Margie's Candies (as suggested by u/ask_me_if_I_suck )would be much better. I think pre-Covid the one off of Milwaukee Ave closed at midnight? It's also off Milwaukee which along with Elston and Blue Island are major diagonal streets with bike lanes. Milwaukee for a certain stretch is the hipster highway. 

This can instantly land you Chicago. 

There is a bike elevated, run path called the 606. It's based on our zip code all starting with 606XX. Anyway-near North and Damen, el lines is Milwaukee. This stop will always have people and a  train coming every 12 minutes per direction at late hours (I think), but nearby IIRC are some stations that were being worked on during the construction of the 606 and rehabbing of the Brown line where the station was closed, but trains (for renovations) but the tracks were still being used. Aaahaa! CPD and CTA Police cameras are fairly easy to spot and there are quieter spots on the North Side for someone to scurry. IIRC there is an American Ninja War

> Suicidal ideation story posted on Friday the 13th. Dang.

I didn't notice that, but yeah... lol

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>I did have trouble picturing this once I knew it was Chicago.

:P You know, I think most of my story-identity-crisis-inducing-comments have come from you. Also with the bit about how eyebrow-raising it would be for a woman to die during a certain stage of pregnancy, the unlikelihood of a character being alone with a prisoner and/or guards having weapons beyond a checkpoint... 

But yeah, this totally makes sense. 

* The train tracks I had in mind were on the outskirts of Moscow. In my head I'm just picturing old school wood-and-steel train tracks. I guess step one should be locating a big city that actually has those sort of train tracks.
* It never occurred to me that Dairy Queen might not have similar status everywhere. I will indeed have to choose a more location-appropriate ice cream parlor, once I find a suitable location.

Thank you for posting. I am on a mobile and swamped with work.

Suicidal ideation story posted on Friday the 13th. Dang. 

I am hoping to give you a more proper feedback later, but I like the ending here and a hug-it-out would feel off. 

The Dairy Queen feels off to me because of Chicago. I think there are two(?) on the North side. I get not using Rainbow Cone or Huck Finn or Golden Nugget (also RIP the Zephyr with the huge boat of ice cream and open crazy late) or something else maybe more specific. OR maybe the exact opposite (tl/dr placing it in Chicago raises more issues for me then if it was just generic unnamed city)

So–even though I like the idea of the last beat, and the telling that he is on the train tracks, I personally find Dairy Queen kind of un-Chicago (but obviously totally subjective). I get wanting to use an easily recognizable family-kid treat place as a juxtaposition to the waiting to be crushed by a train. 

I did have trouble picturing this once I knew it was Chi

I don’t know :P it just worked that way. I didn’t think about it too much.

Maybe it’s a story about Fred’s friend realizing that, when push comes to shove, he isn’t the sort of person who will stand up for something that’s important to him. Fred gets up off the train tracks just fine, but part of his friend doesn’t.

Hmm well I guess in that case I’d have to ask why are you writing about this moment if there’s no real change? 
Story has to come from change, even small.

I do think the friend is quite unnecessary — that's part of why I decided not to give him a name. 

If it helps:

My experience working with people struggling with suicidal ideation is that it's something that comes in waves. You may consistently harbor the general desire to kill yourself, but actually taking action that may lead to your death is sort of a stars-aligning scenario. It's just an unpredictable roadblock that you have to get over. 

The real dangerous period isn't when someone is super depressed — at that point they're too down to do anything, including killing themselves. The struggle comes after that, when they're on the way up. They're not quite out of the woods yet, but suddenly have bursts of energy to do things. Like killing themselves.

That combination of things in mind, a lot of approaches to suicide prevention simply amount to keeping a person occupied for a period of time and (hopefully) making a plan to follow up. You see this in all those videos with people on

It wasn’t confusing but also didn’t feel quite finished because the change in Fred seemed to happen for no reason - his mind changed just because a train never came. For that reason, the friend feels unnecessary - the same outcome would have happened if the friend wasn’t there at all. 

The friend (who, if you keep, I think you should name and then let us figure out what their relationship is) feels like a very passive character. He doesn’t want Fred to die but he barely does anything about a very dire situation. That dynamic is interesting to me, since I would behave very differently, but I’m not sure I believe it. If the dynamic here can generate change in Fred, though, I’m on-board with the friend being some very odd suicidal sounding board. It’s one of those things where if it works, it works, but it doesn’t yet.

I don’t love dialogue tags that tell me how to interpret a character’s speech. I’d rather you just used “said,” or gave us an indication of their physical actions. 

I’m 

> it made me ask a lot of questions.

I can’t understand if this is a good confused (made you think about life and stuff) or bad confused (you didn’t get what the hell was going on)

From a short story perspective it isn't always important to give me the full lay of the land. It made me ask a lot of questions. If you feel those details (them being outside, 3 AM, etc.) are important then I think you can find a lot of fluid places to shift in.

At minimum I need 1 more fuck. You have so many more fucks to give.

Thanks for taking the time to give me your thoughts\~

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>Right now I'm imaging him in the subway system far beneath

I was thinking more old-outside freight train style train tracks. I wonder if there's a way I can hint at that. Or maybe the sentence about the moon could just be dropped, to avoid that issue.

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>You never mention bystanders.

In my head this is 3AM and they're on the outskirts of the city... but I didn't say that, did I.

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>Fred's friend feels more like the center piece

I wondered about this, too :P I initially decided to leave him without a name to emphasize the inconsequential nature of his presence, but maybe it's better to just save reader's the trouble of the double FR.

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>This is a suggestion, perhaps in exercise... Provide three versions, separated out in such a way. 

Huh, I guess I could do that. The story definitely isn't happening in 100 words, so maybe I cold inch a bit closer to the 1,000 word count. Thanks!

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>

**Initial thoughts**

First read I really liked this. It's short, but to the point and goes through the stages of grief in a dark, but funny way. I added 2 comments to the google doc, but going to follow up here. As this is a shorter piece I'm going to zone in on the topics specifically I thought stood out the most (for better or worse)

**Mechanics**

The hook is good, but I'd consider changing it from a lot of "fucks" to perhaps a flurry of cursing. "Fuck me, oh fuck no, shit, fuck, fuck, motherfucking shit." My initial was I saw it was just fuck about ten times and skipped over and went immediately to "Fred's Friend". I don't think this is a particularly bad thing, but noting it for you.

I think the title is fantastic. It's clever enough to be a hook on it's own. Feels like one of those things I'd see at the library and immediately want to read the summary at the very least.

It's a short story, so it is a little hard to critique the general length of sentences, but I will note the

“Fuck fuck. Fuck.” Fred’s friend[a] craned over the tracks and voiced heartfelt appreciation for the unfailing[b] tardiness of Chicago’s public transportation.
“One second it’s a iron heifer[e] and then bam! a flying carpet to El Dorado, and everything is beautiful.”
“It could be here any second!”
“And I’m ready for it.”
Fred’s friend haggled with God, regretted atheism — then he broke: “I’m not.”
Nothing moved (save) the man in the moon, who looked away, and Fred’s friend, shifting from foot to foot, who wished he could.
Twenty-seven minutes passed without a train.
Fred sighed and picked himself off the train tracks. “Is Dairy Queen still open?”

Here’s my cuts only rewrite, idk the transition to one second it’s a … is worse, but I think it still holds shape with many fewer words

I guess I wonder what the pov is? Because it seems like Fred’s friend, but then it also seems omniscient in parts, mostly because of the distance to Fred’s friends. But we don’t get any fred thoughts… idk

I

I see some places saying microfic is under 100 words, others saying 300 words. I've got no idea. Anyhow, I just sorta sneezed this out on the bus home the other day. 

Please give me the ABC's:

* What was awesome?
* What was boring? Turned you off?
* What was confusing? 

Also: I don't really like the last line and/or I think the story should end with a response from Fred's friend. I cut a sentence in which he cried and then they hugged. 

Critique: [\[1070\] Leech - The Year's End Festival](https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/uoi3di/1070_leech_the_years_end_festival/)

Story: [\[169\] A Gilded Train to Galapagos Two](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QIh6nC1c4zK5YiAKCXiOFxJuy7GNcKcIfRHMaDJd6e4/edit)

[169] A Gilded Train to Galapagos Two