Terrific Tallemaja! You developed this story SO beautifully, I was totally engaged with it all the way through. The only bit that made me pause was ‘Look how she pleased…’ which I didn’t quite understand. Brilliant idea though, with a great twist.

Hi Tallemaja,
This is a wonderful concept for a story, and you manage to develop it well within the limited word count.

Just a few thoughts if you plan to develop this further. You will want to review your use of dash – which you seem to use overall for showing shift in speaker (you begin with but then abandon quotation marks). However, in some places it also appears to indicate an expositional shift, which can be a bit confusing. E.g.,
– Did you kill her? – There was a frightened voice …
And this sequence becomes particularly difficult to parse:
– Yes. UAVC25 – universal android of VIP class, twenty-five years old in appearance. She speaks excellent French and I called her Frenchwoman. She sang to me, lisped funny … – Alex smiled at the memories. He shrugged his shoulders, ran his hand over the back of his head. – And then the Frenchwoman was transformed into Francine.
_ Yes, this is how children sometimes call dolls in their own way, ignoring the factory names.

Also you’ll want to do a good grammar check. For example, there are a few misused possessives – ‘bedroom’s door’; ‘what’s banality’.

But overall, a very enjoyable read!

What a twist! You prepared the reader to find a woman in Alex’s bed and then – things change course. The colour of the clothes worked as a device to symbolise what Alex couldn’t get from his wife. I also enjoyed the metaphor of the helium balloon: “just a little more, and I’ll fly.”

Great read with a good plot twist. It made me smile.

It’s concerning that kate isn’t bothered by the other character, but the end of the story it makes sense. so that was a mini roller-coaster that i enjoyed.
-db

I really like the owl, super cool between life and death. Your story timeline was very fluid. I sort of see a opposite comparison a few times and I really enjoy that, subtle and hidden.
-db

Your story is rich in imagery and symbolism. It felt more like a poem as it told the story of one man’s life and his remembrances. I struggled to follow some of the action as at times the subject was missing or the sentences were written in fragments. Also, it flowed as if from a native voice most of the time and then at other times seemed to jump into the colloquial present, a bit of a mismatch.

I think you have the basis for a lovely poem rather than a short story as it is currently written. Consider punctuation to create subtle pauses, quotations to make it clear when the character is talking (or thinking aloud) and clear delineation of who is doing what at each point in the story. The story you’ve told is beautiful, but as written, I found the story itself hard to follow. With small changes, you would have something fabulous to share. Keep writing and sharing your lovely visions!