The Devil's Wings

*Chapter One*

The wind blew slightly over my round face, pushing my blond bangs into my eyes. I giggled, thinking of my appearance. No makeup, tangled hair, and sweats. Not the way I usually looked. I sighed and moved my hair out of my dark brown eyes, taking in the scenery. Trees were bare and scrawny. Frosted grass surrounded the lake and added an extra chill to the night air. I pulled my arms together and blew out of my mouth. A stream of white air hovered for a moment, them dissolved into the clear, cold air around it.

I dipped my bare feet into the icy water. A shiver ran up my spine. Ice was broken and strewn across the edge of the lake. I kicked a piece into the middle of the water. A reflection caught my eye. I looked up.

It all came at once. The pain, the scream, the water. I think the water was the worst part. Like needles, the water stabbed my body. My arms tried to pull me out of the water, but the pain was too much. My back felt like something was attacking it. I looked over my shoulder just in time to see it. Two arms shot out of my back and sent another pain through my back. Suddenly, I flew out of the water and flopped onto the cold grass.

I gasped to try to catch my breath. I looked again at my extra arms. They now had flaps of skin hanging down. I noticed with a start that they reminded me of something. I looked back up to the moon. Outlined on the white surface, a bat hovered, wings flapping furiously. That's what they were, skin-colored bat wings were placed on my back.

I put my hands onto my head, but pulled them down with a yelp of pain. Blood dripped out of tiny pricks on my palms. Tentatively, I felt with my fingers on my skull. Sure enough, two horns were placed on my scalp. I began to cry. It didn't surprise me much when I realised I was crying scarlet tears. Blood welled up behind my eyelids and poured out onto my cheeks. I fell onto the ground and hot my fists angrily onto the frozen grass.

A voice made me sit up and look around. But it wasn't anywhere. The voice came from my head. It hissed between words.
"Don't go home Chloe. Stay in the forest. All will be revealed to you tomorrow." The voice sent a chill through my back. It was like nails on a chalk bored. But I did as it said and walked behind a wide tree. I curled up on the floor and forced myself to sleep under the cold moonlight.





*Chapter Two*

A loud, shrill scream woke me from my deep slumber. I realised with a start that the forest surrounded me. what I had thought to be a dream, was slowly becoming my reality. The scream continued to echo noisily in my head. I pulled my hands up to my ears, but it didn't stop.

"Quit!" I shouted to no one in particular. My voice was muffled and distant compared to the squealing. All of a sudden, the screams became words. Hard to understand, I made out a few of them.

"Kill! Destiny to kill the non-powerful!" The voice stopped and I was left to catch my own weight on a nearby tree. I heard a twig crack behind me and shivered, turning around.

"Who's there?" My voice was shaky and tears were building up in my eyes, making me see red. A dark outline stepped out from behind a tree. I was pointing behind me. I nervously looked behind my shoulder. Screaming filled the entire forest and I cried out in agony as I realised it was coming from me.

Pinned to the tree with nails, was a mirror. In the mirror, reflected a person. She had two, huge bat wings behind her. Horns the size of quarters were sitting on her head, and her ears were very pointy. Blood stains lay on her face, hands, and clothes. She was shivering and breathing very heavily. It took me a moment to realise that I was being reflected to myself.

"Do you like my gifts?" The voice carried on the wind into my ears. It's wicked piercing laugh made me gasp in terror. I spun around and wiped my eyes, trying to get a better look. I could hardly see him. His long legs were very skinny and his head seemed small. But the only thing I could really pay attention to, were his eyes. They were a dark, menacing red. Their awful glare bore right into my soul and made my arms feel weak.

"Why?" My soft voice seemed to be inaudible, but I thought he heard. His evil smile spread across his face.

"I need your help, Chloe." He took a step toward me, but his feet seemed to float on the icy ground. "I need you to kill." The last word hung in the air like a bad stench. I pulled the edges of my lips down and shivered in the freezing air. "Will you help me?" His voice was right in my ear. Suddenly, he was standing beside me, his arm wrapped tightly around my shoulders. I nodded, not sure what else to do. "Good." He whispered.

This is a really interesting story but the main character... Chloe's reaction to all of this happening to her doesnt seem believable. I would have a major freak out, not just cry but scream and carry on...if it was me. I dont know if there's more to the story, like if your going to tell more about her later, but i think you jump into it too fast. I didnt get attacthed to Chloe enough to care what was happening to her or to understand why she was taking all this so well.

I admit I'm not much in the mood for nitpicks, but I stopped by just to give you one quick observation: Your sentence structure is rough. Jerky. Try to connect sentences, and watching the whole show-don't-tell scenario. Right now, it's all telling. Your MC did this. Then this happened. Etc, etc.

Good luck with your writing and editing.

KJ

I agree with the comments about the whole rushed thing. I honestly think her reaction to everything isn't believable at all. Getting transformed suddenly in a single day is going to have vast effects. How does she feel about not ever being able to live her previous life again, against her will? Not much material describes the character's mental state and thoughts. In the end, I didn't really care about Chloe enough to stay interested.

It's a good concept, but your chapters are going to have to be a lot longer than that to fully convey it.

Hey Vandria. I'm here to review your piece!

*Chapter One*

Vandria wrote:The wind blew slightly over my round face, pushing my blond bangs into my eyes.

I do have a few things wrong with this sentence.

1) I know you're trying to be descriptive, but you should wait for a more appropriate time. And besides, I don't know if it's just me, but I think 'The wind blew sightly over my face, pushing my bangs into my eyes.' sounds better than what you have now.
2) It doesn't hook me into the story. If I was an editor looking at a slush pile, I'm not sure if I would continue on after this. Hooks have to grab your readers with some sort of event or action.
Here's what Wikipedia has to say about it:

Wikipedia wrote:A narrative hook (or hook) is a literary technique in the opening of a story that "hooks" the reader's attention so that he or she will keep on reading. The "opening" may consist of several paragraphs for a short story, or several pages for a novel, but ideally is the opening sentence.

One of the most common forms is dramatic action, which engages the reader into wondering what the consequences of the action will be. This particular form has been recommended from the earliest days, stemming from Aristotle, and the widely used term in medias res stems from the Roman Empire. But action is not, in itself, a hook, without the reader's wondering what will happen next, or what caused the actions to occur. Overly dramatic openings may leave the reader indifferent because the characters acting or being acted on are non-entities; even murder of a faceless character may not engage interest.

The use of action as the hook, and the advice to so use it, is so wide-spread as to sometimes lead to the use of the term to mean an action opening, but other things can be used for narrative hooks, such mysterious settings, or engaging characters, or even a thematic statement, as with Jane Austen's opening line, "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

When a story does not lend itself to a good hook when it is laid out linearly, the writer may tell the story out of order to engage the reader's interest. The story may begin with a dramatic moment and, once the reader is curious, flashback to the history necessary to understand it. Or it may be told as a story-within-a-story, with the narrator in the frame story telling the story to answer the curiosity of his listeners, or by warning them that the story began in an ordinary seeming way, but they must follow it to understand latter actions. A famous early example of this technique was used in the One Thousand and One Nights, also known as the Arabian Nights, in which the frame story consists of Sheherazade telling stories to King Shahriyar; she must keep him 'hooked' to each of the stories, in order to prevent him from executing her the next morning.

Narrative hooks often play an important role in suspense thrillers and mystery fiction, particularly in murder mysteries. This also dates back to the One Thousand and One Nights, in which a tale, "The Three Apples", begins with the discovery of a young woman's dead body, thus keeping the reader interested in "whodunit".

Here is first sentence of the first novel of one of the world's most famous series of books.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone wrote:Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Pirvet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.

See? Say a complete new comer picked up this 1st Harry Potter book without having any idea what it was about. They'd want to know what J.K Rowling meant by "perfectly normal". Wouldn't a regular couple be normal? We're they a normal couple at an insane asylum? Later, Rowling tells us that the "deformity" of sorts is Magic, but she doesn't give it away right away, that's why we're anxious to read on. Now, J.K. Rowling doesn't start off with action, but she still hooks us in. Now, reading the first sentence, I see you haven't done that. Anyhow, moving on.

Vandria wrote:I giggled, thinking of my appearance.

What do you mean? Try to be a little more specific. Is she at a party, self-conscious because everyone is dressed better than her? You don't have to follow this bit of advice, but I don't really like the word giggled. "I laughed nervously," sounds better in this case.

Vandria wrote: No makeup, tangled hair, and sweats.

First off, this is not a sentence, it is a fragment. In addition, I'm confused. Wouldn't the character be wearing make-up now, considering it's something that generally makes you more beautiful, and tangled hair and sweats (im assuming you mean sweatpants) make you less attractive?

Vandria wrote:Not the way I usually looked.

This sentence is also a fragment. To decrease the chunkiness, combine this one and the one before in one sentence. Or, if you don't want to do that, you could preface this sentence with 'It was not'.

Vandria wrote:I sighed and moved my hair out of my dark brown eyes, taking in the scenery.

I sighed, moving my hair out of dark brown eyes as I took in the scenery.

^
I think the above just seems to flow better, no?

Vandria wrote:Trees were bare and scrawny. Frosted grass surrounded the lake and added an extra chill to the night air. I pulled my arms together and blew out of my mouth. A stream of white air hovered for a moment, them dissolved into the clear, cold air around it.

Okay? I still do not understand anything about this piece. I've picked up a few things. 1. She's female. 2. She has blonde hair and brown eyes. 3. She's in the forest.
Why is she there? Did something happen? What is her name? Why should I want to continue this story?

Vandria wrote:I dipped my bare feet into the icy water. A shiver ran up my spine. Ice was broken and strewn across the edge of the lake. I kicked a piece into the middle of the water. A reflection caught my eye. I looked up.

Um, okay? What is going on? She's going swimming? Why? I'm confused. When I first imagined this, I thought it was the middle of summer.

Vandria wrote:It all came at once. The pain, the scream, the water. I think the water was the worst part. Like needles, the water stabbed my body. My arms tried to pull me out of the water, but the pain was too much. My back felt like something was attacking it. I looked over my shoulder just in time to see it. Two arms shot out of my back and sent another pain through my back. Suddenly, I flew out of the water and flopped onto the cold grass.

This paragraph is good for the most part, but I still think you are making a lot of the same mistakes. Errors in grammar. I still do not know what is happening. Is she trying to commit suicide? Keep in mind that this was first person point of view, so you should try to convey a few of your MC thoughts.

Vandria wrote:I gasped to try to catch my breath.

I gasped, trying to catch my breath.

Vandria wrote:I looked again at my extra arms. They now had flaps of skin hanging down. I noticed with a start that they reminded me of something. I looked back up to the moon. Outlined on the white surface, a bat hovered, wings flapping furiously. That's what they were, skin-colored bat wings were placed on my back.

Alright, as I keep reading on, I realize the same mistakes.

Errors in sentence structure and grammar

There were a lot of errors here. I told this to someone in a poem. Grammar changes everything. ifgrammardidntexistthatwouldnotworkoutverywellwouldit - did you understand what I wrote? If you said no, you see my point.
Here's what Wikipedia has to say about grammar.
Click here

I'm not going to review any more, because I read it through and you made the same mistakes. I think you use the resources I gave you to figure out the rest of the piece for yourself.

nice story premise..but don't you think your chapters are a little too short?..maybe try elaborating the events more..the descriptions of the characters and the place..it still seems vague to me..and the personality/attitude of Chloe is also kinda weird..she's just watching herself like that..and maybe more conversations..

this could really be a good story you know..