken off in handcuffs. Dad said that they transferred him to some prison upstate; some of my friends even started a rumor that they sent him to a federal prison.

I do a lot of traveling these days. After the twenty-three years I’ve ventured on this earth, I’ve been through a lot (before and after the counterfeiting) and I still don’t know who I am. Most of the year I’m traveling the world trying to find myself, I’ve been to almost every country now. I somehow find the time to get odd jobs wherever I find myself, and I always find a way to provide for myself.

Sometimes in the summer, I come back to Ravenhook and walk the streets. A lot has changed but it’s still the town I know. And some days I come upon and old closed concrete building and I walk around it toward the back. The door is broken and I could enter if I want, but after all I’ve been through, I’m still not brave enough to venture back into that dark alcove where those boxes held the evil money. So I go on with my life and try as I might not to look back at the past regretfully. And sometimes I still think about those golden days I spent with dad and Mr. Hawke playing videogames in the pawnshop for the customers.

I'm going to be honest here. Not brutal. Just honest.

I'm no writing professional, in fact I have an English GCSE and a poetry blog, and little else. But this is what I enjoy in short stories - detail, colour, imagery, sustained atmosphere, and character.

Detail, colour and imagery are out; each moment is explained via a systematic and fleeting summary. It reads like an e-mail. I would have loved to hear more of your discovery of the counterfeit money - but all I get are two sentences of no detail and bland language. This should surely be the focal point of the story?

As for atmosphere; well you sum up a broken up parenthood quite well, but again the technique is systematic and thin. Write about what's really there but other's cannot see; the profound heaviness of the air in tense situations, what makes your heart heavy. Not about tidying your room - not that ordinary situations aren't enjoyable, but your characters do not have the depth to sustain these. I come from a broken family - I've written about it several times, and I generally write about the invisible things tthat hang in the air, and relationships and desires unfulfilled or fractured.

I think you were trying to sum up too much here in too little space - overall, this piece lacks depth. You could have easily written just about the moment you find the money and achieved so much more - and you ight even find you might have to write a few hundred extra words ust to accommidate the depth. You do not have to treat time linearly. Let the reader know certain things only when they are relevant, and never then lose track of the present situation, and the present mind-set. You'd be suprised how much detail you can portray in a character just by carefully choosing his responses and reflexes to a situation that's well introduced and well detailed.

So yeah, sorry, I don't like it :(. Can't say much more than that, I'm afraid. Obviously, if this was so and I didn't feel up to any criticism, I wouldn't post a reply ("If you can't say anything nice..."). But I hope even a small portion of the above criticism is useful to you.

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Originally Posted by Identity

I'm going to be honest here. Not brutal. Just honest.

I'm no writing professional, in fact I have an English GCSE and a poetry blog, and little else. But this is what I enjoy in short stories - detail, colour, imagery, sustained atmosphere, and character.

Detail, colour and imagery are out; each moment is explained via a systematic and fleeting summary. It reads like an e-mail. I would have loved to hear more of your discovery of the counterfeit money - but all I get are two sentences of no detail and bland language. This should surely be the focal point of the story?

As for atmosphere; well you sum up a broken up parenthood quite well, but again the technique is systematic and thin. Write about what's really there but other's cannot see; the profound heaviness of the air in tense situations, what makes your heart heavy. Not about tidying your room - not that ordinary situations aren't enjoyable, but your characters do not have the depth to sustain these. I come from a broken family - I've written about it several times, and I generally write about the invisible things tthat hang in the air, and relationships and desires unfulfilled or fractured.

I think you were trying to sum up too much here in too little space - overall, this piece lacks depth. You could have easily written just about the moment you find the money and achieved so much more - and you ight even find you might have to write a few hundred extra words ust to accommidate the depth. You do not have to treat time linearly. Let the reader know certain things only when they are relevant, and never then lose track of the present situation, and the present mind-set. You'd be suprised how much detail you can portray in a character just by carefully choosing his responses and reflexes to a situation that's well introduced and well detailed.

So yeah, sorry, I don't like it :(. Can't say much more than that, I'm afraid. Obviously, if this was so and I didn't feel up to any criticism, I wouldn't post a reply ("If you can't say anything nice..."). But I hope even a small portion of the above criticism is useful to you.
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I get where you are coming from and I thank you for your advice, but I guess for me, it's just different strokes for different folks. I've read countless short stories as the ones you have described, and when it's all detail and not enough plot, I just can't get into it, sure, it maybe more artistic, and sometimes that is better, but for me, I'd rather read something with more plot than details. Thank you for your advice just the same.

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Originally Posted by PhantomBPR

I get where you are coming from and I thank you for your advice, but I guess for me, it's just different strokes for different folks. I've read countless short stories as the ones you have described, and when it's all detail and not enough plot, I just can't get into it, sure, it maybe more artistic, and sometimes that is better, but for me, I'd rather read something with more plot than details. Thank you for your advice just the same.
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You are probably reading the wrong stories :wink:. I might later write up a mock paragraph to demonstrate how I would rewrite the discovery scenario. I'm no author but it would be interesting (for me at least) to illustrate our different approaches.

Plot and detail should be symbiotic, btw. More later.

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Originally Posted by Identity

You are probably reading the wrong stories :wink:. I might later write up a mock paragraph to demonstrate how I would rewrite the discovery scenario. I'm no author but it would be interesting (for me at least) to illustrate our different approaches.

Plot and detail should be symbiotic, btw. More later.
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By all means, please do. I'm very interested in seeing how you would do it.

Ok, this is only one scene, but as I've said I think you're trying to sum up too much in too small a space. I was going to write more, but I don't have the time.

I wrote this in about an hour amongst MSN conversations and other distractions, and I haven't actually reread it. But enough of the excuses:


Money, and lots of it, here, in the back room of a junk shop. I stepped back, my eyes adjusting to the marvelous sight beyond them, my gaze scanning the edges of the paper notes at a dizzying speed, as if it were an electron beam in a TV set. They had to move that fast, of course, to catch up with my brain, which was already getting to work on that one important calculation. I decided after an instant that there must have been a million or so there; perhaps two hundred grand in the box in front of me, and a similar number in the others. Boxes that had evidently housed Heinz Baked Beans and were picked up from the nearest superstore. I guess you've seen it as many times as I am - that stock scene in the movies, the opened black briefcase stuffed full of cash. You might presume - picturing those movies in your mind - that the room was aglow with peppermint green, and my face overcome with glee. It just wasn't like that. Far from gleeful, it was as if my mind had presently suspended itself of emotion, of life, as if all my blood had rushed to my eyes. And far from aglow, the notes were dull and bland. But as my eyes refocused and started detailing one note in particular, an inconspicuous one in the middle somewhere, I started to realise that there was something on those notes that wasn't as dull as the rest. Something on those notes that wasn't on the $5 in my wallet. Blue zeroes. Blue ones. Et cetera. Sharp, clear, like blisters on the surface of the paper. And they really shouldn't have been there.

It was summer now, of course, but I had been taught at school the previous year that blue had the shortest wavelength of the colours. And we had to draw diagrams. Whilst radio waves just took one slow smooth stroke of the white board pen, looking like tranquil waves on a lake's shore, carrying the latest Duran Duran hit with reliable ease, blue's diagram was a dense, angular blur; and to draw it required the student to shake the pen in a frenzy, the pen emitting strobing wails as if it were an release of the energy generated by the student's angry scratch along the board; and it was this energy that was now burning my retinas, causing to me the wince. The figures - ones and zeros in that awful shade of blue, looked like blots of acid slowly making its way through the money. The counterfeit money. Absorbing this truly horrible realisation, my body took a step back or too, and then I stumbled. I felt heavy as if there was a black hole in the room slowly dragging me in. Hell, I wouldn't have minded if there was one in there, if only to take the vile specimens with it.

Now on the floor, I gathered the courage to touch the filthy objects. Slowly moving my thumb over the surface of the same note that grabbed my attention before hand, I realised how rough the paper was. It was hardly sandpaper, but if you were to rub one of those against your palate you'd probably feel as sick as I felt back then. This wasn't just counterfeit money, it was bad counterfeit money, and yet this is how my father and his business partner sustained there sudden increase in wealth? Maybe I'd have gathered the strength to stand up if I'd have understood any of it, but, as it was, my father walked in to the floor covered in spilled banknotes, and sprawled in the middle of it, myself, with the first tears emerging from my sore eyes. And as those eyes met his, the most terrible look emerged.

I've probably introduce some Britishisms and I do not know much of American currency, I apologise. Anyways, that's it. I've cut from that point because I was too tired to carry on, sorry.

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Originally Posted by Identity

Ok, this is only one scene, but as I've said I think you're trying to sum up too much in too small a space. I was going to write more, but I don't have the time.

I wrote this in about an hour amongst MSN conversations and other distractions, and I haven't actually reread it. But enough of the excuses:
Money, and lots of it, here, in the back room of a junk shop. I stepped back, my eyes adjusting to the marvelous sight beyond them, my gaze scanning the edges of the paper notes at a dizzying speed, as if it were an electron beam in a TV set. They had to move that fast, of course, to catch up with my brain, which was already getting to work on that one important calculation. I decided after an instant that there must have been a million or so there; perhaps two hundred grand in the box in front of me, and a similar number in the others. Boxes that had evidently housed Heinz Baked Beans and were picked up from the nearest superstore. I guess you've seen it as many times as I am - that stock scene in the movies, the opened black briefcase stuffed full of cash. You might presume - picturing those movies in your mind - that the room was aglow with peppermint green, and my face overcome with glee. It just wasn't like that. Far from gleeful, it was as if my mind had presently suspended itself of emotion, of life, as if all my blood had rushed to my eyes. And far from aglow, the notes were dull and bland. But as my eyes refocused and started detailing one note in particular, an inconspicuous one in the middle somewhere, I started to realise that there was something on those notes that wasn't as dull as the rest. Something on those notes that wasn't on the $5 in my wallet. Blue zeroes. Blue ones. Et cetera. Sharp, clear, like blisters on the surface of the paper. And they really shouldn't have been there.

It was summer now, of course, but I had been taught at school the previous year that blue had the shortest wavelength of the colours. And we had to draw diagrams. Whilst radio waves just took one slow smooth stroke of the white board pen, looking like tranquil waves on a lake's shore, carrying the latest Duran Duran hit with reliable ease, blue's diagram was a dense, angular blur; and to draw it required the student to shake the pen in a frenzy, the pen emitting strobing wails as if it were an release of the energy generated by the student's angry scratch along the board; and it was this energy that was now burning my retinas, causing to me the wince. The figures - ones and zeros in that awful shade of blue, looked like blots of acid slowly making its way through the money. The counterfeit money. Absorbing this truly horrible realisation, my body took a step back or too, and then I stumbled. I felt heavy as if there was a black hole in the room slowly dragging me in. Hell, I wouldn't have minded if there was one in there, if only to take the vile specimens with it.

Now on the floor, I gathered the courage to touch the filthy objects. Slowly moving my thumb over the surface of the same note that grabbed my attention before hand, I realised how rough the paper was. It was hardly sandpaper, but if you were to rub one of those against your palate you'd probably feel as sick as I felt back then. This wasn't just counterfeit money, it was bad counterfeit money, and yet this is how my father and his business partner sustained there sudden increase in wealth? Maybe I'd have gathered the strength to stand up if I'd have understood any of it, but, as it was, my father walked in to the floor covered in spilled banknotes, and sprawled in the middle of it, myself, with the first tears emerging from my sore eyes. And as those eyes met his, the most terrible look emerged.

I've probably introduce some Britishisms and I do not know much of American currency, I apologise. Anyways, that's it. I've cut from that point because I was too tired to carry on, sorry.
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I will admit I like the way you do it and this is a more conventional approach to short stories, but this just would not be something I would ever be able to get into. Don't get me wrong, you've got alot of tallent but this looks like something I had to read during a standardized test. Still I like your approach at it.

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carrying the latest Duran Duran hit with reliable ease[/b]

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I don't know about the rest of it, but god this made me cringe.

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Originally Posted by Kaniaz

I don't know about the rest of it, but god this made me cringe.
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I was trying to establish some kind of time frame, since it was obviously a retrospective piece.

PS: I'm not exactly sure what sure a standardised test is. But I guess they'd only print good examples of English :)

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I was trying to establish some kind of time frame, since it was obviously a retrospective piece.[/b]

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Time frame or not, criiiiiinge.

EDIT: A standardised test in America is like basically their fancy talk for 'a end-of-year-type-test' (as far as I know). So I guess what PhantomBPR is trying to say is, I'm sorry, but your writing was good enough to go in a test.

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Originally Posted by Kaniaz

Time frame or not, criiiiiinge.

EDIT: A standardised test in America is like basically their fancy talk for 'a end-of-year-type-test' (as far as I know). So I guess what PhantomBPR is trying to say is, I'm sorry, but your writing was good enough to go in a test.
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Pretty much.

EDIT: Please forgive my ignorance. I have no idea how the educational system works in England, but in America, we receive yearly exams from the government that are usually classified as "Standeredized Tests".

Short stories don't give me enough time to create as much plot as I would like. Writing novels demands too much information by the time I'm done with the plot. So there in lies my delima.