Resonance (First Draft)

Her fingers curled to cup the tap water, fidgeting from the begotten pain in its wake. By the grace of whatever god valued her, she was thankful, for the numbing succor of the painkillers taking effect. Filled until the water spilled over her thumbs, she sluiced the sweat off; a freedom denied by the Levant’s desolate territories.
Her eyelashes flit across the wretches under her eyes, crimping the wrinkles on her forehead. Supped spit, and tap sprung from what she dared not speak, sprinkled the gnawing hunger clawing against its stomach-cage. The restless rumbling wrought her desire to devour her fellow nurse's frozen sausage, for so simple a wish to quash her vegan TV dinner’s tasteless pittances.
'There’s no home for me back in Gaza even if I could, even if I truly wanted to,' Amira cleaned her hands like mourning dove nuzzling her wounds under the bridge, feeling the myriad of hurt pressed under a cobblestone wall of painkillers. ‘Forgive me, but I never wanted to slave over all the rules.’

The hospital bathroom sweltered; miserable, muggy, and submerged in mire morbid of all whatever violence transpired to spill upon it. Amira whimpered a curse at the broken fan for aggravating the quagmire. Thwacked its steel cage, it did, she trembled, sure of its descent to that of a hectic butcher’s knife. Four days in her stint, her trained ears could almost count the heavy, metronomic clang reverberating through her, jolting her into a shocked stasis.

Swallowing hard, upon that fan’s count to three, Amira heaved her weight up and over the sink. Like an outhouse in a grindhouse film set, force fed water-matted dust and matter bled into sink pipe cracks and bathroom's water-sheened crevices surrounding the toilet. A languid green hue swabbed the room, casting an abyss where even those with a scatological fascination of the macabre shuddered to think of. The light of the vanity fixture coughed flickers. Like a chain smoker tossing his fix’s remnants off his deathbed, scattered butts left in the corners around cast trails of smoke. Wood walls and porcelain yellowed, soaking the flavor of cigarettes into the fleeting traces of vomit that clung. Even when the lights coughed a bright flash, the darkness suffocated the kitsch showcase of early fifties America’s pride. Only the faded scent of lavender soap that freckled the sink breathed life into the room.

Her eyes flashed everywhere, glutted with visions of their broken bodies rushed into the emergency room.

‘I can’t bear this anymore,’ Amira thought as her hands began to bleed flickers of phantasmal purple-blue flame. ‘I failed. I froze, I-I couldn’t do anything. It’s not my fault I wasn’t trained for it. Maybe...maybe we got the help. Maybe the folks from the Silverlight Group came in—’

The ventilation’s rickety whirr sputtered a constipated waft through the tunnel, spurring ghostly shivers to crawl up her skin. Coiling, curdling until spasms reeled her arms. Dropped against the sink, her breath convulsed as her chest hit. Hands, fuming with dark power, fastened their grip around the faucet. Into the bones, the metal snakehead depressed as she hung inches from the floor, expanding what strength her arms strained to muster. Feet flailing, skidding along the slickened tile, only whimpering curses in sotto voce accompanied the pouring water.

On the balls of her feet, Amira steadied herself before another loud skid ripped through the muggy air. With a throaty wheeze, her grip around the faucet tightened, teeth clenching as the paroxysm rippled from her hands up to her shoulders. A blackened tear dribbled softly off onto her hijab. Chiffon enriched with a deep wine color, it now bore another ugly stain.

One and a two and a three, she counted and pulled herself up.

‘I reached the end of the road,’ Amira thought to herself, foot slipping suddenly before it was caught by her fallen purse. Staring down at her empty hands, gloves sprawled across the floor, she forced a smile for the apparitions of who was to come and take her away. ‘This is it; these are my last moments of freedom. The life my mother blessed wasted.’

Amira knows she’ll go back to face the Middle East, again and again, until God claimed her for whatever afterlife awaited. wherever her body was to be found. ‘The Traitor of Palestine,’ they’ll cry. Instruments of Hope's end in hand - finality attained upon the dreams she held so tight. Clarity now in the picturesque post-mortem, she’ll go to the grave, the memory of Middle Eastern leaders’ ingrained in every delivered victual, every parade and dog and pony show. All from the comfort behind blood-bathed curtains of her slain people. The destruction of all hope for the Palestinian soul, broken into pieces and sold as chattel for their own tribal ascendance.

She knew she’ll go back. Newfound friends and desperation for a new beginning - it would come one day in America, she believed - petered to a mewling whimper to be scoffed, mocked, silenced by the kafala system’s lethality ‘neath the ink’s final stroke. The proclamation of her desecration.

She hated herself because every day her exile to Qatar drew closer.

‘All I ask is this, dear God. Why? Why did You forsake her? Why didn’t you let me die instead?’
‘It was a matter of time,’ said a voice that resembled her mother’s.

The clock’s hand crawled thirty minutes past four.

Rubbing the splotchy skin, Amira sniffed, struggling to mutter the world through the scratchy sounds coming out.

Coldness took hold of her amidst the sweltering heat as her mouth filled with spit. As her eyes blurred, desperate for the warmth of her mother’s hand, black tears dribbled onto the porcelain.

Hearing her mother weep, before the sword took her, Amira looked to the heavens with a longing gaze. Praying, in vain hope of a heaven above, that her pain came to end.

Saged, in hopes for comments and criticism towards improvement.

One of the most important things needed to be a writer is the ability to observe and reflect the world around you. If you can't do that, then your writing will always be trash.
Specifically, we have critique threads for people to post their work in so the board doesn't get overwhelmed with threads made for each individual's trash writing. The problem with that, is that the shittest of writers don't even notice that, so they make threads for their special snowflake selves, as though they're the only ones who ever thought to write.

>>9849072
Admirable, and thank you for pointing this newfag in the right direction. However, I have seen no new critique thread since the old one was closed.

>>9848834
>posting a first draft
Learn to self edit. No one else is going to do this for you. First drafts are terrible.

This is very overwritten both in vocabulary and in emotion. Readers' feelings are moved by empathizing with the character in their situation, not in the character feeling many feels oh so strongly. You also use a lot of cliches.

>I never knew what I had gotten myself into,
>I can’t bear this anymore,
>It’s not my fault
>I reached the end of the road,
>This is it;
>dear God. Why? Why did You forsake her?