Hide and Seek

This is for a local contest, and my age catagory is 12-15, so i wanted something that would stand out. Here it is:

Hide and Seek

The darkness was complete: compressing, suffocating, choking.
I ran blindly down the black hallway, my arms stretched out in front of my so I would have some forewarning before I smashed into anything.
Behind me was the familiar, ever-present thud of another pair of footsteps. If my own heartbeat hadn’t been deafening, I would have been able to hear his breath.
He was so close.
How could I ever escape him, if I couldn't even get far enough away to not hear his footfsteps? How could I ever win this futile game of hide-and-seek we played?
How could I lose him this maze of rickety wooden staircases and endless hallways: my pursuer, my kidnapper, my dark angel?

I forced the thoughts out of my head in time to skid around a sharp corner. My legs burned with effort. My breath came in violent gasps, and I didn’t try to quiet it. The darkness could not hide me here. It had failed me in the past too many times to count. I had failed too many times. I always lost our hide and seek.
The toe of my sneaker caught on the edge of the stair I never remembered, and I tumbled to the ground.
I lay there in a heap, tears of failure and hopelessness pulsing down my cheeks, blood pulsing down my shin from a cut in my knee.
Because I couldn’t run anymore.

Behind me, my devil stopped and knelt on the creaky old wood like he had done uncountable times before and reached out to me.
I had lost our game hide and seek.

The darkness was complete; compressing, suffocating, choking.

A rule of thumb with semicolons is that both sides of the semicolon must be complete sentences. In this case, the semicolon should be replaced with a normal colon.

some forewarning before

The "fore" is unnecessary.

How could I ever escape him, if I could never get away from him?

"escaping him" and "getting away from him" mean the same thing. You need to make the two phrases in this mean different things, otherwise it is very repetitive.

How could I lose him this maze of rickety wooden staircases and endless hallways; my pursuer, my kidnapper, my dark angel?

This has the same issue with semi-colons. The second phrase is not a complete sentence.


I don't understand what this is trying to say. We need more background information.

-Lena

Hey there!

This is an interesting story idea, and I thought you told it well, especially the way you described the darkness and the fear of the narrator. Grammar and spelling and sentence structure and all that were good as well. I have just one nitpick:

I had lost our game hide and seek.

I think you're missing an 'of' after 'game'. Also, as a last line I like this a lot, but I think it would have much more effect if you hadn't already repeated the phrase "hide and seek" twice before. If you didn't say it until the last line, readers' curiosity and the mystery of what's going on would build as it went through. As it is, it's kinda like you've given away the punchline before you've told the joke, if you know what I mean.

Overall, like I said, this is a great idea, but it has so much more potential than what it is now. You give away a few hints as to what might be going on between the narrator and their pursuer, but you never make take this further, you just leave it as vague mentions. The way I see it, the aspect of this that could be fleshed out, to raise the story to the level it deserves to be at, is the relationship between the narrator and this other character, and the metaphor of the game of hide and seek. Clearly they know each other well and have played it many times before: what could this symbolise about the relationship between them? You've taken a childish game and turned into something much more sinister, and I think you could delve deeper into this. Do they have some kind of history? Have they ever met outside of this game? From the way the narrator describes the other person as "my kidnapper, my dark angel" it certaintly seems like they have, and maybe if you focused on this more and explored the narrator's feelings towards the pursuer more it would help.

Sorry for blabbering on for ages there. But yeah, while this is good, I think that if you did some revising and delved deeper into what's lurking underneath it could be a lot better.

PM me if you have any questions or anything, and good luck with the contest!

Hello there!

Here to review.

my arms stretched out in front of my so I would have some forewarning before I smashed into anything.

It feels lacking.

pulsing down my cheeks, blood pulsing down my shin from a cut in my knee.

"Pulsing" is a bit repetitive here.

Behind me, my devil stopped

Why "my devil"? It's a bit possessive thing to read and I suggest to make each characters more vivid.

Anyways, I think this is a pretty good start but sometimes your wording confused me. The story plot was too plain to be interesting. What is with the Hide and Seek? Unless you have given it with more significant idea behind the story. Perhaps thinking symbolically, you're talking about life and the downfall of it. I'm not sure, this is not clear for us to understand of what you're trying to imply here. but anyways, your spelling and your verb consistency is good, so I give you a tap on the shoulder for that. All in all, I think this has potential. Just so make the plot plausible and significant. Hope I helped and PM me for questions.

Keep writing!

Peace out!

~yuri

That was very interesting, but i feel you one question unanswered, which is why!?
You give lovely description, but there was never an exact reason as to why the devil is chasing your MC. But, i really liked it, it really played with my senses and emotions
~WickedWonder