The Corridor Of Broken Dreams (Short Story)

Following The Burden of Expectations post, here's a short story that's sort of inspired by it and other things. Life is too short to waste it away in a miserable cubicle job. I needed a well-deserved kick in the butt from the universe to remind me of that. Also, this is my first short story after a very long time. I'd forgotten how much fun they can be.

Credit: The Corridor by Adikko (from deviantART)

I push the bar-handles of the double doors open and enter the school building. A long hallway stretches out ahead of me endlessly. There is no one in sight. But I can see them. I can hear their voices in my head. Voices that belong to the past. I start walking down the hallway. Its lockers are full of memories of countless events involving the countless teenagers who used them.

Locker 137. This is where my first boyfriend asked me out. This is also where I had my first kiss.

I keep walking. Locker 156. This is where we broke up. My first ex-boyfriend's locker.

Locker 301. This is where I poured my eyes out to my then best friend and told her I was so done with boys. It was stupid to fawn over them anyway. They were selfish beings who put themselves first.

Two months later, I had no memory of saying that, as I kissed my next boyfriend at Locker 307.

The so-called significant events in the life of an ordinary teenager.

It’s not just the lockers, but the hallway itself. I remember thinking about being a vet or sometimes a lawyer or a fighter pilot amidst the whirlwind of crazy activity that was my life.

Hope...(and My First Dear Author Critique)

Hope is what fuels my writing. Aside from writing because I just plain love writing, I write because I hope to write my stories the way they deserve to be written. I write because I hope that this was what I was put on this earth to do. And I write because I hope that someone somewhere in the world will like what I write.

So. I wrote a chunk of a novel last year (with the rather unimpressive title of "Death Wish") and decided to submit its first page to Dear Author's First Page critique feature in February to see if there was any hope in my writing. I totally forgot about it until I got an email yesterday saying that my first page was up for critique! The community over at Dear Author have taken me to task (wonderfully, might I say) here: http://dearauthor.com/features/first-page-features/first-page-death-wish/

I am truly grateful to Dear Author and its community for giving me hope. I couldn't ask for more.

Oh, and here's my first page for the Dear Author submission (and it's not the most brilliant thing):

I rolled my shoulders and assessed the wraith in front of me. The thing howled like an enraged gust of wind. It was trapped within the circle of containment I’d just cast. There were only two ways it could go now. Back from wherever it came from or through my Rifter.