Oh god this is great. Like seriously FANTASTIC. The visuals are very clever, especially this line - "Sarcasm dripped from the phone line so heavily that Jason wondered why there wasn't a puddle of it on the floor next to the puddle of melted snow"

Pure win.

And the total attitude you gave the woman just from her dialogue. Damn, that takes SERIOUS skill! I swear!

And I LOVE her reason for not committing suicide. "It was too damn CLICHE" I was laughing, being a person who loathes cliches.

And the open ending. Oh why oh why did you have to do that? Part of me is seething because I won't know what'll happen, but if you ended it any other way, I think it'd turn...cliche.

So yes, if you are wondering, I am very satisfied with the ending.

Keep writing!

I really liked this. You gave a unique perspective from the side of the woman, and left me wondering what kind of person she must be to react like she did.

I also like how you left it open at the end. It makes it all the more powerful because you don't tell the readers what happened, you leave it up to our interpritation.

I love the “The phone rang X-amount of time” technique you used, followed by a description.

Sarcasm dripped from the phone line so heavily that Jason wondered why there wasn't a puddle of it on the floor next to the puddle of melted snow.

-Such a great description!

Like… you know what's all the rage now? Suicide bombings.

-Oh my goodness, ha-ha. I was laughing my head off when I read this one. XD

"Second page," Jason corrected. "There was a plane crash that day."

-lmfao. Too funny. Oh man, this piece is great. You’ve taken a rather grim situation and twisted it with comical dialogue.

Overall, this piece was really, really good! I love the humour throughout all of this, and I especially liked the female character. Of all the people he could have called, he ended up calling a woman who didn’t give a flying fuck and had an interesting sense of humour. I even really like the ending. I’m not 100% sure if he’s going to kill himself, but it doesn’t matter. His final line of dialogue sums it up quite nicely, and for some reason I don’t really mind either way if he kills himself or not. Great piece. I really, truly liked this one.

Very well written. I liked the unique concept, especially the character and the tone of the woman on the phone. The mystery regarding Jason's reason behind the thought of the suicide was left unexplained - another thing I liked. Most people have a tendency to supplement reasons where not necessary and in plots like these, it always seems that the reason is too lame. Kudos! :D

I was randomly going through profiles, and this caught my attention- cool plot you have here.

The opening is nice in its own way, but allow me to make a slight suggestion- what are the odds of a random number actually being correct? Personally, I think the opening would have worked better if it was, "As he dialed a number" It would leave a sense of mystery, as you won't specify where he got the number from.

I also liked the "rang once..rang twice..." sentences; I liked the way they flowed.

The dialogue seemed nice and "in character" for me, so kudos for that.

All in all, a great piece!

Keep up the good work!

Sincerely

Caramir

I noticed two typos.

"The term wouldn't work for suicides now. To many people off themselves with guns for it to be considered theatrical anymore."

'To many' should be 'Too many'

"I guess." Jason frowned, pulling the gun from his jacket. It felt light in his his hand. He couldn't understand why it had felt heavy. The woman was quite at the other end of the line.

'Quite' should be 'quiet'

Other than that, I can't find anything at all to complain about, really. Maybe the pacing of the conversation could've been better; maybe you could have developed it a bit further. But these things barely matter; overall, I thought this was extremely good. There's nothing I can specifically point out; I just loved the hauntingly casual tone of the whole thing.

Great piece.

I knew from the first line that I was going to like this story. I laughed all the way through it.

The one mistake that I found is you used "Suite" intead of "Suit" when the woman was talking about suicide being cliche.

Other then that, great piece, it was highly enjoyedby me.

Wow, again loved it! bit choppy at parts. still wonderful though.

Opening: It's effective. It grabs the person in. Casual mention of drugs works. I also like the description in the whole "phone rang once, rang twice, rang three times" sentences, it really set the picture in my mind, and was very effective.

Characters: I like the woman, she is badass. She is really the main character in this piece I think, and just because over the top angst is so annoying, it was nice to see her kick Jason's proverbial ass over the phone. You are good at developing the characters using dialogue, I was left with a good impression of what the woman was like, but strangely, not Jake, he seemed to take more of a backseat.

Ending: I feel this is the only weak point, in that i was disappointed that it was left unresolved, and didn't really seem to go anywhere. But maybe you intended it that way...a phone call is rarely life changing.

Writing: The writing worked well in this piece, the flow was good and nothing stuck out or jarred me when i read through. It served the story well.

Overall, interesting piece, good job.

This was a very interesting short story, I must say. I loves the cynical tone that shone through, despite the grim situation.

I feel that perhaps you could have shown more emotion on Jason's behalf. Although he's supposed to be the typical "don't really care" kind of teenager, it would have been better if he'd shown a little more fear or bitterness through his actions or choice of words, even if it was only subtle. The cynisism comes through, but I didn't really shiver at his ability to throw away life so willingly. On the other end, I didn't sympathise with his character, or hate him. I didn't think anything of him for that matter. Just something to think about for next time.

Some sentences didn't flow as well as others, and I think that's because you use the same sentence form eg. "His clothes clung to him, weighted with water." "Jason frowned, pulling the gun from his jacket." "Glued to his head, his hair felt like plaster." It's kinda hard to explain, but these sentences are made up of two ideas in the one sentence seperated with the use of a comma. You need to alter the sentence structure sometimes so that heaps of them aren't next to each other. Sometimes its better to use the word "and" in the place of a comma, and other times you should alter the sentence altogether and use a semicolon.

Another way you could make the dialogue flow more is cutting out a lot of the "Jason said" and "the woman laughed". The reader should get the tone of the speaker without the descriptions if you've written it well enough. Only when you think it would add to the emotion between the two characters would you put these tags in.

Overall, this is a great piece. Keep up the exceptional work.

Huh, this is really unique. You took a cliche and had a lot of fun with it, even calling it out. Your very aware of what you're writing. I think you handled the dialogue well, there were a few unnecessary speaker tags, since it was only between two people, but it didn't detract from my initial reading. I think you handled the prompt well too, and I also like how you never reveal who the woman is or how he got her number or whatever was going on with that-also, making the woman say "yeah I've done that once too" was a cool spin, it kind of illuminates the idea that almost everyone at some point in their life, even in sarcasm, has thought about wanting to off themselves after something terrible happens.

In regards to your male MC, I didn't feel like he was as emotional as he should have been, I mean, I don't think it fit him to be completely suicide bonkers crying-that would have been out of place too, but I felt he was and unreliable narrator and also non-convincingly distant about committing suicide. It's not necessarily a bad thing, in fact, it's very contemporary in that regard, just because of his odd indifference, I'm not sure I believe that he was even serious about offing himself. I dunno, strange on me, XD. I think the story would be cooler that way-so that's what I'm believing! :D

Good luck for the WCC results! This is much different than others I've read!

Interesting story. I like the sarcasm and conversational tone throughout. And I like that you left it open-ended, because then I can decide for myself whether he really went through with it or not. Nice work. Keep writing and good luck in the WCC! :)

I like the idea of this story... I like the character you created for the woman on the other side of the line, although I would have expect her to show at least a little surprise at being called up out of the blue like that!

I think it could be more obvious that he dialled a random number. I guessed that he did, but it took me a while, and I spent a while wondering whether it was his mother or a suicide hotline or something like that before I figured it out.

The uncertainty at the end suits this very well. It's not the sort of story that should have a "happily ever after" ending, or a really bleak ending, but yours works perfectly, leaving the story open-ended. Well done! Good luck with the WCC!

(And my review button chooses to work now. Yay.)

Wow. You got this idea from Lassie, right?

Unfortunately my reviewing skills are subpar at the moment, though I think this is great story here, so I'm just going to say: I think you did an excellent job with it. I was able to sympathize with your main character so much. Like no don't dew eet. Don't keel yerself yet. ;_;

Anywho, good luck in the WCC. xP

I loved the line, "Cold now that he was inside the warm, lighted library. He didn’t remember being cold outside." Great foreshadowing and a subtle view into his heart/mind.

What is with all the suicide stories this WCC? People must be depressed around Christmastime I guess... hm...

Anyway...the dialogue in this piece was pretty realistic from Jason's POV, although I'm pretty sure if a random stranger called me and told me he was going to kill himself, I would be a little more...I don't know the right word...nervous? about it, but I guess he chose just the "right" person.

Great characterization-they stayed true throughout.

Good luck with WCC! :-D