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The boy drew from his pants pocket a fist-sized canteen.
But she was following us. I must go on. And so as we scaled the hill, him running, me half-crawling,
I was alone, afraid. Weak. And he reminded me of someone....
xDudettex wrote:Kafkescence wrote:But she was following us. I must go on. And so as we scaled the hill, him running, me half-crawling,
For some reason 'I must go on' stood out to me as sounding wrong. Maybe try something like - 'I had to keep moving' or something.
borntobeawriter wrote:My problem is the same as dudette's: I have no idea what happened.
PaulClover wrote:Kafkescence wrote:I was alone, afraid. Weak. And he reminded me of someone....
One thing I would change, though, is this sentence. The last part, "And he reminded me of someone," seems like a non-sequitor or afterthought, especially since it isn't really explained (more on that in a bit). Perhaps more detail would make this mystery more solvable.
The darkness choked me.
I could feel the air being squeezed from my burning lungs. Each breath scorched my lips, dripped from my mouth like acid. Each blink stabbed at my swollen eyes. My tongue, purple and inflated in the cold daylight, probed my mouth, licking at the bloody holes where teeth had been eaten away by cavities. A faint, stinging throb echoed between conscious thoughts.
It looked ancient, flesh rotted away, hollow eyes staring upward. Its skin was tethered to its thin skeleton, and its arms were laid awkwardly at its sides. It was old, but somehow well-preserved on this sandy shore.
I sat on the cave floor and breathed, messaging my legs.
At times it grew worse, and I was forced to hold my breath to keep the air from tearing through my throat: daggers through sails, screaming, bleeding.
Though you have great description, sometimes I don't know what you're describing. You like using the pronouns, which is fine, but I lost track a few times.
After the colon, what is that? Memories, the way his throat feels?
I had used to dream, used to sleep.
The use of had makes this great sentence a bit awkward.
But now I drifted between the underregions of wakefulness and unconsciousness.
The use of underregion here confuses me. I didn't even know that existed as a word, so I looked it up on Dictionary. com and in an actual dictionary to try to find a definition for the word itself. I know what under means and I know what region means, so maybe I'm over looking something, but I could find no definition that fit for that. It is a word. I just don't have a definition.
Now that I've rambled enough, I suggest changing it to something else. It's an easy word to assume, so you don't have to, but it's driving me crazy. Could you tell me what it means?
But now I drifted between the underregions of wakefulness and unconsciousness.
I lay somewhere along the borderline, never truly sleeping, yet never truly awake.
You have a lot of repitition. I would choose one of the two sentences I have here.
But I have no purpose.
You have a tense change here, and I'm not sure if it's intentional or not.
“You control the main line,” the captain had said, many days ago, before the fire, before everything.
You give many flashes of the MC's past, but never elaborate. They hold no importance, so I would chuck it.
My boat had hit something.
You also have many duh statements. We're smart. We can figure it out.
I lifted my hand, pain threatening to swallow me, and took hold of its soft edge.
In the song, we know it's rotten, but I really didn't get the whole soft edge thing, and I wasn't sure if you were talking about the boat or the dock. This is rather small, and if you feel that you're in the right, by all means keep it the way it is.
With slow, gentle movements, I pulled my boat along it, careful not to let my labors pull me under. But eventually the heartbeats tore at my eardrums, and I allowed my arms to retreat and my eyes to close.
The breaths came quickly now. It was difficult for my ravaged brain to contain the agitation. I needed to rest, to let go.
Your MC let's go in the paragraph before and then needs to let go. Make sure it's all the same.
It scratched at my torn shirt, at my deep, unchecked stomach wounds, probably grotesque and infected.
This is the only time you mention this stomach wounds. It's not mentioned in the song. Honestly, a lot of this is a small stretch of reality. Making your MC do all of this with stomach wounds and suffering from dehydration, starvation, and whatever else is too much.
Get rid of the stomach wounds.
But I managed to pull myself slowly forward. I reached up, grasping at a low branch. The thorns dug into my palm, and I saw the blood trickle down upon the sand, but still I managed to pull the sickly berry from its nesting place.
I would say something about the berry before you pluck it.
But soon my stomach, not having digested anything for days, churned, and my hands slipped and I vomited.
Comma after slipped.
But I felt better now, better than I had felt since the fire. I found myself able to stand
Your MC just threw up anything he had eaten. The berries wouldn't have made him feel any better. Instead, stay he doesn't want to give up when he's found what he has. He needs to continue pushing forward. etc. etc. In much better wording, of course.
rounded and disfigured by years of weather’s wrath.
The before weather's?
A corpse. Of a boy.
Both of these don't need to be sentences or fragments or whatever. It breaks it up too much.
“You’re strong, Darrel,” the captain had said, many years ago. But the captain was dead now, dead....
First, one too many periods to be really nitpicky.
Second, I really don't like these flashbacks. They never have anything to do with the story, unless I'm really missing something.
I looked over. The corpse was gone.
This is completely personal opinion, but I made the connection without this. I think it takes some of the mystique out of the story instead of adding it, which is what I think you meant to do.
But I came. I followed him as he strode towards the tundra,
Here's what I found for tundra:
a vast treeless zone lying between the ice cap and the timberline of North America and Eurasia and having a permanently frozen subsoil.
That's all I found. I'm not sure you're using that word correctly.
the colors grew ever duller
The use of ever here is correct, but it sounds odd.
until they were barely perceptible from the gray.
Gray what? I don't think you actually had intended anything to be gray, so maybe try, "until everything seemed like a solid gray," or change perceptible to imperceptible and play around with it. Keep it if you want. I'm not making much sense. I don't think.
Two great statues stood on either side of it: one was an owl, wings spread, eyes fiery; and the other was a man in tattered clothes.
A lot of people use colons this way, but I swear to you, it is WRONG. Colons are mainly in bible verses, the time, and lists. There are a few other purposes, but none of them are seperating two sentences. You could use a semicolon or, even better in my opinion, a period.
As soon as we stepped inside, we were swallowed by darkness. Startled, I glanced back, expecting to see the cold daylight, but even that could not permeate what surrounded us now. And then I was on the boat again, aching, rocking back and forth on the ceaseless waves, never dreaming, never living....
A scratching sound woke me.
What? Darkness, the boat, aching, rocking, the ocean? How? Where? WHAT?
...I don't get it.
Though the berries had somehow rejuvenated much of my strength, I was still not fully recovered.
Again, they couldn't possibly do that.
“The tomb,” he said. He smiled, just slightly. In relief? “Come.”
Again, with the question, you never actually follow up on that. Was it relief? Was it fear? We'll never know. Just cut it.
“I built it myself,” he started. “It took years. I would spend entire days working on it: planning, moving the stone, carving. She would ask, ask what I was up to, but I would never tell her. She...she had her suspicions, of course. But she pretended not to. She wanted not to. Now she is dead. Now this is her tomb.”
So, up till now, this kid has been answering with monosyllables. There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, I kind of like it. Just make sure you stick to the quiet, serious, I'll tell you what you need to know when you need to know it personality.
She was. She gazed down at us with lustrous green eyes, her ebon hair draped over her shoulders in long, parted strands.
I could see the boy saying "she was", but in the MC's thoughts it seems weird.
There was a kindness about her features, her rounded nose, her thick eyebrows. But there was something I could not describe, as well. Something almost... familiar.
“Who are you?” I asked, turning suddenly toward the boy.
“You already know, don’t you?”
I agree with other reviewers on this part.
“So you could help me. And I could help you.”
How does the boy help the MC?
I pushed away my plate, letting it skid across the stone surface. “I’ll manage.”
I don't really want your MC to eat ashes, but if I was starving like he should be, I would accept anything if someone called it food.
“A trapdoor,” I said, gazing at it.
Really? I think your readers can figure it out without you spelling it out.
“Be patient,” replied the boy.
Though this dialouge is short and to the point, I felt that it wasn't really in the boy's character. Up until now, he's kind of been using words when he has to. This comes off as almost smart alecky.
The ghostly cries grew louder by a nearly imperceptible amount.
I'm assuming you mean just a little. Your language is wonderful, but here, again personal opinion, I think it confuses the reader more than amazes them. Just because it's a big word doesn't mean it's the best way to describe something.
“When she died but two weeks ago, I took her body here.” He gestured to the wooden box - the coffin, I now realized. “I slept here, just that night. But her body rose from the coffin.” His pale face stood out in the darkness.
“It rose, and it screamed at me, called me...horrible things. But in the morning, it grew silent. I heard the lid shut.” A tear leaked from his eye. “On the second night, the same thing happened. I realized I needed a way to keep her inside, to prevent her from escaping. So I burnt all of her belongings.”
“Stone wouldn’t hold her. She is stronger than that.” He gazed sadly at the coffin. “After that, normal food never satisfied me. I grew to despise it. So now I eat only ashes.”
All of this is needed history, so I'm slow to say this... I'm going to anyway. All of this dialouge is abnormal for your boy. I'm not sure how you could fix. I suggest making the language less flowery. Just leave the bare basics and see how it goes.
“She does not know of it. It is well concealed.”
Like here, even though this is short enough, if it wasn't, you could get rid of the second sentence. I hope it helps and makes sense.
But you will know.”
He never does.
“And we need to think. To scheme.”
The second part is useless. I would get rid of it. It doesn't sound quite right.
“She broke through. She’s inside,”
Again, we can figure it out.
At last we reached the bottom, and we darted synchronously toward the opening,
Synchronously is a great word. I didn't even have to look it up. It just makes it sound like you used a thesaurus, which is fine, just not when it makes it sound forced.
I was becoming weary.
He should have been weary from walking up those huge stairs. He's been without food and water long enough for his teeth to rot out of his mouth. Becoming weary now isn't realistic.
I forced myself to endure the discomfort.
Being chased by a zombie, stomach wounds, starvation, dehydration, bleeding mouth... Discomfort? Understatement of the century.
“You’ll know.”
But he doesn't.
taking the boy in my arm,
He would be weak to do that.
I sat there, in that boat, drifting on the ceaseless waves. And sometime between then and eternity, my ship arrived, and pulled me aboard.
This sounds like he died. If so, I like it. I really like the ending where you're leaving us shaking our head.
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