Help?

I don't normally come here, but hey. I dunno how much you guys like giving critiques, but here goes nothing.

I've written this short story (very short!) and obviously, I'd like some critique, to make it airtight. Any decent feedback's appreciated (Also, feedback on what is/isn't good, what does/n't work, and so on. Cheers in advance.)


She is not like other girls.
She doesn’t talk to her friends. She only listens. And makes them. She has good friends. All her friends tell her what she likes to hear, just as she can tell them whatever she wants. But she never speaks to them. And to everyone else, her friends can be grouped. Divided. She sees no such divisions. Between the senses, the perception of her friends, like other people do. She’s a different girl. She’s a quiet one.

School isn’t her friend. Never has been, and never will be. Nor are those at the school. Other minds. Other shapes. Small minds discuss people, Eleanor once said. These people discuss people, always talkingtalkingtalking. Noise. Endlessly, jaws springing and tongues dancing. These people haven’t changed. She walked past them when she was young. Walked past Barbie and Sindy. She saw them around town, never said a word. Never made eye contact. Avoided.

It wasn’t her fault. She avoided people because people avoided her, never understood why. Her mother knows. Her doctor thinks he knows. They called it chemical imbalance. She called everyone else single-minded. She was right. Her father didn’t know. He thought she was stupid, crazy, used it to his advantage. Stole things from her that he could never give back. And so she looked elsewhere. Found substitutes and surrogates. Things that help her remember what she lost, and forget that she did.

What she found was her friends, who she makes with care, with reckless abandon. With passion. She makes them with colour, with lines, with space volume form meaning love the geometry of emotion. And she never speaks to her friends. But she converses with them silently, with love and despair and fear and joy and hope. She converses with them not with words, but with her geometry and her love. Because these friends are some of the few things she has left. Her friends are her anesthetic to the pain of the world. These friends talk to her though; talk as she makes them so tenderly and so forcefully, with a waterfall of emotion from the reservoir she keeps hidden. They listen through bristle and handle and colour, while she listens through her eyes. And she weeps sometimes. But she is always happy when she is making new friends. She never speaks to her friends. But they still know how she feels. And they help. Silent counsel. Cold embraces. And they help.

Her name is Lucy. But that doesn’t really matter. She calls herself Lucy. Or Lana. Or Emily or Stephanie or Caitlin or Lucy. And Lucy is her best friend of all. The first friend she didn’t make. The friend she’s always with when she makes new friends. Lucy is almost always there when her friends talk to her. Lucy loves Lucy. Lucy helps Lucy.

Lucy first met Lucy by accident. Back one day when her brother she doesn’t remember had friends over. Lucy found Lucy lying on a table in his room. Lucy didn’t know what to do with Lucy. But she was little and she was curious and Lucy looked so nice. So Lucy tried Lucy, and their first fantastical adventure began. And because she still had a voice then, she found out where to find Lucy. And they had many adventures together before Lucy put her voice away.

She hid her voice from the girls and the boys and the teachers and especially her father (and then he went away and she doesn’t know where. She doesn’t care). The girls and the boys thought she was funny before she hid it. And when she did they tried to bring it back. Tried to coax it out. Lucy knew that if it got out, it would explode and it would hurt. So she kept it away. The teachers learned faster than the girls and the boys. They spoke to Mother and stopped asking her questions. They just made sure she listened. And understood.

But for all she tries, Mother doesn’t understand Lucy. Doesn’t know her friends, Doesn’t hear them the way Lucy feels them and sees them. Lucy’s friends are special. Because Lucy’s most loving friends of all are not the ones she makes. And not even Lucy loves Lucy this much. But when Lucy and Lucy and her loving friends are together, the whole world melts away and Lucy can be happy.

Just as Lucy exhales trouble and colour, she breathes harmony and melody and relief. Harmonies, accompaniments, swirling up and down and all around, eclipsing the greys of the world with colour and light and happiness. Lucy takes solace and freedom in the cascading sound, minor and majors, blues and greens. Red and Yellow. Floating in space, intangible, untouchable. The colours aren’t there, but Lucy feels them and they feel her. The sensation of colour and the colour of sound; the whole world melts away in a sea of everything and nothing and sensation. Mixed and shuffled it all makes sense to her. Shivering to the treble, panting at the bass. Rose-tinted with a soundtrack of Fastfastfast, lilac as her
friends
slow
down
dooown
dooooown.
And so Lucy does not listen. She feels. She lives. She experiences. She is.

So Lucy goes to meet Lucy again. Lucy takes Lucy out of her special hiding place (where nobodybutnobody ever looks) and she gazes at her with such love. And Lucy tenderly lifts up a small part of Lucy and tastes her ever so gently. And she waits for Lucy to say hello. And slowly Lucy wakes up.

And the colours start to dance as the symphony of light begins And the walls and everything disappear and Lucy isn’t afraid The cleansing sound grates not her senses It flows through her ears her eyes her mind her everything and she is happy again The reds the blues and the sharps and the smooth smooth scales E F# E F# E F# E F# F# bend release forgetletgosmilecryscreamrenewrebirthflashingflowingspillinghearingseeingfeelingbeing trustinglearninghappeninglivingrememberingWeAreEternalAllThisPainIsAnIllusion.
She was not like other girls.

I like it; just making sure you know that before I start talking. Also, keep in mind that English isn't my first language, so bear with it if you can.

Now, I wouldn't say it was bad, not at all, but it takes a little more than a description of a moderately disturbed person for a story to be good, I think. Then; every time you reveal something, you certainly should stop talking about that particular thing and treasure it for the future, where you could reap it's harvest when you actually tell a story. You might only hint instead of telling - that would be the best for this particular piece; but you never hinted at a conflict your reader might've had fun resolving in his imagination.

An example on repetition: you finally reveal your character is mentally un-normal. Fine. Stop talking about it, you reader understands. Then, you reveal that all her good friends aren't people; fine! a good touch indeed! but stop talking about it, or you'll stomp it into  dull triviality. I wouldn't so openly explain they're drawings, either.

An example on storytelling: her friends are not quite real. Good. Perhaps, they live in a place that isn't real? Perhaps, other kids told her they know where it is? Hint at a bad place and an incoming cruel joke, maybe, so that your reader could think to himself, "damn, are they really gonna do that to her?.."

Particulars.

Her doctor thinks he knows. They called it chemical imbalance.
This is one sentence, first of all; but, doesn't matter; what matters is that it's second half (your second sentence) is utterly unnecessary. If there is an assigned doctor, then it's all clear: the girl's sick. (I say, keep this kind of thing in mind every time you write.)

Lucy first met Lucy by accident. Back one day when her brother she doesn’t remember had friends over. Lucy found Lucy lying on a table in his room. Lucy didn’t know what to do with Lucy.
Intentional or not, too much Lucy, and thus annoying. Try something that sounds like Lucy or rhymes with it instead, maybe? Not recommending the fix itself, only the method.

trustinglearninghappeninglivingrememberingWeAreEternalAllThisPainIsAnIllusion
I say, the more melodramatic you are, the more cynical your reders become. Judge by yourself: what could your opinion have been if you read this in another author's book?

I also think that you really overuse short sentences. I understand that it more or less works for this particular story, but, really, is it all that necessary? I think it could have been better if it all was written in more adequate prose. Don't take me very seriously on this one, though; here, more than anywhere, I could be gravely mistaken, and it might be just fine, since that's what your character's thought process might actually look like, indeed. Yet, I say, why don't you try re-editing this into normally flowing prose just to see if it improves?

>>2 here again.
Forgot to add that if you make "WeAreEternalAllThisPainIsAnIllusion" into "WeAreEternalThisIsAnIllusion", it really becomes much better, don't you think? Sorry for seperate-posting.

>>2
>>3
Cheers for that. The only thing I'd really object to is the picking up on the We Are Eternal thing. That was a reference to a song which I think fits quite well with the theme of the whole story. The entire notion of escaping one's reality is what I'm focusing on, and that seems to sum it up nicely. Also, the song's got a video to it that is just so trippy I simply couldn't leave out in a story centered around drug use.

>>4
I wouldn't say "All this pain is an illusion" is a very original line, either; and, if anything, it simply is in poor taste, I dare say. You understand that it's too easy to be misinterpreted if you say "pain" these days? And if you can be misinterpreted, you will be. You write escapist, I read emogoth - is that what you want?

The entire notion of escaping one's reality is what I'm focusing on
Yep. So, what's that to do with "all that pain"?

>>5
Yeah, I see where you're coming from. I really was kinda hoping nobody would get the whole emo thing out of it, but hey.

At risk of sounding like a blithering fanboy, the nature of the song it's in suits it.

>>6
"If you can be misinterpreted, you will be" is one of the top rules of  literature. You better believe me, before you write another "a person's a person no matter how small" about liliputes on a flower an elephant has found and see it aggressively used as an anti-abortion movement slogan, if you know what I mean.

does she eat shit?? i was like wtf