Hello everyone!
This is my first (very short) story, please feel free to leave comments and tell me about any mistake you find!
Thank you :)
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It was a warm, rainy summer day.
"I wonder when it's going to let up..." thought Helen, looking out of the half misted window.
Her office was silent, if not for the low hum of the computer.
She glanced at the clock: a quarter to seven, still it was more dusk than evening.
The huge pile of papers lying on her desk caught her attention.
She hadn't been doing much the past days, if not for the most important paperwork she couldn't put off.
She had asked her coworker James if he could give her a hand to sort out all those forms.
Guess what, something always came in between.
Be it the phone call, the boss in need of something, the big client etc.
Long story short, she was sitting there and had to do it all by herself.
Burning the candle at both ends wasn't exactly the best on Friday evening.
Not that she had a choice, anyway, as she was almost snowed under.
"I'd better get to work" she thought "I don't want to stay any longer than half past seven..."
Just as she started typing the lights suddendly went out.
"Oh I can't believe it...what a drag!"
She had no idea where on Earth the generator could be...somewhere down, hopefully not in the basement.
She might as well go looking for the cabinet: it wasn't pitch black outside, there was still a faint light coming through the windows.
However she was completely alone in the building.
"Hm, I think I'll pass and go home. I'm no chicken but you never know."
She could always come early the following day to get a head start.
"If the worse come to the worst and the boss calls me out, I'll make up some excuse" she then considered.
The woman gathered her things and left the office, keeping her phone in front of her to get some light.
Luckily, the staircase had all the emergency lights on, so she put it back in the bag and cautiously started going down.
"Helen.."
A voice?
Helen quickly turned her head to find out who had spoken but no one was in sight.
She took a few steps when the voice called her again, this time in a sad and plaintive tone.
"Okay, yes, I really need a break" she thought "Time to go home and put my feet up. I'm starting to hallucinate...."
She quickened her pace down the stairs and towards the exit.
As soon as she was leaving she spotted with the corner of her eye a blueish light, coming right from her office.
That was the last straw: she dashed to the car and sped off, her mind gone blank.
"I don't know what the hell is going on but I'm outta here!"
The woman promised herself to never, ever stay in the office after everyone else had left.
And perhaps to start looking for a new job as soon as she could.
Overall, very well written. You seem to have a really good handle on idioms. I thought it was, "if worse comes to worse," but apparently, for 30+ years, I've been wrong. Although, in American midwest English, we don't put the before worse and worst. So, whether you decide to keep "the" is up to you. I'll write a bit about the mistakes you made multiple times. 1) When you have two sentences connected by a common idea, it's a semicolon, not a colon. I think your placement of these is perfect. 2) An ellipsis (...) is always three dots. However, if you want to do it as a style choice, you could use four as you have done. 3) Whenever you have speech or thought quotes, you have a few cases: a) "Exclamation!" she exclaimed. b) She said, "the thing she said." c) "A thought," she thought, "another thought." d) "What?" she thought to herself. My examples aren't particularly well thought out, but the point of them is the punctuation.
Hi Joseph, thanks a lot for your corrections! 😀 I'm glad it's wasn't that bad after all! 😂 I use idioms on purpose to revise them - there are so many.