Lone Lament; the Pantomime Tales

Rod scanned the Newspaper... It was blank, as expected. They delivered it regardless, a sort of comfort, reminding them of when their job had purpose. When anything had purpose other then to believe and repent.

Believe and repent, repent and believe... Rod wondered how many times he'd heard those soft assurances of meaning throughout his existence. The term 'life' had been outlawed long ago.

With a gentle strain, his eyes skipped to the corner. Always the top. 'Something to start off nothing', his grandfather used to say. Before the Aids deemed him viable for the Unsanitarium. Clearly, Rod would need to believe a bit more, for even the top of the reminiscently scratchy page was empty.

Yes... He leaked out some fortitude from what mental reserves he had remaining, and sure enough; the date became faintly etched into the corner of the paper.

Ywan {.o 77hT

It was only an estimate, naturally. The world subsided on guesses and ballpark figures. The fact that ballparks were only known as phantasms; pigments shunted off when they blinked, images hidden in shadows linings; went unheeded by the citizens... The Aids alone knew. That, however, was about to change. Because Rod had a secret.

Rod hailed the papercap and fed it. He siphoned out a bit of faith, just enough to justify taking another copy. As his fingers curled away from his temple with their ambiguous contents of lucid solidity, they flicked purposefully outward, jetting the elliptical fog into the Papercap's outstretched hub. It whirred appropriately, and allowed Rod to relieve it of a second paper. Why was he this close to the cap? Glancing at package in his clenched hands, his pupils were assaulted by the glaring nothing of palm and page. Looking over his shoulder, he spotted another paper. Empty, of course. But why did he have two...? Blinking away the harsh white, he looked up. But he didn't see up. At least not what up had always been. He saw Red. Endless Red. So much that he retched, feeling the greens of vomit for the first time. He had never seen red before, nor felt green, or tasted blue. But Red...

And then Rod remembered; he had to find the Spare.

Hey, whence!

I really like your style of writing- it's elegant, but very simple at the same time. Perhaps my favorite bit was at the begining, when they still deliver the paper, though there's nothing written in it. Good idea.

This this is pretty short, I've only one thing to comment on:

- When you introduce a society that your average-everyday reader isn't very familiar with, you can't start alluding to places and objects they don't know about and expect them to follow along. It makes us want to cry and pull our hair out in chunks.

Well, not really. That's a bit melodramatic- but you know what I mean. It's confusing. The problem with this problem is that in order to remedy the situation, it's often a lot easier to resort to info-dumping- giving us too much information at once. The exact opposite of what you're doing now.

My personal favorite way to explain something and to keep the flow at the same time is like this:

Grazing in the pasture were Cows- large, bovine creatures flecked with black spots.

It's easy to just put a hyphen or some other break and quickly explain it. That way, you're not overwhelming your readers, and you're not confusing them.

Overall, a very good piece- please post more, if you've got it!

P.S. Maybe 'Pantamime' should be spelt 'Pantomime'? Even if it's intentional, the spelling obsessed among us may very well burn you in effigy, no matter how nice a guy you are.

I liked it! Well, what I could understand of it. Sam has a good point, you really shouldn't bring up so many different terms and objects without explaining what they are and the relation to the environment. It's apparent that it's some sort of dystopia and presumably science fiction oriented but that's all I could understand.

Some clarification would make this all the better ^_^

I'll have to agree here that we could use a little context. The writing was fluid and interesting and I'm glad you didn't resort to too much background, however I wasn't sure at all what was going on. At the end, it reminded me of someone getting high-- felt green? tasted blue? Maybe he was tripping.

Thankee much for the crits... Sorry about the ambiguity of it all.

Here's the next segment:

And then Rod remembered; he had to find the Spare.

It had come to him some dreams ago... culminating in a near-obsessive state. The assurance that someone, something wasn't pre-planned. Even the Aids, government supported as they were, weren't capable of thinking ahead to met every possible scenario; every potential event. And so it was, that Rod knew that by this realization on it's own was an instance of these forbidden happenstance. For why would someone need to feel when they could forget, to live when they could exist?

Unsure of anything, Rod watched the red seep outward. He soaked in his surroundings... 2 papers. But why? He didn't know why, but he somehow felt why. And he felt he had known before. Then how could he forget? The Spare. It must have something to do with his realization. The red... the paper's, the forgetting. It all led back to the Spare.

And who would want to suppress the knowledge of an accident-- an excess? Only those who created the standard in the first place. The forgers of perfect, the combatant's of peace; The Aids. And Rod concluded that if the Spare was his friend (he couldn't take the thought that it could be anything but) then the Aids most certainly were not. He shuddered with the malignant weight of this revelation-- that everything, he knew, every emotion he had felt, the very thoughts he had smithed; all were now working against him. To make him forget... to make him exist. All but the Red.


well, that was odd. I'm rather curious as to where this is going. Hmm... I guess we'll have to wait and see, won't we?

Well, this is very different. I agree with the other in the fact that your style is very fluid. It dances on the page and it's nice to listen to in your head when you read it. But, I think it's safe to say, I'm not the only one who has trouble understanding it. Really, this is your story, and you can choose the target audience but maybe for a Young Writers Society you could tone it down a bit?

happenstance

God, I hope that's a word.

...

These things are evil. It's a use of punctuation to do the job of words. A simple full-stop would suffice I think. Maybe it's more jarring than the smoother '...' but I'd personally just use a full-stop.

2 papers

The general rule is to use the word for a number if it is ten or below. I did it just then .


Apart from this, it's a very good story. I'm interested to see where it goes to.

DarkLight