True Harmony

Hello everybody. So Today is the day I’ve finally decided to join in on the fun of posting on the site. A few of you may have seen the movie “It Follows”. I really enjoyed it and drew a lot of inspiration from it for this story. On that note, I’d like to mention a few things. For starters, this is my first story and other than a few short stories that I’ve written here and there, I haven’t done anything like this so any constructive criticism would be much appreciated. I also want to clarify that this is a very silly idea but I figured I’d have fun with it. Finally, I hope you all enjoy. :wink:

Chapter 1

“I don’t believe you.”

“I’m dead serious.”

“Well why don’t you prove it?” I said challenging him.

My name is Kat. I’m 17 years old, white with blonde hair, green eyes, and I like narrating my life in my head as if somebody is reading it like on a forum or something. Last week, I went on my first date with Michael, a guy I met at my cousin’s birthday party. So far he hasn’t given me a reason to hate him so I guess you could say that’s a win. He’s sweet, funny, a little bit weird but not too weird. He’s one of the good ones.

“Alright. Watch me.” He said as he jumped up on the wall next to us.

“Oh God, no, I was kidding! Please don’t kill yourself!” I said in shock.

“You might wanna take a step back.” I tried to plead with him one more time but before I could get any more words out, he had already jumped backwards, kicking his feet up in the air in the process. I jumped out of the way more out of reflexes than anything else as I watched him land on his feet. “Ta-da!”

“Okay, okay, all you’ve proven is that you are way more athletic than me.” I said with a giggle.

“Yeah, well stick around and maybe I’ll teach YOU how to do a back flip.” I didn’t actually care about the flip. Actually, now that I think about it, the whole thing was kinda lame but at least he was fun.

“I’d like that” I told him while trying to give him that sexy side smile that you see models do in magazines with a little move of my hips. “Now, would you like to do me the honors of taking me home or not?”

“It would be my honor.” He said, trying to sound cool and failing miserably.

It took us another 20 minutes or so that we filled with stories about ourselves and the kind of questions people ask on a second date. Michael was growing on me. He wasn’t moving too fast or really doing anything that usually turns me off from a guy. Actually he mainly just listened to me talk about school or family or a new video game that I was excited about occasionally throwing in his own little tid-bits. He was quite while still maintaining basic social skills. It was nice. As we were walking up the steps to my house, he slipped and fell flat on his face. “Are you okay?!” I said almost yelling.

“Yeah, I guess.” He said more shocked than hurt.

“Yeah well smooth move Mr. Acrobat.” I said teasingly as I helped him up. I thought what I said was pretty tame but I noticed his facial expression changed as he looked more hurt than shocked this time.

“Shutup!” He yelled as he brushed my hands away from him. I stood there shocked, wondering where this complete 180 in personality had come from.

“Okay, jeez. Calm down crybaby.” I realized maybe he was a little offended by what I said but I certainly wasn’t going to take any crap from him.

“I’m not a-” he started to say in the same tone he had when he told me to shut up but quickly quickly cut himself off. “I’m sowwy- sorry! I’m sorry!” What in the world was that?

“It’s um, it’s fine” I said trying to sort through everything that just happened. “I shouldn’t have said what I said.”

“No, I shouldn’t have acted that way. That was really stupid and I don’t know what came over me.” He apologized. “Can we still be friends?” He asked as we took the final steps up to my porch.

“I don’t know.” I lightly skimmed my hand against his as I kissed him on the cheek. “Let’s see where this goes.”

Well that’s it for now. I really enjoyed writing this and I’d hate to see this story end up on somebody’s reject pile so let me know if I did anything wrong. I know it’s not a very long chapter but I’m really trying to map this whole thing out before I go anywhere in the story I’m afraid I won’t be able to come back from. So without anything else to add, I hope you guys have a good night… or day… I don’t really know what time it is where you are. Was that weird? I feel like that was weird. I should probably stop typing now.

Re: True Harmony

Interesting start… is the guy bipolar?

Also, I can assure you sir that the apples are very much real.

Re: True Harmony

Critique in…3…2…1…go

I kind of like the breaking the forth wall bit about narrating in her head. That was clever

I didn’t like the “info dump” part though. Hi, I’m this tall, green eyes, blonde, white, etc. etc. etc.

That happens in too many stories where the author doesn’t want to introduce the character’s appearance organically. Also, personality doesn’t usually happen in those stories either. It always reads to me like it’s an introduction to a character sheet in an RPG rather than a character. “Hi, my character is a 7th level wizard with a red cloak and mismatched eyes indicating something is different about him. I know you’ve never met him, but he seems really trustworthy.” I blame Dungeons and Dragons.

I’ll give you credit though for not also including breast size and whether or not her ass is awesome.

If you want to describe what she looks like, do it organically. Maybe she’s looking at herself in the mirror, perhaps congratulating herself for her good looks, or being envious and wishing she had strawberry blonde hair instead of straw colored hair.

Now, given the self aware context of the “narrating in my head” thing, I could see like she was being self aware, but I’d focus more on her personality than on her appearance.

Like "Hi, I’m Kat, I’m 17, a Virgo, I have the dubious honor of being a member of the Gay-Straight Alliance at my high school as well as a member of the young republicans, and oh-yeah, I narrate in my head, like all the time.

Alternatively, she could be superficial plastic material ala mean girl and focus almost exclusively on looks. But I don’t think that’s the vibe you’re going for for this character.

I’m cool with the activity, because I remember being a high schooler and willing to do stupid stuff to impress a girl. That part is completely believable.

Re: True Harmony

Alright, whose ready for chapter 2? I hope this isn’t too soon to post a new chap… 5 months since the last update? My bad.

Chapter 2

As I closed the door behind me, I heard feet running down the hallway. Great. Danielle is home.

“Oh my God! tell me everything!” she yelled as she wrapped her arms around me.

“Not until you tell me what you’re doing here. I thought you weren’t going to be home from college for another two weeks.” I said while trying to not suffocate from Danielle’s hug.

“I finished all my finals. You didn’t think that I was just going to sit in my dorm room for after I learned that my little sister has a boyfriend?”

“How did you even know about hi-” wait. “Damn it Mom.” I said as Danielle gave me one of her most clever smiles. “He’s not even my boyfriend. We’ve only been on two dates.”

“That’s bull and you know it.” she said. “I haven’t seen your face turn that shade of red since you had to kiss that boy in your play freshman year. You’re totally in love.”

Was I blushing? I touched my hand to my cheek and felt the heat emanating from it. I knew I shouldn’t have made her come to that play. It was freshman year and I had to kiss Dan Gentry and he was really cute and my costume looked stupid and I almost tripped when I walked out on stage and I’m rambling. “I’m never letting you come to another one of my plays again.” I said half jokingly, half completely serious.

“Yeah, because I was just dying to go to that one.” she said sarcastically. “You dragged me to that, remember?”

“Fine, I guess you win.” I said as I walked past her to my room, trying not to act pissed.

“Hey Kat.” she said.

“I’m really happy to see you.” she paused for a second. “I’m sorry for giving you a hard time.”

I stood there, somewhat taken aback by such an unexpected statement. “You don’t need to apologize for anything. You know we all love it when you come home.”

She cracked a small grin. “Thanks,” she said.

“Don’t mention it.” I said cracking the same smile as I went up stairs to my room. I tossed my purse on the bed and then sat down next to it as I pulled out my phone when I heard something crinkle underneath me. “What the heck?” I muttered under my breath. It was an ad that looked like it had been torn out of a family magazine. On it was a toddler in a just green t-shirt and a diaper sitting in a very messy nursery. “How did this get here?” I continued to look at it. There was a short paragraph at the bottom. “Sometimes things get messy. Let us make things a little easier. -Harmony Diapers”

I put the ad aside. “Mom must have put it in my purse by mistake.” Just then I got a text from Micheal. “Hey, babysitting for a family friend tomorrow. Wanna hang?”

I thought about it for a second before responding. “Sure i love kids :)” I put the phone down, unintentionally dropping it on the ad. Some coincidence that was, diapers and then babysitting. I brushed it off and started getting ready for bed.

I changed into a tank top and pajama pants, brushed my teeth and came back into my room to see a reply from Michael. “Great. I’ll pick you up at 11:00 tomorrow.”

Ha! I bet you thought that she was going to find a diaper when she felt that crinkle, didn’t you? Moving on, sorry it took so long. I finally mustered up the gumption to finish another chapter. What did you guys think? I feel like my biggest flaws lie in my sentence structure and actual length of the chapters but I’m very firm in my beliefs of quality over quantity. As for the former, I’m working on it. I really hope you guys think this is interesting. I’ve got enough ideas to get me through a couple more chapters and maybe the next update won’t even take 5 months. Who knows, right?

Re: True Harmony

I like it so far hope to see more coming soon!