This Is Not A Book

Thoughts About My Short Story "The Room"

I do not recommend reading this if you have not read my short story "The Room". This chapter is talking about the story and you will be most likely confused because you have not read what I'm explaining throughout the entire chapter.

So I just thought about the idea for "The Room" one day in English class because my high-key annoying English teacher made us read The Veldt which is this short story about a family who is ruined by futuristic technology.
Spoilers ahead do NOT read if you were planning on reading The Veldt:
The veldt is a short story about parents George and...well actually I forget the wife's name (whoops) and their children Wendy and Peter. They live in a smart house where the house does everything for them. Wendy and Peter like to spend time in the nursery which is supposed to be like a virtual reality thing. They are studying Africa right now using the room until their parents start going in. The parents realize that something is wrong and there are signs of death everywhere. Lions paced the walls stalking them and everything felt too real. The parents even heard familiar screams sometimes. Eventually the parents got fed up with the children's behavior and turn the house off. The children hack into the house and trick their parents into getting locked inside the room. The lions kill and eat the parents. Later that morning the psychologist the parents called before the parents were killed arrives. It is assumed he is also killed as the door locks behind him when he walks into the nursery. Also the veldt means like a grassy plane in Africa so the title is relevant.
This is the end of the spoilers.
If you read the spoilers then I started thinking about the nursery and like what if the room reflected someone's emotion. When I read this in English class I was extra angry with my English teacher because she said something that made me really angry.
I do well in English and my teacher, *Ms. Smith (yes I based Ms. Smith in "The Room" off of her), is really dumb and makes dumb assumptions about me constantly, one of which really put me over the edge. Some kid started talking in class so she literally turns around to look at him, goes into a lunge, flaps her arms like a bird, and goes "NANANANANA!"
She looked like this:

I didn't know what she did but it looked actually insane so I started laughing and looking at my (no longer) friend, *Kelly, like "What actually just happened?" So Ms. Smith literally looks at me and goes "KAITLYN YOU'RE NEVER FOCUSED! I MEAN COME ON THIS IS WHY YOU'LL NEVER BE IN AP ENGLISH!"
First off: I got a 100 on your pretest...like what? I'm not dumb.
Second: We didn't even start the lesson yet, what do I have to focus on?
Third: Literally what did you just do I have every right to be confused.
And Fourth: You can't say that to a student. That's wrong and discouraging. If I didn't know you were crazy, I would actually be very upset.

Okay so that kind of turned into a rant whoops^^
Well the point of telling that story was because after that I sat there at my desk wanting to scream because that's not the first time she's done that. She does things like that all the time to so many people. She thinks she knows us all along with most other people I know. I decided to blend an idea that came from that with the idea of a room that senses your emotions or personality. My thought was: let's take someone everyone thinks they knows, put them in that room and then prove everyone wrong. That's basically how I wrote "The Room".

Also: I might write a prequel
I understand that typically short stories don't have sequels but my friend __Weekends_  who is also __Weekdays_ (read her books they're amazing) told me I should write a sequel because I can't just leave it like that. My original idea was to leave it there to let the reader decide what Elizabeth was really like, but now I'm considering writing a prequel about what happens to Elizabeth called "How the World Turned Black" but I'm afraid that sounds racist which is something I'm very conscious about because I'm a strong believer in equality and I don't like offending anyone. Anyways, I'm still not sure if I will write a prequel (if I did it would still be a short story just slightly longer than The Room I think) because I still like the idea of leaving readers to decide what happened to Elizabeth. Let me know your thoughts I want to know if I should I like feedback.

Another thing: This was the first story I've wrote in third person so if it seems a little weird it's because I'm not used to writing in that perspective; I usually write in first person.

*Names have been changed for privacy