What Our Mother Always Told Us

     I liked this story. I thought that it was very intriguing. I kept trying to figure out why the young boys just wouldn't listen to their mother. She kept giving them warning after warning. The story started off emphasizing how much their mother said the word "don't". The fact that she told them what to do so much is part of the reason why I think the rebelled against her so much. It may also have to deal with the fact that they might  not have a father figure in their life. The story didn't mention anything about that.
     I didn't like that fact that once I got really interested in the story, and wanted to find out what she was going to do to her sons, the story stopped. I imagined the story ending several different ways but I wanted to read about how she ended it.

The Girl With the Blackened Eye

     I thought this story was very interesting. It started off telling us how the girl was very displeased with her black eye and how crazy she must have looked all the while having us wonder what happened to it. This makes you want to find out which makes you keep reading. It then went on to tell us a little about her past and how she was forcefully abducted when she was a teenager. I think that this was a twist that none of us was expecting. I sure wasn't! This story actually got darker than I thought it would.
     When she said that he was doing all these things to her and then she clarified and said that he was doing all these things to her body, it made me feel like she had emotionally detached herself from the situation so they she wouldn't feel any pain mentally. She stressed how she had little hope that she would live but she held on to the mere thought that she would. This story was also very descriptive, I felt like she described her pain very well, physically and mentally. It was a very deep, unexpected story for me.