Aubrey

[Bunny]

[align=left]This really needs some help. It's the first draft but I'm honestly so angry with it that I lack any desire to come back and revise.

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[align=left]I guess what I need feedback on is how I can get the plot events across but in a scenic, slightly removed kind of way to keep in line with the style I've created for the piece.

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[align=left]I know there's A LOT of confusion on what's actually going on so to get some useful input, here's the rundown:

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[align=left]June and Julian are twins. In frame one, they're eight years old, playing with their older sister Aubrey when she goes missing. In an attempt to find her, they split up and search the first floor of their home separately. During that time I hinted a little at a conflict between the siblings. Aubrey is a bit of a mother-figure and is trying to correct how bratty June is being. Julian is autistic and that's why there is a dream-like quality to the descriptions of how he sees things. June is, again, eight and can't understand why she and Julian have to be so different.

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[align=left]Julian sees something frightening in a room downstairs and freaks out. June at that point, takes charge and they run to a tree she knows of. There's a bad storm that night and it triggers a flash flood. June has to keep herself and her brother safe and calm until the next morning when they are rescued. On their way to a shelter, they see their mom's car with their sister inside, presumably dead.

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[align=left]In frame two, June and Julian are in an ambulance. June is pregnant and has had an accident. Although she's not in danger of dying, her baby is and Julian is very worried that June will die. This is what triggers his memories of their childhood. At the hospital, June has a C-section and in the end the baby is brought into the room for her and Julian to name after their sister, Aubrey.

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[align=left]The thing I hint VERY subtly at is the reason for their parent's divorce is that their mom was having an affair and that's what Julian saw in the room. Aubrey saw it first and she was the one crying in the bathroom. All of that only gets a brief mention in the photo frame bit and the stranger's car outside.

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[align=left]The confusion is completely my fault because I was trying to be ambiguous about who was in the ambulance to deliver the surprise that Aubrey died and that the hospital scene/s is actually much later when June is a having a baby. It didn't work so well. (Understatement. )

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[align=left]What I need to know is:

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[align=left]Would that kind of surprise be too contrived and actually make you angry that I played a trick?

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[align=left]How can I help make the events of the story more clear without being...boring?

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[Bunny]

Aubrey

By the stark white door frame, a girl of fifteen with hair so red and rebellious it escaped the squeeze of her ponytail, counted backwards from twenty, her head hidden in the crook of a fair-skinned arm. Julian could only see one half of her through the crack in the door frame but every part of her glowed and blurred with the things beside her.
“Four, three, two…one! Ready or not!” She said and began to creep in exaggeration down the hallway.
Her bare feet clung to the hardwood flooring, releasing a smooch with each step that only she and Julian could hear. He stepped back a little when she passed by his hiding place then grinned at the thought of winning this round.
Somewhere further down the hall, he heard June’s voice and then her whining.
“It’s not fair! You always let him win!”
“June, calm down. It’s just a game.”
“I don’t want to play anymore. Not with him.”
He watched June’s pale blonde hair drift away down the hall and felt angry and nauseous. He sat and waited for his big sister to come back, rocking and shaking his hands as if there was some beat in his head and a tambourine in his fingers to keep time.
A couple moments passed and a slim hand reached behind the door. He smiled again- put his hand in hers, slowly and awkwardly stepping from behind the door. He couldn’t look into her eyes but he was happy to see her all solid and conforming.

*********************************************

Screeching. Wailing. Sirens.
She was loaded up onto a stretcher, her brother beside her, and the doors were slammed closed. He reached down to hold her hand.
“Open your eyes, look at me. Try. Try hard.”
But she didn’t lift a lid. Her hands were warm. He could feel her heartbeat faintly through her fingers and palm. The movements of the paramedics blurred around him. There were tubes, he knew, and a man pushing on her stomach.
“Don’t be scared. If I’m not scared, you shouldn’t be scared.”
She wasn’t bleeding, just slipping away.

********************************************

When June finally came back, it was her turn to be “it.” She searched high and low for her sister, giggling every time she opened a door. She was sure each time she looked under a bed or in a closet that she would be there, happy to be found at last.
But she wasn’t.
She found Julian hiding behind his bedroom door again.
“I can’t find her. Come help me look.”
They split up downstairs.
Julian stepped lightly down the dim hall full of rooms with closed doors. He was proud to be on his own, smiling and laughing to himself as he passed his hands behind closet doors and toppled over white linens, coats, and a vacuum cleaner.
He thought he heard laughter, or was it crying?
A room ahead of him had two doors; one cracked. A soft gold light made lines on the opposite wall, shut off by the doors like lips over a secret. Julian ruptured the image with his silhouette. He peeked through the crack in the doors.
He screamed and crashed into the wall behind him, hands over his eyes and crouching low for some support.
A family portrait fell from its place and sprayed its shattered glass across the dark and wooden floors; their mother’s red silk nightgown reflected in one piece, a man’s figure in the doorway in another, and a girl’s face, wet with tears and emerging from the bathroom shone in another.
When June heard his screaming, she stopped looking for her sister.
She picked him up from the floor and they ran together.

****************************************************

Her brother ran with her all the way down the hall, his feet keeping up with every other pair lined along the gurney.
“Stay with me, sis.”
The lights and noise, demanding and obtrusive, kept bombarding his focus. Panic was dissolving somewhere in his veins where he had dammed and frozen it. He kept his eyes on her, until the doors to the operating room shut.

***************************************************

Feet pounding the ground beneath them, June ran with Julian past a stranger’s car in the driveway, past a line of trees and into a field cornered by the hills of the Mesa.
It started to rain.
There was a mimosa tree in full bloom in the center of the field.
They sat under it for a long time, waiting for the rain to stop. Julian began to cling to her.
“Stop it, Julian! You ruin everything! Now we’re in trouble because of you. “
He started to scream and June edged closer to the opposite side of the tree, holding her hands over her ears and waiting for their sister to find them.
He wouldn’t stop so she draped her arms over a low branch and kicked her feet against the trunk to get onto it. Julian stopped at that and just stared into the field, rubbing and shaking his hands.
The rain came in harder.

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He sat in the waiting room, rubbing and shaking his hands. A nurse came to check on him but he was unresponsive. She tried to tell him what was going on. He couldn’t look in her eyes.
He could only say a name.
“Aubrey. Aubrey. Aubrey.”

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Lightning crackled across the now dark sky.
“All my friends make fun of me because of you! They say if we’re twins then I must be just like you. ” June yelled from her branch.
They were both soaked in rain and tears.
Julian, for the very first time, tried to look at her.
“I’m sorry!” He said, sobbing, “Help me!”
June cried harder.
She jumped down and showed him how to get up. The sharp bark felt like knives to his hands but June helped him until he got onto the branch. She sat next to him and wrapped her arms around herself for warmth.
Then came the flood.

[Bunny]

Aaaaand it posted a little funny. Gooooo me. : /

[Bunny]

Aaaaand again.

"Ignore me!"

[Bunny]

From the operating room, he could hear crying and screaming.
He jumped to the window to see what had happened.
A second girl, red-headed and pale, was taken from the room and wheeled down the hall.


******************************************

Julian heard it first. A far off rumbling that echoed through the Mesa. It came like a landslide down the mountains; muddy and dark, shimmering in the misty light of the clouded moon and striking lightning.
Terrifying and beautiful.
June reached for Julian as the water struck but he was tossed from the branch just as she had taken hold of his arm. The support of the trunk saved June but Julian was hanging with his feet being tugged by the rising waters. He held onto the branch with one hand and with the other he held onto her arm.
He had his eyes closed, screaming at the top of his lungs. June tried to think of what their sister would do.
“Open your eyes, look at me! Please, Julian. Try. Try hard!” She yelled over the rushing and roaring of the river beneath them.
He looked directly into her eyes and she dragged him back to her. She took hold of a branch above their heads and when she struggled to get up, he pushed her up. She reached for him and helped climb with her. They continued until they had gone as far as they could.
The tree moaned and shook violently in the tossing waves, grabbing and tearing with fluid ferocity at its roots.
Julian’s senses horribly overwhelmed, he took hold of June and she held him close with her hand over his eyes.
“Don’t be scared. If I’m not afraid, you shouldn’t be afraid. We’re twins, remember? We’re the same.” June said to him.

A search party found them in the morning. They were lowered into canoes, wrapped in blankets, and told nothing.
Moments later, a few streets away, they passed by their mother’s car, wrapped around a downed telephone pole and crushed by a tree.
The twins screamed, “Stop!”
Inside there was a body; a red-headed, fair-skinned body. She wasn’t bleeding, just slipping away; her red hair floating in the current. A helicopter was called to pull her out.
The twins cried together, “Aubrey, Aubrey, Aubrey.”

[Bunny]

When June woke from her sleep, Julian was beside her. He was slumped in a chair, fast asleep, glowing with some kind of emotion she couldn’t put her finger on.
[size=100][font=Calibri][color=white]“Hey, you.â€

[Sae-chan]

I just scanned the writing, but from what I've seen, I like it. The plot is good - I do like the alternating between scenes of childhood and adulthood.

If you feel that the alternating between the scenes is confusing, you may want to italicize the childhood parts, emphasizing them as memories.

If you feel that the plot itself was confusing, you can always elaborate on certain parts. For example, near the end, I felt that the plot was a bit too rushed. I would elaborate more on the scene, so that it doesn't seem like the scene "just happens" from strictly a 3rd person view. If this is a memory, I would focus a lot more on the emotions of June and Julian.

I would also edit the last section.

The twins never saw their sister again.
Divorce papers were signed after the whole disaster was over. Then they never saw their mother either.
The family was split.

It seems like the divorce papers were signed because of the disaster with her sister... but I think you said earlier that it was because of an affair. You might want to change that a bit.

Anyway, if you want me to comment extensively, I'll do it. I like editing writing a lot. (But you might have to PM me to get me to check back at this thread. I don't always remember what I need to check up on. )