Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-33642912-20171114223911/@comment-24101790-20171114230150

Starting with the basics, please post in source mode rather than visual editor as you get these types of coding errors: "    That night, the mother went into the father’s room - which was also the mother’s room - and the father was nowhere to be found. She looked out the window, he wasn’t there, she went to the backyard, he wasn’t there. No matter where she looked, he wasn’t there. Needless to say, she slept very little that night. " Awkward wording: "That night, the mother went into the father’s room - which was also the mother’s room - and the father was nowhere to be found.", "The atmosphere had gone from a perfect nuclear family filled with laughs and good times, to the only two members sitting in fear of death by whatever horrible way they could imagine.", etc. I would suggest reading your story aloud to yourself and as a general rule of thumb, whenever you stumble on phrasing or something comes off as awkward/out-of-place, it typically needs revision.

Wording issues: "But, as if on queue (Pretty sure you mean cue here)…", "She was going through a the (either a or the can be used, not both) family photo album." Punctuation: "As he did it, the mother shouted(,/:) “Don’t!”"

Story issues: This story feels like it needs a lot more detail to work. If the person who answers their phone goes to their room and disappears later, why wouldn't the mother be checking on them (especially after she identifies answering the phone as the problem "As she had been expecting, the phone rang.")? Additionally it seems like they could be doing a lot more to stop people from answering the phone or even staying in the area when people are disappearing. This ends u feeling more like the general points you want to make in the story and this isn't the completed version.

Story issues cont.: It seems like you want to have more of an emotional component to your story ("A tear slipped and plopped onto the plastic covering as the mother smiled, remembering how Aubrey had brushed it off and laughed, oh, she could see that smile and hear that laugh."), but there really isn't a lot of characterization here or attempt to help the audience identify with the characters. You don't even name a number of them until it's their time to answer the phone and half of the characters aren't even given names which results in a lot of depersonalization, especially when you try for a more emotional aspect towards the end.

Story issues end.: To bookend my previous comment about the story feeling unfinished or being a rough draft, the ending feels really anticlimactic. "She felt as if the phone was drawing her towards it like a magnet, but then, she heard from behind her: “Don’t pick up that phone…”" It almost feels like while you were copy/pasting the story to post it, you missed a couple of paragraphs towards the end as it comes off more like you're trying for an ambiguous/cliffhanger ending. I'm sorry, but this is going to need quite a lot of revision if you plan on making a deletion appeal for this one. The premise can work, but the way it's written right now leaves quite a lot to be desired here.