Weekly Short Stories Contest and Company! discussion
note: This topic has been closed to new comments.
Weekly Short Story Contests
>
Week 21 (Sept. 25th-October 2nd) Short Story Contest! DONE!!
date
newest »
newest »
message 1:
by
oıɔoɹ/rocio♥
(new)
Sep 26, 2009 09:57AM
o.O
reply
|
flag
Title: The Illusion Of Hope
by Ameerah
Word count:493
"If love is the highest flower of the bright side of life, then disapponitment is the sharpest thorn of its dark side. This feeling- born from a gloomy marriage between sadness and the nostalgia of discovering that what was thought to be gold was indeed fancy jewellery- sucks all hope from the veins of the soul..."
Sadhna knew that she was no great philosopher, and that she had not read great books, but her life had now taught her enough to muse, to talk to herself in her head, about the disappointment of her life as she sat on the grimy bus seat one commonplace summer evening in June. It would be another quarter of an hour before the bus would reach the stop near the tiny three-room London apartment in which she, her in-vain-looking-for-a-job husband and three young children were crammed to live. She had just returned from another hard day of work as a maid at the house of rich Londoners. Her back was aching and her neck was stiff from the day's scrubbing, washing and sweeping at the place of the well-off strangers, on whom she depended for a meagre wage- which all went into the apartment rent, cheap food and commodities- at the end of each month. Talking of months, it had already been six of them since Sadhna was living in London, the land of her disappointed dreams.
Half a year before, in Calcutta, she had been embarking, with her family, an airplane for London, whose tickets had been paid by half of her and her husband's life savings. They had been leaving India, land of slum housing and corrupt officials and never-rising wages, for England, land of proper in-house lavatories and meritocracy and wages in pounds.
They had left behind a corrugated-iron-sheet house and two cows in Calcutta, in the hope of finding a warm red-bricked house and two cars in London.
Back in Calcutta, she had heard such awe-inspiring tales of the eldorado of England.
How greatly she had been fooled by those illusioning hopes...
Fastforwarding from the past hopeful Sadhna boarding the plane to the England of her dreams back to the present Sadhna sitting on the rickety bus seat, we find her preparing to get off the bus as she has just spotted her stop the distance of the evening's fading horizon. As the bus halts at the stop with a jerk, Sadhna is one of the few to go down the bus's clanky metallic steps.
Standing on the pavement littered with sweet wrappers and cigarette butts in the envelopping dusk, she lets out a long deep sigh, and starts walking towards her delapidated apartment. This sigh is the only action she can manoueuvre against her disappointment at having discovered, once having arrived in her then-thought 'eldorado', that the plentiful of opportunities and jobs, the fat paychecks, the protection by the law, and the houses with TV sets of England weren't for the poor clandestine immigrant without papers...
by Ameerah
Word count:493
"If love is the highest flower of the bright side of life, then disapponitment is the sharpest thorn of its dark side. This feeling- born from a gloomy marriage between sadness and the nostalgia of discovering that what was thought to be gold was indeed fancy jewellery- sucks all hope from the veins of the soul..."
Sadhna knew that she was no great philosopher, and that she had not read great books, but her life had now taught her enough to muse, to talk to herself in her head, about the disappointment of her life as she sat on the grimy bus seat one commonplace summer evening in June. It would be another quarter of an hour before the bus would reach the stop near the tiny three-room London apartment in which she, her in-vain-looking-for-a-job husband and three young children were crammed to live. She had just returned from another hard day of work as a maid at the house of rich Londoners. Her back was aching and her neck was stiff from the day's scrubbing, washing and sweeping at the place of the well-off strangers, on whom she depended for a meagre wage- which all went into the apartment rent, cheap food and commodities- at the end of each month. Talking of months, it had already been six of them since Sadhna was living in London, the land of her disappointed dreams.
Half a year before, in Calcutta, she had been embarking, with her family, an airplane for London, whose tickets had been paid by half of her and her husband's life savings. They had been leaving India, land of slum housing and corrupt officials and never-rising wages, for England, land of proper in-house lavatories and meritocracy and wages in pounds.
They had left behind a corrugated-iron-sheet house and two cows in Calcutta, in the hope of finding a warm red-bricked house and two cars in London.
Back in Calcutta, she had heard such awe-inspiring tales of the eldorado of England.
How greatly she had been fooled by those illusioning hopes...
Fastforwarding from the past hopeful Sadhna boarding the plane to the England of her dreams back to the present Sadhna sitting on the rickety bus seat, we find her preparing to get off the bus as she has just spotted her stop the distance of the evening's fading horizon. As the bus halts at the stop with a jerk, Sadhna is one of the few to go down the bus's clanky metallic steps.
Standing on the pavement littered with sweet wrappers and cigarette butts in the envelopping dusk, she lets out a long deep sigh, and starts walking towards her delapidated apartment. This sigh is the only action she can manoueuvre against her disappointment at having discovered, once having arrived in her then-thought 'eldorado', that the plentiful of opportunities and jobs, the fat paychecks, the protection by the law, and the houses with TV sets of England weren't for the poor clandestine immigrant without papers...
Your story is really good, Ameerah! :]
Do write ones too! I'd love to see other people's stories (and, if I am lucky, get some advice from them!). =)
Thanks too Hanzle! =]=]
Thanks too Hanzle! =]=]
Title: Not what he wantedby Rocio S.
The boy raced downstairs as he heard his mom and dad shouting for him and his twin brother to come down. He reached the living room, his heart pounding from excitement, and as he saw the big, bright-colored presents, it sped up even faster. John sat down beside him and together they opened the biggest box, labeled To: John and Timmy; From: Santa Claus. Timmy was almost 100% certain that it was what he’d asked for, and he could barely hold his excitement as he and John ripped through the brightly decorated paper.
But, to his surprise, what was inside wasn’t the Monster Truck Vleke 200. His face fell and disappointment could be seen throughout his whole face. He sniffed, trying to hold back the tears that were welling up n his eyes.
“What’s wrong Timmy?” her mother asked him, confused at his expression. She and his father had thought that the remote-controlled race car they had bought at the store for their little twin sons would be perfect for both. But, apparently, they had both been wrong.
Timmy frowned and said in a barely audible whisper, “Nothing.” He decided he shouldn’t tell his parents about how much he didn’t like it. John, however, was delighted. It was just another clue as to how much they were different, even though they were identical twins.
Al wrote: "I love reading other's stories, too! It is so much fun! Sorry I did not write anything. My week has been very much busy! I am putting up some polls right now. Well, for the poems anyway...you wro..."
:(
This topic has been frozen by the moderator. No new comments can be posted.
