Title: The Wall
Type: Novella
Reason for Rejection: The story was not flushed out
The reviewer was thanked for their time and the piece was shelved as it was the 25th rejection. I got 100 once so 25 was nothing. I wish I still had these emails because some of them were really mean. I didn’t hang on to them because I thought it was bad juju.
Written in 2019.
Pitched in 2020.
My style has changed slightly since 2019 because life made me change and grow.
Chapter 1
Humpty Dumpty and the Wall
Once upon a time, there was a tall yellow brick wall that divided the land in half and on the other side of that wall there was not only freedom but death. Humpty Dumpty, a name affectionately given to her by her now deceased brother, went to this wall that was nearly fifty feet tall every day when the sun rose and she would gaze at it while thoughts of climbing it would race through her mind. Behind her, there were several green mountains overlooking a glistening stream, a village filled with stone houses and a forest filled with maple trees and beyond the wall there were streets filled with noisy cars, tall glass buildings, the smell of gas, coffee and donuts subduing the smell of the little greenery that was left in the air. A concrete jungle of sorts, this place was governed by a greedy power hungry ruler and filled with citizens who were dumb, deaf and blind to the corruption and yet Mai wished to see it, the city of mindless drones and violence.
Pressing her small ears and chubby cheeks against the wall she heard the movement of the spring air and felt the coldness of it. Closing her dark brown eyes, she imagined her escape leaving the queen, who had her persistence, her curvy waist and her button nose, the king, who had her optimism, dimpled cheeks and glistening eyes and her fiancé, a lord who ruled the mountains. With a racing heart, sweaty calloused hands and a salivating mouth, Mai tried to climb the wall but she lost her grip.
As she was falling, Mai saw a red mist roll over a large sunflower field of corpses on the straight street in a place she had never seen before under the watchful eye of a full orange moon and a handful of stars. The mist crushed the bones of the corpses and squeezed the liquids from the bodies until all that remained were dried husks. Circling the graveyard were crows, sitting on the carcasses were flies and gnawing on the dried skins that were glued to the bones were bugs. The glistening red river cracked the road in two, on the right side of the road there was a shadow shaped like a short woman and on the other side there was another shadow shaped like a tall burly man. On the right side of the road, purple dandelions began to grow while on the left side of the road white roses began to grow and once the fragrant scent began to cover the stench of the decayed corpses the paved ground beneath the man’s feet opened up and swallowed him whole. The unearthed roses were thrown into the air and the petals were picked and carried off by a sudden gust of wind while the dandelion and woman in the shadows stood their ground. An orange flame lit the night sky, cleared the mist and scattered grey ash across the ground while Mai closed her eyes and stuck out her tongue.
Blueberries and Lavender. The flavours that danced across her tongue. A woman and man had died, one was her hero and the other her foe and she wept for both of them. While she was falling, Mai blinked and the blue sky returned along with a few dozen passing fluffy white clouds then she felt her body slam against the dirt ground. With her back aching, her hands bleeding, the sun gazing at her and the smell of hay and lilac sticking to the walls of her nostrils, Mai sighed. Staring at her was her closest friend, Anna, a tall lanky woman with freckles scattered across her sunburnt red skin, a pointy chin, a small nose and bright orange curly hair. Bam. The sound of a fist punching the wall as Mai stood up.
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SONYA A WATSON 