# Writing > Short Story Sharing >  Serious Short Story

## mgv1208

So i decided to try to write something deeper, or at least serious, as oppossed to my typical stories. I've been reading a lot of Plato and Aristophanes for class so it definitely effected the style of this story. All critique is welcome because i have absolutely no clue if this is any good


Serious short story

Eric Harris woke up confused, and unsure of his location. He shouldn't have been alive, he was shocked that he was alive, he had tried to no longer be alive. Unrequited love does that to a man, it hits you like a wave-- the initial rejection pulls you under, but then the after-shock drags you deeper and deeper into depression. 

“Hi, Eric, right? I'm Dr. Edwards the hospital psychiatrist and I'm just here to check up on you and ask you a few questions. Is it alright if I sit down?

“Go for it.”

“So, I've read your file and it says you took 100 Ibuprofen and drank a bottle of codeine cough medicine. Now why would you go and do something like that?”

“I don't really feel like discussing it. I just want everyone to leave me alone.

“I'm sorry kid, but I just can't do that. You just attempted suicide, you're not allowed to be alone, and it's my job to help you. And I wanna help you, but you have to tell me what happened.”

Eric sighed and decided he really didn't have much choice in the matter. “Fine, I'll tell you. It all started about two years ago. I was at this party at school.”

“Which school?”

“Michigan State University, so I was at this party at Pi Kapps and I was absolutely trashed, I think I drank like 8 shots of Captain and four or five beers in probably two hours. So anyway I was pretty hammered and I started dancing with this really pretty girl, Ashley. After about three songs, we started making out and she whispered into my ear that we should go to her apartment, which was a couple blocks away. I took a few more shots before we left and then I blacked out on the walk and when I came too, she was on top of me and we were ****ing. So the next day we both woke up and she screamed because she didn't know what had happened the night before, she had blacked out too. She thought that I raped her, she said 'You're disgusting, I would never **** you if you hadn't drugged me. You rapist, you disgusting pig. I'm going to the police you *******.' But I had no clue what she was talking about, I didn't drug her, I would never do something like that. I was hammered and I had no clue that she was as drunk as she was. I asked one of the guys at Pi Kapps and he told me that she had drank 12 shots in an hour and a half, so it wasn't that she was drugged, she was just really drunk and couldn't remember hooking up with me. We went to court and I was charged with being a sex offender because the law in Michigan says that drunk sex isn't consensual sex, but I didn't even know she was drunk. The law's complete bull**** because I can't claim that she raped me. There's a retarded double standard and now I'm considered a sex offender. Do you know how hard it is to get a job, or to have friends in college, when I have to notify them that I'm a sex offender?”

“So that's why you tried to kill yourself? Because you messed up.”

“Hey **** you man, I didn't mess up. I got screwed over by some bull**** law that can't be questioned because of the stupid ****ing hyper-feminist movement, which makes questioning anything that involves rape some kind of heinous crime.”

“So now you hate feminists.”

“Are you even listening to me? I said the hyper, or ultra-feminist movement. I'm a feminist. All a feminist is, is someone who believes that men and women are equal. The ultra-feminist's are the group of hyper-sensitive ****s who wish to censor and condemn anyone who disagrees with them. They're politically correct *******s who think the words '****' and 'rape' are the most evil words on the planet and if anyone says them they throw a hissy fit. And before you ask, no I don't think rape is okay, I just think that what I did isn't rape and if people weren't condemned for questioning what is and isn't rape, I wouldn't have found myself in the situation I'm in. Anyway, that particular event wasn't what caused me to try to end it. I've been dating this girl for about six months and she knows that I'm a sex offender, but I lied and told her that it was for pissing in public.

“Why'd you lie?”

“Because the first couple girls that I told the truth too, they ditched me immediately, so I thought that if she would just get to know me first, then she wouldn't overreact when I told her. But I was wrong. We were in love with each other and I was gonna ask her to move in with me, but first I needed to tell her the truth. So I took her to dinner at Mitchell's Fish Market, which is this great seafood place about ten minutes away from MSU, after we finished our meals, we started talking and I decided that it would be a good time to tell her. She seemed to take it okay at first. She asked me lots of questions and she seemed fairly satisfied by my answers. We even went back to her place and fooled around, but two days later I texted her to see if she wanted to come over. She texted me back and said 'no, and I never want to see you again. You're a rapist and I'm just incredibly discomforted by you. Maybe someday I'll get over it, but I don't want you to call me, or talk to me for the foreseeable future.' I was devastated, I didn't know what to do. I was in love with her, I couldn't lose her. So I called her and left her messages begging her to speak to me. And then I just reached for whatever I had in the room, and I tried to kill myself.”

“Wow, that's rough kid. But don't you know that suicide is a sin?”
Eric just noticed that the psychiatrist was wearing a cross and in his right hand he held religious pamphlets. “I don't believe in that stuff.”

“What stuff? Sins or Religion?”

“Both, I'm an atheist. I hate to be rude, but you can keep your faith and your superstition to yourself, I'm not interested.”

“So what keeps you from doing bad things to people? what keeps you humble? what keeps you from ending your life, if not for the threat of eternal damnation?” 

“So the only reason you don't kill people that you dislike is because you're afraid of what god might do to you? Are you sure you that's how you feel? And as for the religious being humble, let me tell you a story a religious girl told me. She said ' I know there's a god because my uncle was supposed to be on one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center, but for the first time in his life, he missed his flight, and lived.' Now at first glance you may look at that story and think that there's nothing wrong with it, but let's take a look at what she's saying. She's saying that god exists because he saved her family, well what about all the other people that died on nine-eleven, does god not care about them? See religion really isn't that humbling, it's actually incredibly arrogant. And as for your last question, I would've tried to kill myself whether, or not I was religious. Even if I wouldn't have tried to kill myself had I been religious, it wouldn't make it anymore true. There just is no evidence that an intervening god exists, and that's why I don't believe in god. The only thing that matters to me, is what is true, not what is comforting.”

“Wow, that's an interesting way of looking at it. We'll have to agree to disagree, but I don't understand why you would try to end your life. You're incredibly bright, and from what I've learned from speaking to you, you have a very great future ahead of you. Don't throw that away because of some girl. Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right? Please don't try it again, you're better than that.”

Eric rolled his eyes his at the ridiculous Nietzschean cliché, but he appreciated the sentiment and promised the doctor that he wouldn't try again.

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## MANICHAEAN

You have a tremendous talent for comedy, as this was nearly as funny as “The Fear Army,” that I read on Lit Net last year. It’s a little bit like Tommy Cooper, a U.K. magician, whose tricks kept going wrong. But it was an unintentional path to the difficult profession of making people laugh.
Thank you for cheering up my day.
Best regards
M.

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## hillwalker

Why did I cringe when I saw the title of this thread? and cringe even further when I saw someone informing us they have read Plato and Aristophones (wow) then fail to capitalise the personal pronoun 'i' or spell 'opposed' correctly? Perhaps it's the fact that you chose such a pretentious title for your tale and began with a self-indulgent preamble when, if the story is any good, it should be able to stand on its own two feet.

But I decided to read it despite such misgivings, largely following *MAN*'s endorsement. If it's good enough for him it can't be all bad.*

Parts are adequately written - quite amusing up to a point, but the scenario was a little far-fetched. I'm not sure that a patient would 'not have much choice in the matter' when asked by a doctor why he tried suicide. Surely Eric could refuse to answer. But of course, then you'd have nothing to write about.

And therein lies the problem with this. Your characters are wafer thin, used purely to fulfil a role in your story. The block of exposition that followed was totally fake I'm afraid. Dialogue doesn't work like this (and I don't mean Plato's Dialogues). You've set up an artificial scenario so you can dump a load of back-story on the reader but it's handled with the finesse of a dumper truck tipping asphalt at the side of the road.

No doubt you will say it's not meant to be taken seriously as a 'story'. You're merely exercising philosophical dialectic in a more contemporary setting. But to me it was ultimately a rather self-indulgent piece of writing that rapidly became tedious.

_*But I was wrong_  :Frown: 

H

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## mgv1208

> Why did I cringe when I saw the title of this thread? and cringe even further when I saw someone informing us they have read Plato and Aristophones (wow) then fail to capitalise the personal pronoun 'i' or spell 'opposed' correctly? Perhaps it's the fact that you chose such a pretentious title for your tale and began with a self-indulgent preamble when, if the story is any good, it should be able to stand on its own two feet.
> 
> But I decided to read it despite such misgivings, largely following *MAN*'s endorsement. If it's good enough for him it can't be all bad.*
> 
> Parts are adequately written - quite amusing up to a point, but the scenario was a little far-fetched. I'm not sure that a patient would 'not have much choice in the matter' when asked by a doctor why he tried suicide. Surely Eric could refuse to answer. But of course, then you'd have nothing to write about.
> 
> And therein lies the problem with this. Your characters are wafer thin, used purely to fulfil a role in your story. The block of exposition that followed was totally fake I'm afraid. Dialogue doesn't work like this (and I don't mean Plato's Dialogues). You've set up an artificial scenario so you can dump a load of back-story on the reader but it's handled with the finesse of a dumper truck tipping asphalt at the side of the road.
> 
> No doubt you will say it's not meant to be taken seriously as a 'story'. You're merely exercising philosophical dialectic in a more contemporary setting. But to me it was ultimately a rather self-indulgent piece of writing that rapidly became tedious.
> ...


Look your critique is fine and you're probably right about the things you said. However, the title wasn't meant to be pretentious, it was meant as an attempt on my part to inform the readers that this isn't one of my comedies, which you (apparently) dread. I said I'd been reading plato and aristophanes, not to brag, but rather to explain why the format of this story was somewhat odd. I think your dislike for me, or your desire to dislike me rather clouds your judgement when you critique my writings on this forum

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## hillwalker

> Look your critique is fine and you're probably right about the things you said. However, the title wasn't meant to be pretentious, it was meant as an attempt on my part to inform the readers that this isn't one of my comedies, which you (apparently) dread. I said I'd been reading plato and aristophanes, not to brag, but rather to explain why the format of this story was somewhat odd. I think your dislike for me, or your desire to dislike me rather clouds your judgement when you critique my writings on this forum


Actually, I hadn't realised you were the same guy who wrote the 'comedy' pieces some weeks ago until you posted this reply... so personal issues didn't come into it. I was commenting purely on the writing and how you presented it here, but if you'd rather I didn't critique any more of your work that's fine by me.

H

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## MANICHAEAN

H. Never be guided by my reviews, as my friends tell me that I’m the only person they know who could find black humour in the book of Job. To be informed (in all seriousness) in the first paragraph, that the story is serious, that the author has been reading Plato and then stumble upon two small “i,”s just started me off. It was a downward slippery slope after that, culminating in a reference to Nietzsche that had me gripping the arms of my chair.

mgv1208, in all seriousness, (Oh no, don’t start me off again), continue to indulge a wide catholic range of reading, relax with your writing and excuse my display of bad manners at your expense.
Best regards
M.

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## Delta40

I get Hill's point about the dumper truck but as for light reading, I rather enjoyed it and to be honest I didn't consider it a dark serious read in any way. 

There was certainly some element of humour and irony all the way through although the story would not have survived much longer before I shook my head and put it down.

It seems to me you definitely have potential as a writer but at the moment it lacks depth. From what I have read of your work it is rather superficial in thought and action. This story for example was a comic angry rant, totally out of character with a suicide person who would have what is known as flat affect. Getting inside your character to accurately reflect what they would do and say is what will give your story its authenticity.

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