The Boundary (Chapter One)
By: Gen1900
I woke up to the damp smell of laundry boiling outside my window. It must had been the neighbors across from us with their lice infestation. The kids got it from the daily training lessons at Head Quarters. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mrs. Lenke went crazy over there, the tiny little things hopping on the beds, the table . . . her head.
Washing clothes took place in a dumpster bin because the poor people didn’t receive any electricity. Head Quarters had everything, ranging from floating robot servants to a tub that puts bubble bath in for you. I’ve never experienced any of those things, but I would be interested in testing out the robot. How nice it would be to have a maid!
In my family’s world we do chores the hard way. My Mom and I cook food over a pit in the backyard . . . if you call two patches of yellow grass a backyard. Morning meals normally consist of just a piece of fruit. It’s difficult to live where I was born. As my years increased to sixteen, guards appeared everywhere I turned. My life was about to change that dawn . . .
I swung my legs over the edge of the cot and yawned. My nose wrinkled at the foul smell of bubbling of dirty clothes.
What a way to wake up, I thought.
Mom was in the other room, setting a red apple on the rickety, wooden table in my place. When she saw me she cocked her head toward the one of the chairs.
“Eat,” she commanded with a slight frown.
“Why,” I told her, “it won’t ever turn brown.”
The Mayor of Isolation Town (as I like to call it) ordered a few months back that anything we eat has to be genetically modified. So basically, we’re eating food like rabbits being experimented on.
“Just eat before one of the soldiers takes you to Head Quarters,” she replied sternly.
“Fine!” I grumbled slamming my butt into the chair. The glistening red skin of the apple looked appealing, yet the inside was disgusting.
Just as I was picking at it, a young man in black walked in through the front door . . . without asking. He was one of Mayor’s soldiers.
“Is she ready to go?” he asked, bluntly.
“The name’s Pepper, ” I barked back.
He pushed the tip of his gun into my shoulder.
“Get a move on! And knock it off with the sass.”
Mom gave me a quick kiss on the cheek as I left to go.
I didn’t want to go outside . . . not with the black wall facing us day in and day out. The boundary always spoke four words to me:
“You can’t get out.”
The Mayor said it kept us safe from the world beyond, but I’m not so sure. How could life be worse than what the neighborhood was dealing with? Poverty, daily killings if you stole only a slice of bread, torture if you tried to climb the wall. What a paradise . . . heaven felt far away.
Science Fiction
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I love how it’s starting out! For some reasons it’s giving me kind of “Hunger Games” vibe, but there are many ways you could go with this story. I love the main character’s sass. I can’t wait to find out what happens next!
I agree with TheYoungWriter in regards to this story giving forth “Hunger Games” vibes. I definitely think that this story has a lot of potential. I have always been an avid fan of dystopian stories, and I am intrigued by the setting already. Clearly, this world is on a massive decline, considering that the environment is decaying, the poverty rates are high, there are killers on the loose, and there is a massive wall dividing this territory from the rest of the world. I also like the way that you ended this chapter with a cliffhanger, making the reader wonder where exactly Pepper is going with this hostile guard and what the general workings of this community is like. It is evident that what’s coming will be less than fortunate but that foreboding impression is what stimulates us readers.
My main problem with this first chapter is that there is a little too much *unsaid.* While, of course, you want to maintain a sense of uncertainty so that you trigger curiosity amongst audiences and they feel compelled to keep reading, I feel that the amount of explanation you present in regards to establishing character dynamics and this world is almost nonexistent. In other words, it is really, really confusing. You do not want to leave the reader questioning every little detail that you include (which I honestly found myself doing quite a lot over the course of this short chapter). Some of the questions that I had were: What’s the “Head Quarters”? Why is exactly the food being genetically modified? Why are the innards of food become fowl if the food is being modified? What kind of relationship does Pepper have with her mother?
Again, all of these questions do not have to be answered directly and completely (because you certainly don’t want to dump a bunch of random information on the reader either) but you should make sure that, along the way, you offer the reader subtle hints or clues so that they don’t become baffled and feel compelled to keep going. Too much ambiguity can made the reading experience taxing, thus leading to frustration or a rapid decrease in interest. Place a few crumbs on the ground, give the readers a solid taste of the story, and make them crave more.
Still, overall, I believe that this was a good start to this story, and I look forward to seeing what else this world has in store!
I was drawn into this story, you lead us through the developing conflict in a very orderly way. The sense of poverty and oppression come through very clearly, and show us a world through the eyes, ears, and tastes of a young and possibly uneducated victim. I would like to see this story cleaned up with some grammar and typographical editing, and adding in more internal thoughts to develop the narrator’s conflict.
As an example, your soldier intrusion scene packs a lot of information into a very small space. This could be expanded quite a bit to bring the reader into his head more completely. Your scene looks like this now:
—
“Just as I was picking at it, a young man in black walked in through the front door . . . without asking. He was one of Mayor’s soldiers.
“Is she ready to go?” he asked, bluntly.
“The name’s Pepper, ” I barked back.
He pushed the tip of his gun into my shoulder.
“Get a move on! And knock it off with the sass.”
Mom gave me a quick kiss on the cheek as I left to go.”
—
It says several things very quickly: The food is unpleasant, he has no privacy from the government, the mayor hires armed soldiers to collect citizens in their homes, the soldiers are young (strong?) men, they wear black uniforms, the soldiers are aggressive and disrespectful.
If I wanted my reader to truly feel this oppressive and traumatizing intrusion, I would write something like this:
—
Mom was right, of course. I would probably go off hungry today if I didn’t choke this shiny red thing pretending to be an apple down soon. I poked at it, seriously considering if being hungry for one more meal was really all that bad. This, it turns out, was a mistake which I did not have the time to afford. I know inside, I should be more grateful. This is all Mom can afford, and she really is trying her best to provide for us. I regret not being more appreciative in front of her. Before I got a bite of the hard-earned, foul fruit into my mouth, our front door swung open.
“Is she ready to go?” The firm, militaristic uniformed soldier now standing in our doorway asking this question had in his stone-cold eyes, in his tight-lipped scowl, in his close-cropped hair, and in his hard, black rifle held at the ready, nothing at all that suggested he wanted an answer to that question. Nothing at all about this man’s presence in fact even suggested that this was a question. No, it was a command to simply be obeyed, as a prisoner obeys a guard.
I simply could not entertain this much doublespeak and hypocrisy so early in the morning. Because we are not his prisoners, and will not ever be his prisoners, I ignored the intrusion into our private home, through a front door which we are not even allowed to lock. I ignored the man’s scowl, his piercing eyes, and the efficient black uniform he wore to intimidated us. I even ignored the rifle drawn and ready which he pointed so boldly around our home. Whatever it is, it is still our home, and one of us must stand for the sacred principle of a home. Without even a hesitation, I chose to ignore every offensive, oppressive, and demeaning statement his presence made to us and I chose to answer only to the words he asked.
“The name’s Pepper,” I barked back at him.
The scowl on his face deepened, a palpable repressed rage betrayed his face. He felt it necessary to remind me that he is holding my life in his hands, and pressed the tip of his rifle into my shoulder.
“Get a move on! Enough with the sass,” he said.
I knew then that he understood our arrangement was not bound in any way by my human and earned respect for this man, but at the threat of my life alone. I set the standard that my obedience was in no way given out of respect for that man or his office.
My mother, I have seldom seen so proud of me. And at the same time, I had never seen her so afraid for my well-being. These deeply mixed emotions left mom completely out of sorts. Her eyes flitted away briefly in fear, and then directly into mine with the most noble motherly courage. Her hands, unsure exactly weather to stay calmly and complicitly at her side or to grab me in a warm embrace, shakily reached up to my face and brought me near to her. She breathed out warmly, and being so close to me that I felt every essence of her life in that breath, she drew in a long breath of the air bearing the scent of her daughter. She placed a long kiss on my cheek, trembling and firm all together; warm and stern all together; loving, and fearful, all together.
I went out of my home that morning, at gunpoint, not at all willfully, but fully in command of my own world.
—
I hope you can expand your story for us all, and I hope there is a small bit of this feedback which may help you turn your wonderful idea into an engaging world for us all to enjoy.