An example of a prompt response, in case you are completely lost:

Seven Deadly Sins Exercise

She applied her lipstick carefully, so as not to use so much that she’ll look like a whore, but not to use too little to look like a plain coworker. Her mascara was lightly applied, and her soft purple eye shadow highlighted her eyes. She blinked and grinned at herself in the mirror, adjusting her thin white blouse which was only slightly see-through. Her dark blonde hair was in a tight bun atop her head, not a single one out of place.
She exited the bathroom and walked down the hall, her head held high as she saw her boss arguing with his wife again through the window to his office. Finally, the Mrs. burst out of the room and stomped right past Angela without even a second glance.
Angela frowned. She didn’t put this much time into her appearance to be ignored.
She slinkily crept into her boss’s office and closed the door behind her. His face was buried in his hands, but he looked up upon her entrance.
“Hello, Angela, what can I do for you today?”
She smirked, knowing he could hardly resist her soft crimson lips. “Trouble with your wife again?” she asked confidently.
“She thinks I’m cheating,” he said. “She always thinks I’m cheating.”
Angela knew for a fact that her boss always was cheating, with everyone except for her. And he was a mountain she intended to conquer, a prize to be won. No one ignored her.
She worked her charms expertly, and soon enough, he was devouring those lips that he was always staring at.

(This is something I actually wrote in a creative writing class in response to this prompt. See if you can guess the three sins I employed!)

I did the dogs exercise.

I shouldn’t have shot the dog. I definitely shouldn’t have shot the dog. Even if he did chew upon my prized drumsticks, and feast upon my freshly-baked brownies. The little white-and-brown terror, Mickey, belonged to my neighbor. My neighbor, an 87-year-old chain-smoker named Mary, rarely left the confines of her living room. She sat, day in and day out, as her precious mutts wreaked havoc about the neighborhood.
You can see it! My house, the little beasts have chewed upon everything their gnashing, tiny, sharp little teeth could find. I did my best to keep them out, but the little bastards repeatedly wormed their way in. Finally, this morning, I found Mickey gnawing on the ruins of my brownies, intended for my uncle in the nursing home, lay nearby.
In my rage, I rushed up the stairs two by two. Flinging the mattress to the ground, I grasped my .9mm glock and charged down. The dog looked up. He looked at the gun. I pointed it at his tiny, evil head. He barked, and looked at me, almost humanly. I paused, beginning to put down the gun, when I saw them. My drumsticks. Gnawed into tiny, wooden splinters. I re-aimed the gun, and fired.
The mutt was in hell now. Of course, now I had to deal with the splattered mess of dog blood and flesh flung upon the kitchen tile. I put on my yellow rubber gloves. I looked down. The dog didn’t look like he could have been sleeping. No, it wasn’t as cliché as I’d hoped it would be. A large hole between his eyes poured red and grey slime onto the floor. The backside of his skull was an open, bloody mess, as if someone had messily chopped off the back of his head. I gingerly picked up the white, brown, and now red dog and placed him into a black bag.
After wiping up the mess and throwing the bag into the dumpster behind Wal-Mart, I hastily walked over to Mary’s house. Walking in, I nearly choked. The smoke in the room was so thick it felt as if walking through a fire. The yellowed, cracked walls were inhibited by cheesy paintings of clowns. I found Mary, tears pouring down her face. She was sobbing about how Mickey had disappeared. Her other dog, Moose, lay at her feet. How she could tell the difference between the two, I couldn’t say.
I consoled her as best I could before walking back home. Upon entering the kitchen, I found a red mess on the ground. Grey pieces floated in red blood. Confused, I grabbed a cloth and wiped it up. I was sure I had cleaned it up! I stumbled to the bedroom and fell into a fitful sleep.
The next morning, I awoke to whimpers. Hurriedly pulling on my robe, I fled downstairs to find Moose, sniffing at his dead companions last point of life. It looked up at me. It’s eyes taunted, knowing what I had done. The dog couldn’t leave! Once again I found myself standing over a dead dog’s body with a gun in my hand. Cleaning up the mess and once again dumping the body in the dumpster behind Wal-Mart, I then stopped by the liquor stop and picked up a bottle of Stoli.
Sitting on my soda, gulping down whiskey like water, I stayed. My glazed eyes fell upon the floor. I saw them. Moose and Mickey. Glaring at me. I shouted, knocking over my coffee table. Running into the kitchen, I skidded to a stop. On the floor was another red and grey pool. I stumbled backwards, hitting the oven. I cursed, pulling open a drawer of silverware. Brandishing a knife and a silver spoon, I began waving them around at the cursed ghosts.
I charged at them. Skidding on the blood and brains, I fell, striking my head against the table. I looked up. As if in slow motion, the knife began falling towards me. Closing my eyes, I braced for impact. It did not come. I opened my eyes again. The blood was gone. The knife was safely in the drawer with the spoon. I was slumped against the coffee table in the living room.
But it did not go away. For several days, I found pools of red and grey in my kitchen and saw ghostly apparitions. I did not sleep and began to stop eating. Finally, I could no longer take it.
I ran to Wal-Mart, where the dumpster had not yet been picked up. I pulled out the bags and rushed to Mary’s house. Opening the bags, I dumped the dogs upon her doorstep and fled. Finding safe haven in my bedroom brandishing my glock, I awaited what was to come. They finally came. They were huge, growing to the size of men. I screamed, and began wildly firing bullets. One of them fell, but the other advanced. I felt an acute pain in my chest. I looked down.
Red was spreading across my blouse. I screamed again and fired even more wildly. Two more sharp pains, this time in my thigh and stomach, came. I stopped screaming. I stopped breathing. I stopped firing. I stopped moving.
I shouldn’t have shot the dog.
(Does everyone understand what happened at the end? I was supposed to be that two cops came in to question her but she was hallucinating and thought they were the dogs.)
(Oh, and Cinders, I think it was envy, pride and lust. It was very good, very detailed.)

I shouldn't have shot the dog, she thought amongst the various other regrets running through her mind. Her legs willingly buckled beneath her, and she slumped forward on her knees staring at what was now nothing more than useless meat.

The gun lay in her hand. How did she even get involved in this awful mess? She thought of happier things as tears began to roll down her cheeks at the loss of the dog. She thought of her place back home, with it's nice maroon drapes that she had felt right in treating herself with early September. She thought of the boy,
a good man now, whom she had watched grow up in to the person she wanted to marry and found herself another regret of not telling him this. To steer clear of more heartache she thought also of her ballet class and all of the children she taught when she was there. Unfortunately a dark thought came to her yet again.

What if she never made it back? Down here in the muddy jungle, with a group of strangers for company? Any one of them could be a murder, rapist or something equally bad. The tears had stopped now, but she still hurt deep down.

Wiping her hands and standing up, she picked up the dog where it was least bloody and pulled it in to some bushes. She tucked the gun in to the back of her jeans, remembering to set the safety on. A rumble from the bushes startled her. Was the dog still alive? No, this disturbance in the foliage came from further away. She braced herself for the worst, but tried to keep an innocent smile as she was hopeful it wasn't what she thought.

"Faith?"

It was Doug. Phew. Doug was always looking out for her. She knew that he had recently lost his wife, so was looking for some companionship, but she wasn't quite ready to pursue the relationship further.

"Oh, it's you Doug."
"What are you doing out here?"
"Just...thinking"
"Come on, let's head back to the beach."

Faith turned around and put her hand in Doug's, and took a quick glance over her shoulder to make sure the dog could not be seen. The poor boy would be crushed if he knew what happened. She hoped her dark secret would never see the light of day as they both headed back to the beach.

(So that came from me thinking "Oh no! Someone shot Vincent from Lost". Hence why there was the briefest of flashbacks to Faith's old life)


(Cinders, was it lust, envy and greed?)
(Spotty - Nice hallucination and guilt story. Makes me think about doing something involving hallucogenic drugs for the next prompt.)

yeah cinders i have to agree with spotty, envy, pride and lust? great small piece, like spotty said brill description, i feel like i would need a bit more to give it proper criticism....but since i know you love it so much, i felt the characters were very 2d maybe you could have added in a small character trait which if you were to build on you could use later on

spotty i think the general storyline and twist was good but it felt rushed like you had too much to get in with in a few paragraphs, i did really love "The dog didn’t look like he could have been sleeping. No, it wasn’t as cliché as I’d hoped it would be." and the following description, very raw....no pun intended

okay here's mine, i'm writting it right now so any edits will be spelling and what not see if you can guess the sins....

Evlyn stared in the mirror, she didn't like what she saw. As she tried her best to brush back her hair and gather herself together, she watched a single tear tainted grey from charcoal marscara leave a mucky trail on her otherwise perfectly powdered check. Lifting her hands she gently cupped the bruise, it was only just forming and little red blotches slowly appeared. She opened her dresser draw, searching for the best way to cover up the latest mark in her marrage but sighing she decided to leave it, there was only the two of them in the house anyway. She would have to think of something tomorrow. Something that would convince even the nosy gits nextdoor.

From downstairs the faint sound of a football crowd could be heard cheering...or maybe jeering. She wondered if he was thinking about her but that was probably wishful thinking. He was probably indulging himself in pretending everything was fine, then he would drink until he fell asleep, he probably wouldn't even go to that job interview. Maybe she should do the same and call in sick, she stared at the bruise, it would stop her from being the watercooler gossip for a extra day at least.

Sighing she stood up and walked toward the door still cupping her bruised hand she started to make her way downstairs, thinking of a new way to apologise

Debs, pride, wrath and...I'm stuck on the last one?

Very nice story though, but criticisms. Hmm...apart from the few spelling mistakes I don't think I can fault you majorly. I'll be back later when I feel meaner :-P

oh sorry jay i completley missed your post must have overlapped with mine

as a none lost watcher i have no idea who faith is nor did i understand what was going on in your section of the story....but i didn't need to, i was intrigued and pace was fast enough so i didn't need to question what was going till i had finished so major pats on the back for that

it was fairly dramatic in parts but i could think of that as character's heightened emotion

the third sin, i did make a bigger deal out of it originally but it felt forced, like it was jammed in there so i edited it a bit....think maybe more of possible reasons for the trouble, evlyn's motive sort of thing, but yes pride and wrath :)

Cinders: I liked how you introduced us to Angela; putting on her makeup, intent on using it for a nefarious purpose. And the metaphor that he was a "mountain she intended to conquer" was superb. My only complaint is that he seemed to give into her too quickly. And I would have liked to find out why exactly he had cheated with everyone EXCEPT her.

Spotty: I loved the description of chain-smoking Mary's house and how "the smoke in the room was so thick it felt as if walking through a fire." I also liked how you used the senseless killing of a dog to show how easily guilt can consume someone's life. However, I didn't quite pick up at the end that she was hallucinating about the policeman. From everything she had been experiencing, I first thought she had actually shot one of them. Other than that, I thought your story was vividly detailed and thought-provoking.

J: Great story! I especially liked how her shooting the dog caused her to flashback to memories of her maroon drapes. Such a insignificant detail, but that's usually what traumatic events elicit...the minor details that you normally don't think about. I've never watched 'Lost' either, but I still think you added enough detail that it's not necessary to be a fan of the show.

Debs: Beautifully written. Abuse in marriages is tragic, but I like how you wrote from her point of view. The line "cover up the latest mark in her marriage" was heartbreaking, but also a clever way to tell the reader what the story was about without jumping out and saying it. And the remark about how she felt like the football crowd was jeering at her...I can just imagine why she felt like people who didn't even know her were taunting her.

Okay, now I'm a little depressed. :D I will be back with my story later.

Debs, Faith and Doug aren't characters on the show. Simply names I used. It was just the setting of Lost that I used a backdrop really. I just watch it so much that jungles and evil come to mind when I write. :-P

Still unsure about your third sin...

I think the sins in Debs' story are:
Pride (Evyln is trying to cover up the abuse so people won't talk)
Sloth (The husband sits around, watches TV and won't go to job interviews)
Wrath (The husband takes out his anger on Evyln)

That would be it! I always forget sloth

oh right sorry jay, my apologies
but like i said and as chel has said, i wouldn't of mattered it didn't feel like we needed to know all the details as of yet.
and i agree lost has a amazing setting, that you can have all sorts of fun with

erm yes sloth is right

....but you seem to be missing the point of the whole story

yes wrath is correct but you have the wrong character as the "sinner"

let me just quote this last paragraph again

"Sighing she stood up and walked toward the door still cupping her bruised hand she started to make her way downstairs, thinking of a new way to apologize"

...maybe i need to make that more obvious?

So...is she the one doing the abuse? I thought the bruise she was covering was on her face. "A single tear tainted grey from charcoal marscara leave a mucky trail on her otherwise perfectly powdered check. Lifting her hands she gently cupped the bruise..." I guess I didn't notice at the end her hand is bruised. Also I figured she was thinking of a new way to "apologize" for whatever she had done to make her husband strike her.

yeah see i wanted the audience to think at first it was the stereotypical thought of domestic abuse

i don't think men being abused is often brought to light, so i tried to be clever and not specifically say where the bruise was....maybe i should make it more obvious then at the end? or leave more clues as i go along?

Re-reading it, I can see how, if you had just made it slightly more obvious at the end, it would have been much more powerful a story. Men being abused is not something you hear as much about so I think my mind just glazed over the small details at the end.

Chel, she did shoot one of the policemen.

Anyway, Deb. That was really good. I didn't catch that she had been the abuser until I re-read it. Very creative.

And J. Yours was very good. It moved a little fast but it made me think. :D

You guys-- I'm loving this! I'm loving the responses I'm seeing and the conversation it's generated, it's all so exciting! I can't say much (between classes and I have to eat) but I will say that what I've read so far has made me smile and, where appropriate, gasp, and all that fun stuff. I will comment more extensively later, but in the mean time, keep it up!

EDIT: Also, yes, lust, envy, pride, very good.

‘You shouldn't have shot the dog.’ That single thought reverberated inside my head, knocking from side to side, smashing at the sides of my skull until I had to put my hands to my temples in a futile attempt to stop the pain. The man sitting next to me took a swig of his whiskey, the glass bottle knocking against his yellowed and rotten teeth. His other hand held onto the steering wheel, maneuvering the car down the winding and deserted stretch of highway. I leaned my head against the cool glass of the passenger side window, willing my head to stop pounding. From the radio, the soft strains of Aretha Franklin singing "Ain't No Way" floated through the frigid air. The heater was broken, it had always been broken. Then again, who had ever needed a heater in Florida. I shivered as the cold darkness outside seemed to creep inside the car and wrap its arms around me. Tears welled in my eyes, but I struggled against letting them spill. He couldn't know how I felt.

As Aretha asked "how cold and cruel is a man?” I blinked away my tears. I tried to slow my breathing down and be as quiet as possible. My eyes focused in on the man's right hand. I couldn’t have cared less about his left hand; it was wrapped tightly around that bottle of Jack Daniels and I was sure it would let go until Jack was bone dry. It was what was casually gripped in his left hand, the same hand that was steering the car, which mattered to me. The gun was loaded, or so he had said. And I had believed he was telling the truth. I had believed him when he held it to my head at the gas station and told me to move to the passenger seat. I had believed him when he got in and told me he would kill me if I didn't shut my dog up. My dog...loyal devoted Jesse, who now lay in the backseat of my car with a bullet in his head. He had lied to me, that bastard. He had said he'd kill ME if I didn't shut Jesse up. He'd lied. He'd lied and shot Jesse instead. I trembled again, but not from the cold. The tears trickling down my face were no longer tears of fear, they were tears of anger.

The car came to a stop. I looked forward and watched as a train rumbled past in front of us. The train engineer had no idea, no idea that for the past two days I had been a prisoner in my own car, held captive by some crazed and drunken madman. It was at that moment, as I watched the locomotive rumble past, that something snapped. I reached over and grabbed the nearly empty whiskey bottle out of the man's hands. His reflexes were slow, impaired by the alcohol rushing through his blood. He had barely registered the sound of broken glass before blood began pouring down his face from the gash in his head. The gun slipped from his fingers onto the floor. He grabbed his head and looked over at me, disbelief and shock pooling up inside his eyes. I reached over, opened his door and with one fluid movement, pushed him outside onto the frozen ground. With Aretha Franklin crooning about how "it ain't no way," I pulled myself into the driver's seat, being careful to avoid the gun that lay on the floor. I put the car in reverse and hit the gas. The car shot backwards and the lone figure of a man laying on the ground appeared in front of me. My foot pressed down on the brake, almost of its own accord. I glanced in the backseat at the unmoving figure of my sweet and beloved dog, who had never hurt anyone and who had only been barking to try and protect me. My hand mechanically put the car in drive. The train rumbled off into the distance and I was now all alone. Alone with him. I hit the gas pedal. As I felt the car connect with his body, only one thought appeared in my head. ‘You shouldn't have shot the dog.’

Wow, chel! That was amazing! I love how you added just enough information to keep you as confused as the woman and yet able to understand it as well. Kudos!

Spotty: Twisted. Very "Tell Tale Heart" except with a much bloodier ending. I probably wouldn't have recognized they were cops if you hadn't told me. You could probably benefit from dwelling a bit more on that last paragraph.

J: That was fun! Love the "Lost" take on the prompt. That's why I love these, because they make people think of so many different things! See, what I'm left wondering at the end of that is, WILL her secret ever surface. That would be a fun thing to explore.

Debs and Chel, I haven't forgotten you, I just desperately need to leave. Will return. I'm a lot busier today than I thought I'd be.

I re-wrote it a bit link

I regret that I missed the deadline for submission. I do think that such a deadline is a good thing, but I may not be posting writing for the next few weeks, due to our preparations for moving out of our house.

Critique and comments for each story to follow.

Cinders:

* Nice unreliable narrator. I particularly like the purple eyeshadow, showing how out of whack Angela's perceptions are
* the jump from "hello Angela, what can I do for you?" to "She thinks I'm cheating" was very abrupt for me. It didn't ring true for me - it's not something a person would reveal to a co-worker - especially if the two characters didn't already have intimate knowledge of each other.
* editorial comment: ending the last sentence with a preposition really made a sour note for me. Were I your editor, I would recommend that you consider ending the story fragment with a different word choice than "staring at": "ogling", "admiring", "longing to taste", or even replace "he was always staring at" with "he had longed to try", "he had so long desired", "had been a part of so many of his fantasies".
* I like that it's left to the audience to decide whether Angela'd set out to seduce the boss, or only did so because the wife ignored her.

Spotty_Vision21:

* I liked the ambiguity of the ending, and much prefer the version posted here than the rewrite in your article, where you were much more explicit in that and other details (I found the detail of the dog's decomposition in your rewrite excruciating and unnecessary). I assumed that the ending meant that she was so disjoined at the end that she'd shot herself. May I encourage you to not explain your stories in future? Let the audience interpret the story on its own merits.
* Editorial: Given that the story is essentially told as a flashback from the last few moments of her life, there were some tense problems throughout the story: "now" should be "then", "I had" should be "I'd had", et cetera.
* I like how the narrator is so unreliable that the same day seems to repeat over and over. "this morning" she finds the mess and shoots Mickey, the "next morning" she awakes to whimpers, she's sleepless for "several days", yet the dogs' bodies are still in the dumpster when she returns. It's also nice to show how much she's drinking ("whiskey" as well as vodka
* editorial: "dumpster had not yet been picked up" I would recommend something that didn't end with a preposition, such as "the dumpster hadn't been emptied"
* I also really like how the narrator is so incensed at the relatively minor damage the dogs have done, yet she completely trashes her house herself ('flinging the mattress", "knocking over my coffee table") It's clear that she despises the dogs and/or Mary completely out of proportion to their crimes, and yet, even at the end, is trying to justify her dog killin'.
* editorial: "soda" should be "sofa" in both versions. Also, the sentence "Finally, this morning, I found Mickey gnawing on the ruins of my brownies, intended for my uncle in the nursing home, lay nearby." doesn't scan. What is laying nearby?
* I find the silver spoon intriguing. Why is it necessary that the spoon be silver there? "Silver spoon" as a phrase connotes wealth and privilege, but that doesn't seem to connect with the rest of the story. I suspect, though, that there be an implied background there. Fascinating.

More feedback, this time for PkmnTrainerJ:

* I'm fascinated with the enigmatic nature of your story fragment, as it leaves so many questions. Why did Faith shoot the dog? Why does she then think she shouldn't have? The writing is particularly good when you consider that neither of these questions are answered.
* "useless meat" - it's neither here nor there, but my first thought was, "what, they've got that much protein in the jungle?" However, you may forgive the thought if you realize that various people I know have asserted that dog goes well with beer (especially black dog, for some reason)
* I found the snippet to be particularly effective at communicating a lot of information in a short piece. We know a lot about Faith: that she grew up as a friend or acquaintance of a young man who is not now in the jungle with her (whom she thinks of as a boy still, for some reason), that she taught ballet, that she's fond of maroon, that she's comfortable with firearms, that she's somehow stranded with a group of strangers in a jungle near the coast, and that she knows how to manipulate people (she wants to marry the boy, but is considering a relationship with Doug for protection). It makes me wonder what other secrets she has hidden.
* editorial: "its" as a possessive has no apostrophe
* I wonder what "the worst" is that she's preparing herself to face before Doug steps out of the foliage.
* Note: I didn't assume that this was "Lost", but knowing your passion for the show, I used its imagery in picturing the scenes (I pictured a tropical rain forest, for instance, rather than other types of jungle).
* In all, I particularly enjoyed this, but of the five submissions for this week's group, this one felt the least complete to me. To put it another way, this most felt like part of a larger story...and I'm impatient to see that larger story.

...and now for amazondebs:

* Intriguing. I've read a number of stories over the years that have attempted the same feat, namely a bait-and-switch for abuser and victim, but I liked yours in particular. You manage to accomplish a lot with just a few sentences.
* Realizing that the tear is more likely from anger than the sadness we first think, I'd like to see more anger in her character. It may be implicit, but without other signs of emotion, the tear seems a bit out of place.
* I keep coming back to your use of the makeup to disguise the fact that she's looking for a glove in her dresser drawer. Reading such detail about her makeup misleads us into thinking that she's looking for makeup when she's explicitly looking in her dresser (thus, for clothes). That's really very clever. Her hand must be really horrible to view for there to be a chance that the neighbors would notice it...
* I'm bothered by the sentence about his not thinking about her, because it's so nonsensical (of course he's thinking about her, she just beat him!) But, on writing this, I think that this may be a further insight into her fragile self-image (perhaps, like Cinders' Angela, Evlyn can't stand and at the same time fears being ignored). In her view, she's still probably the one who's been abused.
* editorials: cheek, marriage, next door, an extra, there were only the two
* I like that there is some attempt to make the relationship balanced in terms of "blame". Sure, it was part of the prompt, but it's nice to have him have some flaw (out of work bum avoiding a job interview that he is) to provoke her wrath.
* It makes me very curious about Evlyn, how she's handled inquiries in the past. Clearly she's negative about them, but I wonder how specifically she's handled the nosy gits and the coworkers gossiping about her.

hmmm you've brought up quite a few flaws there

i tried to inflict a little anger within her like with the "nosy gits" comment but i have the impression that after hitting a loved one the anger would have died down and she'd be more unnerved, upset

about the hand i realize she would have hardly any damage to the hand, if your not close with your neighbors or hardly see them even a black eye is easy to avoid them seeing however, that was my pride implication, her paranoia almost which you obviously picked on up when she was worried about what the husband was thinking

your speculations, i'm not sure why have made me intrigued as to what it would be like to be the abuser or victim from the man's side...however writing things from a male point of view has always been a major downfall for me....maybe i will set that as my challenge for my next piece?

anyway thanks for all the comments harold you have clearly thought hard on these

Lastly, for chel1395:

Note: since we don't know the gender of the narrator, I'm going to assume it's a she for the purposes of writing my comments. There's nothing to indicate one way or another, but I find it more interesting to imagine the narrator as a gender other than my own.
* I'm partial to science fiction stories, especially when they don't appear as SF at first glance, but I'm pretty sure that you didn't intend to give the carjacker more than two arms. Reading your story, I kept wondering: How many left hands does he have?
* As you know, I always appreciate it when someone uses "couldn't have cared less" correctly. Bravo!
* "The heater was broken, it had always been broken." That's probably my favorite sentence from all the submissions for this week.
* I didn't read your re-write too closely for good comparison, but I did notice that you added a bit of detail to indicate why it was so cold (after 2 days driving, they're no longer in FL) Actually, I liked it better in the original, because I felt that the coldness was interior rather than objective external temperature. But then, later, we see that the ground is frozen, which indicates that they've come a really long way from Florida.
* I enjoyed the story, but as with other hijacking/kidnapping stories, I can't help but wonder at the logistics that were involved over multiple days. Since she's been a prisoner in her own car for two days, how did they eat/drink/sleep/eliminate? Did they not eat, drink or sleep for 2 days and just made messes on the seats when they had to "go"? In that case, there's more for her to avoid than just the gun when she slides back into the driver's seat...
* Nice bit with the tears: of rage again, rather than sorrow. "He couldn't know how I felt" seems ridiculous at first, but works if you believe that she's planning on killing him, and had been since he shot Jesse. But the story seems to imply that she has a change of heart, from sorrow to rage, at the close of the 2nd paragraph. That rings false, for me. Why would she try to hide her sorrow and not her anger?
* "or so he had said" implies that there's a possibility that the gun isn't loaded, but there isn't a chance of that. He's already used the gun. My recommendation would be to lose the "or".
* I like that you don't explain how she injures him (whether she breaks the bottle and then stabs him or just beans him with the bottle so hard that it actually breaks on his head)
* Nice use of a song to provide counterpoint to the action, and it communicates also how little time the events of the story cover (just over 4 minutes, from start to finish) I'm not sure how well the rest of the lyrics fit with the action, but the lyrics you quote fit very well.
* the phrase "one fluid movement" to me feels a bit overused (not in your story, just in general). It seems like characters showing extreme competence can always be counted on to perform an action in "one fluid movement". In your story, it stands out a bit for me. It seems superfluous; removing the phrase reads at least as well to me.
* "the lone figure of a man laying on the ground appeared in front of me" also rubs me the wrong way. I've been trying for a couple of days to determine what it is about it that bugs me. I think that it reads as far too flowery and ornate prose for what it is describing. Much of the rest of the piece is simple and matter-of-fact by contrast, so to have a florid description like that when she's screeching the car backward before he rises to his feet to escape seems out of place. I figure you may have wanted it to go into a sort of trance- or dream-mode by that big jump in tone (and the foot finding the brake of its own accord supports this), but it just didn't quite work for me.
* I really liked the way that the narrator works herself up to a murderous rage in her indignation that the carjacker shot Jesse and not her. It was a good mechanism to use accumulative repetition that way, for me.
* It's a nice touch that she avoids touching the gun, presumably from distaste for the thing that killed Jesse, but perhaps also because she doesn't want to leave incriminating fingerprints...particularly nice when you consider that she's about to kill the man with a moving vehicle. Also, I like how we don't know the specifics of the crash at the end. Is she running over an unconscious man, or is she totaling the car by hitting a standing person, looking at her with that same disbelief and shock right up until she goes flying out of the windshield from the impact? It's a good ambiguity.

Thanks for the comments, Harold. I agree with you about the logistics of them being in a car for two days. In my rewrite I changed it to twelve hours because after reading my story again, I realized it would be very unlikely that the kidnapper would have left the decomposing body of a dog in the backseat of the car for that long. I just wanted to give them long enough to have gotten out of Florida and into a colder area. Thanks for all your great insight!!

This Fanpop Writer's Group was a great idea. I had so much fun and I can't wait for the next session. :D