Colorless, I want criticism!!! :) Options

[remini]

I'd love criticism... (good criticism please. ^^ I don't want you to tell me it sucks and not why.)

Colorless

It was a perfectly normal Saturday. You could call it beautiful in fact, because there certainly was something wonderful about that Saturday. Of course, she didn't know exactly what it was yet, but she knew for sure, that it would be a happy, happy day.

Her parents were out, they had taken their golden retriever to the vet. She would've gone with them, but it was an ordinary check-up. Nothing to worry about.

She left the house, (unlocked, because she didn't need to worry about robbers or anything, at least, not in her neighborhood) and skipped along the chalk-covered sidewalk. She planned on taking a trip to the park. A group of small girls were giggling and jumping rope. "Cin-der-ell-a, dressed in yell-a, went upstairs to kiss a fell-a, made a mistake, and kissed a snake, how many doctors did it take..."

She skipped past neatly trimmed lawns, freshly painted two-story houses and sprinklers. Finally, she reached the park. It was a wonderful park, just like how everything else was flawless. There were swings, slides, sandboxes, monkey bars, and water fountains. An ice cream stand placed itself next to the playground.

Thinking she'd treat herself to a fudge bar, she ran the rest of the way. "Hello, what would you like?" the ice cream man asked pleasantly. After she made her purchase, she plopped herself onto a nearby bench and licked the ice cream happily.

There was definitely nothing wrong with this world. It was as perfect as you could make it…except for one thing. Everything was flat.

What else would you expect from a coloring book?

---=*~+~*=---

A small girl with short brown pigtails sat up and examined her picture carefully. She colored in all the lines and everything was the correct color (the sky wasn’t purple and the trees weren’t pink). Why did it look so strange then?

Her brother would know. He knew everything and it was really annoying when he proved it. So after she finished coloring the popsicle brown, (fudge bars were her favorite), she put her “chocolate-fudge” crayon down and ran to find her brother.

---=*~+~*=---

She continued eating her fudge bar. It had been fun watching it turning a darker shade. The bench was mahogany, like it should be. The sky was a brilliant blue, like it should be. The trees were dark green, the grass was green, and the children were all colored peach. Like they should be.

She stared at her feet, knowing that all she would see was her feet. Her shadow had disappeared long ago, if she ever had one. She wore orange sandals, purple shorts, and a green top. The person who colored me, she thought sadly, has no fashion sense. Not like she had a choice about it.

Suddenly, that happy, happy day turned unhappy.

A coloring book was no fun to live in.

---=*~+~*=---

“What???” He demanded. His sister was cute, and of course he loved her, but how could such a small person be so annoying? “Fine, I’ll come.”

He followed her up the stairs and into her room. It was a little messy. Everything was pink. She tugged at his sleeve and pointed to an open book on the ground. He sat down and looked at a colorful picture. A playground with children and an ice cream stand were in the back. It seemed to be a bright and joyous picture. Why did he feel that that girl sitting on the bench, (even though she was smiling), was sad?

“Can you make it better?”

It’s pretty good for a seven-year-old, he thought, she must’ve been working really hard on this. All it really need is to look more three-dimensional.

He sat down and began his work, with his sister inspecting over his shoulder.

---=*~+~*=---

She sighed. She wondered, what would happen if I took of my shoes? Her hands trembled as she slid off an orange flip-flop off her foot. It was strange to see the uncolored parts of her foot and the inside of her sandal. She quickly slid the shoe back on before anybody noticed.

She had finished the ice cream a long time ago, but if you lived in a coloring book, it would still be there. You couldn’t eat it anymore, but you could still see it. That’s what a coloring book was like.

She walked to the edge of the page and glanced on the next page. It wasn’t colored yet. Too bad, she thought, I’m getting sick of this page. I can’t go home until somebody finishes coloring the other side.

Wait…what was that? Her insides felt funny. Huh? Insides? She had no insides. But she was beginning to feel… She looked at her arm, which was beginning to get tanner. Her feet didn’t look quite so incomplete anymore and… She gasped. What was that blackish thing forming at the bottom of her feet? Could it be…? She hadn’t had a shadow for the longest time. That could only mean… They were getting a new colorer who could color shadows.

She smiled.

---=*~+~*=---

“There.” He finished coloring the sad girl, who seemed happy now. He knew he was crazy to think something like that, but…

She took the book from him and frowned.

“What’s wrong?”

“You colored out of the lines. That black thing shouldn't be there.”

“That's her shadow.”

“I don’t like that black thing.” She grabbed an eraser and prepared to erase the girl’s shadow.

“Don’t! It’s what she wants!”

She gave him a quizzical look. “She can’t want anything. It’s my coloring book and I don’t want the black thing!”

He stared coldly at his sister. She can too want something, he thought. But what could he do? He was arguing about a picture from his little sister’s coloring book. He was being stupid again, yet he could have sworn…

“The "shadow’s" going bye-bye.” She began to erase the shadow, but all it did was smear the page. She erased even harder, but it was no good. She threw the book down furiously, and ran out of the room crying.

When she left, he picked up the book again gently and flipped back to the page she was working on. The page was a little creased, but he flattened it. This only needs a little work, I can still fix it, he thought. No, this is stupid, it's just a picture.

He threw the book down.

---=*~+~*=---

Wait! She stared angrily at the grass she was standing on, which had now turned into a messy black blob. What was wrong? What happened to her shadow?

Frustrated and angry, she bit her lip. She was being too sensitive again. A shadow was nothing to have a fit about. She could live without it. She bit her lip, something wet was forming in her eye. It was unknown to her, she had never truly “felt” before.

She sat on the black grass. Her hand touched the smears, and the blackness crawled up her skin. She stood up quickly and tried to shake it off, but it clung to her like a dark mess of sticky glue. The blackness spread from her wrist up to her shoulders and wrapped itself around her legs.

Around her, the ice cream man continued handing out popsicles and ice cream. The little children played in the sandbox and slid down the slide. They seemed oblivious to the shadow she was entangled in.

Why couldn’t she get out?

---=*~+~*=---

The book was still lying on the ground, opened on the same page, when he sighed, and decided he would fix it anyways. For his sister, not him.

This isn’t working, he thought as the pink eraser in his hand steadily turned black. He had tried to erase the shadow some more, but he learned that crayon can’t be erased the hard way.

You could hardly see the girl anymore. The entire bottom-right-hand corner was a big smear of blackness.

There was nothing left to do. He ripped out the entire page, crumpled it into a ball, and threw it away.

He left his sister’s room.

---=*~+~*=---

She opened her eyes. Where was she? She could still see a little bit, but the shadow still clung to her. Her world had suddenly become blank. Where did the park and the little kids go? Why was she so alone and why was this stupid black stuff still here?

She managed to sit down in a somewhat comfortable position. The shadows still didn’t let go.

So this is what it’s like to be thrown away.

---=*~+~*=---

In his room, he took out a big box of color pencils. He planned on giving this to his sister for “messing up” her picture. Unknowingly, he looked for the girl he had worked on in the other picture. This was a themed coloring book sort of thing, so the characters appeared on a page more than once. When he couldn’t find her, he flipped through the rest of the book. She wasn’t there either.

This was too weird. He turned to the cover; there was a big picture with a squirrel, a rabbit, and a boy. The girl was gone. In replace of her, was an empty, blank space. In the pictures his sister had already colored, she was gone too. It was as if she was never there.

He just ignored this fact, and colored the page the way it was. Without shadows, the way his sister liked it.

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I hope you didn't think my story was too weird... Or too long...

[picaso_smile]

If you want criticism...

You lack description... try using more complicated adjectives/adverbs. Also similies or compare what is happening to something the reader can easily relate to.