United Kingdom • 60 y/oReviews Given
You caught the voice of a grumpy old lady very well. I disagree with her sentiments, but there are people like that. I know you mean to be funny but good comedy is usually based on fact.
The opening is good, it draws the reader in. The basic premise is promising.
You made a few mistakes with punctuation, there should be more commas and capital letters in some places. 'Its all right Emma, I'll come and get you' is one example; comma after Emma. One or two names start with lower case letters. Deal with that and this will be better still.
Well done for a thoughtful, hopeful piece of writing. During lockdown a lot of people have been forced to look again at nature on their doorsteps. I think they will relate to this.
You're building suspense well, and I like the detail about her makeup running. There are a few spelling mistakes, 'her' when I think you meant 'here', but keep practising and you'll get better.
You build tension well and your narrator's feelings are believable. Perhaps you could use this as a basis for a longer story. If not its a good short piece.
There is more awareness now than there used to be of adolescent mental health issues. Perhaps that will result in young people getting more support. Hold onto that hope.
I think the narrator would run between the fighting boys rather than walk between them.
As to the ending, a happy one would perhaps be too easy. The narrator has been associating with the paranormal and that's dangerous in many folk tales and horror stories.
I like the way you fuse the everyday with the sci-fi. Even in outer space daughters can be irritated by over-protective mothers. Her inner conflict over answering the call is believable and you wrote a good cliffhanger.