First, I’m no expert: Nothing I have written has ever been published.

Second, 13 lines is a real challenge (I not sure I’m gutsy enough to post my own efforts yet!).

Caveats out of the way I like what you have written and would surely read more. There’s been a lot said about the present tense; in my view, coupled with the 1st person PoV and done well it can be very powerful. The passage has immediacy that past tense might not have achieved.

Okay there’s the pat on the back. What do I think could be improved? Well, I think more variety in sentence length would help. The short sharp initial sentences are strong but I think longer sentences would work better for the reflective passages (for example you might consider combining the last four sentences of the first para).

In the second para you have three consecutive sentences starting with “my” - I’d see if I could break that up (again compound sentences might help).

Thank you so much for sharing your work. As I said before, I’d be reading more given the chance.

It would be great, if you can condense these paragraphs into one that is both descriptive and leads into why this person has ventured outside in broad daylight. Do this, and you will have me wanting to know more.

Right now, the character is interesting, but the paragraphs aren’t quite compelling enough to keep me reading. I need to see the a glimmer of the problem here.

The opening hooks with the ‘ugly-issue’ and with a secondary ‘where’s he off to?’

For me, it lingered on the ugliness too much - you could have got a couple of quick hits with that, then expanded, and returned to it a bit later. We got the idea pretty quickly!

Also, you might perhaps use the reactions, and the MC’s speculation about them, to better illustrate his condition. Some of the description was out of POV exposition & could be delivered more effectively. That said, I’d read on & feel safe that I was going to get my money’s worth.

However, once I did, I discovered that I was intrigued. If this were recast in past tense, I might read another page. I wouldn’t read more unless the character were jolted out of his self-absorbtion, though.

Seaboe

I’m curious as to what this person (or some other creature) is doing walking down the street. What purpose has brought this character out into an element he/she/it is so uncomfortable in?

Stephen R. Donaldson opened up his first Covenant book (Lord Foul’s Bane) with Thomas Covenant walking down a city sidewalk. Donaldson’s opening - the reactions to Covenant and his internal reaction to their reactions - pulled me in immediately.

While the above is interesting, I want to know why this character shouldn’t be out in public - and why he/she/it is.

And this is where the 1st person present tense doesn’t work for me. It sounds too much like instructions instead of emotions.

The present tense combined with first person pov works for me, has an immediate and intense feel. I like some of the bluntness of the statements.

I actually didn’t have a lot of the problems that appear to bug some of the commenters, but would consider revising some of this, make it more terse since I think you do actually use too much space to repeat, or drag out, some of the thoughts.
(will run hard and loose with suggestions, so take them with several bags of salt:))

I avoid looking in the shops. It’s not their contents that bother me, it’s their windows.

I avoid looking through shop windows. It’s not the contents but the windows that bother me.

perhaps consider unsettle instead of bother? or some word that implies shame/ embarassment and humiliation?

Block after block of reflective glass.

cut; unnecessary, but mostly it makes no sense why someone who dislikes windows would enter an area filled with them.

A jogger flashes by on the right and brushes my shoulder. He glances back to apologize, meets my eye, sees my face.

agree that it feels implied that he’s coming from behind, and that would be the way I would leave it, feels more effective.

His mouth hangs open as he runs over the old lady with the bag of groceries.

“the old lady” to me implies there is only one old lady or this one is significant, consider “an old lady with a bag of groceries”. She’s a generic character is she not?

I am no jogger. I am barely a walker.

this adds nothing not implied before or after

I don’t

cut; implied by “if I let them hang”

k, so my suggested re-write would go:

I avoid looking through shop windows. It’s not the contents but the windows that bother me. I stare at the sidewalk. A jogger flashes by on the right and brushes my shoulder. He glances back to apologize, meets my eye, sees my face. His mouth hangs open as he runs over an old lady with a bag of groceries. My fault. I should not be out in public. I’d like to help, but I would only frightem them more so I hurry away as fast as I can.

My legs are short, bowed, not built for speed. My back is painfully twisted. My hands would brush the ground if I let them hang. They remain deep in the pockets of my overcoat. This overcoat that hides so much of the hideousness of my body. I am a moving black lump with no discernable features.

I actually like the quiet, almost despairing, rhythm of this last para.
This picks up the pace a great deal more, and I get the impression with the story you’re setting here you need to raise tension from within, not without.

I don’t know where precisely you’re heading with this, but 500 words will likely be too short. That’s hardly more than a mood piece, and this is a nice Frankensteinian set-up. You can do more with it.
have to agree with Beth, that I don’t think you actually need the “I stare at the sidewalk”, disrupts the flow unkindly in a sense.
Adam raised a couple of good points which you could easily slide in here:
1) a hat or face cover of some kind, this would be needed for an ugly person;
2) time of day - this is actually needed otherwise it feels non-sensical for the char to be out and about. Perhaps dusk, when people are rushing home, have rushed home, the light is dim, etc.
Easily fixed.
But I liked it.