Campfire story

The sun had set, and the moon rose till it stood over a vast forest. Within this forest there stood a village. Few of the villagers had not gone to sleep. One of these was the village hunter. It was then that a sudden downpour of heavy rain came.
“By the bloody bones, what was that?” He said. Putting on his suit of bear’s skin, he rushed out of his house into the drenching rain. He shuddered and half-stooping, went against the pounding winds to his barn and stood up. He looked around for his suit of aluminum amour.
“Hey there, you’re supposed to be hanging on the wall!” he told it. But it just fluttered in the wind. Propelled by the wind, it went out the door. The man grabbed his rifle and ran after the suit, following it into the forest. It was many miles before the man gave up the chase of his aluminum armor, and began his dreary walk back home.
Near where the man turned his face homeward, the ground parted and a metallic column slowly rose from the hole, casting a shadow on its surroundings. The column rose till it stood as high as a man. He lethargically came to life, drawing on the light of the moon to revive himself. He extended out its arms, revealing a fork in his left hand, and a knife in the right. He continued to expand, revealing four legs.
He turned to the suit of armor and said angrily, “Why did you wake me up?”
“I was chased by my owner, the wind blew me here!”
“You are a flimsy monkey! Anyways, your owner might make—hmm, a good meal!” he raised himself above the trees surrounding him.
Scanning the forest with his eyes, he espied some houses in the distance, making him smile broadly to himself. He began to weave his way through the dense forest at an incredible speed, followed slowly by flimsy.
In a short while, the he came upon flimsy’s owner. They both stopped and stared down each other.
“I am ghost of metals past, and I’m hungry!”
“I am hunter of the village over there, somewhere, and I’ve lost my armor.”
“You eat bears?” the ghost asked.
“Yes, I take their skin also, what do you eat?” the hunter said, “Wait, ghosts don’t eat.”
“I for one will prove you wrong.” the ghost said. “I can give you a suit of armor, don’t care whether it’s new or old, on one condition.”
“Condition?” the hunter asked.
“This is the condition.” The ghost said. He stretched out his left arm and speared the hunter.
“Hey wait, I didn’t agree to this!”
“But I do” with that, the ghost cut the man in half and began feasting. At this moment, flimsy came up.
“I am ghost of metals past, do not disturb!”
“That meat bag is mine!” flimsy said.
With a hysterical laugh, the ghost pulled flimsy to himself and, crushing him, ate him as well. “What a feast!” He laughed, and continued on towards the village….The end

I like this a lot. I like how short it is, it still goes well and the ending is fab It's comical and good. I just have a question, what is a pillar?

good question. A pillar is architectural element similar to a column in its role as a vertical support structure, but the base section is any shape but circular. As in here it is not supporting anything, it should be a column

hi, i'm cannoncomplex and i'm here to comment your work.

Okay, my general impression of the work was a sense of the anti-hero. We got a pillar woken up and about to devoru a village when a guy comes up. This guy, in my opinion, would have been a hero of this short piece since he would survive an attack and warn the villagers but then, you seem to reverse this expectation and make the pillar devour him. This was good and i like the anti-hero effect.
Secondly, there is the essence of surrealism. I am pointing out on the pillar and how out of some reason, it reanimated and began to feed itself. I like this and how you seemed to put some realist on it.
Thirdly, is that you gave a sense of expectation and a firm concept in that piece which is good generally speaking because that is a little hard to do-for me especcially. That is what I like of the story.

For extra work, try to elaborate the pillar and give some subtle background to its revival. This may be to inform the reader why did it rose in the first place but such clues do not need to be direct. Allusions or detail to its suuroundings can give the reader some clues.

Overall, I like the story.

Hey there, Z, here to review as promised! I’ll be a little harsh, but you can take that, right?

The dark column slowly rose from the forest, casting a shadow on all of its surroundings. It continually increased in height until it stood above all the trees in the vicinity.

I struck out those two places because they are repetitive. Having long sentences full of useless phrases can bore the reader.

By this time, the sun had set, and the moon slowly rose until it stood over the pillar. The pillar quickly came to life, drawing on the light of the sun reflected from the moon to revive itself. It extended out its arms, revealing a fork in its left hand, and a knife to in the right. He continued to expand, revealing four legs.

I italicized the first sentence because I believe you can eliminate it completely or remove it to the beginning of the story. The time and setting of a story is something you usually want to put as forward as possible, just to eliminate any possibilities for confusion.
I struck out that phrase about “the light of the sun”, since “the moon’s light” is quite enough without having to go into where the light of the moon comes from and how it’s actually reflected sunlight and all that. Y’no?
I also replaced your “to” with “in” since it makes more sense.

Scanning its surroundings with its never erring eyes, it soon smiled broadly to itself after spotting some houses. It began to slowly dislodge itself from the ground and weave its way through the dense forest.

I’ve noticed two things so far that you need to change. Your recurring mention of ‘it’ and your ineffective, passive voice.
Instead of saying ‘it’, you can say ‘the dark column’ or, ‘the ghost’ (unless you don’t want to reveal that yet).
About your passive voice…let me explain what I mean by that first.
A passive voice is a phrase or sentence that refers to action or possession in a distant way.
“The chair belonging to Jim” is passive. Correction: “Jim’s chair.”
“Sandy was stung by a bee.” is passive. Correction: “The bee stung Sandy.”
Let me put it this way, when the verb tells that the subject is doing the action, it is active.
“Mr. Benz received the grant.”
When the verb tells that the subject is receiving the action, it is passive.
“The grant was received by Mr. Benz.”
An active voice is always better than a passive one.

it soon smiled broadly to itself after spotting some houses

That should be, “Spotting a group of houses made it smile broadly.” Or something to that effect.

After an hour, it reached the edge of the forest and dropped on its hands, going at full speed towards the houses.

If it saw the houses through the trees, I’m quite sure it wouldn’t be an hour away. You should fix your time a little bit.

But before it could reach its intended destination, it was stopped by a man wearing a bear’s skin.

Here you introduce the man without any prior action. Suddenly, the reader is presented with ‘a man wearing a bear’s skin’ and given no further information. Is he hunting? Does he live in one of those houses? Why would he talk to a ghost? You really need more information on this man.

“What do you want, metal man?” The man asked.

Once again, you introduce a new idea very suddenly. That the ghost is made of metal is not evident from the beginning, when you refer to it as a ‘column’. Transition, transition, transition.

“Me? You ask Me?” the man was terrified. He stammered out, “Shuure, I would like a suit of metal armor.”

Why does he think the ghost is offering a metal suit? The ghost has simply spoken to him about his ‘metal pasts’ and he is suddenly terrified and filled with an urge to get armor. What? You need to think your story through a little more.
The conversation could go like this:
G: “I am a ghost of metal pasts.”
M: “Metal pasts? What the fudge does that mean?”
G: “It means that I can grant anyone a free suit of metal armor.”
M: “Really? See here, metal thing, I’ve been hunting for a long time under this bear’s skin. It makes me look big and strong, but truthfully, it is just hot and heavy. Can you make me a metal suit?
G: “Absolutely! *Glomp* *Gulp* *Scrumpff* *aaaah*
See what I mean? Now, you probably wouldn’t want that conversation, since it leads over towards the crazy side of writing, but that’s just my style. You can come up with your own conversation that leads up to the final climax of the man getting eaten.
You’ll notice that if you followed all my suggestions, your story will end up being much longer than it is now. That’s good.

The ghost of metals past promptly ate the man up, saying as he did so, “You get your armor, I get my full stomach!” and went off in hysterical laughing hysterically.

This is the punchline, the klinker, the lead-off, and, truthfully, it’s not a very good one. For one, it happens too quickly. Secondly, you make some bad mistakes. I struck them out above. Also, that bit of dialogue (the ghost’s words) needs to be in a new paragraph all by itself, like this:

The ghost promptly ate the man up, saying as he did so:
“You get your armor, I get my fully stomach!”
He then went off laughing hysterically.

Overall:
It’s not very scary, so you don’t have much hope for winning the October contest, but that’s fixable. First off, add more suspense, waiting and delaying of action. Have the ghost creep up on the man, include the man’s part of the story and give us a view of his scared emotions. Put more setting in it, wind whistling through the trees, wolves howling, big moon hanging like a massive eye over the dark forest; prose like that can add a lot to the story.
You did a good job, Z, keep writing, I know you can do better than this!
Jenthura.

LOL, Jenthura, if you can wait i will revise it the possibility of my winning this thing is 1 to a trillion!

cannoncomplex wrote:hi, i'm cannoncomplex and i'm here to comment your work.

Okay, my general impression of the work was a sense of the anti-hero. We got a pillar woken up and about to devoru a village when a guy comes up. This guy, in my opinion, would have been a hero of this short piece since he would survive an attack and warn the villagers but then, you seem to reverse this expectation and make the pillar devour him. This was good and i like the anti-hero effect.
Secondly, there is the essence of surrealism. I am pointing out on the pillar and how out of some reason, it reanimated and began to feed itself. I like this and how you seemed to put some realist on it.
Thirdly, is that you gave a sense of expectation and a firm concept in that piece which is good generally speaking because that is a little hard to do-for me especcially. That is what I like of the story.

For extra work, try to elaborate the pillar and give some subtle background to its revival. This may be to inform the reader why did it rose in the first place but such clues do not need to be direct. Allusions or detail to its suuroundings can give the reader some clues.

Overall, I like the story.

The man is not supposed to be a hero, actually

The man is not supposed to be a hero, actually

i understand that the guy was not the hero...but from the way that has been structured int his piece, this guy has a hero-like potrayal. Again he is not the hero but a victim but from the way i see it, he is a represented of the shed of human heroism.
Let me explain, if you look at sci-fi novels, humans possessed this human heroism and that theyw anted to destroy the deadly stimuli that will happen. Almost every novel seemed to have this heroism in it but this piece has not.
Look at the guy, he has no shed of heroism. The only thing he does is talk to this creature and is absent-minded of his fate. If you compare it to the heroism of some novels, this guy would have escaped and report the menace to the village. But this piece didn't showed that. The guy was dead and that itself was a representation of the shed of heroism. That is what i meant when i said that this guy has a hero-like potrayal or that this piece is a bit anti-hero.

LOL, i have somewhat changed the story already