Good evening, FRESH MEATers! Tonight’s tale is about a girl named Tara, who had a face to die for. So grab a bucket of popcorn, curl up with your cat, and watch (or read below) if you dare! This one’s gonna leave you Tara-fied…
Great story! Love the twists! Good use of objects! Somehow, perversely perhaps, I want to order pizza for dinner? In my defense, I always want to order pizza for dinner.
Minor suggestion: I wonder if you could find an object to tie Pizza Face and his waiting together, even now. Maybe Morgan takes the ribbon and slips into Tara’s dress and PizzaFace has her wedding gown and asks what to do with it and she says I don’t need it now but he keeps it, so he can say something like True Love Waits, I still got that dress...
I like how you capture the universal concerns of high school, but also the new reality of influencer makeup channels!
And I know this is a sitcom/movie plot, but I did in real life have a buddy who went to Catholic school and loved the purity messaging because somehow the butthole didn’t count?!?!?
I really liked this.😊 My favorite of yours so far.
Feedback: I was getting dragged happily through the horror until you hit me with the "I" pronoun, and then I got pulled out. I wasn't sure who "I" was. 😬 I'm sure I missed something along the way, but to try to keep going I decided "I" was Morgan's dad - until a few lines later when "Morgan's daddy" reappeared in the third person. So, I'm still not sure who the narrator was. Also, not entirely sure who Pizza Face is in relation to Morgan and her dad. Does he just work for them? I'm sure a second read would clarify some of this for me and I will read it again. Just wanted to throw some first impressions at you.
Gym glass stuff was great. I got all goosebumpy about prom. Love the rumors around Morgan railing dead guys and the Instagram face stuff. So great, Maegan. Well done!!!
Apr 3, 2023·edited Apr 3, 2023Liked by Maegan Heil
Language insanity, in all the best ways! Your writing is like a bunch of firecrackers popping right in front of my face. I love the beginning, especially the stuff about "untying" the ribbon.
"What’s the first thing them boys wanted to do when they seen that ribbon? That’s right, they wanted to untie it. Because you see girls, whatcha don’t understand is how hard it is for a boy to see a girl with purity in his heart when she’s doing her Mile Run in a pair of booty shorts, face done up like a supermodel. A boy sees a ring on a finger, and his mind says, Taken. But a boy sees a ribbon, and his mind goes, A present? For me?"
Maegan! Voice is always top-notch in your pieces. You're obviously mentally unwell dreaming up ideas like this. Takes one to know one. =}
To echo some other comments, I admit to losing track of who's who at points. Usually I chalk that up to being kind of dense, but maybe here the unreliable narrator is a little too unreliable. One idea could be to introduce I earlier into the piece. The reader still wouldn't know who the narrator is, but it could orient the reader in advance of the twist.
As it reads, I'd say it's clearly in first-person POV even though it seems like third-person POV. Pulling that off is an incredible feat of which you should be very proud.
Apr 10, 2023·edited Apr 10, 2023Liked by Maegan Heil
I'm continuously impressed by your ability to conjure up so perfectly in one or two simple images that shared high school experience. This is perfect: "Derrick punts a basketball to the ceiling and knocks out a light, one of those metal halide bulbs."
Loved the bitchiness in the hello MORG-an, as well! It's perfect.
How you manage to get the reader reading it in a certain voice in their head is another skill of yours I'm in awe off. It's those two lines near the beginning in which the narrator says y'all. After that the whole story reads in said accent and tone. It's fucking great, Maegan! I'm not even American but you still get me reading it in that accent in my head.
Great story! Love the twists! Good use of objects! Somehow, perversely perhaps, I want to order pizza for dinner? In my defense, I always want to order pizza for dinner.
Minor suggestion: I wonder if you could find an object to tie Pizza Face and his waiting together, even now. Maybe Morgan takes the ribbon and slips into Tara’s dress and PizzaFace has her wedding gown and asks what to do with it and she says I don’t need it now but he keeps it, so he can say something like True Love Waits, I still got that dress...
I like how you capture the universal concerns of high school, but also the new reality of influencer makeup channels!
And I know this is a sitcom/movie plot, but I did in real life have a buddy who went to Catholic school and loved the purity messaging because somehow the butthole didn’t count?!?!?
Oh Maegan... oh... ee... ack... aaahhhhh!!! 🔥🔥🔥
I really liked this.😊 My favorite of yours so far.
Feedback: I was getting dragged happily through the horror until you hit me with the "I" pronoun, and then I got pulled out. I wasn't sure who "I" was. 😬 I'm sure I missed something along the way, but to try to keep going I decided "I" was Morgan's dad - until a few lines later when "Morgan's daddy" reappeared in the third person. So, I'm still not sure who the narrator was. Also, not entirely sure who Pizza Face is in relation to Morgan and her dad. Does he just work for them? I'm sure a second read would clarify some of this for me and I will read it again. Just wanted to throw some first impressions at you.
Gym glass stuff was great. I got all goosebumpy about prom. Love the rumors around Morgan railing dead guys and the Instagram face stuff. So great, Maegan. Well done!!!
Language insanity, in all the best ways! Your writing is like a bunch of firecrackers popping right in front of my face. I love the beginning, especially the stuff about "untying" the ribbon.
"What’s the first thing them boys wanted to do when they seen that ribbon? That’s right, they wanted to untie it. Because you see girls, whatcha don’t understand is how hard it is for a boy to see a girl with purity in his heart when she’s doing her Mile Run in a pair of booty shorts, face done up like a supermodel. A boy sees a ring on a finger, and his mind says, Taken. But a boy sees a ribbon, and his mind goes, A present? For me?"
Excellent :)
It's always the quiet ones, isn't it?
Another great peice! I loved the little nods to other horror stories and playing with readers' preconceptions by using them.
I also loved the sneakily ever present narrator, even point blank saying: he's invisible.
I was a little confused by the funeral home arrangement, as in, which characters do what, but it might just be that I need to reread.
But as always, the pacing was really good, and I always enjoy how you punctuate and set out paragraphs.
Maegan! Voice is always top-notch in your pieces. You're obviously mentally unwell dreaming up ideas like this. Takes one to know one. =}
To echo some other comments, I admit to losing track of who's who at points. Usually I chalk that up to being kind of dense, but maybe here the unreliable narrator is a little too unreliable. One idea could be to introduce I earlier into the piece. The reader still wouldn't know who the narrator is, but it could orient the reader in advance of the twist.
As it reads, I'd say it's clearly in first-person POV even though it seems like third-person POV. Pulling that off is an incredible feat of which you should be very proud.
Per usual, the 🥩🥩🥩 was FRESH.
I always have to make sure I’m sitting down when I open one of your stories because once I start I can’t stop until it’s over.
Also, the way you lined everything up to be knocked down at the end was masterful. It’s like 10 different payoffs in one go!
Loved the story. I could see an anthology of stories like this for one small town in the midwest. Nice.
I'm continuously impressed by your ability to conjure up so perfectly in one or two simple images that shared high school experience. This is perfect: "Derrick punts a basketball to the ceiling and knocks out a light, one of those metal halide bulbs."
Loved the bitchiness in the hello MORG-an, as well! It's perfect.
How you manage to get the reader reading it in a certain voice in their head is another skill of yours I'm in awe off. It's those two lines near the beginning in which the narrator says y'all. After that the whole story reads in said accent and tone. It's fucking great, Maegan! I'm not even American but you still get me reading it in that accent in my head.
Well done!