Prom Night
june contest, mystery, prom, short story
Published on:
Jun. 5, 2008, 7:23pmWord Count:
2073Last Edited:
Jun. 29, 2008, 7:38amWork Description
A mystery. :]
This work is archived and isn't accepting critiques or comments. Why?
Print
all your secrets, I'm in all of your private thoughts." Stephanie
shivered. She'd never gotten a prank call before.
"Who ever you are, leave me alone."
"If I leave you alone, you'll always be alone forever. No friends, no family. Everyone you know and love will abandon you." Stephanie slammed the phone back onto the receiver. She sat on the bed, and drew her legs up to her chest, hugging them. Waiting. She closed her eyes. She'd seen this all in the movies.
Please, don't call again. Please don't call again.
Ring ring. Ring ring. Ring ring.
She closed her eyes tighter. This isn't happening.
Ring ri--
The answering machine clicked on and Stephanie heard Monica's voice coming out of it.
"Steph? Steph, are you there? I just wanted to make sure you got home okay. You left Starbucks really quickly, and you didn't give me a chance to ask if you were allright. You looked bothered. I hope it wasn't something I said... Okay, well, when you get home --"
Stephanie lunged for the phone.
"Mon? Monica?"
"Hey, I was about to hang up."
"Yeah, I know," Stephanie said anxiously, the words rushing from her mouth. She had to tell someone, right now. "But I just got the weirdest phone call. I thought it was them calling back."
"Them? Whose them? Telemarketers?"
"No, not telemarketers. Some guy trying to scare me. I don't know. But it really freaked me out. Can you just, talk to me for a while?"
"Yeah, sure. But I'm getting in the car with my mom, can I call you when I get home?"
"NO! They might call again. Please?" Monica heard the pleading in Stephanie's voice, and sighed.
"Sure. Just, keep it PG, okay?" Stephanie heard Monica smiling. She rolled her eyes.
"Oh-kay. Hi, Mrs. Gohan." Monica's mom didn't have the same last name as Monica. She kept her maiden name, while Monica took her father's name. Roberts. Stephanie always thought Monica should have changed her name from Roberts to Gohan. Stephanie heard Mrs. Gohan laughing in the back. Monica told her she said hi. Monica's mom loved that kind of thing.
*****
Stephanie looked at her clock. 12:39. She punched her pillow; frustrated. Ever since those creepy phone calls, she hadn't been able to get to sleep right. She sat up, and leaned against her wall. She pulled out her pink Crazr and checked her messages. One new message. She opened it, and as she read the text, her mouth slowly fell open in shock.
"Don't go to prom if you want to save your best friend's life." Stephanie instantly made a new text, made out to "Mon".
"hey i know its late, but text me back, k?"
Send.
She leaned forward, resting her head on her knees. All she could think was, Monica better reply. Monica better reply. Monica... better reply... Monica... Monica better reply...
Stephanie found herself waking up to the sound of her phone vibrating. New text.
It was from the same number as the one from the previous night.
"Nice try. :D" Stephanie wondered if she could talk to this mystery man.
"who are you? what have you done with Mon?"
Send. Now all she could do was wait.
*****
Jason leaned his head to the right, then the left, cracking it, making that popping-cracking sound girls always seem to hate. Hesitantly, he picked up his phone, and dialed the number he'd been rehearsing for the past two hours.
Ring. Ring. Ring.
Voicemail.
He pushed the "end" button. Story of his life. He fell back into his chair. He couldn't keep up the charade any longer. Sooner or later, someone was bound to find out. He wasn't exactly discreet, and he wasn't sure if the phone companies keep up their promise of "discretion." Plus, his mom goes in his closet from time to time.
Jason sighed, and closed his eyes.
More waiting.
*****
Looking at the new text, they wondered how to reply. "Who are you." How does one answer that when they're trying to keep their identity to themselves? Sighing, a new text was formed.
"You know better than to ask that. Or, that's what Monica tells me..." Keeping curiosity aroused was bound to buy some time.
Rate This Work
Your honest rating will help the author improve, and you'll earn a little karma too.
Please log in to rate.Discussion
My first critique, not so sure how it'll go.
The plot was pretty solid, but as stated above, it seemed to parallel some of the scary genres of movies. Not that it's a bad thing, just, it does seem to be played out a lot. Nothing against it, seeing as the movies tend to be okay.
The pacing seemed a bit fast, but not too fast. Pretty good all in all.
Descriptions were excellent and went smoothly with what was going on. I was wondering where the mother and daughter were (I'm not all that great with names), though. Otherwise spot on.
I liked the way you introduced the characters, giving us some back round and how they think.
It was a pretty good first chapter and I wish you luck in the contest.
Hello, i am relatively new to Scribophile but I am part of several other critique circles so hopefully I can give some helpful advice. However I must say that while I tend to be harsh and very honest everything I say is just my opinion so you shouldn't get offended by my comments. Take what you find usefull and ignore the rest.
That being say to the critique itself:
So far this was a very predictable plot, that we all saw in teen slasher movies. Self absorbed teenagers that end up in a situation way above their heads. (The main difference between your story and the classic plot-lines is that usually the situation is brought on by something bad the teens do while in this case it seems to be random) What stuck out to me was the fact that the caller is in her dreams. This little twist sounds interesting but a bit close to the "Nightmare on Elm street" series. Overall while this plot isn't very original it's not bad either and can lead to interesting twists and turns.
I am a bit surprised by your choice of characters though as nobody is really likable (so far), which seems to predict everybody will get killed. (I'll expand on the character latter) Anyhow if the main character is to survive you should make her more pleasurable and easyier to identify with.
The pacing was perfect for a teen slasher story. You introduce the characters and describe their petty little drama's. I was only disapointed by the lack of suspense before the strange call. Why don;t you slow down and let us feel scared? Tell us the house is empty and dark, a strange shadow crawls on teh ceiling of her room, etc..stuff that will put us in the right mood for a creepy call.
A bit more description please. As I mentioned before let us "feel" the scene; not too much but tell us how her hosue looks, how jason's room looks etc. Also I would add a short description of the town or the neighboorhood so we can get an idea of how these kids live, what they do daily etc.
Well writen POV and you kept it consistent. Good job (I always mess this up when passing from one scene to another)
I wish the main character (Stephanie) would be mroe likable. Tell us more about her. The fact that she had her heart broken doesn't really make her stand out and be lovable, tell us how her ex cheated on her in mroe detail and how people made fun of her. A drama in her past will make her more attractive to the reader. Also give her a larger scope in life, past prom. She should be somehow different than all the other petty teenagers so we can be interested in her. Of course all of this applies only if you want her to survive the killer or if you don't plan a bildugnsroman that follows her change into a great character...
The dialog was taken out of teenager's mouths. A bit annoyng but very realistic well done.
I didn't see any issues with grammar.
As far as teen slasher stories go this is a good one, I just wish you would have foreshadowed what will happen more. I predict that this dream monster will start killing Stephanies's friends but I guess you could take this in a completely different way...anyhow nice intro.
Hey! I must agree with all the above comments. Since the plot and the opening chapter is all so familiar, it should not end up as, " Oh no! another one of these", in the readers mind. If you have begun such, you must carry it out with a twist in its progress to make it stand out from the crowd. I would say, the writing style can be typically catagorized as -fiction for teens. I like the way you treated the girl's emotions versus the boy's communication style. It might be easy to capture the reader's interest in the first chapter but needs some thinking in developing it further to maintain the pace (yet not make it too runny as the scary movies we've seen all too often).
Hope you do a great job with this one!
First of all I want to say that I think there is a lot of potential here, there are so many ways that you can do the Prom piece. I'm assuming this is part of something that is a work in progress so here's what I have for you so far.
"Looking in the full-length mirror, she held up various dresses,
to see which one looked best.
Combing back her long blond hair, with some dark brown mixed in to
make it look more natural, she gave herself the stare down with her
green-blue eyes that changed depending on what she was wearing,
which right now, were trying to match the blue dress she was
holding up. She had skinny legs, displaying blue shorts that were
far too short to let the imagination run wild, paired with a medium
sized waist, veiled by a gray tank top with lace on the straps and
along the top."
While I definitely think describing your characters is important, I don't think having the blanket description paragraph at the beginning. It feels too much like you are trying to get it out of the way. Instead, I think you might try slipping in bits of description with the dialogue. That way you don't have this huge transition between a paragraph that is all description and then character dialogue. It will help the flow of your story and keep readers from losing there place in the plot development.
*By the way I wan to say, I like the way you have her picking between dresses and the guy picking between girls… Leaves this idea that picking a dress is the equivalent to a guy picking a girl which to me is a subtle jab at how chauvinistic society can be. I think it's a strong literary device that you can probably utilize throughout the story in other areas. An example would be when she gets the prank phone call maybe Jason gets a letter in the mail (or email or IM) that warns him against taking her to the prom. Something like that you know.*
There was some dialogue I didn't find believable that I wanted to point out.
“Okay, man, I know I’m dumb sometimes, but taking two girls to
prom is like asking to start World War three.” Jason sighed."
“But she’s fugly.”
I didn't like the World War Three thing, way too cliche for me. I think you can come up with something more descriptive and more believable as far as guys go. I mean they are in high school and niether of them have said a bad word yet. Maybe it's just me, but when I was in high school us guys swore all the time. Their conversation just doesn't seem believable.
Being a guy myself who is in his 20s, I really couldn't get behind this. Sure, "Fugly" is definitely a word spawned by men. However, it's not something we use regularly. Had you made the reference a joke it probably would have worked better. Like having Ryan say it with an accent to make it sound like he's dogging on her. Instead it just sounds like a response that would be standard for guys. Which, I highly doubt is. "Busted" I think would have been a better choice if you don't want to add description to Ryan's comment.
Lastly...
"She never made the first move. She never asked any guy out. She was socially awkward. A wave of shame washed over her."
The way these sentences are written is very choppy. That's 4 periods in almost one line, that's a little excessive. Three of the sentences start with "she" you could probably combine some of these sentences and have a greater effect on the reader. If you want it to read like an internal monologue you might try an introduction statement (like "she thought" or "Stephanie pondered") followed by an italicized collection of statements. If it's a stream of consciousness then let it flow.
Over all I think you have great potential here and although I'm not sure where you are headed with this I'm interested to find out. Good luck!
Yes, it is extremely predictable.
But it is a work in progress, and the best I could think up at the time. and I didn't want to throw it away, so I continued it.
Thank you so much for your comments/critiques.
Hey there! I just read this piece and here's review so bear with me.
The plot sounded so familiar from movies like "When a Stranger Calls" or "Scream". But, I'm not mad at what you got your idea from. It was good. We all have our inspiration.
The pacing was a little fast. Overall, it was good.
There was some description on what Monica was wearing while shopping for that prom dress. By the way where were they when they've gone to get their frappachino fix?
Now for Jason and Ryan: are the guys at Jason's or Ryan's. There should be some description to where they are located.
This is the one flaw I spotted here. Instead of that it be:
Well that's it. I'm right behind you on this winning the June Contest. Hope my comments help.
1 love.