Fear

[jbknowles]

Hi Teachers

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Excerpt from The House That Haunts Me

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Macy walked up the stairs listening to the creak of each step. Her heart began to beat faster. “Calm down Macy.” she said aloud. She knew she was letting her mother’s stories creep her out. She thought she heard footsteps, so she paused on the steps holding her breath. How did her brother get up here before her? That had to be what it was. She didn’t believe in ghost stories. She wanted to see the room her mother had slept in. She’d heard so many scary stories about the closets she wanted to check them out. She began to climb once more feeling the veins in her neck pulsing as she stepped onto the landing. Turning to the right she stepped into her mother’s childhood room. The pattern of roses on the yellowed wallpaper was just as her mother had described it. In the shadowy corner she could see little eyes peering out, the result of glow in the dark paint still active all these years after her mom and aunt had painted them. She saw the small cubby hole with empty boxes stacked neatly inside. She walked to the closet with the

RE: Excerpt from The House That Haunts Me

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Oh man, this gave me the creeps. Closets were definitely a source of fear when I was little. I loved the neck pulsing and the background that tis was her mom's childhood room. The wallpaper description, the yellow eyes from glow in the dark paint - both helped create a spooky old feeling. When she jerks her hand back, does she sense something? Or was it just the fear? I was expecting that sentence to be followed up with something like the hand that touched her. In the sentence where she does feel something on her hand, perhaps you could play with the punctuation? Shorter sentences might build the moment of the hand touching her. I almost read right through it. I would also love to hear more description of how she was feeling as she raced down the stairs. What was she thinking?!

I'm so curious to read more of this. Nice work!

The Brown Recluse

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I don't know your name above from Excerpt from The House That Haunts Me, but I really liked it. Closets used to scare me when I was little. Would love to keep reading. Nice job! Mine is not as scary, but is based on when our family did move to Idaho

RE: The Brown Recluse

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Kay, is this true?! I had no idea that brown recluse spiders could take a leg off and still live! That is terrifying! I'm not typically afraid of spiders but when they suprise me and are in clothing or bedding, as you described, it is so scary. I found a spider in my sweater over vacation and I did exactly as you described, checked everything before I wore it.

Your descriptions are clear and exact. I love the build up to the spider trap not actually working. I also love the phrase, "Houdini spider." I was left wondering why she was watching a spider crawl away at the beginning. Nice job!

Re: The Brown Recluse

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Absolutely true!. I hated those spiders. You would see a couple of legs left on the sticky trap and you knew what had happened. But one day, we also watched one get off. Side note: It was hilarious when a sticky trap would accidentally get stuck on something else. When we moved to Idaho, I was a mother of four kids (I wrote the above with my MC in mind), and my little three year old came over to me with his blanket that he had dragged around, and there was an ugly sticky trap stuck on it!

Re: The Brown Recluse

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Sandra Stiles says: I started getting all queasy reading about your spiders. They are my number one fear. I scream and get physically sick when I see them. I wouldn't be able to stay there. First place I lived in when I got my own place I came home to a big garden spider in my sink. I poured boiling water on it while I screamed and my neighbor kicked in my door to take down the person he thought was assaulting me. He laughed his butt off when he realized it was a spider. I wasn't laughing.

Fear for Alice

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When I was in 3rd grade I came home and my dad had written the note, “I quit” on the whiteboard kept on the fridge. I think in my head I knew what he meant but I asked my mom anyway. She said, “The family.” I wrote about it in my diary saying, “I thought my family would always be together, I guess not.” I was terrified of what it would mean to have our family split up. This was such an impactful moment for me and I planned on putting it in my story. I haven’t made it to this scene so here is where I think this will happen later in the story. Alice’s Gram is suffering from Alzheimer’s and has gone missing. Her dad has a lot of pressure at work and he can’t take the time to help with his missing mother as he would like. The normal, everyday parenting, adult world is getting to him

Re: Fear for Alice

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I am glad you are writing about it. How hard that must have been for you. I like that Alice is kind of taking the situation in hand to help her mother with the blow of it all. Would love to read the whole story. Well done.

Sandra Stiles on Fear for Alice

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Very heavy. You can feel the fear bubbling up inside of her ready to erupt. Fear of losing her grandmother, losing her father and the loss mentally of her mother, not to mention the burden of fearing for her siblings. Very emotionally packed. Well done.

Walmart

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Katie's five, and she knows parking lot rules, but she often wanders. So, as we were walking into the store, my eyes were less on my surroundings and more on her. I think Chelsea was on one side of me, and Katie was on the other. As we walked through the first set of doors, a group of three or four men were standing around a cart. A Walmart greeter asked, "Do you got a receipt?"

I heard, "Don't do it!" One of the men charged the greeter and the greeter hit the far wall. I grabbed both of my children and pushed them through the second set of doors and into the store.

As we reached the self checkout, I screamed at the first woman I saw, before I noticed she wasn't wearing a Walmart vest. When it registered, I just screamed louder, "A man just pushed a greeter into a wall over by the door." When someone looked, saw and started moving toward the greeter, I pulled both girls along with me farther into the store.