Writer In Motion Forum

This is my LEAST favorite round!  How impossible it is to cut something you work so hard to craft. Yet, with the help of a couple of cheer partners, thank you Morgan and Rebecca, I'm finally at 995 words. I wasn't sure I was going to make it, and I totally thought I'd go rogue and refuse to get under 1,000 words. LOL! I absolutely had those thoughts. But with their encouragement, I was able to scrape the word count down to where it needed to be.

Thank you so much Writer in Motion for putting this event on! I had so much fun and enjoyed exploring writing short stories with this great community of writers.

I LOVE THIS VERSION! It is totally my favorite. Though I resist the slicing and dicing, liking it to bringing an ax to a delicate surgery on The Resident, the results never fail to dazzle me.

You can read the final version of For Serenity on my blog at https://www.jlburrows.com/2019/11/30/for-serenity-final-version/

Please leave comments. I have found they are my favorites!

Thank you so much to all the writers here! Thank you for letting me be a part of this journey. Thank you for your critiques, vulnerable growth, and allowing this process to be so visible.

You have made my first short story epic. It is all to you.
Jennifer

I LOVE the critique partner round! The more that I work with CPs the less I believe anyone should ever put words out in the world without at least two CPs touching it.

This round was so easy for me! I was emotionally attached to two parts, but I slashed them, trusting my CPs. I LOVE THIS VERSION! It's only problem is that it is 126 words too long. So, this next week I'm working with my CP to pare it down. Fingers crossed!

You can read it on my blog at https://www.jlburrows.com/2019/11/21/for-serenity-2/

To those of you that left me a comment on my last draft, YOU MADE MY WEEK! Thank you so much! I always love those!
Jennifer

You can find my first draft at https://www.jlburrows.com/2019/11/08/writer-in-motion-week-1/ I go into my thoughts on the prompt, my process, planning steps, the writing, and my thoughts on the result. This is my first EVER short story! I've written 9.64 books, and I wasn't sure if I could be so succinct. LOL! Hope you enjoy.

Below is the short story for those of you that don't want to click a link. I know who you are!

PS. It took everything I had to post this rough draft. SO HARD!

Giving Up My Daughter by Jennifer Burrows

She'd done it. She didn't mean to. It was a total accident, but when thought sits and stirs and simmers for weeks, months, and then years, it becomes an inevitable mistake that lurches up from the dredges of one's mind.

She'd finally snapped. For years, she'd watched the government assignments dictate the lives of their youth. Planning the futures of the children beginning at the young age of two. Sending them into battle as enforcers, burning hot kitchens as cooks, and backbreaking work as masons before they hit their twenties. Service rendered for the government's care up to that point. Bah.

When her daughter's name, Serenity Grace Knowles, filled her screen with Enforcer, Joyce nearly choked. She hoped for teacher, medtech, caretaker, but enforcer placed her directly into the claws of their government and in the line of danger. No. No. No. No.

She didn't think. She acted. And it was done before it could be changed. Serenity Grace Knowles, Teacher.

"Now, Joyce Makayla Knowles, you don't know what's going to happen. You don't know the future. Just keep it cool." She slipped through the halls like a thief in the night, but it was day time and she was supposed to be at her post.

"How long till they figure out? How long did she have to hold her baby before they came for her?" It had been far too long since she'd gone to the Medi Scanner, her moods destabilized within a month, and she couldn't remember when she last was there. That was it. That was why she slipped today.

Her flats slipped silently across the carpeted foyer, the wall length windows showing a panoramic view of the world beyond, freedom. Only twenty more steps, a ride in her trans, and she'd be with Serenity once again. One more time.

She stood on the precipice of the roof's edge, and now she was falling but her body hadn't caught up with her mistake. No one defied the orders of their superiors. Yet today, she had.
A sob caught in her chest, and she forced it back down into the churning depths of her stomach. She'd treasure these moments.

Waroo Waroo the alarm sang through the air, a demon screaming chase her, chase her. It flew through walls and sang through steel and glass catching the heel of her shoe and twisting so that it almost fell off. Joyce ran. She left her shoe.

Her automatic trans navigated the electrical currents embedded in the streets slipping into the normal flow as if nothing was chasing her as if nothing had just gone terribly wrong, as if the Federal Bureau of Acceptance wasn't bearing down on her to take her life. For Serenity. Joyce wouldn't regret this day. Though it might burn in the minds of others, no one could trace back to what the initial edict was. No matter what happened, she'd made her little Sere a teacher. Safe.

The stupid smart car dropped her at her doorstep and she ran in to relieve the nanny. She might have twenty minutes. Probably more like fifteen.

She stopped in front of the green door, and glanced up the twenty stories to her ledge. Sweet music trickled into the air from somewhere. Happiness. Joyce inhaled it. Drew it in and tried to keep it forever. Joyce exhaled. Purple flashing lights, the FBA's signature signal, slashed across the wall. Joyce slipped into the building, her heart a wildling beating at its cage.

Every second she wasted was one she couldn't spend with her little Sere. A tear escaped and Joyce rebound her hair at the nape of her neck. Why the skies had she done it? If there were a being out there that watched out for them like her father assured her every time they met, well, he'd certainly forgotten to stop her.

The purple lights slashed through her living room window as she finally entered the safety of her home. She wanted to call out for help. Find someone to rescue her from the rooftop she found herself trapped on. Light a flare and get lifted out of the nightmare her life had become. She'd endured as long as she could. It was for the best. What kind of mother had she become anyway? Absentee? Lifeless? Broken.

Pounding hit the door twenty stories below. It echoed through the paper thin cement and slipped right up her spine.

"Mom!" Sere tore through the living room leaving the nanny at tea alone. "You're hommmme!" Her tiny arms wrapped around both of Joyce's legs.

"Thank you, Delia. I'll take it from here."

"You doing alright Ms. Joyce."

"Yeah. Right as rain."

Delia chuckled. "Same time tomorrow morning." She nodded and slipped out the door.

"I think it's tickle torture time." Joyce choked back the tears and chased Sere, forcing her to run away so that she could hide her tears. They ran in circles around the furniture until Joyce slipped her hands under Sere's armpits and hoisted her high to the sky and then together they collapsed to the floor, giggling, smiling, breathing in deep lavender breaths.
 
Joyce stilled and Sere seemed to read the moment with her infinite three year old wisdom.

"Mom, why are you sad?" Her little blonde curls slipped over her serious blue eyes that wore a pinch between them.

"I'm okay." Joyce swallowed. "But the tickle monster's going to get you." The pinch lifted and Sere's rosey little cheeks pinked as she squirmed to get out of her mother's hands.

Pounding fists on a door down the hall sent Joyce's heart stuttering. The blood drained from everywhere except her heart where it filled over full and began to bleed down her ribs and bones. She wasn't even injured, and she was already bleeding to death.

Maybe someone would see her flare, maybe that being her father spoke of would come pick up her shattered life and put it back to gether. A squeal of delight from behind the settee drew her out of her morose thoughts. She would love Sere. Right now. Right here. They would have one more good memory, before. . .

Another door pounding resounded through the flat. They were no more than three doors away. Joyce crawled on all fours and snuck up behind little Sere's back. She was peeking around the settee. "Mom?"

"Right here!" Sere startled and squealed again.

This time Joyce folded her precious little girl into her arms and kissed her forehead breathing in deeply the scent of lavender and powder filling her mind full of every moment from birth till right now, this last moment together. She urged her arms to memorize the feel. She begged her mind to hold on to the moment.
Voices and footsteps surrounded her thoughts. They were closing in on her. "Sere."

"Yes?" She tilted her chin to the left and Joyce wanted to hold that image forever in her mind. Would her mind survive? Would her memory last? Would they ever let her see Sere again?

"I love you. I love you more than the stars. More than the air and the water and the food. I love you more than anything."

"I love you too Mommy." Sere wrinkled her nose and twisted her lips to the side. A question scrunched her forehead. "Something is wrong Mommy."

"It had to be wrong for me to be able to make it right. Just remember. I love you and you are worth it." A sudden crushing urge to fly out the window with Sere in her arms flickered with insanity through her. Maybe they could?

Stupid. No one could fly out of a twenty-story window and survive. No. This was goodbye.

Bang bang bang bang ricocheted through her living room. Sere's big blue eyes rounded above her pretty pink cheeks. Joyce didn't move. She clung to her. Clung to her one last flare. Would the being above see it? Would anyone come to find her? Would she really have to say goodbye to little Serenity?

Little Sere just held Joyce. The tiny arms under her own squirmed a minute and then squeezed as hard as they could. "Mom, are those bad men at the door? Are you going to let them in?"

"Serenity please understand. Mommy loves you."

"I know."

Bang bang bang. "Open up. It's the FBA." The man's voice sent Joyce's mind on fire. Not enough time. There just wasn't enough. She inhaled her daughter's precious scent. They sat there, behind the couch, silent, squeezing, memorizing.

Please please please please someone help. Help. She couldn't leave Serenity. She was too young. What would she grow up thinking? What would they tell her?

"Ma'am we know you are in there. Open up. We just want to talk to you." The man's voice didn't convince her. She'd lived too long under the government to buy the party line. She'd worked too long for the man in charge, and she knew, everything was rigged.
 
"Serenity, remember."

"Remember what Mommy?"

"Remember I love you baby." She whispered it into her hair. Tears tripping their way through Serenity's curls. Her precious little hands reached out and touched Joyce on both of her cheeks. "Remember baby."

The voice outside quieted, the banging stopped, and then the silence splintered around the hideous ramming bar they broke through the door with. The demons had found her, knew her secrets, and now was the day of reckoning.

A man with a flat face and no hair lifted her precious screaming daughter from her arms. Joyce no longer felt her arms. Another man whose face seemed to all come to one point lifted her up by her armpits and spun her around cuffing her hands behind her back.

The flare no longer extended into the sky fell, tumbling end over end, into nothingness. No great being stopped the FBA. Nothing changed the course of the tears racing down those pretty pink cheeks. No. Life. Life ended in that moment, but it began for her little teacher. For her little teacher.